Life on Mars

By Antonio C. Abaya

Written on May 28, 2008

For the Standard Today,

May 29 issue

After a journey that took almost ten months, NASA’s Phoenix Lander landed in the north pole region of the Planet Mars last Sunday, May 25, to begin a three-month search for signs of life beneath the permafrost surface.

No other planet in our solar system has excited the human imagination as Mars, for the most part because of apparent “canals” that crisscrossed the Martian surface, which suggested the existence of a superior civilization that constructed them, but which were later found to be mere optical illusions.

The first landing on Mars’ surface was made by the Viking 2 space craft in 1976 – almost ancient history in the annals of space – which sampled the Martian soil. It found no signs of life, no microbial organism, certainly no superior civilization.

Phoenix Lander’s main mission is to analyze the sub-surface, up to a depth of less than a meter, for signs of organic life, to see if life as we know it on Earth could have existed on Mars in the past, or is existing in the present, or could exist in the future.

All life forms on earth – animal or vegetable – is made up of four key elements: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, joined together in myriad combinations or compounds, the most basic of which – for animal life – is amino acid. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, which in turn are the building blocks of all living organisms.

Past missions to Mars, since the first flyby by Mariner 4 in 1965, have determined that the Martian atmosphere is 95 percent carbon dioxide, 3 percent nitrogen, 1.6 percent argon (an inert gas) plus traces of oxygen and water. The red color of the Martian soil is said to be due to the heavy presence of iron oxide or rust.

So the key elements for life as we know it on Earth are present in Mars. By digging below the Martian surface and analyzing the soil below the permafrost, the Phoenix Lander hopes to provide definitive answers: was there life on Mars in the past, is there life there at present?

Any organisms from the past would be embedded in the ice, the way insects from tens of millions of years ago are embedded in amber resin here on Earth. Discovery of such organisms would constitute the most Earth-shaking news in the 21st century, even if that organism were only a one-celled paramecium.

It would provide empirical evidence for the logical assumption that, given that there are billions of galaxies in the cosmos, and there are in turn billions of planets in these billions of galaxies, it would be reasonable to assume that on some of these planets, where conditions were hospitable for the evolution of organisms, there would be life as we know it on Earth, including even sentient beings who have self-consciousness, memory and the ability to communicate, some of whom would be more highly developed than us earthlings..

Even if Phoenix Lander were to come up empty-handed in Mars, the statistical chances of life on other planets – even life forms more evolved than us – in other galaxies would still be high.

The terra-centric universe that was the conventional wisdom of Christianity for 1,500 years would not be able to adequately explain evolved life on other planets in other galaxies.

This terra-centric universe was based on the flawed cosmology of Aristotle (384-322 BC) and Ptolemy (second century AD) who taught that Earth was the center of the universe around which revolved the moon and the Sun (which moved the fastest), the planets (which moved more slowly), and the stars (which moved the least.).

Beyond the stars was a region where nothing moved, nothing changed, where resided the Unmoved Mover, the Uncaused Cause, which Christian theology borrowed from Aristotle and concluded was God in Heaven.

The notion that Heaven was up there, somewhere, and conversely that Hell was down here, somewhere, is fixed in the Christian imagination,for most Christians, up to this day, even though astronomers Nicolaj Kopernik or Copernicus (1473-1543) of Poland and Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) of Italy had disproved this cosmology, and taught, instead, that the Earth revolved around the Sun, not the other way around.

But the Medieval Church resisted this “heresy” vigorously. After all, the Resurrected Jesus is said in the New Testament to have “ascended” (up) to Heaven, and so did the Virgin Mary. In Dante Alighieri’s (1263-1321) Divine Comedy – an allegorical vision of the Christian afterlife – the author visited Paradiso or Heaven by first climbing (up) the highest mountain. Conversely, Dante visited Inferno or Hell by descending (down) into the bowels of the Earth. There are thousands, tens of thousands, of Christian art over the past 2,000 years that depicted Heaven as somewhere up there.

.The idea that Earth was not the center of the universe was so subversive of Christian orthodoxy that Galileo was summoned by the Inquisition, forced to recant his “heresy”, was ordered imprisoned (later commuted to house arrest), and his books banned. It was not until the year 2000, that the Church – through Pope John Paul II – apologized for its “errors in the last 2000 years, including the trial of Galileo..”

So, if Heaven is not “somewhere up there” beyond the stars, as the Early Fathers had inferred from Aristotle and Ptolemy and had taught for 16 centuries, where is it?

We were taught in Theology class at the Ateneo that Heaven was not a physical place that saints and deities ascended to but was a state of consciousness called a Beatific Vision that one attained through faith and good works, much like the nirvana that Buddhists – who do not subscribe to a personal God – believe in.

So, OK, since God and Heaven are not “up there,” what is? Nothing but more stars and more galaxies than were known in Aristotle’s time, in some of which other life forms most probably exist, including some that may be more highly developed than we earthlings are.

A Jesuit priest, Fr. Jose Gabriel Funes, who is head of the Vatican Observatory and a scientific adviser to Pope Benedict XVI, has recently expressed his opinion that life in other planets is a distinct possibility, but that this is not in conflict with faith in God. Such extra-terrestrial (ET) creatures would still be part of God’s Creation. (Reuters, May 16).

But Islam, which has a view of Creation similar to the Judeo-Christian tradition, would also claim that those ETs are part of Allah’s Creation. So if we should establish contact with ETs in the near future and it turns out, as is likely, that they have never heard of Jesus or Allah, who would have the franchise to “convert” them? Will it throw us earthlings back to the genocidal Crusades of the 11th to the 13th centuries? Just asking. *****

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Combating Smuggling

By Antonio C. Abaya

Written on May 26, 2008

For the Standard Today,

May 27 issue

As every business person or manufacturer in this country knows, smuggling is one of the most insidious banes in our economy, undermining the enterprises of legitimate importers and struggling domestic producers, and depriving government of billions of pesos in tax revenues.

The news that the Bureau of Customs will again use the services of Societe Generale de Surveillance (SGS) for pre-shipment ocular inspection of goods being exported to the Philippines should be welcomed by all affected parties.(Manila Standard Today, May 20, 2008)., except, of course, the smugglers.

According to the Standard Today, Customs was using the services of SGS from 1992 until 2002. I recall that the service contract was terminated under pressure from an NGO headed by former congressman Wigberto Tanada, whose “nationalist” sensibilities were offended by the idea of foreigners performing a government function. SGS was charging a service fee that ranged from P2 to P3 billion a year, which was considered extravagant by Tanada and his group..

Under the arrangement with SGS, all goods bound for the Philippines were subjected to ocular inspection by SGS agents in their ports-of-origin before being cleared for shipment

This made sure, theoretically at least, that the goods and their declared value were correct and legitimate, so that the right taxes were levied when the goods arrived in a Philippine port of entry.

Under the proposed re-contracting of SGS’ services, the Bureau of Customs will no longer collect payments from importers, who will henceforth settle their tax obligations with the banks.

According to Customs Commissioner Napoleon Morales, revenue losses due to smuggling amount to close to P200 billion a year. Assuming this figure is correct, the Philippine government was/is losing P200 billion a year – or P1.2 trillion in the six years since 2002 – because “nationalist” sensibilities rejected paying foreigners P2 to P3 billion a year for services that Filipinos, theoretically, were capable of performing. Was this a case of cutting off our noses to spite our faces?

The Philippines is an import-dependent economy. Almost every year since independence in 1946, we have been importing more than we have been exporting. This is the main reason why the Philippines peso has been losing its value, from P2-to-US$1 in 1946, to P43+-to-US$1 in 2008.

Even our primary export products – electronic components – which make up 60 to 65% of our exports, are heavily import-dependent, with a value-added (mostly from labor) of only 20%. This means that for every $100 worth of electronic products that we export, we have to spend $80 to import their parts..

Given our also relatively weak tourism industry, we do not generate enough foreign exchange to pay for our imports. Were it not for the remittances of overseas workers, the peso would long have plunged to P100-to-US$1 or more.

Employing the services of SGS was never a perfect foil to smuggling, and will never be, unless it is fine-tuned and improved all the time, to keep pace with, or be steps ahead of, the resourcefulness of Filipinos who have a talent for breaking, bending, massaging, twisting, circumventing, disregarding or skirting laws..

One way would be to implement an electronic national ID card, an idea which we have been debating for decades. I have been supporting the national ID card since it was first proposed during the Aquino presidency. But it was always blocked by communists (who feared it would be used to smoke them out) and by liberals in media and the clergy (who raised the specter of Big Brother invading their privacy.)

To make matters worse, the idea was revived during the Ramos presidency with the expressed rationale of using it to keep track of people moving around the country. I wrote that this was a dumb way to promote the idea since it reinforced liberal fears of Big Brother. Besides it would require a mammoth bureaucracy to implement and would accumulate mountains of data everyday, 99.9% of which would be totally useless.

I argued that the electric national ID card should be promoted as a voter’s ID card, to clean up the voters list and help make elections automated, clean and honest. Who can possibly be against clean and honest elections, aside from Garci and his tribe, and their trapo clientele?

In tandem with the SGS pre-shipment ocular inspection, an electronic national ID could be used to curb smuggling, though it will not totally eradicate it.

If a law were passed so that only persons with authentic electronic national ID cards were allowed to a) import anything; b) withdraw any import shipment from the ports, c) pay import duties at the banks, d) store any goods in any bonded customs warehouses, etc., the resultant paper and electronic trail – which can be publicized in media – would constrict the operating space for smugglers and discourage their activities.

Only last week, the Bureau of Customs admitted that it could not locate 200 luxury cars which had obviously been smuggled through the Port of Cebu and registered in nearby Toledo City. If, additionally, only those with authentic electronic national ID cards were allowed to register cars with the LTO – in Toledo or Metro Manila or Subic or anywhere else – those 200 luxury cars would not have been illegally imported at all, or, if imported, would not be so difficult to locate, since the data in the electronic ID cards of those who registered them with the LTO would be immediately known. .

An article by Economist Ernesto M. Pernia in the May 20 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer reveals that the Philippines has nine international airports, compared to only six in Thailand, six in Malaysia, and 11 in Indonesia (which is six times larger than the Philippines). Of these four countries, the Philippines draws by far the fewest number of tourists.

So these surplus international airports were built not to encourage tourism, but for something else. And that “something else,” I am inclined to believe, includes smuggling..

Reducing our international airports to four (Clark, Ninoy Aquino, Mactan and Davao) would further constrict the operating space of smugglers.

So if President Arroyo really wants to curb smuggling, she should accelerate the resumption of SGS’ services, impose the use of electronic national ID cards on those who deal with Customs, and reduce the number of international airports.

The problem is that some of her best friends (or relatives, or financial backers during elections) may be big time smugglers. *****

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ONE – A Filipino Movement
GLIMPSES
Jose Ma. Montelibano

It is public knowledge, internally, that Filipinos are burdened by a curse called divisiveness. This destructive pattern is not the exclusive domain of Filipinos in the Philippines but is like a virus that travels where Filipinos travel. It is very much alive among Filipinos in North America if we look at the number of Filipino associations, around 200 in San Diego alone.

I am now on my second week in San Diego, primarily to support a new and determined effort to promote solidarity among Filipinos in North America. Although I am not a Fil-Am, many among those who help my prime advocacy, Gawad Kalinga are from San Diego. It was more than a pleasant surprise when a few GK advocates from San Diego led by Tony Olaes, a successful second generation Fil-Am, began a renewed effort towards solidarity among Filipinos in North America.

I have been monitoring email correspondence of several egroups in the last twelve years. With great consistency, more and more Filipinos in America write about their deep desire to help the homeland, to strip it of its corrupt image and behavior, to take the poor out of their historical poverty. A common sentiment can be a common cause, and there are common sentiments that can be firm bases to become common causes. Yet, the pattern of divisiveness is embedded too deeply and has created so many wounds that common sentiments and causes have not yet triggered a visible move towards unity.

Why would a young businessman and others like him take on such a Quixotic quest when all others before them failed? When I asked him, Tony Olaes said because he longs for that solidarity, he believes it is time, and he knows that with just a few committed patriots committed to spend their own money like him could drive the movement without being dependent on solicited funds. If I had not been aware of what Olaes has been doing for Gawad Kalinga and the village he is building in the memory of his grandparents in Cavite, I would be skeptical even though I, too, believe that the moment is quickly ripening.

To walk his talk, Olaes mounted a soft launch of the movement for Filipino solidarity in America last Saturday, May 24. Calling it ONE – A Filipino Celebration, Olaes chose KIimball Park in National City as the venue of the launch. Together with Robert Sanchez, another successful second generation Fil-Am generation, the operational support of Seafood City and the multilevel marketing group of the health drink, Mona-Vie, Olaes staged a whole day fiesta at Kimball Park with end-to-end entertainment by performers of Filipino descent.

The ONE movement that Olaes and friends want to promote begins with reaching out to kindred spirits among other successful Filipinos from North America. Some Fil-Ams from other states are already on board to be the strategic players in key regions. Tony Olaes does not want to form an organization and prefers a movement which will draw life from its core group and the cooperation of Filipinos and Filipino organizations across America. After all, he does not envision competing associations submitting themselves to an umbrella organization, nor does he feel that it is necessary. Apparently, he believes that unity is possible in diversity for as long as they can adopt common causes.

With the history of divisiveness of Filipinos, it seems impossible that a centuries-old behavioral pattern can be dismantled by the vision and nobility of a few Filipinos in America, no matter how wealthy and strategic they may be. However, the work of Gawad Kalinga is being supported by even competing organizations or corporations. Recognizing the capacity of Gawad Kalinga as a convergence zone, Olaes and friends believe that it serves a template for unity. ONE, then, is being formulated to be grounded on the same principles and values as Gawad Kalinga.

It is impossible to build a nation we can all be proud of if poverty and corruption continue to define Philippine society and governance. It is impossible to dismantle poverty and corruption if the pattern of divisiveness overrides the need for change and honor. But if the solidarity we seek has not been an impossible dream, then we would not be poor or corrupt. Thousands of well-meaning patriots have tried over several decades to bring a divided people together, and many of them gave up their lives to do so. I would think it remains impossible if I have not been aware that Filipinos abroad are shedding their apathy and now expressing a more intense desire to help those who are left behind.

Are Filipinos ready to move towards common causes and take common actions? It does not appear so in the Philippines, even at times when the worst of issues are presented to the public. Somehow, the reaction to poverty and corruption is weak and glaringly inadequate considering the need. Filipinos in the home land continue to be submissive, and only a looming food shortage – whether from supply or the inability to pay higher prices – can conceivably cause a political stir.

In the United States, however, I am convinced that Filipinos are nearing the point of intolerance against poverty and corruption. The young especially are manifesting their desire to visit a home land they never felt anything for before. That is a sure sign that things will change, and change dramatically.

Perhaps, ONE is such a manifestation of the resolve of second, and third, generations of Fil-Ams to participate in building a brighter future for the home land. They may be in search of a collective honor, or they may truly be repulsed by the poverty of their own countrymen. Whatever it is, I am hopeful that the first rays of a new day are penetrating the darkness,and that a new age for the Philippines is about to arise.

The Cancer of Corruption
By Senator Ping Lacson
(Speech before a public forum sponsored by the Concerned Citizens Movement delivered May 28, 2008 at the Manila Polo Club, Makati City)

Let me begin with a short story.

A big acacia tree crashed on a segment of the fence surrounding Malacanang palace. Hence, it needed immediate repairs. Wanting to show “hands-on” leadership, the lady tenant came down to oversee the bidding among competing contractors.

Contractor Nr 1 is from Amsterdam – “Madam, I can fix it for P900,000.”

Contractor Nr 2 is Chinese – “Ma’am, I can do it for P700,000.”

Contractor Nr 3 is no ordinary Filipino. He works in the Comelec. “I will repair the damaged fence for P2.7M.”

P2.7M! The lady tenant exclaimed. Why? she asked.

The Filipino Comelec official replies, P1M for you, P1M for me and I will hire the Chinese to do the job.

The following morning, people saw the Chinaman doing the repairs.

I can end my speech right here and you can understand why we are the most corrupt in Asia.

But let me pay for my dinner.

To all citizens who are deeply concerned, and deeply disturbed, as well as those whose concern has blossomed into a fierce commitment towards shared principles of good governance; Ladies and Gentlemen, Good Evening:

We meet in deeply troubled times. Not that this country has been really out of trouble in this horrible decade, but because the prices of basic commodities from food to fuel have skyrocketed beyond the means of our people, a scenario filled with gloom and doom.

The millennium supposedly ushered in the Asia-Pacific century. Yet our country is nowhere in the radar screens of the world economy, embellished and over-stated statistics notwithstanding.

In an era defined by global competitiveness, we are most uncompetitive. Our physical infrastructure is woefully inadequate. Our social infrastructure even more so. Our manufacturing sector has shrunk. Our agricultural sector has hardly grown, unable even to feed our increasingly growing population.

Direct foreign investments have looked at countries which used to be much poorer than ours, when it comes to locating in Asia. Worse, those which have previously located here in the fifties up to the eighties, are moving elsewhere. Countries like Thailand used to learn farming technologies from us; now we have to beg them to export us some rice. Even Vietnam which was ravaged by a terribly brutal war barely a generation ago, now gets more foreign tourists and visitors than our far more beautiful islands.

Our economy is kept on a lifeline coming from the dollars of our overseas workers, which in turn drives a consumer economy where what is consumed is mostly imported anyhow, and the value added is service. Filipinos are reduced to servicing the labor needs of the outside world, which in turn allows service industries to cater to the dependents of our OFW’s.

The majority of our people have remained helplessly poor.

But if the indicia of poverty is high, something else beats that. When it comes to the indicia of corruption, we are truly world-class.The latest survey of Transparency International ranks our country the 8th most corrupt country in the world. Political and Economic Risk Consultancy based in Hong Kong classifies us the most corrupt in Asia.

Yet fifty years back, we were the envy of many of the countries of the Asia-Pacific region.

What happened?

Academics and economists will debate endlessly about the wisdom or un-wisdom of the economic policies we pursued. When we were into protectionism, our so-called industrialists took advantage of the lack of competition to make oodles and oodles of money from the domestic market, and failed to keep in pace with the technologies of the outside world. And when we embraced the global economy, we were hardly prepared.

I am aware that this is not the forum for an assessment of where and when we went wrong with economic policy. But one thing is certain — regardless of economic directions, the single most negative impact on all our efforts at progress and development has been corruption. Corruption so massive in scale and so endemic in scope.

There is petty corruption committed every day, by lowly clerks and lowly examiners, by kotong cops and traffic aides. There is corruption in land transportation agencies, where driving licenses are given even to the blind, and corruption in sea travel, where coast guard functionaries allow over-loading of un-seaworthy vessels for a price. Our roads peel with the first heavy downpour; our schools turn roofless with the first typhoon. Police generals, along with mayors, governors and congressmen tolerate illegal gambling; some even operate it themselves. Fiscals are fixed by the rich to file cases against the poor, no matter if innocent. And judges deny justice for money, or pressure from the powerful, mostly both.

But corruption in the highest of power circles is worse. It affects, nay, shapes public policy and program implementation in the most egregious manner. It used to be that programs and projects were crafted with public need and public good in mind. And corruption was a by-product of the implementation of a project that was imbued with public good to begin with. Those were the long bygone times when a 10% commission, was deemed “acceptable” by contractors and suppliers, and delivered to the government officials with a “smile”. “Smiling money”, as Jun Lozada calls it.

These days, public need and public good are farthest from the minds of crooks in high places. Programs and projects are designed principally for personal profit, never mind if no real public good is served. The NBN-ZTE project is the most recent example.

A national broadband network that is not urgently needed, that is better left to the private sector, is designed to take advantage of the overflowing resources of a friendly nation. Instead of an investment by way of a build and operate arrangement, a supply contract is drawn with a foreign company, and the same is billed as an investment. But that was not bad enough. The more horrible story unraveled piece by piece, where equipment, service and training worth 130 million dollars balloons into a 329 million dollar purchase. This is not 10%. This is not even the 30 to 40% that has become “usual” in pork barrel funded projects. This is an overprice of 150%, to be paid for by present and even future generations of our people.

Unconscionable. Excessively greedy. But worse was when a witness whose conscience bothered him was clearly abducted upon arrival at the airport, and only the vigilance of an alert media and concerned citizens like you saved him from the designs of the minions of the guilty.

And yet, two years earlier, another crime in the highest of places was uncovered. It involved the corruption of a commissioner in charge of elections, and along with him, a cabal of other government officials, civilian as well as military. And the prize was much much more than hundreds of millions of dollars, or billions of pesos. The prize was the presidency itself which in a democracy is supposed to be decided by the sovereign people. No less than the presidency had become the object of transactions by persons willing to subvert that sovereign will. Corruption could not possibly be worse than this — where the corruptor is no less than the sitting president of the republic.

Yet when shit hit the fan, and guilt was too obvious for everyone to see, corruption once more proved to be the solution to her problem. She lied and got most everybody else to lie. And to ensure that congressmen sworn to protect democracy would willingly close their eyes to obvious truth, the executive simply bought consciences with more pork and greater perks.

A year after, another impeachment case was filed, and those who saw the futility of fighting for truth and giving justice to the sovereign people, succumbed to the same transactions of corruption.

Successful each year, they became more brazen. Fat envelopes were distributed right in Malacanang, all a matter of course, all without a shred of shame. When a priestly governor denounced it, ridiculous contortions were passed off as explanations, and soon, the matter just died down. Evil triumphed once more.

Yet the signs were all there to begin with.

All of us hoped that in the aftermath of the second ousting of a president by people power, the successor government would consecrate itself to good governance and minimum corruption. Yet barely a week after taking power, sovereign guarantee was extended to IMPSA, amid whispers of an offer of $14M. That was seven years and a half ago, and only recently did the Ombudsman file charges against a former justice secretary, the unexplained dollar trail of which I first exposed, and the Swiss federal officials confirmed. Don’t count on those charges prospering, for as long as this government remains in power. They have to protect those who know too much about the rest of the money trail.

Remember Pacifico Marcelo, whose telecommunications business this leadership wanted to take over barely a month after Edsa Dos? The guy had to flee for his life.

A 2.2 kilometer boulevard built by the previous government at a cost of 650 million pesos was taken over by the officials of this administration, finished by the new dispensation with landscaping touches, and suddenly, the cost ballooned to 1.1 billion pesos. Filipinos refer to it as the most expensive boulevard in the whole universe.

The leadership was so proud of this most expensive boulevard that she had it named after her father, a former president remembered kindly for the simple life.

There was the short-lived but long remembered saga of Jose Pidal, where a cacophony of bare-faced lies and an abduction of a material witness, was made to cover-up for money laundering and unexplained wealth so brazen.

And in another instance where programs are prostituted for perfidious money-making, the Department of Agriculture bought overpriced fake fertilizers ostensibly for food production, and distributed these even to congressmen in Metro Manila where no farms exist, for them to convert into cash to be used to buy the elections of 2004.

Another set of lies for explanations nobody in his right mind could buy. Just another scandal to wiggle itself from. When the Senate was closing in, the architect of the fertilizer scam, Joc-Joc Bolante, simply flew away.

These cases are never closed. They live in the public mind. But temporary “closure” buys time for the corrupt. Time to steal some more. Time to continue making a mockery of governance. Time to continue crafting public policy with the aim of making more and more money.

In the words of Dean Raul Pangalangan written recently in his Inquirer column, we ushered into power “a kleptocratic mafia whose greed is unprecedented in Philippine history”.

Indeed, name it and you see or smell the same “kleptocratic mafia” at play. In smuggling, wherever the waterfront is, whether Manila, Batangas, Subic, Cebu or Cagayan, via containers or breakbulk cargo. And even shipside in the case of oil. In gambling, legal or illegal. In land registration anomalies and in the registration of hot cars. In the importation of rice and sugar. In public works projects and in the misuse of close to 10 billion pesos annually of road user funds. In big-ticket transportation and telecommunications projects. In buying high-priced X-ray machines for containers, ostensibly to fight smuggling, even in ports where hardly any containers are shipped. And computers for public schools whose teachers are not even computer-literate. In the North Rail as well as the South Rail.

So pervasive is the corruption that its cancer has metastasized all over the body politic. Almost everybody and everything has become transactional —a legislator’s vote or his verbosity in defense of the mafia, even judicial decisions. And of course, that which is called the foundation of democratic rule — elections.

So where do we go from here? Can we ever put an end to corruption?

We are where we are now — mired in corruption, because in the past and up to the present, we as a people tolerated “small” graft, be it the “kotong” of cops or the “lagay” for clerks in regulatory and licensing agencies. We took jueteng as “normal” and accepted the corruption of our officials by jueteng lords as a “way of life”. We know that our congressmen and senators take kickbacks from the projects funded by their pork barrel, but we nevertheless thank them for the overpriced or under-specified project. And elect them back to office.

We see the crooks at Holy Mass, the first even to receive the sacraments, and we forget their mortal sins of corruption and avarice. We see them at parties, and we oblige them with greetings. Some would call that social form. Just like our so-called democracy— all form and little substance.

For crooks, crime pays in our corrupted body politic, because no one is severely punished. In time, even the shame disappears. As it has. The culture of impunity has firmly taken root.

We need to install leaders who, trite though it may sound, will lead by the power of good example.

We need a benevolent, strong leader who can make government feel afraid of its people and make people unafraid of their government,

Sure we can re-design our procurement systems, tighten our audit of government contracts, go into electronic bidding, even increase the penalties for graft. But all these require zealous implementation, without any let-up and without any exceptions to the rule. But a leader cannot compel obedience if those who should follow, are aware that the leader himself or herself participates in corruption.

We need a leader who is ready and willing to “break glass” in fighting all forms of corruption, not someone who would rather sweet-talk, or pass by through propaganda spins.

Never again should we allow the least of us to lead us. The “least” is here defined not in terms of a lack of academic preparation or intellectual gifts, rather, the “least” are those who have had a history of corruption, or who have gone up the political ladder by cutting deals and compromises with the corrupt.

Never must we subscribe to the false reasoning that says a public servant on his way up the political ladder has to accept certain givens of the political game, and compromise with what is morally wrong. One who has compromised with small graft in his or her salad days will partake of bigger and bigger graft as he or she occupies higher and higher office.

For moderate greed eventually becomes immoderate and excessive.

As a nation, we have suffered enough from years of unabated corruption. Our schools are sub-standard; proper health care is unaffordable to the middle-class and inaccessible to the poor; our peace-keeping forces are ill-equipped and under-manned. Our food supply is short, and the patience of our people is wearing extremely thin. Corruption has robbed us of the most fundamental of services that are the responsibility of a government our taxes support. We are into exceedingly difficult times.

If we seriously meditate on why our quality of life has so deteriorated through the years, we will agree that the biggest culprit is corruption. We have to excise the malignancy, and thereafter, begin to build a kinder society and a more responsive polity.

We owe it to ourselves. We owe it to future generations.

There are problems of policy that we may debate and discuss. There is a sense of nationhood that we must begin to inculcate. There is a business environment whose playing field we must always level. There is social unrest that we must quell through the provision of fundamental services that will ensure equal opportunity. But first and foremost, there is a rot in the body politic that we must excise. There is a cancer of corruption that we must extinguish.

At the end of the day, for all of us, there is a responsibility to the next generation and to the future Philippines, to redeem our nation from the curse of corruption. As Pilosopong Tasio said, “No todos dormian en la noche de nuestros abuelos” Not everyone slept in the long night of our forefathers.”

The debate on public policy and economic directions are replete with pros and cons, conflicting sides each with subsequent merit. But there is only one side to corruption. No matter what, it is evil. And there can be, there should be, no compromise with evil.

It wasn’t like this before. Those of you who like me are over fifty still remember when times were kinder. When the middle-class and the poor could hope. And when hard work could yet turn those hopes into reality.

Let me end with another story:

Many, many years ago, there was a poor couple with eight children. / Despite their poverty, or perhaps because of it, they dreamt of sending all of eight children to school and earn their college degrees.

Raising eight children and seeing them through school was back-breaking for that poor couple. But through honest toil and plenty of prayers, the couple managed to get all their eight children through public school, and thence, through college.

“May awa ang Diyos, makakaraos din tayo mga anak. Sukdulang hindi kami kumaing mag-asawa ng tatlong beses isang araw, makatapos lamang kayo sa inyong pag-aaral ” – iyan ang madalas sabihin ng mag-asawa.

They were a deeply religious couple. Never a Sunday passed that they did not attend Mass in the town’s parish church. And they instilled the same moral values they practiced / among their brood of eight.

The fourth child became a soldier, law-enforcer and eventually a public servant./ He may not be the ideal public servant in the minds of his critics and doubting Thomases, but he does his best to live by the virtues that his poor parents had imbued in his young mind and the rest of his siblings.

How many such poor couples, in this day and age, can yet succeed to give their kids, even a smaller brood of two or three, the same blessings received by the eight children from the hard and honest toil of their poor parents in my story?

If we all leave this hall tonight determined — that together we can yet bring back those kinder times when everyone could hope, under a government that provided enough reason to hope, enough reason to be believed, then the concerns that brought us together here tonight shall have become a mighty, committed force.

By the way, the poor couple in my short story are my parents. I am their fourth child.

Thank you and good evening.

*****

Doesn’t the SEC act in Meralco remind you of the Comelec?
AS I WRECK THIS CHAIR By William M. Esposo
Thursday, May 29, 2008
A few days before the May 27 Meralco Annual Stockholders Meeting, Winston Garcia, GSIS General Manager representing a quarter of Meralco stockholders, conceded that he will not be able to muster the needed proxy votes to takeover management from the Lopezes.

That comes as no surprise at all. The last thing stockholders would like to see is the government running the power firm. The fastest way to erode share value and lose money is to let the government run the enterprise. That concern must have also prodded stockholders to attend the May 27 meeting in bigger than usual numbers.

Then, Winston Garcia suddenly pulls this monkey wrench and announces before the fateful Meralco meeting that the Lopezes will retain Meralco management through the use of bogus proxy votes.

Now, as if on cue, lo and behold, the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) shows up at the Meralco Annual Stockholders Meeting last Tuesday to impose a cease and desist order that will stop the election of board members.

It would appear that Garcia maneuvered the SEC order that will allow him to disregard the disputed Lopez votes — thus paving the way for his desired management takeover.

Having chaired several corporations, I am familiar with these maneuvers that one is to expect in the executive suite. The bigger the corporation, the more creative and vicious the maneuvering and back stabbing are. Greed and stiletto back planting go together like ketchup and fries.

Frankly, I have not seen anything as scandalous and downright high-handed as that SEC cease and desist order to halt the Meralco board elections. Government is supposed to be a regulator, an arbiter if need be. But this reeks of outright partiality. It’s like playing the Los Angeles Lakers with Phil Jackson, Mitch Kupchak and Jerry Buss as the referees!

Monico Jacob of the Lopez Group lost no time spelling out the far reaching consequences of the SEC action on Philippine business and the inflow of foreign investments. Jacob was, of course, promoting Lopez interest in Meralco but that does not negate the truth of what he said about how the SEC act will make investors think thrice about doing business here.

Investors are the easiest to scare. Rumors, no matter how wild and unfounded, can scare them away. They can just as easily say that there is no point investing in a place where the rumors can give us a heart attack. They scamper at the earliest signs of disorder. And the warning that this hostile takeover of the Meralco sends will scare even the bravest and most daring corporate gamesman.

It is bad enough that investors here complain about how we just as easily change the rules of the game, how a Supreme Court decision can alter the business landscape overnight. This SEC order says it loud and clear: “If your business is lucrative enough, the GMA regime reserves the right to takeover.”

The scandalous SEC order does not surprise us when taken in the context of what has been happening to our country ever since Madame Gloria Macapagal Arroyo (GMA) ascended the presidency. It comes as a natural sequence to the long trail of acts of impunity that have characterized the Arroyo regime.

The Lopez board defended its defiance to the SEC order by stating that it was highly irregular and defective. They enumerated the following irregularities:

1. That it did not even have a date (How is one to know when this order applies?),

2. That it was signed by only one SEC Commissioner,

3. That it was not the result of a Commission meeting (So who decided to issue it and for what justifications?),

4. That there was no docket number (Is this document a joke or for real?),

5. That there was no SEC official seal on the document, among other issues.

It was my former Ateneo classmate Jess Martinez who signed the questioned SEC cease and desist order. When I told Jess how I felt about the SEC intervention, he deplored what he considered my “prejudging” his order.

When I got back to him about the points raised (no date, only one signature, etc), Jess said that these were just the arguments of the Meralco lawyers playing to the gallery. Jess claimed that: “We’ve issued CDOs (cease and desist orders) by the dozens without bothering with those petty details.”

“It doesn’t affect the order at all. That’s the way it is buddy,” He added.

It does not help Jess at all that he happens to be a province mate of Winston Garcia — something that connects dots in the highly politicized Philippine landscape. I would not hold that though against Jess.

But for SEC Commissioner Jess Martinez to say that a missing date on a cease and desist order and those other mentioned details are inconsequential — now that is what I call bovine ordure. Even Raul Gonzalez and his brand of justice might find it difficult to sustain that SEC cease and desist order with all those missing elements.

* * *

Chair Wrecker e-mail and website: macesposo@yahoo.com and www.chairwrecker.com

The Filipino remains clueless
AS I WRECK THIS CHAIR By William M. Esposo
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
If you cannot even identify your rapist, then you have no case at all and may well be raped again by the same assailant. Such is the rape case of the Filipino nation.

Luckily, a patriot named Professor Emmanuel Q. Yap, now in his 70s, has witnessed how our country was raped by our past colonizers and current neo-colonizers.

Adviser to Presidents Jose P. Laurel, Carlos P. Garcia, Diosdado Macapagal and Ferdinand Marcos, Prof. Manoling Yap was instrumental in opening Philippine relations with China, Russia and the other former Eastern European Communist States. He was personally present during the Vladivostok Accord that dismantled the Cold War.

The following article that Prof. Manoling Yap gave me for STAR readers was written and published in 1989, right after the Cold War was dismantled.

Caught in turning wheel
(For country’s sake)
By Emmanuel Q. Yap

“Keeping cordial relations with foreign friends who want to be helpful is a humane and civilized act, therefore, desirable; provided the relationship is based on mutual respect.

But uncritical or blind dependence on foreign advice, no matter how well-meaning, can be counterproductive. In the end it could only destroy friendship or lead to enmity.

Take, for instance, a case where your foreign friend tells you that in the interest of your country you must fight the Soviets and other Communists in every way and with everything you have got because they are evil, worse than the devil himself, that it is better to be dead than Red, that you must fight them because they are out to destroy what he calls the Judeo-Greco-Roman Christian heritage.

For years he has been giving you this advice and for some strange consideration you follow him with animal loyalty and perform your political act along his anti-Soviet line.

He has convinced you that to defeat the Soviets and its allies, like the emaciated and rice-eating Vietnamese, we have to resort eventually to the use of nuclear weapons against them. He gives you all the details on how to prosecute limited or universal nuclear warfare in a scenario that he and his colleagues have carefully and beautifully articulated in “strategic” jargon.

If at first you doubted the wisdom of using nuclear weapons, he has healed your doubt with his argument that if we all die in a nuclear war, this would be only in fulfillment of the Armageddon in God’s Revelations. So now you are also spiritually prepared to perish in a nuclear holocaust because you want to go to heaven.

Your foreign adviser tells you that any person who disagrees with his advice must be immoral, a dangerous leftist or fellow traveler, or a downright Marxist-Leninist or Communists; therefore, he must be marginalized, demobilized or liquidated with extreme prejudice. And you accept and adopt his line.

You now turn against your own long-time friends and own people who do not act, think and talk the same way as your foreign friend. Since he has convinced you that nationalists and patriots are often allied with Communists and Socialists, you now regard every nationalist and everybody fighting for national independence as security risks and evil. You now also begin to believe that Rizal, Mabini, Bonifacio and other Filipino revolutionaries must have been moles of the Communists.

You are told that there are special economic models designed to resist Communist expansion. Now you want to follow only the Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan or South Korea model. If you get to be sophisticated along this line of politico-economic logic, you might want to mix all these models together and make the combination tastier with some Italian models.

You come to a point that you cannot believe anymore that your own people can develop their own national economy with their own thinking and experience, because you are already set in your mind that Filipinos are stupid and very gullible to communist propaganda. In fact, they should all be suspect.

Your mind is also now preoccupied with searching for Communists, pro-Communists, Socialists or Nationalists; because you are told that they can be everywhere, including places like your closet, your drawer or under your bed.

In short, you have cast your entire life with the dictates, arguments and scenarios of the political, social, economic and military doctrines of the Cold War.

Then, as it often happens in the long history of human civilization, the relationships of nations take radical turns. The Soviets, the Chinese and the Americans become good friends and partners. They de-ideologize their relationships, cooperate in ending regional conflicts, and work together in de-ideologizing international relations.

Your foreign advisers disappear because he has become by force of powerful circumstance irrelevant in the new mood of the world. And because you have followed him with great devotion and admiration you also become irrelevant before you even reach your political ambitions.

You are caught in a political turning wheel, and you now think you have been misled by our friend and, because of this you now regard him as your real enemy all along.”

To this day, those who lead the country continue to rape and pimp the Filipino nation.

* * *

Chair Wrecker e-mail and website: macesposo@yahoo.com and www.chairwrecker.com