But what each protagonist must do to win in the first ever boxing championship card assembled by Top Rank in the cavernous $1.3 billion stadium?

Bert Randolf Sugar, boxing’s acknowledged dean of commentators, advised that Clottey (35-3, 21 KOs) “must use his jab consistently to make Pacquiao (50-3, 28 KOs) spend his time blocking them and backing up rather than allowing him to dart in behind five-and six-punch combinations.

“Clottey must employ some head movement, rolling his head to the side to make Pacquiao miss, then counter, not wait until Pacquiao delivers his payload and gets away.”

Sugar also warned that “Clottey cannot spend the majority of his time just blocking Pacquiao’s incoming but must aggressive and get off first, making Pacquiao go backwards where he tends to run in circles rather than attacking.”
 
COMBINATIONS
 
Pacquiao, on the other hand, “must throw his 1-2 or 1-2-3, or 1-2-3-4 combinations, then move to his right and to Clottey’s left to stay away from Clottey’s left.”

Sugar said: “Manny must not get overly anxious. His mistakes are covered up by his blinding speed and power. However, he cannot afford to get up in exchanges with Clottey, especially on the inside.”

Also, Sugar said, “Pacquiao cannot drop his hands after throwing punches, but must anticipate Clottey’s counter-punching ability.”

Sugar said, ”Pacquiao possesses faster hand speed—the frequency of his punches registering pinball machine-like numbers on the CompuBox punch meter-long with greater foot speed and lateral movement.”

Clottey, he said, is “a naturally heavier, physically stronger fighter than Pacquiao and could enter the ring at least 10-12 pounds heavier than the smaller Pacquiao.”

Clottey also has an “excellent defense, one he himself says is ‘not easy to crack.’ With his elbows in close and his hands held high, almost as if he were hiding behind a wall, he reminds boxing experts of Winky Wright.”

Pacquiao’s ability to throw punches in bunches, almost asfastasyoucanread this, will challenge Clottey’s defensive skills, Sugar observed.

“With one-punch knockout power as illustrated by his devastating two-round destruction of Ricky Hatton and attested to by his ‘slugging’ average of .717, with 38 knockout punchers of the past, like Sugar Ray Robinson, Henry Armstrong, Sugar Ray Leonard, and Rocky Graziano—Pacquiao hits harder than Clottey and will present a test for Clottey’s supposedly ‘iron’ chin.”

Clottey, on the other hand, possesses an excellent job, said Sugar. And with a 3-inch reach advantage, should be able to reach Pacquiao.

A determined fighter, Clottey, who, in the words of one reporter, has “indefatigable will power.” Like his countrymen, Azumah Nelson, Ike Quartey, and Ben Tackie, Clottey will be there, in front of Pacquiao, pressuring him for most of the fight, Sugar pointed out. 

Sugar said the native of Accra, Ghana who now resides in Bronx, New York, “possesses good chin whiskers, having never been stopped and put down only once—that by Cotto on a jab he walked into in the first round of their fight.”

Pacquiao gets stronger as the rounds progress, registering later-round stoppages of Oscar De La Hoya and Miguel Angel Cotto, having worn both down in earlier rounds.
 
WEAKNESSES
 
Pacquiao’s amazing ability to leap divisions in a single bounce will be put to a test against the bigger and stronger Clottey, who looks as if he were born at 147 pounds, warned Sugar.

“Although Pacquiao has rarely had to move backwards in his previous fights, he will now have to adapt to Clottey’s constant forward movement and pressure, needing to give ground before coming forward, a change in style for him.

“Pacquiao’s style is one built of offense, offense, and more offense, not one built on defense. He tends to come charging in, with his hands held low and his chin raised after he punches, giving Clottey an inviting target.

“When Pacquiao misses, he is sometimes off-balance, his body moving faster than his feet can carry him, leaving him susceptible to Clottey’s counters.

“In previous fights there has been a question of Pacquiao’s focus. Now, with Manny having declared for political office in the Philippines and the election just eight weeks away, the question of his focus on his fight surfaces once again.”

Clottey, on the other hand, is a one-dimensional fighter, fighting in a straight line with little or no side-to-side or head movement, said Sugar.
“Like all forward-moving pressure fighters Clottey takes his share of incoming punches, something he is more than willing to accept, almost as if feeding off of them.

“Clottey has a passive defense, taking his time blocking shots on his gloves and elbows before countering which, if done too often, will put him at a decided disadvantage against the far more active Pacquiao.

“While stamina doesn’t seem to be a question for Clottey, his ‘killer instinct’ may be questionable as witnessed by his performance against Miguel Cotto where he grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory by merely pawing at the half-blinded Cotto in the closing rounds in a game of cat and mouse as Cotto ran away with a split-decision win.”

Top Rank boss Bob Arum tossed the question during the final press conference for undercard fightsof “The Event” March 12 at the media room of Gaylord Texan Hotel in Grapevine.

“Maybe Manny Pacquiao because he is known all over the world and he brought his entourage here. Maybe Jerry Jones because I was the one who phoned him and he offered the Cowboys Stadium as venue for the fight, or maybe me as the promoter,” Arum declared.

“But the one truly responsible for bringing us all here in Texas is no other than David Diaz. It was Diaz who opened the gates for Pacquiao (when Pacquiao knocked him out to win the WBC lightweight title in 2008).”
Arum said, “Diaz gave Pacquiao the opportunity as challenge to fight for WBC lightweight crown and that led to (his fights against Oscar) De La Hoya, (Ricky) Hatton, and (Miguel Angel) Cotto.”

After Pacquiao stopped the then WBC lightweight king Diaz in the 9th round at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on June 28, 2008, he relinquished the throne to face De La Hoya and won by 8th round technical knockout (TKO) at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada on Dec.6, 2008.

The 33-year-old Diaz (35-2-1, 17 KOs) will attempt to win back the WBC bauble when he faces Mexico’s Humberto Soto (50-7-2, 32 KOs) in a 12-round championship duel in the main undercard of “The Event”.

“Soto is my good friend and friendship fight is a good rivalry; we might steal the show from the main event,” said Diaz, who predicted that Pacquiao (50-3-2, 32 KOs) will knock out Clottey (35-3, 21 KOs) in the 7th round “or less”.

“Pacquiao’s speed will always make a difference,” said Diaz.”When I lost to Pacquiao, I didn’t feel bad because I didn’t lose to anybody: I lost to the greatest fighter in our era.”

http://www.quezon.ph/2010/03/08/the-long-view-social-justice/

SOCIAL justice, a President once said, “IS far more beneficial when applied as a matter of sentiment and not of law.” Point XI in the Nacionalista Coalition platform in 1935 was, “When the resources of the country so permit, we shall begin the expropriation of great estates, so that they may be divided into lots and sold to private citizens, preferably their actual occupants. We shall encourage the formation of small land-ownership, which is the bulwark of democracy, the guarantee of public order, and a stabilizing force. It is our desire that every Filipino shall own his own land, the house in which he lives, and the farm which he tills.”

But the devil, as they say, is in the details. On the one hand, there was the active hostility of landlords to state expropriation; in the middle was the state itself, far more dependent in those days on the income generated by the sugar industry than it is now; and on the other, the conservatism of the peasantry itself even as radicalism made inroads among the peasantry. In his classic book, “The Huk Rebellion,” Benedict Kerkvliet says the problem arose when traditional expectations among farmers clashed with the businesslike attitudes of a new generation of landlords: “To the modern landlords, their relationship to their tenants was a business proposition—the peasants were laborers who would be employed as long as they helped turn land into profits.”

However, Kerkvliet continued, “The peasantry, meanwhile, wanted traditional patronage more than ever, lest they succumb not only to such usual hazards as poor harvests and sickness, but also [because] ‘Progress’ had not brought even modest economic gains to the peasantry, while at the same time severing numerous ties with their landlords that peasants wanted to retain and to which they felt entitled. The traditional landlord-tenant relationship included far more than a simple exchange of labor for money, so peasants wanted to keep it. They wanted the landed elites to acknowledge those ties and the obligations entailed. The stage was thus set for a conflict…”

In the first State of the Nation Address in 1936, a modification of the Coalition Platform was announced. In brief, land would be opened up for settlement in Mindanao and other relatively underpopulated areas, while the redistribution of land would be limited to “the expropriation of those portions of the large ‘haciendas’ which are urban in character and are occupied by the houses of the tenants. With the opportunity to own their own homes thus assured, the settlement of the present difficulties of the tenants relative to their farm lands might no longer be of urgent necessity.”

This did not turn out to be the case. The same President told an American communist, Sol Auerbach, in 1937, that he had warned landlords, “I tell them, if you know what’s good for you better improve the conditions of your tenants. You do not have enough sons for the army, so we must conscript our soldiers from the poor. We put guns in their hands and teach them how to use them. If you are not careful they will use those guns against you. If you want to save what you have, give them 10 percent of it or they will take it all.”

By the late 1960s, agrarian unrest, effectively crushed in the early 1950s, resumed on a large scale, as population growth closed off the social safety valve of resettlement (and sparked new problems in Mindanao between Christians and Muslims). Macapagal attempted land reform but was foiled by the landlords; Benigno Aquino Jr. proposed corporate collectivization as a middle path: preserve economies of scale for sugar while transferring ownership to farmers and landlords proportionally by means of shares of stock.

President Marcos aimed to score propaganda points at the onset of the New Society when he proclaimed the entire country under land reform. But he decreed the redistribution of rice and corn lands and left the sugar estates alone, focusing, instead, on creating a state sugar cartel which led to the collapse of the sugar industry in 1984.

After Edsa, radicals demanded the immediate expropriation of estates while landlords threatened civil war if this was done. President Aquino in her last days of full lawmaking powers issued two executive issuances, the first placing all lands under land reform (thus removing the Marcos-era exemption for sugar land); the second, giving 10 years for redistribution to take place: but the details were left to the incoming Congress. Civil war was prevented by giving landlords a seat at the bargaining table, but rebellion was perpetuated by giving radicals a justification for confrontation.

From 1987 to 1992 a total of 898,420 landless tenants and farm workers became legitimate recipients of either land titles or free patents and support services. Under President Aquino, 2.6 million hectares or 33.3 percent of the total CARP scope of 7.8 million hectares were redistributed. But Hacienda Luisita submitted, instead, to another kind of redistribution, which was the Stock Distribution Option or SDO.

Overlooked in the debate over this scheme is that it represented one alternative to outright redistribution among tenant-farmers of hacienda lands and, at the time it was proposed, a possible way forward to preserve economies of scale while attending to Social Justice concerns. Other landlords such as the Arroyos were more clever: they promised to redistribute but bogged down the process in legal red tape, ensuring neither stock option schemes nor redistribution. For the middle path, the situation finally came to a head when both radicals and the government clashed on Luisita, eliminating SDO as a viable option in terms of public opinion for what is now a “sunset industry.”

See also my entries, Planters and Millers (2006) and The Return of the Sugar Bloc (2007) and my 2007 Arab News column, Philippine Economy: A Cautionary Tale.

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/views-and-analysis/03/11/10/chief-justice-puno-chameleon-marites-da%C3%B1guilan-vitug

Excerpts from the book, Shadow of Doubt: Probing the Supreme Court, which will be launched March 16

Reynato Puno was a smart lawyer in his 30s, just starting his career when President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in 1972. A graduate of the University of the Philippines College of Law, where Marcos had obtained his law degree, Puno was then working with the Solicitor General’s office, headed by Estelito Mendoza.

Puno had returned from the US years earlier where he finished two post-graduate degrees: Master of Comparative Laws at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas and Master of Laws at the University of California in Berkeley. Scholarly, steeped in books and a fast and prolific writer, he was, in Mendoza’s words, “analytical, he had a good mind, and a good knowledge of the law.”

Mendoza was a brilliant lawyer, one of the fine minds that Marcos tapped to implement his experiment of a “guided democracy.” But, in the post-Marcos years, Mendoza was unable to shake off his association with the authoritarian ruler and the dark and painful years that choked our democracy. He argued for martial law in cases brought to the Supreme Court, becoming its most visible defender.

It was an uncertain and perilous time. Asia’s first democracy, with its rambunctious press and festive elections, was suddenly silenced. Marcos blamed the communists for fueling protests and instability. He sent his political opponents and activists to prison. Others simply disappeared, snatched by government forces, much like the desaparecidos of Argentina.

Congress was shut down. Marcos ordered the Constitution rewritten and approved in people’s assemblies. The judiciary fell under the grip of one man.

Puno was one of Mendoza’s second-tier lawyers, his co-defender of martial rule. More than three decades later, when he was Chief Justice, Puno described this regime he helped perpetuate as one of a “slaughter of rights,” a period when the 1935 Constitution “was sent to the shredding machine.”

In a tribute he paid to the late Gerry Roxas in 2007 (he worked briefly in the Roxas law office), he said that the senator, who was a staunch opponent of martial rule, “showed us the way to deal with tyrants who trample on the civil rights of the people—and that is to strike no deal with them.”

But Puno, during eleven years of martial law, stayed on as counsel of the government. He appeared in the Supreme Court during oral arguments in the martial-law cases, including the dreaded Javellana v. Executive Secretary which sealed Marcos’s one-man rule. The Court ruled that the Constitution, which was ratified by a show of hands, was valid.

Fernando del Mundo, a journalist who covered one of the oral arguments on the Court remembered Puno as part of Mendoza’s panel, appearing in “one tragic hearing four months after martial law was declared in September 1972 on an opposition petition asking the high court to immediately act and stop Marcos from promulgating the decision of a rump plebiscite approving a new Constitution that gave him sweeping powers. In the midst of the debate, news was relayed to the Supreme Court that Marcos—at that very moment—had just issued in Malacañang a decree proclaiming that the plebiscite had approved by viva voce vote the Constitution that he said was now in effect. Caught flatfooted, the Justices looked stunned…. The Court later issued a decision declaring the petition argued by Lorenzo Tañada and the other opposition lights of the time—Jose Diokno, Francisco “Soc” Rodrigo, Jovito Salonga, Sedfrey Ordonez, Joker Arroyo—moot and academic.”

Oscar Orbos, who was a UP law student then, used to visit Puno and have discussions with him. They belonged to the same fraternity at the University of the Philippines, Alpha Phi Beta. UP was the most restive campus before martial law. Protests reached a climax during the so-called Diliman Commune of 1971 when police stormed the barricades and lobbed teargas at the students.

Orbos said in an interview, “We talked about his position on martial law. He told me it’s his work, that Marcos was doing something new and that they were defining what the law means, what martial law will be.”

After the Solicitor General’s office, Puno’s next stop was the Court of Appeals where Mendoza got him appointed. He stayed for only a year. Mendoza then plucked him out to be his deputy at the justice ministry. Whenever he was out of the country, he designated Puno acting minister. The two worked together for a total of 13 years.

Mendoza and Puno’s ties were not only professional; they were also personal. Rosa, Mendoza’s wife, was wedding godmother to Puno’s daughter, Ruth.

Puno kept a low profile throughout this time. He was barely known to the public, even to the lawyers who were on the opposing side in the martial-law cases. Mendoza was the star and Puno the protégé. Before he led the Supreme Court, he was an unknown figure, as he admitted in an interview in 2007. “Many sectors were complaining about my invisibility. A large segment of the public could not recognize me or did not have an opinion of me.”

But to his friends, like businessman Harry Angping, Puno was one of Marcos’s “bright legal minds.”

Puno effortlessly reconciled his work then with his high-profile advocacy for civil liberties and human rights as Chief Justice. He explained—in his sober voice and furrowed face—that “I don’t see any kind of inconsistency. As a solicitor, it is my job to defend the cases of government as best as I could. I go to another branch of government, the judiciary, and I perform the role of a judge or justice.”

When the People Power revolt in 1986 cut short his career in the executive branch, Puno returned to the Court of Appeals. He is proud of his record as the youngest, at 40, to be appointed to the appellate court.

Later, his interrupted stint in the Court of Appeals caused controversy when the Supreme Court reinstated him to his old rank in the roster of CA justices. This meant that he jumped over more senior Justices. “From number eleven in rank, he was promoted to number five,” wrote Justice Jose Campos in his memoir. Campos and another CA justice complained to the Supreme Court and they won their case.

Puno joined the Supreme Court in 1993 but not without minor difficulty. President Ramos’s legal counsel, Antonio Carpio, vetted the nominees, one of whom was Puno. It was his practice to interview preferred candidates to the Court and Puno wasn’t one of them. Puno then asked to meet with Carpio—and they did have a brief, forgettable conversation. Still, Carpio didn’t recommend him to Ramos because he was convinced that Puno, when on the Court, would vote for Estelito Mendoza’s clients, led by Marcos crony Eduardo Cojuangco. Puno, anyway, found a link to Ramos who vouched for his integrity. But as events later showed, Carpio’s gut feel was right.

Shadow of Doubt: Probing the Supreme Court, a publication of Public Trust Media Group Inc., will be launched on March 16, Tuesday, 4 p.m., at One Serendra Social Hall, The Fort, Taguig City. Copies will be sold at discounted prices during the launch. To place orders in advance, contact Newsbreak at tel. (+632) 920-0997, fax (+632) 920-3611, email admin@newsbreak.com.ph. Regular prices are P795 hardbound, P475 paperback.

How could a piece of property sequestered by the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), and a lis pendens annotated upon its transfer certificate of title, land in the hands of a corporation called Crown Asia, owned and controlled by the so-called “brown taipan”, Manuel Villar, who wants to be president of the land?

The 2.18 hectare property is in the vicinity of a swanky golf course called TAT, before that Filipinas Golf Course, and even before that, during the Marcos years, known as Holiday Hills, in the municipality of San Pedro Laguna. It straddles the boundary of the first town of Laguna with the last city of Metro Manila, and is now connected to the South Luzon Expressway (SLEX) by an interchange, and to Las Pinas and Bacoor to a so-called Daang Reyna, which in turn connects to Daang Hari. Pretty good property, one must say.

It used to be titled to one Maximo Argana, remembered by many to be the feared and powerful mayor of Muntinglupa during the martial law years. When the dictatorship fell, the newly-created PCGG went after the unexplained wealth of Marcos, his cronies and other public officials. They went after Maximo Argana’s wealth, and this San Pedro property was one of them. Because Argana had meanwhile died, the PCGG attached an encumbrance upon the title, what is called a lis pendens, which means the property cannot be sold, leased, or otherwise encumbered while the case is pending. And up till today, that case pends before the Sandiganbayan.

Meanwhile, the informal settlers who had stayed in the property by tolerance or sufferance of the registered owner, Argana, had hoped that when the government finally gets full leave of the court to confiscate the San Pedro property, they could apply for land ownership under the social justice programs of the State. Their hopes brightened with the enactment of the Urban Dwellers Act during the Cory administration, otherwise known as the Lina Law.

But lo and behold! In the year 2000, a corporation called Crown Asia suddenly claimed ownership of the property, on the basis of a deed of sale executed between it and Capitol Bank. Both Crown Asia and Capitol are owned and controlled by the spouses Manuel and Cynthia Villar. Crown Asia, along with its sister corporations, had already acquired other properties in the vicinity, which it was then developing into medium and high-end housing projects.

How did this happen? There was a lis pendens on the property, and a check with government agencies, including the Office of the President shows that the Argana title should not and must not be the subject of a deed of sale, not even a contract of lease, for as long as the courts would not lift that lis pendens (or pendente lite, which means pending legal resolution of the case.

But apparently, Capitol Bank foreclosed the property from a certain Jose Nunez, who failed to pay a short-term loan, and made no effort whatsoever to restructure or re-schedule the loan, as most are wont to do, but instead, immediately had his property foreclosed by the Villar bank. And the Villar’s Capitol Bank turns around and sells the property also immediately, to Crown Asia. Seems like this is a pattern, a modus operandi of the Villar’s interlocking corporations.

In 2002, Villar’s Crown Asia posted security guards and then ordered a demolition of the settler’s houses. The demolition squad succeeded in destroying 30 houses and led to the killing of Quirico “Rico” de los Santos, a leader of the neighbourhood association of poor informal dwellers called ironically, Paradise Park. But the informal settlers resisted and they remain there to this day, their Paradise Park Neighborhood Association knocking from one government agency door to another, hoping to seek justice and their urban dwellers’ rights under the laws of the benighted land. There are now some 205 family houses walled inside the 2.18 hectare property, with no basic services such as electrical connections and water. They have to walk to buy expensive retailed water and inter-connect or share one electricity source. Guards of the neighboring walled subdivision, armed with shotguns strictly monitor their movements. They are not allowed to bring in construction materials even to repair their rickety dwellings.

Is this another racket where fake titles are produced surreptitiously, and prey on helpless landowners, such as the Dumagat and Remontado farmers in Norzagaray, Bulacan (read our articles of February 25 and 27, Malaya)? In Norzagaray, the titles issued during the Japanese occupation, which under Commonwealth Act 141, as amended, have been declared null and void, were “foreclosed” by Capitol Bank, and then paid in kind to Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas which had earlier issued an emergency loan to the said Villar-owned bank of 1.5 billion pesos.

In San Pedro, property encumbered in temporary favour of the Republic of the Philippines, pending resolution of a sequestration case, is suddenly claimed by a family corporation which “bought” the property from the same family-owned bank, which in turn foreclosed the same from a person, fictitious or real, who “borrowed” a short-term loan and “failed” to pay.

But the Paradise Park homeowners are now in mortal fear of imminent ejection, should this “poor man turned billionaire”, whose heart “bleeds for the poor”, and who makes a holy vow (panata) to end poverty (tatapusin ang kahirapan), become president of the benighted land. Truly, night will fall upon the lives of these poor people “squatting” on government-owned land. Because if Villarroyo succeeds with his money, and buys the presidency come May 10, 2010, with secret help from the woman who replaced the man he impeached in 2000, then the “government” and their nemesis will be one and the same.

“Mayaman na siya. Huwag na niyang agawin sa amin ang karapatan na manirahan sa lupang hindi naman kanya”, said Aling Gloria Barrameda of the Paradise Park Neighbourhood Association , who along with some 40 other settlers marched and picketed the front of the historic Laurel House that Money Villarroyo bought two years ago, and from whence he launched his quest for the presidency.

The man who claims to have shared the tribulations of the poorest of the poor, who used to live in a single-room house with his entire family (but transferred as a kid later to a 560 square-meter property in San Rafael Village in Balut, built by his government employee of a father and his industrious fish merchant of a mother) and used to sleep in a narrow bench in Divisoria market (but was schooled in a Catholic parochial school where he and brood were fetched by a stainless steel owner-type jeep), and virtually mocks the toil and sacrifices of his truly industrious parents in order to propagandize alleged poverty, now sends his guards to confiscate property held by the Republic, at the expense of poor, landless settlers, one of whom was executed by his unknown security guards.

As Aling Gloria stated in poignant anger: “Sa ginagawa niya sa aming mahihirap, kasinungalingan ang sinasabi niyang siya ay para sa mahirap at siya ay may malasakit. Siya ang tunay na pasakit. Siya ang tunay na pahirap”.

(banayo_at@yahoo.com)
(atbanayo.blogspot.com)

In the alleged attempts to influence Senator Juan Ponce Enrile to stop the investigation of Senator Manuel Villar in the C-5 controversy and to make Senator Dick Gordon withdraw from the presidential race, the phrase “not for sale” had been used as the reason why the two senators did not accept the offers. Of course, Manny Villar denied the allegations of Enrile and Gordon.

If Enrile and Gordon are not for sale, what about other Filipinos? If billions of pesos are being spent in the presidential campaign, what is the objective of that massive and almost vulgar spending? Would people spend monstrous amounts without trying to buy anything or anyone? Are politicians simply stupid that they will spend billions yet not want anything for all that money? Or, as is the popular belief, the presidency is worth everything one has because no single politician is richer than the wealth of the whole Philippines.

Because the electoral campaign is a contest, and because the presidency is the Olympus of positions with the greatest power and the authority to the greatest wealth, it is natural that aspirants to Malacanang have to do their best in convincing voters that they are the best choice. The effort to convince voters need great sums of money because television and radio ads are the only way to reach tens of millions of voters.

Candidates and their parties have to raise funds for the campaign and the election. Fund-raising is the only way to afford a decent campaign for national positions, especially the coveted presidency. Fund-raising is also the only way for candidates to diffuse the challenge of producing from their own resources the amounts needed for the contest. In fact, some do not have resources at all yet must show capacity to get them or face disqualification for being nuisance candidates.

On the other hand, other candidates are rich, or very rich. They do not need to ask as much from other sources. If they are that rich, they even end up funding their political parties and the candidacies of other politicians. And if some candidates are really fortunate to be already in positions of power when they run for higher office or re-election, then additional resources and influence are also available to them.

The election laws are supposed to keep elections honest, peaceful and fair. They have not been able to do that, and have even become a farce. With all sorts of provisions to level the playing field, election laws today are silent victims to their own rape. With the wanton spending that is happening in the most recent elections, particularly the current one, it is obvious that laws are impotent and that those who are mandated to enforce them are as impotent, or simply corrupt. The spirit of the laws give way to the myopic, or malicious, interpretation of public officials entrusted with the authority to protect the purity of the spirit and the fidelity of application.

But the question is less if the Comelec is corrupt; rather, why would Comelec officials, why would members of the courts, why would the highest officials in the executive or legislative branches of government be corrupt? What is their temptation?

Of course, when one is corrupt, it is mainly because of greed. If the Philippines is now known to be a corrupt country, it is because many of its public officials, especially those who hold the highest positions, are greedy. Then, their greed makes them become blind to the suffering of the Filipino as a consequence of their corruption. Greedy officials are not only guilty of corruption, they are also traitors to the motherland and killers of their own fellow Filipinos. In their greed, though, they blindfold their consciences to the pain they inflict on those whom they are sworn to protect.

What the corrupt in government, and the corrupt who wish to be elected to government positions, are not blind to is the fact that many Filipinos are for sale. It is common knowledge, or common speculation, that the poor among the voters, are for sale. The most popular imagery of Filipinos for sale is the voter who will accept money in exchange for his vote. Yet, with classes D & E comprising more than 80 million Filipinos with about 40 million voters, it is obvious that direct vote-buying remains impossible as the main method of even the richest politicians. But if a candidate is willing to spend billions of his own money, then he must believe that his money can actually influence those votes to go his way.

Buying votes can be done in a number of ways, as many as the ways by which Filipino voters accept payment in cash or kind for their votes. Advertisements influence voters preferences, most especially voters who have less capacity to discern truth from lie. The most ignorant, the most gullible, and the least informed are the common victims of dishonest advertising – which is why there are efforts to demand truth from advertising. The inanity of many advertisements, however, have nothing to do with truth or lies. They simple pander to the baser instincts of human beings.

The most victimized in electoral campaigns, and on election day itself, are not the ignorant, gullible or uninformed, they are the poor and the very poor. They are manipulated to hope when there is no intent or possibility of that hope to be realized. Politicians with the aid of advertising agencies who also have blindfolded consciences exploit the need of the poor by pandering not only to sexual fantasies by presenting half-clad bodies or titillating actions but to dreams of having security through, homes, medical and educational facilities, and livelihood opportunities. Then, for the very poor, direct vote-buying is a usual practice. Yes, Mr. Comelec, up to today.

When great amounts are spent, especially from one’s own pockets from wealth made legally or illegally, there must be a fundamental assumption that Filipinos are for sale. When great efforts are made to violate or circumvent truth in advertising, or offer inanity to Filipino voters, there must be a fundamental assumption that Filipinos are easily fooled. When the political exercise is characterized by spending and dirty maneuvering, then the future for Filipinos is more corruption and more poverty. And the only antidote is for Filipinos to declare, “Pilipino Ako Not For Sale!”

–
“In bayanihan, we will be our brother’s keeper and forever shut the door to hunger among ourselves.”

 http://mlq3.livejournal.com/152370.html

THE REMAINDER OF THE NATIONAL CAMpaign has two parts: from the present time, when the newest surveys have defined the remaining challenges ahead for the two leading candidates, to Holy Week; and then, from the resumption of the campaign after the Comelec ban on campaigning on Holy Thursday and Good Friday (April 1-2), to the end of campaigning on May 8, two days before election day. Straddling these two phases—the middle and final stretches of the presidential and vice-presidential campaigns—are the local campaign period that begins on March 26 and overseas voting which begins on April 10.

For the last five years, especially after the “Hello Garci” tapes exposed the massive cheating in the 2004 presidential elections, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has been excoriated, vilified and reviled by politicians, media commentators and the Filipino people in poll after poll which rate her the worst president in Philippine history.

But this revulsion has been largely concentrated on her personally. Her critics point to her lavish celebration of her wedding anniversary in New York with a $20,000 bill paid for by Leyte Rep. Martin Romualdez. This is an impeachable offense, critics charge, because Philippine law ( RA 6713)  provides that “public officials shall lead modest lives appropriate to their positions and income and that they shall not engage in extravagant or ostentatious displays of wealth.”

Pres. Arroyo has also been accused of “betrayal of public trust” for approving the National Broadband Network (NBN) telecommunications deal with China’s ZTE Corp. that was allegedly overpriced by at least $130-M which, critics charge, was supposed to be divided between First Gentleman Mike Arroyo and former COMELEC chair Jun Abalos as a reward for his role in securing her election victory in the 2004 elections. But the NBN-ZTE deal was scrapped by Pres. Arroyo after it was exposed.

Polls show Pres. Arroyo with a -39% approval rating which one obtains by subtracting the number of people who disapprove of her from the number of those who approve of her.

And yet former Pres. Joseph Estrada enjoys an 18+ % favorable rating despite the fact that he was convicted of plunder beyond a shadow of a doubt after witnesses like his childhood friend, Carlos Arellano, whom Estrada appointed president of the Social Security System (SSS), testified that Estrada pressured him to invest $20-M (P900-M pesos) in Belle Corporation stocks owned by a crony. Another Estrada appointee, Federico Pascual, president of the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), also testified that he was similarly instructed by Estrada to invest $25-M (P1.1-B pesos) in Belle stocks which turned out to be worthless.

Belle Corporation executives testified that Estrada’s commission for facilitating government investments in Belle amounted to $4-M (P189-M pesos) which they paid to Estrada crony Jaime Dichavez who deposited the money in the bank account of “Jose Velarde” at the Equitable Bank where a bank manager, Clarissa Ocampo, testified that she personally witnessed Estrada sign the name “Jose Velarde” to withdraw those funds from his account.

Despite this overwhelming evidence of his personal corruption, Estrada is still loved by the people who apparently do not have any problem with the fact that 2-B pesos of SSS and GSIS funds have evaporated.

Presidential candidate Manny Villar enjoys an even higher favorable rating despite the fact that a majority of his fellow senators have charged him with making the Filipino people suffer a loss in the total amount of P6.22 billion pesos ($129.6-M). 
 
As senator and as chair of the Senate’s Finance Committee, whose approval is needed for government funds to be disbursed, Villar caused the Department of Public Works and Highways to build a Las Pinas-Paranaque link highway (C5) that was diverted to pass through 23 subdivisions owned by Villar, substantially increasing the land values of his properties. Villar also caused the government to pay three times more than the market price to buy his land for the roads that would pass through his subdivisions.
 
Another issue raised against Villar concerned the purchase by his company (Northwinds Prime) of Santa Lucia Realty property in Norzaragay, Bulacan for 120-M pesos. The property that was purchased turned out to be fraudulently reconstituted titles (the ancestral lands of the Dumagats) which Villar supporters say was not Villar’s fault (they point to the Puyats for doing this). But the problem is that Villar then mortgaged the fraudulently titled lands to his bank, Capitol Development Bank, for P150-M pesos (a P30-M profit) and the Villar-owned bank then used the lands as collateral for a P1.5-B pesos emergency loan from the government’s Bangko Sentral which it then defaulted on.
 
When it comes to the principles of accountability, transparency, integrity and credibility (ATIC), Villar’s defenders point to the fact that Villar has never been convicted of fraud. Of course, neither was Ferdinand Marcos and, for that matter, neither was Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
 
But while Arroyo as a sinner is hated, corruption as a sin is generally tolerated if not embraced, at least when it comes to Estrada and Villar.
 
(Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 or call (415) 334-7800).

July 4, 1946 was the date we got our independence from the United States of America, or was it? Did colonialism really end when America gave us our independence on that said date? Lately, I have seen a series of events which gave me an impression that colonialism still thrives in our beloved country even after more than 500 years of foreign rule. Picture this: in a small internet café at Tomas Morato Ave., a group of noisy and rowdy foreigners (Iranians) shouting at the top of their voices while playing computer games unmindful of the presence of other people. And what puzzled me was that not a single Filipino inside the cafe voiced out a complaint against this very disruptive conduct. Adding insult to this very “offensive” behavior was when one of the foreigners stood up and scolded the undersized Filipino cashier (the Iranian was brawny) saying “your aircon is too cold”. When the Filipino politely said “Sir you could take another table”, the irate foreigner said “don’t be stupid just lessen the temperature. I want my original table”. “Whoa! They are a nasty bunch” I said to my self as thoughts quickly raced inside my mind. Because I live nearby, the idea of bringing in our driver, houseboy, our neighborhood security guard and all their friends to “engage” these people and teach them “proper” manners “played” into my mind. But I also knew this would be very violent and later “reason” won over my feelings. I just comforted the poor little Filipino cashier by saying “engaging these people isn’t worth it”. It was a pity that the little cashier had to take the incident in stride but what was more appalling was that not a single Filipino protested against this “unacceptable” conduct displayed by a foreigner against a Filipino in our very own country.

Let me take you to another story. These incidents happened inside a “British” owned offshore bank three months ago. A lady friend of mine and her work colleagues, all officers of that prestigious bank, are unjustly and contionuously berated in public by the prestigious bank’s male Indian senior officer. As my friend was in the middle of her business presentation, the “foreigner” boss said “that is a crappy report made by a “very stupid” person, step up to your position! You are not thinking, you are not thinking”! The Indian executive continued with his berating, and verbal abuse despite my lady friend’s efforts to defend herself. This lady friend and her work colleagues experienced oppression several times under the said Indian senior executive – he would interrupt lunch breaks and require his team to hold cross functional meetings instead of taking their lunch or hold meetings beyond office hours if the team does not follow he calls them “lazy” and would use statements like “the bank does not pay you for this kind of work”! This Indian regarded by the prestigious British bank as its senior officer certainly shows a lack of sensibility or concern for Filipino Employees’ feelings and welfare, including Filipino culture as a whole.

In another alarming incident the same senior Indian bank executive also went to the extent of threatening one of the officers under him who refused to alter figures in a report which the said Indian executive would use to his advantage. The Indian national issued threatening statements such as “do not bite the hand that feeds you”. The oppressed employees raised their grievance to the Bank’s Human Resources Department, but despite that, the Indian executive has not ceased his maltreatment of Filipino officers under him. The grievance case was also escalated to the appropriate government organization but to no avail. It is so sad that it seems that our fellow Filipinos who are supposed to be protecting their brothers are instead massing the oppressive acts of these foreigners in our native country!

The words “stupid” and “lazy” when used by a foreigner on a Filipino in our own country reminds us of the time when the Spanish colonizers called our forefathers stupid and indolent. When the Americans came to our shores in 1899, those who resisted (Filipino Insurrectos) were called “gugus”, a slang word where we probably got the Filipino term “gago” meaning “stupid”. When the Japanese invaded in 1942, they brought with them their favorite cuss word “bakeru” meaning “stupid” in reference to their new subjects, the Filipinos.

Today, I am quite amazed (at the same time appalled), that some of the foreigners visiting or even working here have the audacity to use such a bad language on our people in our own country. I am not against foreigners visiting or working in our country, they are good for the economy. What I am against are “arrogant” foreigners who think that our country is still a colony because they have the money and influence to “rule” over us. A friend of mine told me that we were a “conquerable” race. My answer to him is maybe, because in the past we were always “passive”in our response to all the indignities committed against us by people of different races. Not to long ago, the great Jose Rizal said “Where there are no slaves, there are no tyrants”. With this saying, my lady friend and her other colleagues filed a complaint before the Bureau of Immigrations against this arrogant Indian national who probably thinks of himself as a British colonizer just because he works in a British firm. Maybe this guy needs some lessons in history. Has he forgotten the time when the Indians were maltreated by their colonizers, the British? And as for this prestigeous British offshore bank, are they willing to sacrifice and post a risk to their present values and reputation by protecting this arrogant maltreating Indian executive? As for the group of “rowdy” Iranians at Tomas Morato, I am very sure that they would meet their “match” someday if they continue their arrogant ways against us Filipinos.

The Author, George M. Hizon currently writes for Ateneo’s Blue Blood Magazine.