The new year as a season of possibility is looking better and better for the Philippines.

Better than the SWS surveys that said that most Filipinos are looking at 2019 with optimism, and that more Filipinos rate themselves as poor, is Bloomberg’s upbeat report on the Philippine economy.

Yen Makabenta

“After last year’s inflation shock, a 5 percent slump in the currency and a widening current-account deficit, pressure is starting to ease. Consumer-price growth slowed last month, the peso and stocks are rebounding, and the current account is set to remain manageable.

Economic growth is expected to exceed 6 percent and reserve buffers are among the strongest in global emerging markets, according to Moody’s Investors Service.

‘We’ve seen the worst in 2018,’ said Jonathan Ravelas, chief market strategist at BDO Unibank Inc. in Manila. ‘We are cautiously optimistic because we know we’re not there anymore.’

Investors will dive back into PH
“The benchmark Philippine stock index has risen more than 7 percent this year, the biggest gainer in Asia. The peso is up 0.6 percent to 52.3 per dollar, after being one of hardest hit by an emerging-market rout in 2018.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. forecasts the peso will strengthen to 50 per dollar over the next 12 months, according to a note on Monday. The tightening in financial conditions last year should slow domestic demand and import growth, helping support the current account, it said.

‘There’s more room for the peso to rebound, with sufficient reserve buffers and quite solid fundamentals,’ said Koji Fukaya, chief executive officer at FPG Securities Co. in Tokyo.

The Philippines has the advantage of having low foreign debt obligations. External debt payments due this year and total non-resident deposits over one year are estimated at 25 percent of foreign reserves for 2019, the lowest among 19 emerging markets tracked by Bloomberg, according to Moody’s forecasts.

Remittances from Filipinos living abroad are a key pillar of support for the economy and the currency, amounting to 10 percent of gross domestic product. Those inflows probably rose 8 percent in November from a year ago as more people sent money home for the holidays, according to a Bloomberg survey ahead of data due Tuesday.

As economic fundamentals firm up, they should offset risks including a prolonged US-China trade war and an uptick in world oil prices, which hampered the economy last year.

‘The waters are no longer murky. Investors are ready to dive back into the Philippines,’ Ravelas said.”

Andaya the newsmaker
Another new year development of note is the mutation of House Majority Leader Rolando Andaya Jr. from congressional investigator of anomalies into a bigtime maker of news. He competes with President Duterte’s ability to grab media attention with insults and jokes. He also exceeds fake news specialists in generating frontpage news because he uses his position in Congress and deals with live public issues.

This week, it was impossible to avoid reading about Andaya in the front pages of newspapers and listening to him in the broadcast programs of TV networks.

Evidently, as a follow-up to his noisy tiff with Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno, wherein he accused Diokno of channeling billions of pesos worth of public funds to his alleged in-laws in Sorsogon, Andaya has persisted in conducting a House inquiry into his allegations.

Diokno refutes Andaya charges
But Diokno has forcefully answered Andaya with a detailed refutation of the charges, that was published by the Manila Times in its issue of January 10.

In summary, the budget secretary declared that:
1. He does not facilitate the awarding of projects to a favored contractor because as budget secretary, he does not deal with contractors and does not meddle with project implementation.

2. He did not manipulate the budget to ensure the inclusion of projects in favored districts, particularly flood control structures under the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH).

The DBM is only in charge of setting the aggregate budget ceiling and individual budget ceilings for agencies during budget preparation.

3. The DBM is not involved in the allocation of DPWH projects by region, province or district during budget preparation. DBM only evaluates the targets, by program, based on their budget utilization rate in previous years.

4. Budgeting was opaque and transactional during Andaya’s term as budget secretary. Budget implementation was micro-managed.

5. By contrast, today’s budget system under Duterte and Diokno is rules- based. There is less discretion in budget releases during budget implementation because the DBM has adopted the GAA as allotment order (GAARD) policy since 2017; the GAA has served as the official fund release document for regular programs in the budget.

The DBM has made important steps to institute an open, accountable and rules-based budgeting system.

It has been rigorous in publishing budget information. It is for this reason that we are ranked first in Asia and 19th in the world for budget transparency.

Where will Andaya go now, given this reply? Who will listen to him?

Andaya’s new headlines
Andaya is undaunted, however. He persists in making news with startling claims by creating new headlines.

Consider:
1. On January 14, he filed a petition for mandamus with the Supreme Court to compel Diokno to release funds under the fourth tranche of adjustments under the Salary Standardization Law (SSL).

Diokno replied that the DBM must wait for the passage of a new national budget by Congress because it is the legal basis for implementing the fourth tranche.

2. Andaya claimed that the DBM failed to include the Bangsamoro law plebiscite in the 2019 budget.

DBM retorted that the Bangsamoro Organic Law (BOL) plebiscite has adequate funding and will push through as planned. There are enough funds for the government to push through with the BOL plebiscite this month.

3. The Sandiganbayan on Tuesday rebuffed Andaya’s motion to dismiss 97 cases of graft and malversation of the P900-million proceeds of the Malampaya Fund against him.

Instead, the Sandiganbayan stood firm on its decision to refuse to dismiss a total of 194 criminal cases filed against Andaya, Janet Lim Napoles — the alleged Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) scam queen — and several others.

They will be arraigned on Friday.

Presiding Justice and Division Chairman Amparo Cabotaje-Tang penned the resolution with the concurrence of Associate Justices Bernelito Fernandez and Lorifel Pahimna.

The Sandiganbayan found strength in the cases related to the alleged irregular diversion of funds from the Malampaya natural gas project to the relief and rehabilitation efforts in areas affected by typhoons “Ondoy” and “Pepeng” in 2009.

Andaya, who was the budget secretary of the Arroyo government at the time, allegedly released the funds through the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR).

In his motion for reconsideration, Andaya contended that the graft and malversation cases against him lacked pertinent details.

The anti-graft court insisted that the elements of graft and malversation were aptly alleged in the information filed by the Office of the Ombudsman.

“A plain reading will show that the acts and/or omissions complained of are alleged in plain, ordinary and concise language. In fact, the specific participation of all the accused in the alleged Malampaya Fund scam is outlined in detail in each of the information in these cases,” the court said.

Newsmaker in victory and defeat
However these new issues pan out, Andaya has ensured for himself a place in the news.

Media attention will turn now toward these issues:
1. Will the Supreme Court throw out his petition to compel the release of the salary hikes?

2. Will Andaya retain his post as House majority leader? This is unlikely since he is running for a local government post in the May elections.

3. Will Andaya be convicted for his liability in the Malampaya fund fraud?

In victory or defeat, the media will have room in the news for Andaya.

yenmakabenta@yahoo.com

This story was originally published by The Manila Times, Philippines

The climate change debate has become more complicated as the United Nations continues to double down on its forecast of climate catastrophe in response to near-global rejection of its warning.

The situation will intensify this December as nearly 200 countries meet for COP 24 in Katowice, Poland (the curious acronym stands for Conference of the Parties) to discuss a global plan of action against climate change.

Yen Makabenta

In particular, they are quoting Thatcher’s words in a 1989 speech at the United Nations, wherein she sounded a call about the danger of global warming. The lady said then: “The danger of global warming is as yet unseen but real enough for us to make changes and sacrifices so we may not live at the expense of future generations… No generation has a freehold on this Earth; all we have is a life tenancy with a full repairing lease.”

Hot air and global warming
But there is a problem here. Thatcher, in fact, became a skeptic on global warming and climate change, and became even more so about the apocalyptic warnings that it engendered.

She devotes a chapter in her book Statecraft (HarperCollins, New York, 2002) to the subject. And she titled it “Hot Air and Global Warming.” She called Al Gore “ridiculous” for his “apocalyptic hyperbole” about the climate.

What a pity she is no longer around to brand the current surreal stewards of the United Nations!

Questions of a climate skeptic
Mrs. Thatcher left behind a lucid and knowledgeable exposition on global warming and the harebrained solutions that can help non-experts like yours truly in understanding the intricacies and implications of climate change.

She shows that skepticism is the sensible attitude to adopt towards the fevered claims and warnings of the UN and climate alarmists. It is a must once one is confronted with the grandiose claim that global warming is settled science.

Thatcher breaks everything down point by point.

The lady raises five key questions about global warming:

1. Is the climate actually warming?
This may seem obvious because of the media hype and climate politics. But the facts are in doubt. There seems to be a long-term trend of warming but, according to some experts, it is such a long-term trend that it is not relevant to current concerns.

A warming trend began about 300 years ago during what is called the Little Ice Age, and this has continued. It is recent developments which are more disputable.

Ground-based temperature stations indicate that the planet has warmed by somewhere between 0.3 and 0.6 degrees Celsius since about 1850, with about half of this warming occurring since World War 2. But against this, the temperature taken from weather balloons and satellites over the past 20 years actually show a cooling trend. The indirect evidence from rainfall, glaciers, sea levels and weather variability, often adduced to prove global warming, is similarly ambiguous.

2. Is carbon dioxide responsible for whatever global warming has occurred?
Here too the uncertainties are formidable. CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas. Methane, nitrous oxide, aerosols and water vapor — the most abundant greenhouse gas — make major contributions. So, exclusive concentration on CO2 either in analysis or in policy prescription is bound to mislead.

Still more important is the role of solar activity. Studies have suggested that increased solar output may have been responsible for half of the increase in temperature from 1900 to 1970 and a third of the warming since 1970.

Whatever we manage to do about CO2 and other greenhouse gases, we are not likely to be able to do much about the sun itself.

Human-induced global warming
3. Is human activity, especially human economic activity, responsible for the production of carbon dioxide which has contributed to any global warming?

The facts are unclear. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded in 1955 that “the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate…However our ability to quantify the human influence on global climate is currently limited.”

Actually, not all scientists agree with the IPCC’s view. It is a great deal more tentative than some alarmist assertions.

In any one year, most CO2 production is not related to human beings. In fact, less than 5 percent of the carbon moving through the atmosphere stems directly from human sources.

4. Is global warming quite the menace suggested?
To doubt this is of course rank heresy, but one should at least start out with an open mind. In an ideal world, we would want a stable climate.

It is necessary to keep a sense of proportion. The world climate is always changing and man and nature are always, by one means or another, finding the means to adapt to it.

Earth temperatures today are probably at about their three-thousand-year average. And we have known periods of warming before. The Dark Ages and the Early Medieval period — about 850 to about 1350 — for example saw a sharp increase in temperature of 2.5 C.

There is only one thing worse than getting hotter — and that is getting colder. In the 1970s, after two decades of unusually cold weather, there was a minor scare about global cooling. Some of the same people now worrying about global warming offered broadly the same program of international controls to deal with the problem.

5. Can global warming be stopped or checked at an acceptable price?
At Kyoto, the United States answered “No,” at least to the proposals on offer. Perhaps the answer will always be “no.”

It will be necessary to resolve many remaining uncertainties before risking action that makes the world poorer than it would otherwise be by restraining economic growth.

If there were clear evidence that the world is facing climate catastrophe, that would be different, but such evidence does not so far exist.

What is far more apparent is that the usual suspects on the left have been exaggerating dangers and simplifying solutions in order to press their agenda of anti-capitalism.

Worries about climate should take their place among other worries — about human health, animal health, modified foods and so on. All require first-rate research, mature evaluation and then the appropriate response.

But no more than these does climate change mean the end of the world; and it must not mean either the end of free-enterprise capitalism

Lessons from predictions of global disaster
Thatcher ends her discussion of global warming with what she calls “the lessons from past predictions of global disaster.” They must be learned in considering the issue of climate change.

These lessons are:
1. We should be suspicious of plans for global regulation that all too clearly fit in with preconceived agendas.

2. We should demand of politicians that they apply the same criteria of common sense and a sense of proportion to their pronouncements on the environment as to anything else.

3. We must never forget that although prosperity brings problems it also permits solutions — and less prosperity means fewer solutions.

4. All decisions must be made on the basis of the best science whose conclusions have been properly evaluated.

Many new articles and commentaries on the UN climate agenda have jibed with Mrs. Thatcher’s critique of global warming. When taken together, these have combined to shape my skeptical view of global warming and the UN doomsday forecast.

I shall discuss in detail these articles and commentaries in my next column.

If the world is going to fade away in my lifetime, I figure that it is important to know what is happening than to just act surprised.

yenmakabenta@yahoo.com

This story was originally published by The Manila Times, Philippines

To comprehend the complex arguments and abstruse terminology of the climate debate, I have been helped by the advice of one scientist who said it is essential to grasp the difference between weather and climate.

Yen Makabenta

The current conundrum is the widespread and erroneous belief (propagated by climate alarmists) that 1) the California fires, 2) the Hawaii volcanic activity, and 3) super typhoon Haiyan-Yolanda in Leyte are proof of global warming or climate change.

This belief is as mistaken as believing that planet Earth is flat.

The way out of this thicket is to understand first the difference between weather and climate.

Confusion about the two has led to the fear-mongering about global warming, and now the absurd UN prediction of global climate catastrophe.

Weather and climate: The difference
You can’t take better guidance on these concepts than from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), two major science agencies in the United States.

I have taken the following from a brief of NASA and NOAA. I quote:

“The difference between weather and climate is a measure of time. Weather is what conditions of the atmosphere are over a short period of time, and climate is how the atmosphere ‘behaves’ over relatively long periods of time.

When we talk about climate change, we talk about changes in long-term averages of daily weather. Today, children always hear stories from their parents and grandparents about how snow was always piled up to their waists as they trudged off to school. Children today in most areas of the country haven’t experienced those kinds of dreadful snow-packed winters, except for the Northeastern US in January 2005. The change in recent winter snows indicate that the climate has changed since their parents were young.

“If summers seem hotter lately, then the recent climate may have changed. In various parts of the world, some people have even noticed that springtime comes earlier now than it did 30 years ago. An earlier springtime is indicative of a possible change in the climate….

Weather is basically the way the atmosphere is behaving, mainly with respect to its effects upon life and human activities. The difference between weather and climate is that weather consists of the short-term (minutes to months) changes in the atmosphere. Most people think of weather in terms of temperature, humidity, precipitation, cloudiness, brightness, visibility, wind, and atmospheric pressure, as in high and low pressure.

In most places, weather can change from minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, day-to-day, and season-to-season.

Climate, however, is the average of weather over time and space. An easy way to remember the difference is that climate is what you expect, like a very hot summer, and weather is what you get, like a hot day with pop-up thunderstorms.”

Global warming errs badly
To understand the great confusion about global warming or climate change, my most lucid guide has been Dr. Richard Lindzen — a former Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology at MIT and member of the US National Academy of Sciences — and his now famous lecture for the Global Warming Policy Foundation last October 8.

Some say that the lecture is must reading for everyone who thinks about global warming/climate change, and for everyone who thinks about science and its role in human society and politics.

In just a number of segments of his lecture, Dr. Lindzen crystallized for me why the church of global warming errs so badly in its dogma.

Global warming promoters fostered the popular public perception of the science of climate change as quite simple. It is that here’s one phenomenon to be explained (“global average temperature,” or GAT, which, says Lindzen, is a thoroughly unscientific concept). And there’s one explanation for it: the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

But the reality is that Earth’s climate system is probably the most complicated system ever studied, with the exception of DNA and the human brain.

There are dozens of categories of factors that influence it, and thousands to billions of individual pieces of each category…

GAT is only one of many important phenomena to measure in the climate system, and CO2 is only one of many factors that influence both GAT and all the other phenomena.

CO2’s role in controlling GAT is at most perhaps 2 percent, yet climate alarmists think of it as the “control knob.”

Most people readily confuse weather (short-term, local-scale temperature, humidity, precipitation, wind, cloudiness, and more) with climate (long-term, large-scale of each) and think weather phenomena are driven by climate phenomena; they aren’t.

Consequently, as Lindzen says, the currently popular narrative concerning this system is this: The climate, a complex multifactor system, can be summarized in just one variable, the globally averaged temperature change, and is primarily controlled by the 1 to 2 percent perturbation in the energy budget due to a single variable — carbon dioxide — among many variables of comparable importance.

This, says Lindzen, is an extraordinary pair of claims based on reasoning that borders on magical thinking. But this is the narrative that has been widely accepted.

Crisis of credibility
I turn next to my latest find in my continuing research on the UN doomsday scare and the global warming debate. I refer to an article published on April 24, 2018 in Real Clear Markets and Investors Business Daily titled: “Did You Know the Greatest Two-Year Global Cooling Event Just Took Place?” by Aaron Brown.

Brown reports that NASA data show that global temperatures dropped sharply over the past two years. Does this make NASA a global warming denier?

Brown looked at the official NASA global temperature data and noticed something surprising. From February 2016 to February 2018, “global average temperatures dropped by 0.56 degrees Celsius.” That, he notes, is the biggest two-year drop in the past century.

“The 2016-2018 Big Chill,” he writes, “was composed of two Little Chills, the biggest five-month drop ever (February to June 2016) and the fourth biggest (February to June 2017). A similar event from February to June 2018 would bring global average temperatures below the 1980s average.”

Brown’s discovery did not warrant any news coverage in US mainstream media.

In fact, in the three weeks since Real Clear Markets ran Brown’s story, no other news outlet picked up on it. Instead they reported on such things as tourism’s impact on climate change, how global warming will generate more hurricanes this year, threaten fish habitats, and make islands uninhabitable. They wrote about a UN official saying that “our window of time for addressing climate change is closing very quickly.”

In short, the mainstream media repeated only what climate change advocates have been saying for decades.

Brown’s point is that the drop in temperatures at least merits a review of the global warming narrative.

But there is a refusal to cover inconvenient scientific findings. Brown recalled them.

There was the study published in the American Meteorological Society’s Journal of Climate showing that climate models exaggerate global warming from CO2 emissions by as much as 45 percent. It was ignored.

Then there was the study in the journal Nature Geoscience that found that climate models were faulty, and that, as one of the authors put it, “We haven’t seen that rapid acceleration in warming after 2000 that we see in the models.”

Nor did the press see fit to report on findings from the University of Alabama-Huntsville showing that the Earth’s atmosphere appears to be less sensitive to changing CO2 levels than previously assumed.

Now, they are also turning their backs on NASA’s findings.

In sum, says Brown, global warming faces a crisis of credibility.

yenmakabenta@yahoo.com

This story was originally published by The Manila Times, Philippines

I have been lately mesmerized by the awesome power of words, even just a single word to alter the perception of reality, or trigger outrage.

Yen Makabenta

Under Marcos, four agencies were created by the Department of Labor to carry out the overseas employment program: the Overseas Employment Development Board (OEDB), the National Seamen’s Board (NSB), the public employment offices network, and the foreign exchange remittance committee (FERC).

Things were simple and straightforward at the beginning. A worker went to work abroad carrying a contract and headed for a specific destination.

From OCWs to OFWs
When the OCWs officially mutated into the overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), the overseas work force became a flood. Filipino women joined the parade to work as domestic workers and in other jobs. A multitude of skills were hired across a wide spectrum of occupations and interests. Suddenly Filipino workers could go abroad without contracts.

You can say in defense of the shift to OFW, that the OFW remittances began to soar, culminating in the $30 billion last year. But you must also confront the reality that the shift has brought forth the nightmare of raped and murdered OFWs, hundreds in detention awaiting execution, and countless undocumented workers in foreign lands.

When the word “contract” was dropped from the required documentation of our overseas workers, their world changed.

Now, the nation faces a nightmare – hundreds of thousands of our people living and working in foreign lands undocumented and unsung.

According to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), as of the year 2016, the number of OFWs who worked abroad at anytime during the period April to September 2016 was estimated at 2.2 million. OCWs, or those with existing work contracts, comprised 97.5 percent of the total overseas Filipino workers during the period April to September 2016. The rest (2.5 percent) worked overseas without contracts.

Boracay as ‘cesspond’
Consider Boracay next: President Duterte fumbled and then hilariously called Boracay a “cesspond.” He simply could not recall the precise English word, “cesspool” (“cesspit” is also used by the English), to express his exasperation over Boracay’s environmental emergency.

Think of it as a presidential senior moment. Who is so lucid all the time that he does not find himself sometimes at a loss for words?

Cesspond or whatever, Boracay is today is a national calamity. An island paradise that once was a destination for millions, and was a stupendous foreign exchange earner, has been reduced temporarily to a backwater. The island has to be closed down during the summer season for at least 60 to 90 days, so the government can fix its massive runaway problems.

To DU30’s relief, “cesspond” is benign compared to “shithole,“ which President Trump used to describe Caribbean and African countries, like Haiti and El Salvador, that send streams of immigrants to America.

Trump compounded his offense by suggesting that the US should bring more immigrants from Norway, not ‘shithole countries.’

Trump and ‘shithole’ countries
US diplomats around the world were summoned for formal reproach, amid global shock that such crude remarks could ever be made in a semi-public meeting by the president of America.

In a strongly worded statement, the UN said it was impossible to describe his remarks as anything other than racist, while the Vatican decried Trump’s words as “particularly harsh and offensive.”

The 55-nation African Union said the remarks were “clearly racist.”

The uses of euphemism
Trump’s was a situation wherein a euphemism could have saved the day.

A euphemism is a generally innocuous word or expression used in place of one that may be found offensive or suggest something unpleasant.

Reasons for using euphemisms vary by context and intent, and can include avoiding discomfort in day-to-day social interactions.

The euphemism affirmative action denotes a preference for minorities or the historically disadvantaged, usually in employment or academic admissions.

Perhaps the most controversial new euphemism is “enhanced interrogation” to disguise torture. Only the word is new. The thought and the practice is American tradition. During the Philippine-American War of 1899-1902, the American military used the euphemism “waterboarding” to extract information from Filipino freedom fighters.

Wellness leave
Lawyer Jun Lacanilao, the spokesman of Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno could give the Trump White House a lesson or two in the art of euphemism.

In the face of the latest tsunami engulfing the chief magistrate, Lacanilao magically came up with a euphemism to save his boss from drowning.

To counter the headline news that Sereno was being forced to resign by the majority of her fellow justices, and was only allowed the option of taking an indefinite leave of absence, Lacanilao invented an elaborate story and euphemism that Sereno would be taking a “wellness leave,” starting today March1, not an indefinite leave, and not a sick leave.

When does a person take a wellness leave? Isn’t it because he or she is unwell or feeling poorly? Why did Sereno not take a sick leave?

Private sector employers are now on edge that they may have to provide a new employee’s benefit called “wellness leave” if Sereno’s euphemism is allowed to stand. As things are now, they already provide their employees with vacation leave, sick leave, and 13th month pay.

Classic evasion and deception
The story of Sereno’s wellness leave is classic evasion and deception.

What really happened was this:
During the Supreme Court en banc session on Tuesday, Sereno was pressed to resign by a majority of the justices, because they saw the court as being destroyed by the many pieces of evidence that have been unearthed by the House justice committee during its hearings on the impeachment case against her.

Sereno refused to resign and some justices instead suggested that Sereno should take a leave of absence. At first, Sereno also refused to go on leave. But the justices prevailed on her to take a leave of absence after they threatened to call for Sereno’s resignation if she still refuses to take an indefinite leave of absence.

Sereno asked to talk privately to the two most senior justices of the court, Carpio and Associate Justice Presbitero Velasco.

After the three met, it was announced that Sereno would take an indefinite leave starting March 1.

Lacanilao flatly denied that Sereno was coerced into taking an indefinite leave. He concocted the tale that Sereno had scheduled a “wellness leave” for mid-March but had decided to advance this by a couple of weeks, beginning today.

Resignation is the last word
During her wellness leave, CJ Sereno can productively spend the time to contemplate one final word about her case and her ordeal: resignation.

She should avoid her lawyers and her spokesman during her meditation. Their interest in their professional fees, and the free media exposure during the impeachment trial will impel them to counsel that Sereno stay put and fight on. They will ignore the cost to her health and her emotional state by the barrage of hostile publicity and public disdain that will rain on her.

It is at this point when Dr. J. Patrick Dobel’s thoughtful paper on” the ethics of resigning” can be most illuminating or liberating.

yenmakabenta@yahoo.com

This story was originally published by The Manila Times, Philippines

In the arcane world of natural disasters, names matter a great deal—not only because of history and science, but because people need them in order to remember or mourn what and whom they have lost.

Yen Makabenta

During its 2014 annual session, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (Escap) announced that the name Haiyan would be retired from its naming lists on January 1, 2015, and would be replaced by the name Bailu.

This information is useful to have because yesterday, in seemingly just the wink of an eye, the nation was already marking the fourth anniversary of Yolanda (Haiyan) and its devastating landfall in the East Visayas on November 8, 2013.

It’s awkward that to be true to the historical and meteorological record one must also take account Yolanda’s international name. This is imperative because Yolanda’s claim to be one of the worst natural catastrophes in history is closely wedded to the fact that Haiyan made landfall and did great harm also in many other countries in Asia-Pacific, and they remember it also by a different name – their own or the international name.

Earthquakes and tsunamis have a simpler naming system. The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, which occurred on December 26,2004 is simply remembered as that. The undersea megathrust earthquake triggered a series of devastating tsunamis along the coasts of most landmasses bordering the Indian Ocean, killing 230,000 to 280,000 people in 14 countries. Indonesia was the hardest-hit country, followed by Sri Lanka, India, and Thailand. The event is known in the scientific community as the Sumatra–Andaman earthquake. The resulting tsunamis were given various names by the affected countries.

Filipinos refer to their biggest natural disaster simply as “Yolanda.” Instinctively, Philippine journalism attaches the word “Super” to Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan), as if in salute.

Yolanda and the memory hole
I monitored yesterday’s commemoration of Yolanda, and I have researched the progress of the rehabilitation and rebuilding of Leyte and Eastern Samar, in order to assure myself that my home region and home province are marching in stride with the ambitious programs of President Duterte.

I have an angst (dread) that because of the many failures of the Noynoy Aquino administration, Yolanda and its sorrows and lessons have been dumped by bureaucrats and politicians in a memory hole. There are so many things and so many tragedies that the Liberals and Yellows dearly hope would be forgotten by the nation. The new administration has its own promises that still remain to be honored.

The Oxford Dictionary defines a memory hole as “an imaginary place where inconvenient or unpleasant information is put and quickly forgotten.”

It originated from George Orwell’s novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, which described a dystopian future, where historical documents and records could be disposed of to allow for manipulation of memories of the past. A memory hole is any mechanism for the alteration or disappearance of inconvenient or embarrassing documents, photographs, transcripts, or other records, such as from a website or other archive, particularly as part of an attempt to give the impression that something never happened.

I was curious to see how far the Aquino government went to revise the historical record of Yolanda, so that the following abominations would disappear:

Aquino government officials’ infamous statements: Aquino’s “Buhay ka pa, di ba?”; Mar Roxas’ “You are a Romualdez, the president is an Aquino,” and many others;

The accounting by former Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman of the billions of pesos worth of donations for Yolanda’s relief that were placed in her charge, and were reportedly mismanaged;

The failure of government up to now to deliver the thousands of houses that were promised to Yolanda victims;

The grotesque non-performance of Sen. Panfilo Lacson as rehabilitation czar under President Aquino, and the humbling lesson that an engineering task should never be assigned to a policeman.

At yesterday’s commemoration, thousands of families stricken by Yolanda held demonstrations in Tacloban City and Catarman, Northern Samar to protest the failures and demand better action from the Duterte government. People Surge, a non-government organization based in Tacloban City, staged a silent protest along the national highway in Tanauan, Leyte, which enumerated with five body bags the false promises of the Duterte government: the investigation of the “gang of five” (former President Benigno Aquino 3rd, former Interior Secretary Mar Roxas 3rd, former Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman, former Energy Secretary Jericho Petilla and former rehabilitation czar Panfilo Lacson), who collectively and individually neglected and denied vital assistance to the typhoon victims.

Comprehensive view of Haiyan
To get a better and more incisive perspective on Yolanda (Haiyan), I recommend to readers the fine article of Wikipedia on the disaster. I never expected the online encyclopedia to be so thorough in discussing the scientific, geographic, humanitarian, economic and political dimensions of the tragedy.

The Wikipedia article on Haiyan is in its way the most enlightening and comprehensive that is readily available. It links the reader to further articles that shed important light on many topics.

It is especially enlightening in its discussion of the colossal humanitarian assistance and donations that countries made to assist the country in the relief and rehabilitation of Yolanda-affected areas.

It lists the aid given country by country and the invaluable contributions of private and philanthropic organizations. It was especially pleasing to see cited the impressive and comprehensive disaster response provided by the Taiwan-based Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation, which organized a large-scale cash-for-work program in Tacloban from November 20 to December 8 with up to 31,000 participants per day, totaling nearly 300,000 day shifts. This operation not only helped clean out the thousands of tons of debris covering the city, but also kick-started the local economy. Tzu Chi also contributed emergency cash aid of P8,000, P12,000 or P15,000 pesos depending on family size for over 60,000 families in the affected areas of Tacloban, Ormoc, Palo, Tanauan and Tunga, and has provided free clinics, hot meals, and temporary classrooms for over 15 schools in the area.

Tzu Chi impacted Yolanda’s victims in a personal way. It’s assistance like this that enable families and stricken communities to recover from disaster.

So did many Filipino humanitarian and private foundations. They have not stopped up to this day.

Remembrance, reflection, responsibility
Some people mistakenly believe that the Yolanda catastrophe should ever be remembered in all its horror and devastation. To do so is itself catastrophic.

Remembering Yolanda with an intensity that does not diminish over time will destine people to live in the past. This way, warned Ellen Goodman, “people will become curators of their ancestors’ grievances.”

It is foolhardy to interpret literally George Santayana’s counsel: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Repetition is also the fate of those who remember the past too well.

Far better is the counsel provided by the historian Carol Gluck. She made the case that what is really needed are three R’s: remembrance, reflection and responsibility.

She wrote: “We don’t want to transmit all the burdens of the past; we’re not looking for a constant open wound. What we need is remembrance for those who died and the day of the disaster. We need reflection for understanding how it really happened. We need to take responsibility for the past and therefore the present and the future.”

Among friends, relations and communities in Leyte who lived through Yolanda and its pain and sorrows, I have been most impressed firsthand by their indomitability and resilience.

In every traumatic experience, psychologists say, there is the fear of being paralyzed with grief. And then also the fear that recovery will require forgetting.

But forget we must. At some point, yes, we have to learn that Yolanda’s proper place belongs in the past.

yenmakabenta@yahoo.com

This story was originally published by The Manila Times, Philippines

I thought of writing this essay on population at this time when our thoughts are turned towards both the dead and the living with equal reverence.

Let’s hear it first from Pope Francis.

Last Saturday, October 28, the pontiff told (Re)Thinking Europe, a project sponsored by the European bishops’ conference (COMECE):

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“A Europe that rediscovers itself as a community will surely be a source of development for herself and for the whole world,” he said.

EU, a tired grandmother
In an earlier address to the European parliament, the pontiff described the European Union as “a tired grandmother, no longer fertile and vibrant.”

He said on Saturday, that he found Europe to be “increasingly distinguished by a plurality of cultures and religions” but warned of the dangers of erecting “walls of indifference and fear” when it came to assimilating migrants who “are more a resource than a burden.”

For Francis, “leaders together share responsibility for promoting a Europe that is an inclusive community,” as it looks to meet challenges including the “imbalances caused by a soulless globalization.”

Among the pope’s audience were European Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans and EU parliament chief Antonio Tajani.

They heard Pope Francis insist that Europe “is not a mass of statistics or institutions, but is made up of people” who should not be “reduced to an abstract.”

The West’s demographic imbalance
From the side of the state, listen to the voice of the Iron Lady, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

In her book Statecraft (Harper Collins,London,2002), she is even more emphatic on the subject of population: “The facts about population in the world today are not subject to dispute. In the developed world, population is either shrinking or stagnating. In the less developed world, too, the projected rate of population growth is rapidly slowing.”

”Perhaps the single most pressing problem for Western economies and societies is demographic imbalance, in part reflecting the sharp decline in fertility rates. Underpopulation, not overpopulation, is the West’s worry. After years during which it was thought irresponsible to have more than two children, there is even talk of a return to ‘natalist’ policies to encourage larger families.”

Thatcher recalled that it was her fellow Englishman, Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834)who started the fuss about population growth. In his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus observed that an increase in a nation’s food production improved the well-being of the populace, but the improvement was temporary because it led to population growth, which in turn restored the original per capita production level. In other words, mankind had a propensity to utilize abundance for population growth rather than for maintaining a high standard of living, a view that has become known as the “Malthusian trap” or the “Malthusian specter.” Populations had a tendency to grow until the lower class suffered hardship and want and greater susceptibility to famine and disease.

Malthus and his successors were mistaken on many points. The real tendency, to which a large body of evidence points, is for families to have fewer children as societies become richer and more urbanized.

Today, because of human creativity and technology, less farmland is producing more food. There has been a dramatic fall in the number of famines. Food surpluses are a major headache. Far from starving, more and more of the world is threatened by the ill-effects of obesity.

Thatcher concluded her discussion with these words: “It is extremely doubtful whether population policies of any kind are likely to yield much benefit. They may well indeed do harm. Governments are not more likely to make sensible judgments about how many people should be born than about how many cars should be produced. It is best for people to be left to make their decision. The real challenge for government is to respond intelligently and farsightedly to the changes that occur.”

The Philippines and its young population
This brings us to my sub-topic in this column: the Philippines and its young population of over 104 million, and what it means for the Filipino future.

No discussion of the Philippines has much substance, unless you delve into the subject of its population, and its surpassing importance for the future.

According to the estimate of the Commission on Population (Popcom) of the Philippines and the US Central Intelligence Agency(CIA), and the population clock of the Philippines, the real time projected population of the Philippines as of November 1, 2017, is 104,840,636.

This is based on the 2015 Census of Population which recorded a population of 100,981,437.

The2017 projection is based on the 2015 population growth rate of 1.72 percent.

Added features of the Philippine population are:
o The Philippines’ population is equivalent to 1.39 percent of the total world population.
o The Philippines ranks number 13 in the list of countries (and dependencies) by population.
o The population density in the Philippines is 352 per sq km.
o The total land area is 298,170 sq km.
o 44.4 percent of the population is urban (46,543,718 people in 2017)
o The median age in the Philippines is 24.3 years.

The Philippines is one of the fastest growing economies in the world today, with GDP growth of well over 6 percent for nearly a decade.

One key reason for this dynamism is the high proportion of the country’s working-age population, which also has a high literacy rate of over 90 percent. This constitutes its demographic dividend, which I have discussed in detail in some earlier columns.

Over 10 million Filipinos today are employed in foreign lands as overseas workers. They remit an average of over $26 billion annually to their families back home.

The young population has also fueled the growth of the country’s business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, which generate earnings of some $25 billion annually.

A new level of credibility
This finally is the hopeful part about the Philippines today. With a young population of nearly 105 million, with the economy growing at well over 6 percent, with strong and good relations with global powers (the United States, China. Japan, Russia and Europe), and with a confident and reformist government in place, the country is developing a new level of credibility in the world. Foreign countries see it as a reliable partner and friend. The international business community now believes that the country is creating a fair and dynamic business environment where they can prosper.

The prosperity and stability, which were built first in Japan, then in Korea and Taiwan, and then in Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia may be finally coming to the Philippines.

Many Filipinos have started to feel that they are part of something bigger than their once insular view of the world.

It all began, I submit, when Filipinos stopped worrying that there are so many of them.

yenmakabenta@yahoo.com

This story was originally published by The Manila Times, Philippines

“Wars are always clarifying” is a line that I jotted down from a column in the New York Times that was written two years after the attack on the twin towers on September 11, 2001. The subject was ostensibly “9/11” and the war on terrorism that it set off (Thomas Friedman wrote the line).

Today, with the news that Marawi has been officially liberated and that terrorist leaders Ismail Hapilon and Omar Khayyam Maute have been pronounced dead, I am trying in my own fashion to decipher what the five-month Marawi conflict has clarified – so that our country and our people can better learn from it, and I can write with more comprehension of events and developments in the South.

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“9/11” was one challenge for the American people. Marawi was another challenge for the Filipino people and our republic.

Raising the flag of the Islamic State
Marawi City, the premier Muslim city of the Philippines, was attacked by Filipino and foreign Islamic terrorists on Tuesday, May 23.

During the siege, armed men took over vital installations in Marawi City, including schools, hospitals, mosques and commercial establishments. They looted banks and financial offices. They replaced the Philippine flag with a black flag of the Islamic State, in an open declaration of their intent to establish a caliphate in Southeast Asia. It was seen by some analysts as an effort to compensate for battleground losses in Syria and Iraq, where the IS would eventually lose in succession their strongholds in Mosul and Raqa.

The timing of the siege was precise; the terrorists staged their attack when President Duterte was in Russia on a state visit and a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. They hoped to catch the armed forces unprepared, and to throw the country into confusion.

Filipinos answer the challenge
Not unlike the Americans, Filipinos responded to the siege of Marawi with complete resolve to prevail in the confrontation, with no less comprehension of the danger posed by terrorism to the very life of the republic, no less anger at the brazen plot to establish an Islamic State outpost in Mindanao, and no less determination to wage war until the danger was fully overcome.

You can see the clarity with which the peril was assessed from the fact that President Duterte immediately declared martial law in all Mindanao even in the middle of his visit in Russia.

You see the clarity in the speed with which the Armed Forces responded to the crisis. You see the clarity in the assessment by military strategists that the Maute siege was seeking to unite under one IS banner all rebel groups in Mindanao, and work towards creating a separate republic.

You see the clarity in the way martial law in Mindanao was extended until the end of the year to totally end the conflict.

You see the clarity in the way the nation ‘s armed forces methodically and progressively cut down the terrorist forces, and reduced them to a handful of fighters.

You see the clarity in the valor and heroism of Filipino soldiery, as they waded boldly into the arena of war, some even returning, even after being hospitalized for battle wounds.

You see the clarity in the way the AFP’s war strategy never wavered from the objective of defeating or killing all the terrorists.

You see the clarity in the way the AFP used effectively the assistance of allies in the war on terrorism.

Finally, we see the clarity in the way the fighting has been wound down to the point where not a single terrorist will be left standing.

Troops are now hunting for the Malaysian terrorist Mahmud Ahmad who was estimated to be still in the battle zone. One terrorism expert projects that if Mahmud survives he would likely take over the leadership of IS-linked fighters in Mindanao.

Opposition’s moral confusion
“Moments of moral clarity,” wrote Bennett, “are exceedingly rare in life, and they are exceedingly precious. They usually follow upon hours – years – of moral confusion.”

When crisis struck in Marawi, the response of Filipinos was not immediately unified. The opposition sought to confine the fighting only to Marawi City. Local politicians in Mindanao wanted their jurisdictions spared from martial law. Liberal Party politicians and lawyers went to the Supreme Court to challenge the martial law proclamation. Several justices wrote dissenting opinions from the majority opinion sustaining the proclamation.

The Liberal Party, from the first, could not find its way to supporting our troops in the battle for Marawi. The Left kept away from it all. The Catholic Church never made clear its precise view of the conflict, even when church members were caught in the crossfire.

Up to now, there are pockets of Philippine society who continue to differ with the way the AFP and the national leadership have conducted the war on terrorism.

Some voices. like Sen. Risa Hontiveros who has a genius for finding the wrong thing to say, have raised concern about the possible violation of the human rights of the terrorists, including Hapilon and Maute. As in the fight against the communists in 1972, politicians are making political capital from pleading the cause of the enemies of the state. They found space in the media for their press releases.

The toll of the conflict
As the Marawi crisis ended, the toll of the conflict was swiftly tabulated. In all, the official count was: about 847 terrorists (including foreign fighters) killed, along with 163 government troops and 47 civilians. Some 300,000 persons were displaced from their homes and wound up in evacuation centers.

Some 846 firearms were recovered, along with various bombs and improvised explosive devices.

The military remains concerned about possible stragglers among the population. One commander said: “We cannot really say that [the area]is 100 percent cleared because even when they declared the end of World War 2, there were still stragglers.”

But Duterte’s declaration of Marawi’s liberation was issued as a “go signal” for the

start of the city’s rehabilitation, for which P10 billion has been appropriated.

The military has raised an alert against retaliatory attacks from terrorist sympathizers.

The United States has vowed support for the military’s final push in Marawi and the government’s rehabilitation plan.

The rebuilding of Marawi will be a telltale sign of how much Mindanao, the Filipino Muslim community and the nation have learned from the agony of the last five months.

yenmakabenta@yahoo.com

This story was originally published by The Manila Times, Philippines

A new university research study has added a twist to the saying, “honesty is the best policy,” which has been immortalized by the Holy Bible, William Shakespeare, Benjamin Franklin and countless mothers.

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In an article early this month (“The secret of honesty revealed: it feels better,” by Henry Bodkin, Telegraph, May 1, 2017), the paper reports that a new study in University College, London, sheds new light on the motherhood virtue, and could offer hope for our perennially failed efforts to stop corruption and enhance honesty in our public service.

The main finding and conclusion is that most people are honest, because honesty feels better. It is the corrupt and the deceivers who are tortured by guilt and doubt, and who in the end must pay for their transgressions.

While many in public service are tempted to steal, lie and bend the rules, the average person will not do the same. They are impelled by their scruples or conscience to act honestly.

I shall quote the article in its entirety here because I would like my readers and government policymakers to judge for themselves. I will discuss its relevance to current issues in our public life and public service in the discussion that immediately follows.

London Telegraph article
“It is a mystery that has perplexed psychologists and philosophers since the dawn of humanity: why are most people honest?…

“Researchers at University College London discovered that at a physical level the brain finds decency far more satisfying than deception.

“The trial revealed that, despite accumulating a large amount of money, most participants derived no deep-seated satisfaction if the success was gained at the expense of others.

“Ill-gotten gains evoke weaker responses, which may explain why most people would rather not profit from harming others

“Published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, the study indicates that, at least at a psychological level, the old adage that ‘crime doesn’t pay’ is right.

“ ‘When we make decisions, a network of brain regions calculates how valuable our options are,’ said Dr. Molly Crockett, who led the research.

“ ‘Ill-gotten gains evoke weaker responses in this network, which may explain why most people would rather not profit from harming others.’

“ ‘Our results suggest the money just isn’t as appealing’.

“The research team scanned volunteers’ brains as they decided whether to anonymously inflict pain on themselves or strangers in exchange for money.

“The experiment involved 28 couples of participants who were paired off and given the ability to give each other small electric shocks.

“They were given the option of selecting sums of money that were related to a shock either for themselves or their partner.

“The researchers noticed that, as they made their decisions, a region of the brain called the striatum, key to the understanding of value, was activated.

“MRI imaging found that this brain network was far more active when the participants gained money while inflicting pain on themselves than on another, suggesting they found it instinctively more valuable.

“ ‘Our findings suggest the brain internalizes the moral judgments of others, simulating how much others might blame us for potential wrongdoing, even when we know our actions are anonymous,’ said Dr. Crockett.

“The scans also revealed that an area of the brain involved in making moral judgments, the lateral prefrontal cortex, was most active in trials where inflicting pain yielded minimal profit.

“In an allied study, participants were asked to make moral judgements about decisions to harm others for profit.

“It showed that when people refused to profit from harming others, this region was communicating with the striatum.

“The researchers believe this shows that normal societal moral rules are visible in the form of neurological signaling, and that these disrupt the value we might otherwise place on ill-gotten gains.

“They insisted that the electric shocks administered to participants were carefully matched to each recipient’s pain threshold to be ‘mildly but tolerably painful’.”

Bong, Jinggoy, PDAF looters will agree
The study is nothing revolutionary. Buddha’s teaching thousands of years ago said that doing good steers the human person towards the right path and enlightenment.

If we ask the senators (Senators Bong Revilla and Jinggoy Estrada) and the legislators who are now facing graft charges before the Sandiganbayan, they will probably agree that honesty would have made them feel better. Now, as they stew in their misery, they surely rue the day they ever thought of stealing their PDAF allocations or the day they met Janet Lim Napoles.

Straight path artists
The dishonest officials who still have to face the music are notably former President Benigno S. Aquino 3rd and former budget secretary Butch Abad who, not content with routinary graft opportunities, even invented the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) to raise their loot to billions of pesos in public funds.

And they had the bright idea of calling it all the straight path (tuwid na daan).

Compared to these Filipino originals, Richard Nixon who declared, “I am not a crook,” was a baby.

Unchanging rules and principles
It‘s individuals who are too clever for their own good who run afoul of ethical politics and government.

The old rules have not changed. Public officials are still obligated to render honest judgment, to work hard and efficiently, and to maximize the benefits of government to all citizens.

The basic principles are in truth unchanging:
1. Public officials must no lie, cheat, or steal in any official capacity. They must obey the law.
2. Public officials must avoid all conflicts of interest created by business, friendship or family relationship.
3. Public officials owe a fiduciary (trustee’s) duty to taxpayers and all citizens to ensure that public funds are used honestly.
4. Public officials should perform their duties based solely on the public interest and the public good, rather than on what is in their best personal interest.

Ethics in government is really no different from ethics in personal life.

Hence, people who do not lie, cheat or steal in business or personal life generally have no problem handling ethical questions in government.

But then power corrupts and tempts. And those with little character are too weak to resist.

yenmakabenta@yahoo.com

This story was originally published by The Manila Times, Philippines

First read
In “The Interpreter” op-ed column in the New York Times, Max Fisher reported that President Obama, during his final year in office, spent time in acknowledging United States’ misdeeds in various countries that he has visited.

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1.) In March, Obama visited Cuba and President Raúl Castro. He told a Cuban audience that the United States had previously tried to “exert control over Cuba” and treated it as “something to exploit.” By tacitly rejecting past American behavior, Obama signaled that he would not repeat it. By opening himself up to criticism at home, he showed his willingness to make sacrifices for improved relations.

2.) Also in March, Obama visited Argentina. While there, he talked of a 1976 military coup that had received tacit American approval. He said: “The United States, when it reflects on what happened here, has to examine its own policies, as well, and its own past.

“Democracies have to have the courage to acknowledge when we don’t live up to the ideals that we stand for.”

3.) In May in Hiroshima, Obama cited the suffering caused by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Max Fisher wrote, “This signaled not just Obama’s concerns about nuclear weapons and his understanding of Japan’s needs, and US readiness to commit resources to meet them. This could help convince Tokyo that it can count on American support when it comes to, say, naval confrontations with China.

4.) This September, on the occasion of the Asean and East Asia summits in Laos, the misdeed singled out for reconciliation was the C.I.A.-led bombing and paramilitary campaign that devastated Laos during the Vietnam War. President Obama stopped short of offering an apology in Laos, but his words were clear and appropriately contrite, in “acknowledging the suffering and sacrifices on all sides of that conflict.”

Why exclude the Philippines?
In this litany of grievance and regret, why did President Obama leave out the Philippines, which is surely as deserving of conciliation as all these countries, if not more so?

Surely, it cannot be because President Obama has a crystal ball like that of a fortuneteller who can accurately predict that President Rodrigo Duterte would fly off the handle and bury him in profanities in the two summits in Vientiane.

More likely, it was a deliberate decision to exclude the Philippines from consideration, having already gotten our government’s assent to the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) and the disguised return of US military presence in the country – and even the endorsement of our integrity-challenged Supreme Court.

These considerations notwithstanding, it is totally baffling that in Obama’s selection of countries with whom to talk of reconciliation and expiation, he forgot the Philippines and the Filipinos.

Because it was here in our archipelago, and in 1898, where and when the United States of America embraced its destiny to become a global and imperial power – at the expense of our people and our newly inaugurated republic.

Given this glaring omission, either our foreign affairs department or our embassy in Washington was totally clueless about what was afoot in the Obama administration, or Obama wanted to send a message to President Duterte to mind his mouth and his human rights report card.

A turning point in history
By any measure in geopolitics and history, the US decision to invade, conquer and annex the Philippines in 1898 was epochal – a turning point, a watershed in history

In his book, 1898, The Birth of the American Century (vintage, 1998), the historian David Traxel wrote, “The United States had irrevocably entered the world in 1898, and although a strong isolationist movement would intermittently rise throughout the century, there could be no turning back to the country‘s earlier policy of avoiding foreign entanglements.”

That is the American viewpoint, and the verdict is shared by most historians.

There was another view of events—the Filipino’s viewpoint. To one Filipino historian and political scientist, Dr. Floro C. Quibuyen, in his book, A Nation Aborted (Ateneo University Press, 2008), American conquest in 1898 aborted the Philippine republic, which was the fitting climax of the Philippine revolution of 1896.

Dr. Quibuyen wrote: “American conquest deformed, with the wholehearted cooperation of the local elite, the blossoming nationalist hegemony, thereby co-opting the anti-Spanish, anti-colonial movement, and transforming it into a pro- American nationalism.

“On the cultural terrain, this was accomplished by the appropriation of Rizal by the American colonial regime.

“The nation – as civil society that Rizal had envisioned – did not materialize. What emerged, instead, was the monstrosity of nation-statism, and a people completely cut off from the spirit of 1896.”

Moving beyond the past
In a briefing with reporters, Susan E. Rice, Obama’s national security adviser, said, “A hallmark of President Obama’s tenure has been to face and acknowledge our history.”

That history has included “points of departure” from the United States’ “overwhelmingly positive” role in the world, Ms. Rice said. “Where that’s the case, we should acknowledge it.”

This practice, she added, “serves our interests and our relationships in our ability to move beyond the past in some of these places.”

Mr. Obama hints that the United States has caused harm abroad and perhaps even made mistakes. He squares American rhetoric with reality as the world perceives it. Supporters see this as sending a message to foreign states that they can trust Washington to hear their concerns and even compromise, encouraging allies and adversaries alike to invest political capital in the relationship.

Despite talk of rock-hard closeness, the US and the Philippines have not moved beyond the past in their own relationship. This is why President Duterte’s unexpected disclosure of a massacre in Mindanao perpetrated by American troops during the Philippine-American War was so shocking and unsettling.

Had President Obama not skipped the Philippines in his bygones tour, this unfortunate row might have been avoided. But no one had the wit to remind him of the Philippine-American War.

yenmakabenta@yahoo.com

This story was originally published by The Manila Times, Philippines

First Read
Having expounded on the “rule of law” in my previous column (“Rule of law: The principle Duterte has not trampled on,” Manila Times, September 6, 2016), I feel bound to also do the same on the subject of “human rights,” especially because the issue has driven a wedge in Philippine –American relations, and has momentarily unhinged Philippine standing in the United Nations.

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The facts show that the misunderstanding between presidents Obama and Duterte would not have happened had the White House not overplayed the human rights issue in announcing the planned meeting of Obama and Duterte, and had the foreign media not sensationalized the unfounded story that Duterte had called Obama a “son of a whore.”

It could all have been avoided had the Obama White House given due regard to the lessons of history when a US president ventures to lecture the world on human rights, and reviewed the diplomatic record and literature on the issue.

White House statements provoke reply
The rigmarole began when the White House announced that US President Barack Obama would meet with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on the sidelines of the East Asia Summit in Vientiane, Laos, starting on September 6.

When asked whether Duterte’s controversial remarks about vigilante killings, journalists and women would be on the agenda, White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said: “We absolutely expect (President Obama) will raise concerns about some of the recent statements from the president of the Philippines.” Rhodes said Obama regularly brought up issues around human rights offenses with treaty allies such as the Philippines.

Thinking perhaps that the first announcement of the meeting was too bland, White House staff issued another statement to the media. It said that President Obama will “pull no punches” in talking to Duterte.

Another aide was quoted by the media as saying that Obama would confront Duterte about his country’s handling of drug dealers, including extrajudicial killings.

Raise concerns? Pull no punches? Confront? At this torrent of statements, Duterte bristled, and he came out swinging with his own stinging reply.

A careful review of what Duterte actually said (in English or Filipino) shows that he never called Obama a “son of a whore.” He spoke with vehemence, yes, but he did not curse Obama.

And the thrust of his tirade was to affirm that the Philippines is a sovereign nation.

What he said was this: “Who does he [Obama] think he is? I am no American puppet. I am the president of a sovereign country and I am not answerable to anyone except the Filipino people.”

The mix-up impelled Obama to cancel the meeting with Duterte. A statement said that Obama was concerned whether the meeting, if it pushed through, could be productive.

Carter’s stress on human rights in foreign policy
Before Obama and his aides talked of human rights in US relations with other nations, there was one US president who made human rights a central goal of US foreign policy- Jimmy Carter (US President, 1977 – 1981).

A moral ideologue, Carter insisted on applying the human rights test not only to America’s adversaries like the Soviet Union; he sought to apply it also to US allies. This angered authoritarian governments that were upbraided by the policy. But more importantly, it angered many foreign policy experts in the US, who saw the HR policy as naïve, moralistic and dangerous. They contended that strategic concerns must take precedence over human rights concerns.

Today, Carter is chiefly remembered as a better ex- president than he was as president. He won the Nobel prize as a private citizen.

Human rights and state sovereignty
Human rights advocates tend to exaggerate the claims of human rights, far beyond the limits recognized when it was first introduced in international relations.

Although president Harry Truman told the UN conference in San Francisco in 1945 that “the Charter is dedicated to the achievement and observance of human rights and freedoms,” the UN charter in Article 2, section 7, explicitly limits that dedication in this way: “Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the UN to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter…”

Without explicitly citing the provision, President Duterte invokes the sovereign right of the Philippines when he protests US and UN criticism of the drug war and their itch to intervene in Philippine affairs.

In her book, Statecraft, Margaret Thatcher writes perceptively about the issue of human rights and state sovereignty. She wrote: “the preamble of the UN Charter rousingly declared: “We the peoples of the United Nations are determined to affirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women, and of nations large and small….” But the key clauses of the Charter in actual fact describe a system which assumes that sovereign states, not any international body, exercise power within their borders; in which the legitimate scope for intervention is extremely limited…indeed this combination of far-reaching statements of principle with very limited means of giving effect to them is characteristic of international human rights discourse.

“This does not mean that the 20th century international preoccupation with human rights has been a waste of time; it is simply that the UN conventions and documents on human rights, covering so many rights, were assumed to apply within an international order based upon sovereign states, whose own governments had the ultimate responsibility to give them effect.”

Human rightism and strategic objectives?
I close with this observation:

Without saying that he did curse the US President, President Duterte has commendably expressed his regrets over statements that were misreported and distorted to become a personal attack by him against Obama.

The two governments have agreed to reschedule an Obama- Duterte meeting to a more propitious time.

The Philippine government issued a statement that underscored the importance of the Philippines-US relationship.

And there is now clear recognition by both sides that our bilateral relationship is of great strategic importance to international order and Asia-Pacific security and cooperation. Human rights disputes or “human rightism” should not imperil this overarching strategic objective.

yenmakabenta@yahoo.com

This story was originally published by The Manila Times, Philippines

First Read

Because in the first draft of this column, I used the word “Draconian” to describe the unprecedented measures that President Duterte has adopted in his war on drugs, I was led by my research to the story of Draco, from whose name the word was taken.

In the Encyclopedia Britannica, I found this entry on Draco:

“Draco also spelled Dracon (7th Century BC), Athenian lawgiver whose harsh code punished both trivial and serious crimes in Athens with death – hence the continued use o f the word “draconian” to describe repressive legal measures.

“The six junior archons or magistrates, are said by Aristotle to have been instituted in Athens after 683 to record the laws. If this is correct, Draco’s code was not the first reduction of Athenian law to writing, but it may have been the first comprehensive code.

“The code was later regarded as intolerably harsh, punishing trivial crimes with death; it was probably unsatisfactory to contemporaries, since Solon, the archon in 594 BC, later repealed Draco’s code and published new laws.

An international issue now
This excursion into Draco’s story is a way of introducing my theme today, that President Duterte’s war on drugs and the over a thousand drug killings are no longer just a national issue; they are an international issue now.

The name “Duterte” is now known all over the world and carried by innumerable newspapers and news media. It has taken a seat for notoriety beside the likes of Hugo Chavez and Osama bin Laden at a time when the world has started to forget them.

By going to war against the United Nations because of the world body’s desire to inquire into the drug killings, and because of his obstinate refusal to honor human rights and humanitarian law in the drug war, President Duterte has placed himself in the cross-hairs not only of the UN but in those of every international human rights organization.

By threatening to pull the Philippines out of the United Nation (even organizing his own association of nations), the President may have only boxed himself into a corner.

All the profanities that he has heaped on the UN and his human rights critics cannot wipe away the cloud that has formed over him and his government. The human rights issue will not go away. It may well wind up in an international court.

The dead will not be forgotten. More than 1,500 people have been killed since Duterte took office and immediately began his law-and-order crackdown, according to police statistics.

The UN’s special rapporteur on summary executions, Agnes Callamard, said last week said that Duterte’s promise of immunity and bounties to security forces who kill drug suspects violated international law.

This follows UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s criticism of Duterte in June, for promising during the election campaign to kill 100,000 people and dump so many bodies in Manila Bay.

“I unequivocally condemn his apparent endorsement of extrajudicial killings, which is illegal and a breach of fundamental rights and freedoms,” Ban said.

This led to more cuss words from DU30: “Fuck you, UN, you can’t even solve the Middle East carnage … couldn’t even lift a finger in Africa,” he said then.

Last month Duterte said he might not ratify the country’s commitments to a historic UN climate change pact agreed to by his predecessor last year.

Teaching the UN how to count
In his latest blast against the UN, President Duterte boasted that he would teach the UN how to count. He addressed himself to the UN, saying: “You’re complaining that there is no process. Okay, you guys, you law experts of the United Nations, come here, come here and face me and make the accusations and I will show you the statistics and I will hold your finger and teach you how to count,” he said.

The President said that he was willing to dialogue with UN observers to explain to them the effects of his war on the narcotics industry, yet his spokesman Ernesto Abella said a UN fact-finding mission that Callamard offered to lead to look into the summary killings in the country was not welcome and would be considered “unnecessary meddling” in internal affairs.

Duterte justifies everything by saying that what he has launched and sown are in line with fulfilling his duty:

“My job as President is to protect law-abiding citizens. I was never tasked by any law to protect criminals. I say this because 16 million people voted for me and I have a large margin between me and the next candidate,” he said.

“The President therefore finds the pronouncements from certain bodies as unwelcome meddling in national matters. The Philippines has not extended any invitation to anybody, nor the UN to look into its national affairs. We are capable of our own internal dialogue.”

A necessary catharsis
But all this blah-blah cannot wipe away, however, the fact that Duterte’s draconian measures have gone against humanity’s fundamental belief that people have a right to be left alone by government when there is no evidence that they have committed a crime, and if there is evidence, that they have to be charged and tried in public, under judicial oversight.

When officials deviate from this norm, they should be grilled and must be called to account.

Yesterday, the Senate inquiry into the drug killings opened with Sen. Leila de lima leading the probe. The hearing was broadcast live, and the public finally began to hear for themselves accounts about the killings, and the stories of some of the people killed.

It was excruciating to behold. But this inquiry is the necessary catharsis that the Filipino nation must go through because of the war on drugs.

yenmakabenta@yahoo.com

This story was originally published by The Manila Times, Philippines

‘Whatever else shall pass away, this must remain’  THIS is the standard that I privately apply to the inaugural addresses of Presidents and Prime Ministers, in this country or elsewhere. Oftentimes, the speeches just perish on the page or on the computer monitor. But a few remain and grab mind and heart, eliciting occasional recollection and quotation.

The magnificent line “whatever else shall pass away” was uttered by the arch-villain in Peter Schaffer’s play, Amadeus, after hearing The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart.

So I await with bated breath the inaugural address at high noon today of our 16th President, Rodrigo Duterte.

Will he shock or rouse the nation to action?

Or will he inaugurate the start of a new era in this country?

Yanks borrow from Filipinos

It’s not usual for American politicians to borrow ideas and lines from the speeches of Filipino Presidents. Usually it’s our politicians who do the cribbing.

But I can point to two clear instances where the Yankees have borrowed from the words of our better Presidents.

Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican Party nominee for President in the US elections in November, was evidently captivated by a line—“this nation can be great again”—from Ferdinand Marcos’s inaugural address on Dec. 30, 1965. He liked it so much he has made it the rallying cry for his presidential campaign.

The exact words of Marcos were: “This nation can be great again. It is my article of faith, and Divine Providence has willed that you and I can now translate this faith into deeds.”

Barack Obama, usually eloquent in his speechmaking, has borrowed the phrase and idea “winning the future” from the inaugural speech of President Fidel V. Ramos, on June 30, 1992.

Ramos said: “This nation will endure, this nation will prevail and this nation will prosper again—if we hold together.

“With God’s blessing for all just causes, let us make common cause to win the future.”

Ramos’s line was also borrowed by former US Speaker and presidential candidate Newt Gingrich. He liked it so much he used it as the title for a book. But the indefatigable FVR beat him to the bookmaking part; he used it earlier as the title for a collection of his speeches, To Win the Future.

Cory had no inaugural address

Surprisingly, considering that she used American and British speechwriters, Corazon Aquino has not been cribbed from at all. One reason is that she never bothered to deliver an inaugural address.

She was sworn into office on Feb. 25, 1986 at Club Filipino, as the climax of the EDSA people power revolt.

In some accounts, it is recorded in photograph and caption that she took her oath before “Chief Justice Claudio Teehankee.” This is inaccurate. Teehankee was an associate justice at the time; he would not become chief justice until April 2,1986, after Aquino had proclaimed a revolutionary government and abolished the national assembly and reorganized the Supreme Court. The real chief justice at the time of Cory’s accession to office was Ramon Aquino, who curiously sported her own surname.

In the records, there is an interesting account from the BBC of what took place on Feb 25,1986:

“The new Philippines President Corazon Aquino is sworn in today, bringing to an end years of dictatorship under Ferdinand Marcos.

Mr. Marcos was threatening to go ahead with his own swearing-in ceremony today at his heavily-guarded palace.

However, the United States, which has supported him in office since he was first elected in 1965, finally withdrew its backing three days ago.

In her first news conference, Mrs. Aquino announced that she would not be living in the presidential palace, as it was not fitting for the leader of such an impoverished nation.

She also urged the people to be patient, saying the problems inflicted by 20 years of Marcos’s corrupt rule could not be remedied overnight.

Cory’s son, Benigno BS Aquino III, had his own inauguration at the Quirino Grandstand, in Rizal Park, on June 30, 2010. He delivered his inaugural address in Filipino.

Judging by the press accounts of the inauguration, the line that resonated in Aquino’s address was “Kayo ang boss ko (You are the boss so I cannot ignore your orders. You are the ones who brought me here).”

Who would ever think of stealing this banality?

Gravitas larger than the inductee

The inauguration of a Filipino President has a gravitas that is larger than the inductee.

Some incoming Presidents are awed by the traditional ceremony, they do not want to take their oath under the shadow of Jose Rizal. President Estrada took his inauguration to Malolos, Bulacan, site of the first Philippine Congress.

President Duterte will take the inaugural indoors to Malacañang. He wants to keep the ceremony simple and small.

Why the speech matters

The magnitude of a presidential speech, especially an inaugural address, is captured vividly by Peggy Noonan (speechwriter to Ronald Reagan and, later, to George H.W. Bush), in her memoir, What I saw at the Revolution (Random House, 1990).

She wrote:
“A speech is a soliloquy—one man on a bare stage. He will tell us who he is and what he wants and how he will get it, and what it means that he wants it and what it will mean when he does or does not get it.”

Going more technical about the art of speechwriting, she went on: “A speech is part theater and part political declaration; it is a personal communication between a leader and his people; it is art, and all art is a paradox, being at once a thing of great power and great delicacy.”

The irony of modern speeches is that as our ability to disseminate them has exploded, their quality has declined. Some blame the decline on the contemporary obsession with soundbites—the short 20-second takeaways that broadcast networks hurry to get from an event.

The fact is, the really great soundbites—“I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat”; “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself”; “Ask what you can do for your country”; “Tear down this wall”—were not just snippets from a speech but reflected the essence of speeches that were profound.

The words abide with us, long after the speakers of them have passed away.

yenmakabenta@yahoo.com

This story was originally published by The Manila Times, Philippines