GRP Shorts

The 4P's of practicing politicians in the Philippines

2013-05-20T19:58:00.001+10:00

To be a politician in the Philippines, one need only be familiar with the 4P's and be any or a combination of them to win elections:

Popular
Prayerful
Pretentious
Presumptuous

After all, politicians merely reflect the society they govern.

Reality check: Most Pinoy netizens are really only interested in Marjorie Barretto's boobs #juanvote

2013-05-10T17:51:00.001+10:00

Search referral stats for Get Real Post as at 1745H 10 May 2013 AEST...

Goes to show it's really too much to expect of Filipinos to focus on the truly important stuff.

Philippine economic growth 'only looks great on paper' - The Atlantic #juanvote

2013-05-09T07:05:00.003+10:00

But that economic growth only looks great on paper. The slums of Manila and Cebu are as bleak as they always were, and on the ground, average Filipinos aren't feeling so optimistic. The economic boom appears to have only benefited a tiny minority of elite families; meanwhile, a huge segment of citizens remain vulnerable to poverty, malnutrition, and other grim development indicators that belie the country's apparent growth. Despite the stated goal of President Aquino's Philippine Development Plan to oversee a period of "inclusive growth," income inequality in the Philippines continues to stand out.

[Above excerpt taken from "The Grim Reality Behind the Philippines' Economic Growth" published on The Atlantic.]

Breaking News: Philippine President Noynoy Aquino demoted to Loren Legarda spokesman! #juanvote #phvote

2013-05-07T12:28:00.001+10:00

Seems Philippine President Benigno "BS" Aquino III is now the spokesperson of senatorial candidate Loren Legarda. In a press conference, Mr BS Aquino spoke about the recent transparency scandal surrounding Legarda's alleged Manhattan property portfolio which she allegedly failed to declare in her Statement of Asset Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN). According to BS Aquino, "Legarda is prepared to answer all allegations regarding her ownership of a high-end condominium in Manhattan, New York."

Also...

"She has a long and credible record of advocacies, which is the foundation for her public support."

"I am confident that she is not only prepared, but will do her utmost best, to answer any and all allegations raised against her," he added.

Aquino said Legarda exemplifies Team PNoy. "Team PNoy's composition is based on a shared commitment to honesty, transparency, and accountability in public service."

"Loren Legarda has never backed away from the duty of every person who works for the people, to live up to our common obligation to stand by these three basic principles of governance. I know that our fellow citizens will recognize this and that they can separate the facts from mere rumors or opinions," the President added.

We're all starting to get the feeling that you really like Senator Loren Legarda, Mr President.

PNoy using presidential time to campaign for Team PNoy - a dereliction of duties! #juanvote

2013-05-07T11:36:00.002+10:00

A sitting president should be above partisanism (or at least should be seen to be above partisanism) in his role as leader of the country. As such his running around on the campaign trail for a ragtag bunch of people who can’t even get along amongst themselves is quite simply irresponsible given his demonstrated lack of skill in being President — which, he needs to be reminded, is his primary day job.

Recall the earliest of the calls we were making to Noynoy back in 2009 leading up to his ascent to power in 2010:

Be a man.
Be a statesman.
Be a PRESIDENT.

This current personal hobby of Noynoy campaigning for “Team PNoy” is an absolute dereliction of his duties as president, not just in terms of the time and resources (all of which are accountable to the public trust) that he spends campaigning for his henchmen, but also in terms of the damage he is doing to efforts to mitigate the divisive effects of partisan politics on the already dysfunctional society that is the Philippines.

* * *
[Above text is based on a comment posted on Get Real Post. Photo courtesy Journey to Samal.]

Foreign 'investment' in Ph going to 'nonproductive' things! #dearPH

2013-05-03T11:08:00.000+10:00

Aren't commies supposedly averse to any kind of foreign intervention (both political and economic)? But then...

Jobs will not necessarily be created even if foreign investors do come into the country. Of late, investors have been increasingly pouring capital into financial markets rather than putting up new factories because they seek higher returns in the shortest time possible. For every P1 in foreign direct investments (FDIs) entering the country, P5 flows in as portfolios. This partly explains why the Philippine stock market is on steroids even as joblessness persists. Moreover, the sparse FDIs are concentrated on nonproductive sectors of the economy, such as mining, real estate, and business process outsourcing, which do not have the same broad labor base potential as manufacturing. Jobs in these sectors also pose serious health and safety risks to workers.

Above is an excerpt taken from the KMU chairman's letter to the Inquirer.net published 02 May 2013.

Balisacan 'bumped off the entourage to Brunei as excess baggage' due to poverty stats #juanvote

2013-05-01T13:50:00.000+10:00

According to NSCB statistics, poverty incidence stood at 27.9 percent in the first semester of 2012—“practically unchanged” from the same period in 2009 (28.6 percent) and 2006 (28.8 percent). Although poverty incidence was unchanged in the past six years, the number of poor people was expected to be higher in 2012, in the midterm of the Aquino administration, because of the growing population. The Inquirer reported that Norio Usui, senior country economist for the Asian Development Bank, pointed out that the government must solve the problem of jobless growth if it hoped to reduce poverty.

“I am not surprised at all,” Usui told the Agence France-Presse. “The benefits of strong economic growth have not spilled over to the people because they still cannot find a job.” He added that the Philippines’ economic model was dependent on consumption, stronger remittances from its large overseas work force, and the business process outsourcing industry, which employs college graduates. However, the country’s weak industrial base has stood out in the region. “Why do you need a strong industrial base?” he said. “To give jobs not only to the highly educated college graduates, but also to high school graduates.”

The Philippines, which has a population of 97 million, mostly poor, posted 6.6-percent GDP growth. How do these figures translate into poverty conditions? NSCB Secretary General Jose Albert told reporters at a briefing that during the first semester of 2012, a Filipino family of five needed P5,458 to meet basic food needs every month. Families earning that amount were considered to be living in “extreme poverty.” The proportion of extreme poverty among families was largely unchanged from 10.8 percent in 2006, 10 percent in 2009, and 10 percent in 2012.

With these grim statistical data, Balisacan became a bearer of bad news. As the messenger of ill tidings, he took the brunt of presidential displeasure and so was bumped off the entourage to Brunei as excess baggage.
* * *

Above is an excerpt taken from the Inquirer.net article Why Balisacan was jettisoned.

Get ready for Noynoy's Labor Day platitudes! #juanvote #dearph

2013-05-01T08:23:00.001+10:00

Not many people will remember —or will want to remember—how Aquino punished Corona for forcing the distribution of his family's hacienda. But the workers who will denounce Aquino today would be wise to remember how foolhardy it is to expect this President to be pro-labor and pro-poor, given his defense of his own family's status as part of the economic and landowning elite that has ruled this country for more than a century.

Above is an excerpt taken from "Truly anti-labor":
http://manilastandardtoday.com/2013/05/01/truly-anti-labor/

Noynoy, Maggie, and the fine line between conviction and stubbornness

2013-04-30T20:16:00.002+10:00

Comparing Noynoy Aquino and Margaret Thatcher, of course, can be thought of as similar to comparing chalk and cheese. In Japanese they term it “undei no sa”, which literally refers to the world of difference between clouds (un) and mud (dei).

Conviction and stubbornness can be often thought of as two sides of the same coin. What, then, is the fine line that separates them?

Results.

We don’t have to think very hard about who’s gotten them, and who hasn't.

[The above is inspired by a comment on Get Real Post.]

Leftist New People's Army reportedly earning millions in election protection racket #juanvote

2013-04-28T22:46:00.004+10:00

Leftist Philippine rebels are raking in millions of dollars extorting money from candidates in next month's elections and will likely use this to buy guns, a senior military official said on Sunday.

Each candidate illegally pays between 50,000 and five million pesos ($1,210-121,000) to buy protection from the New People's Army (NPA), said Major-General Jose Mabanta, commander of one of the country's army divisions.

[Above excerpt taken from Yahoo! News report.]

Authentic photo? Teddy Casiño campaign posters found with NPA weaponry #juanvote

2013-04-27T18:43:00.001+10:00

Posted by Showbiz Government with the following caption:

Assault rifles, IEDs, campaign materials of BAYAN MUNA party list and senatorial candidate Teddy A. Casiño recovered by 66th IB after an encounter with elements of NPA in Nabunturan, COMVAL:

Hey! what's up Comrade?!

COMELEC Spokesman James Jimenez not registered to vote @jabjimenez #juanvote

2013-04-24T19:28:00.001+10:00

Jimenez confessed his voter's registration has been deactivated because of his failure to vote in the last two elections. He said his work with the poll body prevented him from going to his voting precinct.

Jimenez said he has not been able to reactivate his registration, making him ineligible to participate in the local absentee voting, which is being offered by the Comelec for its employees, other government employees and military and police who will be working on Election Day.

=====
Above is an excerpt from an ABS-CBN New report.

Has the Inquirer.net apologised satisfactorily?

2013-04-23T08:38:00.001+10:00

"No netizen in his or her right mind would have mostaken that meme of
President BS Aquino--with his mouth wide open--for a Time Magazine cover," Spin Busters said.

It also raised concern over "the apparent tolerance of incompetence within the country's most influential newsroom."

"Next time editors at the Inquirer commit a glaring gaffe, they can use 'honest mistake' as an excuse for what's really a stupid mistake," Spin Busters said.

* * *

Above excerpt quoted from Yahoo! News:
http://ph.news.yahoo.com/inquirer-issues-erratum-for-aquino--time--photo-booboo-051629740.html

Noynoy Aquino now seemingly on a PR campaign to reverse his 'nganga' look...

2013-04-21T22:50:00.002+10:00

Sometimes it's better if you just let it all out...

Original photo by Martin San Diego featured in The Lasallian (source: Showbiz Government).

Untapped campaign real estate for the chronic epals #juanvote

2013-04-21T22:22:00.001+10:00

Location location... This spot makes this poster hard to ignore...

Thanks Parallax!

Dove beauty sketches and the Filipino perception of self

2013-04-21T15:06:00.002+10:00

After watching this latest ad from Dove, think about how a typical Filipino/Filipina views himself/herself versus how others perceive him/her to be. Think as well about the importance that Filipino society places on others' perception of an individual against the individual's perception of himself/herself.

You may or may not be surprised about what comes out, but it should make you think.

Photo courtesy: Huffington Post

Fake TIME Magazine cover of Noynoy Aquino as one of 100 Most Influential People 2013

2013-04-20T23:02:00.001+10:00

Image of TIME Magazine cover parody of Philippine President Benigno "BS" Aquino III featured as one of 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2013 mistakenly featured by the Inquirer.net on its 20th April 2013 edition.

Image courtesy Showbiz Government.

Twitter in a time of disaster: Treacherous

2013-04-17T08:50:00.001+10:00

"Twitter has only made the business of news gathering and sharing in the wake of a disaster more treacherous. If, as a wise journalist once said, journalism is the first rough draft of history, then Twitter is the first rough draft of journalism. During nightmarish events like today's bombings at the Boston Marathon, the micro-blogging service is both the cause of and solution to a whole lot of journalistic problems. Soon after details started to trickle in about the Boston attacks, George W. Bush's former press secretary Ari Fleischer noted this murkiness with some smart rules for responding to a crisis as a member of the press, a newsreader, and an official government spokesperson..."

Full article:
http://mobile.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/04/boston_marathon_bombing_all_the_mistakes_journalists_make_during_a_crisis.html

Emo activism: The Kristel Tejada outrage fad is getting out of hand

2013-03-20T07:07:00.000+11:00

So if you have a policy of not allowing people who have outstanding debt in your learning institution to re-enroll for the current term, are you responsible for that person's resulting depression, or even her suicide supposedly precipitated by said depression?

Apparently not a few "activists" think so.

The National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP) backed yesterday calls for the resignation of the UP Manila officials.

"We support the faculty's demand for the UP Manila chancellor to be held accountable. However, resignation will not resolve the issue, the Aquino administration must be held accountable for state abandonment on education," said NUSP deputy secretary-general Sheryl Alapad.

There's something definitely wrong with all that rhetoric. Trace the assumed causal linkage in that latter concept:

Outstanding Debt => Restriction imposed on re-enrollment => Depression => Suicide

The only coherently-defined and clearly-deterministic part of that causal chain is covered by the first two: Outstanding Debt => Restriction on re-enrolment. That is presumably written in black-and-white in the UP system's guidelines.

The last three, however, implying that the restriction imposed on re-enrollment caused depression which supposedly caused said suicide is debatable at best.

As a lot of experts emphasize, suicide is a complex thing. There are a lot of variables at work that contribute to it. So we cannot make any conclusions with much confidence as to which one or handful of factors actually "caused" the subsequent event. The notion, therefore, that depression caused said suicide is debatable. That the patient suffered from depression is debatable. That the restriction imposed caused said depression is debatable.

As you can see, the restriction on enrollment part is twice removed from the suicide and the notions that link it to said suicide are huge orders of debatability separated.

As such the UP is orders of magnitude of debatability separated from culpability for Kristel's death. You cannot prove beyond 40% confidence at best that the system's policies and the way UP officials applied them caused her suicide.

[Photo courtesy Narinig ko sa UP.]

Oh yes, some people without brains do an AWFUL lot of talking.

2013-03-04T00:43:00.003+11:00

Some of them even get elected to government posts in the Philippines...

Noynoy Aquino: does he come from a long tradition of treachery? #sabah

2013-03-03T10:18:00.001+11:00

Statesmanship? Or treachery?

Look who will be voting for Bam Aquino on the basis of a handshake #juanvote #phvote

2013-02-10T01:55:00.001+11:00

[Source: Carlos Celdran Facebook page.]

A piece of advice that keeps flying over Filipinos' heads #juanvote #phvote

2013-02-09T11:47:00.001+11:00

"Proletaryo"

2013-02-03T00:44:00.000+11:00

Sometimes, I'm amazed at how the Philippine educational system, deranged though it is, has produced people who appear to think profoundly, but not give an alternative future for the Philippines at all.

I have this acquaintance who prides himself on being a "proletaryo". In fairness to this guy, he is actually a working-class intellectual, the sort of Mao Zedong-types colegialas fall in love with, marry, and then dump well into their marriage because they eventually prove to be a burden. He reads much, talks much, and knows a lot of people. He is generally genial - until you hear this "proletaryo" shit from him. We're good, by the way - but I'm not okay with this kind of deception or hypocrisy I hear, not just from him, but from a lot of such other working-class intellectuals. It's becoming a widespread phenomenon in the Philippines.

I am a working-class intellectual, and one of the hardest things for us is to congeal (in Tagalog: pagtagni-tagniin) the things we learn in school, the things we read in books, and the doings of the people around us. We must make sense of all three for ourselves, especially the third; the Philippines is no intellectual paradise where you can even just inquire without being suspected of something bad. . An insuperable feeling of intellectual claustrophobia is stamped on us every time we look around and try to befriend people around us. This is exactly the feeling experienced by middle-class intellectuals and the upper classes in general as well - but we claim to be "working-class", or on the side of the people. We profess to love the people and serve the people because we're part of them. Working-class intellectuals are much like middle-class intellectuals without money. But we're intimately living with the working class non-intellectuals - and our differences with them become more substantial as the intimacy deepens.

It's a bit like having a girlfriend who doesn't share your BDSM tastes and likes sex only once a month, given that she does like it in your relationship in the first place.

So the danger for working-class thinkers here is to have intellectual "flings", instant gratifications of the mind. The thing is that, in the end, we could either 1) get sucked up by the system we are trying to change or at least peacefully coexist with, 2) create ivory towers for ourselves, where we can live out our fantasies and dreams, or 3) become cynical and hard-bitten by the reality. We end up bitter, and mistake the bitterness for "revolutionary fervor". We hold a "revolution" and, if it works out, we translate the bitterness into the kind of social regimen (not "regime", but regime change is a part of it) we feel our society must have. At best, we might foster a government like Cuba (left) or Milosevic-era Yugoslavia (right). At worst, we might give birth to another Khmer Rouge-era Cambodia (left), where a fifth of the population was killed just because the leaders wanted them killed, or Taliban-led Afghanistan (right), where, for ten years or so, militants chopped hands, stoned people, forced women to cover themselves entirely in public, and terrorized the general population just because they wanted to.

[You might be surprised that I didn't list Nazi Germany and the Stalin-era Soviet Union as the worst cases. At least the society stabilized and developed - for a time - before eventually breaking into mass killings. The cases I cited as 'worst' broke down society in those countries from the moment they came into existence, and rapidly.]

I think that the Philippines still has a long way to go in developing its intellectuals, and its working class. The best treatment for this problem might be for us working-class intellectuals to realize that we are, in fact, part of the working class, and that will not change. We should adopt terminologies suited for the working class, an attitude open to the rest of the working class and their concerns, and not merely posturing in public. By virtue of the skills and information required of them every single day, the working class is actually very intelligent (maybe not 'informed', but intelligent). They know if someone is only deceiving them with words. The working class is the strength of a society, because most of the other classes look to them for everything they need. Working-class intellectuals need to remember this, not flinch when rubbing shoulders with the rest of the working class, and destroy any ivory towers.

What if Carlos Celdran pulled his Damaso stunt in Malacañang?

2013-02-02T01:21:00.002+11:00

What if Carlos Celdran pulled his Damaso stunt in Malacañang, albeit with a small difference as shown below:

Would PNoy and his supporters consider imprisonment too lenient? Would PNoy make good use of his exemption to the gun ban?

Photo courtesy: Showbiz Government FB page