Ending enforced disappearances

Ending enforced disappearances

Approximately 183 citizens have disappeared since 2001, according to human-right groups that keep count; about 1,900 since 1973. Enforced disappearances continued during the administrations of Corazon Aquino, Fidel Ramos and Joseph Estrada. Who carried out the abductions? What happened to the victims? Were the perpetrators ever been prosecuted and punished?

Leftist organizations have blamed elements of the military and the police since most of the victims were persons known to have socialist or communist leanings. They said they have witnesses and evidence to back their claim. The Armed Forces and the Philippine National Police have denied the charge. The military said the New People’s Army, the Abu Sayyaf or the Moro secessionists could have had a hand in the abductions.

The International Convention for the Protection of Persons from Enforced Disappearance defines involuntary disappearance as “the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence by the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law.”

The latest abduction being pinned on the military is that of Jonas Burgos, a farmer and a training specialist for a national organization of peasants. It has been three months since a group of men seized him at a shopping mall in Quezon City. The military has denied involvement. The PNP on Tuesday produced three “communists” who said at a press briefing that the NPA abducted the son of journalist Jose Burgos.

Still missing are Ma. Luisa Posa-Dominado and Nilo Arado, missing since April 12; Karen Empeno and Sherlyn Cadapan, two UP students said to have been abducted by the military on June 26, 2006, and other students, workers, farmers, lawyers and labor organizers identified with left-of-center organizations.

The search for the desaparacidos continues while efforts to stop abductions by the military, police and enemies of the state intensify. In what could be a giant step, 131 congressmen, crossing party lines, have introduced a bill that defines involuntary disappearance and prescribes sanctions on perpetrators and accomplices.

House Bill 2263, “an act defining and penalizing the crime of enforced or involuntary disappearance,” metes life imprisonment for persons involved in such crime. The bill describes five categories of involvement.

It seeks the rehabilitation of the victims and prescribes compensation to their families. The measure aims to provide protection to victims, families, legal counsel, human-rights organizations, the media and witnesses of involuntary disappearance.

The principal author, Rep. Satur Ocampo of Bayan Muna, said that he phenomenon of enforced disappearance has largely remained undefined, unchecked and unpunished in the country. No specific offense related to it has been recognized despite its systematic occurrence in the past 30 years, he added.

The vigor with which the administration and opposition lawmakers supported HB 2263 is comforting. We hope the Senate, under President Manny Villar, would pass its version soon and a conference committee would work on a unified bill for the signature of President Arroyo.

The unabated kidnapping of Filipino citizens—whether socialists, nationalists or communists—is a blot on our democracy and system of justice. It mocks our pretensions to law and order and claims to development with social conscience.

Any law protecting human rights and the safety of citizens, however, will fail unless the Establishment—political, police and military—accepts left-of-center thought as an integral part of the body politic and that socialism or any ideology close to it is not poison but an expression of legitimate political action, an option to the conventional wisdoms about the political economy.

The Magsaysay Awards

It’s the late Ramon Magsaysay’s 100th birthday anniversary. Among Filipino presidents, he has no peer in honesty and devotion to duty.

The nation honors him by conferring the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation’s Award on seven distinguished Asians for outstanding service to humanity.

The Foundation says “the 2007 Ramon Magsaysay awardees are collectively advancing causes to improve lives and correct unjust social conditions across Asia.” They will receive their awards in fitting ceremonies today, joining the 256 previous awardees in a distinct hall of fame.

We join the Filipino people and the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation in congratulating:

The revered former Senate president Jovito R. Salonga, the awardee for government service, for the integrity and substance of his long public career in service to democracy and good government.

Kim Sun Tae of Korea, the awardee for public service, for helping his fellow blind and visually impaired in South Korea.

Mahabir Pun of Nepal, the awardee for community service, for his innovative application of wireless computer technology in Nepal, particularly in the villages.

Tang Xiyang of China, the awardee for peace and international understanding, for guiding China to meet its mounting environmental crisis.

Palagummi Sainath of India, the awardee for journalism, literature and creative communication, for his commitment as a journalist to restore the rural poor to India’s national consciousness.

Chen Guangcheng of China, the awardee for emergent leadership, for leading ordinary Chinese citizens to assert their legitimate rights under the law. And,

Chung To of China, another awardee for emergent leadership, for his proactive response to AIDS in China.

Obstruction

Obstruction

If the “Hello, Garci” tapes had never surfaced, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo would be firmly in charge, there would be, at best, a token opposition, and she wouldn’t be, today, the Richard Nixon of Philippine politics. But the tapes surfaced, and the country then, as now, must ask: Why does the chief victim of the wiretapping, the President, seem the least inclined to get to the bottom of the matter?

When the first (modified) versions of the tapes appeared, let no one forget that the Palace began by trying to muddle the issue with its own doctored version. Then it proceeded to wield its own interpretation of the law like a club. It threatened media with prosecution if they broadcast the tapes or published transcripts. It then issued executive issuances that were found defective by the courts, but which provided a shield for vulnerable Cabinet and military officials. It embarked on a divide-and-rule strategy by resisting both a truth commission and impeachment, until it had lobbied enough support to block both.

The President herself tried to grovel before the people. When that failed, she proceeded to do her best to intimidate those who wouldn’t be induced into cooperating with her. We should never overlook the reality, however, that throughout this time, until the present, she has acted as the primary defendant, instead of the foremost victim, and that is because whether she instigated the wiretapping or not, at the heart of the tapes is the revelation of a larger crime, the subversion of democracy.

The public instinctively knew then, and on the whole continues to believe, that these revelations stripped the President of legitimacy. While the public has also, on the whole, been willing to keep an open mind, all efforts to resolve this paramount question have failed. This failure has given the President an uneasy tenure.

But there is a difference between what we, the people, knew about the “Hello, Garci” issue in 2005, and what we know today. Someone has stepped forward to testify how it was done, by whom, and to whom. That someone is Vidal Doble Jr.

In 2005, he was the kind of fugitive over whom various camps conducted a tug-of-war that the intelligence establishment won. Today, he is acting as a whistle-blower. And now the public wants to see if his allegations can be debunked, or if they can withstand sustained scrutiny.

Instead of finally resolving matters, the Palace has reached into its old bag of tricks. It has dismissed the whistle-blower out of hand, threatened to recycle discredited executive issuances, proclaimed its own interpretation of the law as the only valid one, and tried to rally its old reliables in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Doble has finally done what he didn’t do in 2005, which is to give testimony on the vital questions of who were wiretapped, by whom and how, all of which suggest a possible answer, at long last, to the question of motive. Who was interested in getting the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines to eavesdrop on such a wide-ranging group as a member of the Cabinet (Michael Defensor), a constitutional officer (Virgilio Garcillano) and members of the opposition? In 2005, the public could only wonder, but now we are inching closer to suspects, and the chief suspect seems to be a member of the President’s official family.

These are allegations that demand an investigation. We are told that Congress can investigate with one of two purposes in mind. It can investigate in order to exercise oversight over the executive branch, or it can investigate in aid of legislation. Every aspect of these allegations touches on these two justifications to hold a Senate hearing.

Former senator Francisco Tatad warns of a constitutional crisis if the Senate proceeds to investigate the case. The separation of powers, he says, means the Senate cannot investigate a president unless articles of impeachment have been approved by the House.

Tatad is being true to the spirited defense he made of then-embattled President Joseph Estrada. But we are not convinced by his reasoning, and we’re glad that the Senate committee on rules voted that hearing by the committee of the whole is in order.

To be sure, the Senate, at the end of the hearings, can only recommend action or amend existing legislation or pass new bills. It cannot remove the President from office without an impeachment. But it can, and should, ask: Why the President, who may have been victimized by her own people, coddles them. Why did the law prove impotent to prevent such a situation? And is it being used to protect the culprits?

Murphy’s deal

Murphy’s deal

With the ZTE deal, everything that can go wrong has gone wrong. Is it any wonder, if the lurid reports ultimately prove accurate, that a Commission on Elections (Comelec) official was actually involved in the deal?

The Comelec should have nothing to do with the ambitious but fatally flawed plan to construct a National Broadband Network -- unless, that is, previous participation in another ambitious but fatally flawed computerization contract (think Mega Pacific) was a prerequisite. But, if the reports are accurate, the hiring of the election official to lobby for the contract was a masterstroke of cynicism: during an election period, the influence of election commissioners is second to none.

As it is, the entire NBN scandal has all the hallmarks of a Comelec project under the chairmanship of Benjamin Abalos.

Like the infamous claim of Maguindanao election supervisor Lintang Bedol, the scandal involves stolen documents. To be sure, the ZTE deal wasn’t the only such contract stolen in Boao, China, last April, hours after it was signed in the presence of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. At least five other contracts were filched, too. But like Bedol, officials of the Department of Transportation and Communication waited an inordinately long time to report the alleged theft.

The scandal also features clueless government officials, in the mold of Abalos himself. The President’s chief lawyer, Sergio Apostol, announced that there was, in fact, no contract. Transportation and Communication Secretary Leandro Mendoza, whose department will manage the network, kept a studied if embarrassed silence. And the Department of Justice ruled that the contract between ZTE and the Philippine government was valid -- without, however, actually seeing a copy of the contract.

Like the Maguindanao vote recount, the scandal is marked by a thorough lack of transparency. The contract for the network mysteriously ballooned in the course of a few months, ending as a $330-million project. In the process, the competitive and in fact superior bids of two other companies were virtually ignored.

Above all, and like Abalos’ oft-repeated claims of his commitment to clean and honest elections, the scandal involves a betrayal of the project’s very objective. Instead of an infusion of foreign capital to produce a functioning network, we will get the opposite: an unnecessary and expensive piece of government infrastructure, paid for by Filipino taxpayers.

Last March, officials of ZTE, described in news releases then as China’s largest listed telecommunications equipment provider, pledged (together with officials of another Chinese company) to invest heavily in the Philippines. “Officials of Pioneer Metals Group of Companies based in China and Hong Kong and ZTE Corp. ... told President Macapagal-Arroyo in separate calls in Malacañang of their intentions to invest here….”

This notion of investment, however, has been stood on its head. A few days ago, the Philippine government took out a loan from China’s Import-Export Bank, including a $400-million allocation for the National Broadband Network. What does this mean? It means ZTE is not in fact investing in the Philippines; it has bamboozled the Philippine government into taking out a loan from the Chinese government to fund ZTE’s “investment.”

Surely this “investment” is not what the President and her economic officials had in mind, when they discussed the need for a “privately funded government broadband network” in November 2006, and resolved that “the government connectivity and infrastructure should be developed at no cost, and with savings, to the national government.”

For these or similar reasons, Rep. Carlos Padilla of Nueva Vizcaya has filed graft charges against Mendoza, two of his assistant secretaries, and at least four officials of ZTE, for violating anti-graft and government procurement laws. “The officials I have charged are liable for misleading the public and executing this anomalous contract and should be punished accordingly,” Padilla said.

Let’s hope Murphy’s Law, at work in this controversial deal at every stage, does not extend to the prosecution of Padilla’s case.

Leadership and integrity

Leadership and integrity

When lawmakers are likened to clowns and crocodiles and all it takes to land a Senate seat is a public denunciation of any member of the First Family, it is good to remember that not too long ago, Filipinos voted into high office deserving statesmen like Jovito Salonga. His body weakened by shrapnel from the bombing of Plaza Miranda on Aug. 21, 1971, Salonga went on to fight Ferdinand Marcos’ oppressive regime. After democracy was restored, he steered the Senate with wisdom, responsibility and integrity — traits that are now sorely missed in the chamber.

Salonga will be honored today with the Ramon Magsaysay Award for government service. Sharing honors with him are six other people from all over Asia who have dedicated their lives to the service of others and to making the world a better place to live. Their stories reflect the life of the late President Ramon Magsaysay, who left behind a legacy of leadership and integrity, and who showed Filipinos the virtues of hard work, education and determination.

The honor roll:

• Kim Sun-tae, awardee for public service, for providing assistance and hope to his fellow blind Koreans and other visually impaired people through his ministry.

• Mahabir Pun of Nepal, for connecting his mountain village to the world through wireless computer technology, bringing progress to mountain communities. He is being honored for community leadership.

• Tang Xiyang, awardee for peace and international understanding, for contributing to China’s awareness of its environmental crisis.

• Chen Guangcheng and Chung To, both also from China, for emergent leadership, for baring ugly truths about their country at great risk to their personal safety, to compel Beijing to address the problems squarely.

• Palagummi Sainath of India, awardee for journalism, literature and creative communication arts. He is being honored, the Magsaysay foundation announced, for “his passionate commitment as a journalist to restore the rural poor to India’s national consciousness.”

Like Magsaysay, the life stories of all the awardees can lift people out of despair and cynicism. They are sources of inspiration as the nation marks the centenary of Ramon Magsaysay’s birth today.

Malu Fernandez: Hate ugly Filipinos

Malu Fernandez: Hate ugly Filipinos

Don’t we ever run out of scandals? Lately it has been the fierce and fabulous author Malu Fernandez of People Asia magazine. Allegedly she already resigned from her writing job due to the numerous complaints against her article of June 2007 titled, “From Boracay to Greece!” It is a travel piece recounting her summer spent in the beautiful island of Boracay fighting off insects and protecting her immaculate pedicure from the white sands and then jetting off to Greece to see the goddesses but having to go through ugly Filipinos en route.

What exactly did she write? She said that to save on ticket going to Greece, she bravely took the economy class via Emirates with a stopover in Dubai, only to remember that the latter was the hub for OFWs. She “wanted to slash her wrist at the thought of being trapped in a plane with all of them.” She was tormented in her sleep with “endless yelling of “HOY! Kumusta ka na? At taga saan ka? Domestic helper ka rin ba? I thought I had died and God had sent me to my own private hell.” On the return trip [of course she had to fly back somehow], she “resigned [her]self to being trapped like a sardine in a sardine can with all these OFWs smelling of AXE and Charlie cologne while my Jo Malone evaporated into thin air.”

With these lines, Malu offended our sensibilities, went against political correctness and doomed herself to public condemnation.

Our sensibilities say that to travel for leisure is a privilege and a luxury. Millions of our countrymen brave foreign shores in search of the proverbial three meals a day. Hence to vacation in Bora or, rather and, Greece in one break is something we whisper a prayer for and count our blessings. How can Malu be so ungrateful, we ask not out of envy?

Malu writes for the sosi crowd. For outsiders, sosi means sosyal—a Filipinized word of “social” referring to high society and the rich and/or famous. It is obvious from her article that Malu is part of this class (otherwise she will not be a credible source so essential in sosi magazines). Well, she scrimped on her plane ticket to shop for more accessories and her nose spotted the difference of AXE and Charlie, scents of the masa (masses) and her exquisite Jo Malone. That is how socialites are.

She flaunted political correctness when she dared to be true to herself and called OFWs for who they are: A noisy lot intruding into personal space sacred to others in small places like economy seats. At least she is honest with her thoughts. She could have injected the value of empathy—understanding that it is beyond the OFWs themselves and largely attributable to socio-economic factors like education and professional attainment. She may perhaps have been trying to be cute about it or simply reflected the elite mentality.

She is publicly condemned for pointing out, albeit unintentionally, the stark truth that we are a society of pretenders—of OFWs buying branded goods and perfumes instead of saving up and matronas spending three hours at hair spas and then going to their favorite charity balls, of migrants fighting for survival and public servants swimming in pork barrel, of urban professionals concerned with the next gimmick or new car or exotic vacation and our national budget in perpetual deficit because of low tax base and tax evasion, of mall goers hugging dogs and cats and young children on the streets begging for alms. Damn, we sure deserve what we see and don’t see. Don’t we just hate Malu and hate ourselves the ugly Filipinos. How could we look away?

Malu, you are not alone, come back and write. Let us hate the ugliness of the OFWs in us, enough to do something about it.

What Sison’s arrest means

What Sison’s arrest means

Manila newspapers head­lined yesterday the arrest of Mr. Jose Ma. Sison, political consultant of the National Democratic Front, in the peace talks with government. He is more known as the founding chairman of the Communist Party of the Philippines which is engaged in armed struggle with the government.

He was reportedly arrested in the city of Utrecht in The Netherlands which also hosts the foreign chapter of the NDF rebel coalition.

It is a significant development in the history of the insurgency, almost similar to the time Mr. Sison was arrested sometime in 1977 in the Philippines while he was in the underground. After his release in 1986 by the Cory government, he went on exile in The Netherlands.

The report said that Mr. Sison would be tried in Dutch courts on the ground that he violated Dutch laws. One of that crime is he reportedly ordered the killing of some people in the Philippines while staying in The Netherlands.

The previous arrangement in Mr. Sison’s exile was that he could stay as a political refugee in The Netherlands provided he did not violate local laws. The legal question now is whether the state prosecutors of The Netherlands could prove that Sison indeed ordered the killing while staying in the European country.

That would be matter of a presentation of evidence. Remember that the Dutch courts and government are under pressure to show fairness in their trials because many elements in the Dutch Parliament are human rights-oriented. Public opinion also won’t allow unfair trial for political refugees or their eventual extradition to their native countries, even for a suspected communist like Sison.

From 1986, Joma could stay in The Netherlands since he was supported by many members of the Dutch Parliament who thought that no political refugee should be expelled if he is in danger of being persecuted at home. Even before his arrest, Joma could travel to the Benelux countries: Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg.

For the Philippine audience, the more important question on the Joma arrest is its implication on the peace process. Would this development lead to resumption of peace negotiations between the government and the communist rebels? Or will this lead to more violence in the insurgent areas?

The peace talks that started in 1992 have been canceled several times because of the many contentious issues that cropped up during the talks. After the initial agreement on human rights, the other three topics held vital to a final peace accord had been put on the backburner. One obstacle is the disagreement on truce, a foolish attitude since ceasefire is supposed to benefit both sides.

Just a recollection: The arrest and incarceration of Joma during the Marcos years did not check the insurgency. As a matter of fact, it even increased the number of rebels and their arms to the point of threatening the government in 1986. At that time, the rebels were already proclaiming the entry of strategic offensive, which means readiness to enter Manila. What we are saying is that the arrest of a leader did not mean the end of the insurgency.

The Philippine government should take advantage of the situation by proposing a resumption of peace talks with the NDF, with no conditions. And in that effort, The Netherlands and members of the European Union would fully support the peace initiative.

Remembering del Pilar

We remember today, August 30, Marcelo H. del Pilar, the chief propagandist of the Philippine Revolution. Like Rizal and Bonifacio, we honor his memory because of his role in building our race and nation.

Samahang Plaridel will honor this Bulakeño with flowers at his tomb in the Children’s Park (in front of Manila Zoo). Journalists and city officials will be there to pay tribute to the man who set the standards of Filipino journalism.

BRIEF NOTES. General Avelino “Sonny” Razon will be our guest at the Kapihan sa Sulo on Saturday at 9:30 a.m. at the Sulo Hotel in Quezon City . . . Puerto Princesa Mayor Edward Hagedorn is angry at the proliferation of mining claims in his city. Local government cannot sit idly while the environment is being destroyed by profit-oriented firms. . . . The same is happening in Sibuyan Island in Romblon. Heard that some mining firms are out to destroy the beautiful Mt. Guiting-Guiting just to mine iron ore and nickel in San Fernando. . . . Good that Congressman Carlos Padilla has filed charges against the ZTE and the DOTC for the national broadband contract.

The case for JPEPA

The case for JPEPA

Perceptive observers believe the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement, or JPEPA, notwithstanding the objections raised against it, will be able to pass muster in the Senate. Individual senators, they predict, will find it in their collective wisdom to ratify the treaty, of course after going through it with a fine-tooth comb. The accord, after all, is necessary to hasten the country’s economic development.

Sure, Japan expects to derive benefits from JPEPA as well, along with similar deals struck with other countries. That is the primary reason it signed the agreement in the first place. But only the paranoid would describe it as lopsided, skewed in favor of the other side. Despite its economic clout, Japan cannot dictate—or hope to dictate—on the Philippines, or any other country for that matter, as if it were a client state. This is no longer the age of colonialism.

As explained by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), JPEPA will result in the expansion of the country’s market in Japan, not only for its agricultural products but also for its industrial output, with close to 95 percent of its exports granted zero duties. Of course, Japan’s exports to the Philippines will also enjoy the same preferences. It is this particular trade-off that draws the ire of leftist groups. They claim that the Philippines will be flooded with manufactured products. Well, we already import cars and television sets from Japan, but no country can force consumers to increase their purchase of these items, treaty or no treaty.

Detractors train their guns on the supposed entry of toxic wastes as a result of the treaty.

There is nothing in the treaty that remotely suggests that the Philippines will allow itself to be a dumping ground for hazardous substances. Moreover, the exchange of notes between the two countries expressly prohibits it. Still, those who choose to oppose the treaty claim the assurance is not nearly enough. If so, will it help if the two governments renounce the pledge to protect people and the environment?

In any case, we are not a nation of half-wits, who will accept things that threaten to poison us and our children.

The provision on nurses and caregivers is another argument used by those who oppose ratification. As the Philippine Nurses Association tells it, Japan dangled the entry of workers as a bargaining chip to win concessions without giving something substantial in return. It looks great at first glance, but requiring the nurses to pass the licensure examination in Nihongo practically makes the provision unenforceable, or so says the group.

To the protesters, it’s like a case of the left hand taking back what the right hand gives away. But Japanese hospitals and health-care institutions really need the services of foreign nurses. The language requirement is insisted upon to ensure that the nurses, who will be working under Japanese doctors, understand the orders given them, particularly in life-and-death situations. No doubt, the nurses cannot pass the examination without prior language training. And Japanese officials are aware of that fact. That is why training is made part and parcel of the agreement, and the Japanese are footing the bill, proof of their honest intentions to hire the nurses as full-fledged professionals.

About the only valid concern raised against the treaty is the loss of customs revenue, projected at P16.1 billion in the next few years. But DTI says the additional taxes derived from an expanded export volume will more than offset the loss. If that is true, then the Senate must put its stamp of approval on the treaty at the earliest possible time.

We have not much time left. Barely a week ago, Indonesia approved a similar economic partnership agreement with Japan. And it is only the latest of the countries to have done so, after Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore. If we fail to ratify JPEPA, these countries will reap all the benefits—to our detriment.

Ping, work for run off elections instead

Ping, work for run off elections instead

The reopening of the “Hello, Garci” controversy is but the first leg in the race for the presidency in 2010. Even Sen. Panfilo Lacson, the instigator of the probe into the 2004 bugged telephone conversation, does not seem confident that a second inquiry would go any farther than the first.

What it would accomplish though is to help Lacson capture the sort of media coverage that this early could put him on pole position in the presidential race. You don’t have to be a political scientist to figure that one out.

If there is still any doubt that a reopening of the “Hello, Garci” case would be anything but investigation in aid of election, how come it has drawn either perfunctory or no support from Manny Villar, Loren Legarda and Mar Roxas—all likely rivals of Ping’s in 2010?

By placing all its bets in the last senatorial elections—which it won in spectacular fashion—the opposition blew any chance of beefing up its presence in the House of Representatives. True, the opposition succeeded in turning the senatorial elections into a referendum on President Arroyo; but it found itself outmaneuvered in the congressional races.

As a result, there are now fewer oppositionists in the House than there were in the Thirteenth Congress—meaning, there are not enough congressmen to launch a credible bid to impeach Mrs. Arroyo once more. And impeachment is still the only legal way to sack a sitting president.

Lacson is well aware an impeachment bid now would be an exercise in futility—that is, if deposing Mrs. Arroyo is really what he has in mind.

The last senatorial elections showed that a candidate need not spend a bundle in campaign advertising. Rather, it is constant, favorable coverage by the legitimate news media that really counts come Election Day.

Reopening the “Hello, Garci” case—or just the attempt to do so—gives Lacson the advantage of a flying start.

But even if Lacson does manage to come out on top in 2010, he will be vulnerable to the same kind of instability that has plagued the current Chief Executive and her immediate predecessors.

With the introduction of the cumbersome multiparty system, as mandated in the 1987 Constitution, the presidencies of Fidel V. Ramos, Joseph E. Estrada and Gloria M. Arro­yo—not to mention Cora­zon C. Aquino’s—have been wobbly at best. Election by a mere plurality of voters made sure there is a larger segment of electors who did not vote for the winner.

FVR could never quite get rid of the thorn on his side named Miriam D. Santiago, who insisted—and still insists—that she was robbed of victory in 1992.

Erap, despite being the darling of the masses, could not defend himself from his “elitist” and leftist adversaries who took less than a week of street demonstrations to force him out of Malacañang.

That GMA has managed to survive a plebian uprising, a couple of mutinies and impeachment bids—not to mention Cabinet defections—gives ample testimony to her staying power. Still, it has not put to rest the stubborn questions about the legitimacy of her mandate. Although she can no longer seek reelection in 2010, the President continues to behave like she is still on the campaign trail.

An insecure presidency is what Lacson—or whoever wins two and a half years from now—will inherit even after hise proclaimed. Faced with so many rivals, the victor in 2010 will have to contend with the same causes of destabilization that GMA must deal with now.

What could assure an indisputable mandate is a mechanism long practiced in many mature democracies: runoff elections. If the first round of voting does not result in a clear majority—i.e. over 50 percent—for the first placer, another election is held between him/her and the second placer.

The winner of the runoff could then claim a solid mandate. Having gained the support of over half the voters, he/she could put to rest any questions about the legitimacy of his/her presidency.

Rather than continue to shake up the current administration, Lacson—along with the other presidential hopefuls—would be well advised to help ensure that when their time comes, their own regimes would not be as shaky.

More than a reshuffle of the Commission on Elections or a purge of the voters’ list or even multibillion-peso automation, a runoff vote could prove more effective in restoring confidence in our presidential elections.

Broadening the Filipino investing class

Broadening the Filipino investing class

THE growing number of people falling for investment scams underscores the inaccessibility of the country’s financial markets to ordinary savers. That otherwise educated people would risk losing their hard-earned savings to any of a growing number of illegitimate get rich-quick schemes says a lot about how far removed higher-yielding investment instruments are from the average Filipino’s life.

The blowout in the preneed industry is partly to blame, as it eroded trust in what were supposed to be legitimate investments. But there are structural reasons as well.

With savings account rates dropping close to zero, it’s no wonder consumer spending has been the main engine of economic growth. Why leave your cash in the bank when it would earn less than the inflation rate.

Price increases have sunk to historic lows, pulling down interest rates, with the benchmark 91-day Treasury bill rate at one time slipping to an all-time low early this year. The government fancies that the low rates are a result of its narrowing budget deficit. So while an improving fiscal position brings down the cost of borrowing and allows government to cut its debt, the dividends of this fiscal restraint are not shared equitably by all.

Sure companies, especially big ones trading at the local bourse, have been enjoying a bonanza of fundraising. We’ve seen many of them refinancing their expensive debt with cheaper ones, while a growing number of firms are raising fresh capital by selling additional shares at the stock market. More importantly, family-held firms are braving the market, and opening ownership to the public through maiden share offerings.

All of this fundraising has attracted its share of new investors, particularly from the retail side. But we’re far from where China is, where you see ordinary people in their shorts and sandals, crowding in any of the neighborhood stock market satellite stations, watching their bets while reading the papers, gossiping, knitting, even playing cards or chess.

Local financial regulators luckily have noticed and have been going the rounds of key cities imparting the virtues of investing in the stock market. Unfortunately, we have a long way to go before we can raise our country’s domestic savings rate in a sustainable manner.

This is unfortunate because our low savings rate is a key reason why we go to great lengths, even foregoing much-needed tax revenues, to attract foreign investments to fuel our economic expansion on a more sustainable pace. Foreign money however is fickle and no serious reformer would rest his (or her) industrial policy on the lone leg of foreign investments.

Restoring confidence in the financial markets is in order. But regulators have to do more.

Low interest rates should be a boon since they bring down the cost of borrowing to build houses, buy cars and establish or expand businesses—all worthwhile activities that would create jobs and raise people’s incomes.

But financial market stakeholders should go beyond a literacy program. Pricing or the cost of investing obviously is an issue.

Regulators should take their cue from the world’s most advanced markets so we can broaden the Filipino investing class. Failing to do so would prevent our economy from really taking off.

Obstruction

Obstruction

If the “Hello, Garci” tapes had never surfaced, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo would be firmly in charge, there would be, at best, a token opposition, and she wouldn’t be, today, the Richard Nixon of Philippine politics. But the tapes surfaced, and the country then, as now, must ask: Why does the chief victim of the wiretapping, the President, seem the least inclined to get to the bottom of the matter?

When the first (modified) versions of the tapes appeared, let no one forget that the Palace began by trying to muddle the issue with its own doctored version. Then it proceeded to wield its own interpretation of the law like a club. It threatened media with prosecution if they broadcast the tapes or published transcripts. It then issued executive issuances that were found defective by the courts, but which provided a shield for vulnerable Cabinet and military officials. It embarked on a divide-and-rule strategy by resisting both a truth commission and impeachment, until it had lobbied enough support to block both.

The President herself tried to grovel before the people. When that failed, she proceeded to do her best to intimidate those who wouldn’t be induced into cooperating with her. We should never overlook the reality, however, that throughout this time, until the present, she has acted as the primary defendant, instead of the foremost victim, and that is because whether she instigated the wiretapping or not, at the heart of the tapes is the revelation of a larger crime, the subversion of democracy.

The public instinctively knew then, and on the whole continues to believe, that these revelations stripped the President of legitimacy. While the public has also, on the whole, been willing to keep an open mind, all efforts to resolve this paramount question have failed. This failure has given the President an uneasy tenure.

But there is a difference between what we, the people, knew about the “Hello, Garci” issue in 2005, and what we know today. Someone has stepped forward to testify how it was done, by whom, and to whom. That someone is Vidal Doble Jr.

In 2005, he was the kind of fugitive over whom various camps conducted a tug-of-war that the intelligence establishment won. Today, he is acting as a whistle-blower. And now the public wants to see if his allegations can be debunked, or if they can withstand sustained scrutiny.

Instead of finally resolving matters, the Palace has reached into its old bag of tricks. It has dismissed the whistle-blower out of hand, threatened to recycle discredited executive issuances, proclaimed its own interpretation of the law as the only valid one, and tried to rally its old reliables in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Doble has finally done what he didn’t do in 2005, which is to give testimony on the vital questions of who were wiretapped, by whom and how, all of which suggest a possible answer, at long last, to the question of motive. Who was interested in getting the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines to eavesdrop on such a wide-ranging group as a member of the Cabinet (Michael Defensor), a constitutional officer (Virgilio Garcillano) and members of the opposition? In 2005, the public could only wonder, but now we are inching closer to suspects, and the chief suspect seems to be a member of the President’s official family.

These are allegations that demand an investigation. We are told that Congress can investigate with one of two purposes in mind. It can investigate in order to exercise oversight over the executive branch, or it can investigate in aid of legislation. Every aspect of these allegations touches on these two justifications to hold a Senate hearing.

Former senator Francisco Tatad warns of a constitutional crisis if the Senate proceeds to investigate the case. The separation of powers, he says, means the Senate cannot investigate a president unless articles of impeachment have been approved by the House.

Tatad is being true to the spirited defense he made of then-embattled President Joseph Estrada. But we are not convinced by his reasoning, and we’re glad that the Senate committee on rules voted that hearing by the committee of the whole is in order.

To be sure, the Senate, at the end of the hearings, can only recommend action or amend existing legislation or pass new bills. It cannot remove the President from office without an impeachment. But it can, and should, ask: Why the President, who may have been victimized by her own people, coddles them. Why did the law prove impotent to prevent such a situation? And is it being used to protect the culprits?

Deeper in debt

Deeper in debt

The 1987 Constitution requires the government to give “the highest budgetary priority” to education. Like the constitutional provision on the separation of church and state, however, the provision on budget priorities has never been followed. Debt servicing, not education, has always eaten up the biggest chunk of the annual national budget. The strong peso has shaven off a substantial chunk of the country’s foreign debt, but the amount is still in the trillions, saddling generations of Filipinos with debt.

Yet the government continues adding to that mountain of debt, the latest of which is a whopping $1.8-billion loan from China. That’s approximately P84 billion at yester-day’s exchange rates; the amount could balloon if the peso weakens. Government officials have pointed out that the loan from the Chinese Export-Import Bank will have easy repayment terms. The cash-strapped government can use foreign assistance especially for badly needed infrastructure. But because what is involved here is not a grant but a loan, the repayment of which will be shouldered by taxpayers, with interest, the government must give a full accounting to the public about the purpose of the loan.

A big part of the loan — $330 million — will be used to finance a broadband network for the government. The deal has been awarded to Chinese company ZTE. The $1.8-billion loan was signed a few days ago by Philippine and Chinese government officials. It is not clear whether awarding the contract to a Chinese company is part of the loan agreement. Too many things, in fact, are not clear about the broadband deal, starting with the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the original document that was signed in the presence of President Arroyo in China last April by ZTE executives and Transportation Secretary Leandro Mendoza. The lost document is supposed to have been reconstituted, but this new version also has not been made public.

A big question is whether the country needs the broadband service at all. Another question is why this service is double the price of the offer for a similar service by another interested party. The nation is already up to its neck in debt. The least that the government can do is convince the public that any new indebtedness is justified.

Foot-dragging

Foot-dragging

Last Thursday, officials of the Presidential Anti-Graft Commission expressed frustration over the slow pace of the Office of the President in acting on 90 cases filed by the commission. The following day, Malacañang denied that it was sitting on 90 cases; it said that only 35 cases were pending. It said that four Cabinet officials had been recommended for punishment.

But even if the actual total is 35, that’s still 35 unresolved cases too many. Only two officials have been dismissed so far: National Labor Relations Commission Chair Victoriano Calaycay and Dominador Ferrer Jr., chief of the Intramuros Administration. Calaycay was sacked for allegedly demanding P200,000 from a recruitment agency that he was helping to obtain a license from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration. The PAGC found Ferrer liable for an unliquidated P2.2-million cash advance used for the eviction of squatters.

The Calaycay and Ferrer cases are relatively petty cases when you compare them with high-profile cases that are still pending up to now. These include the plunder case against former President Joseph Estrada, the P1.3-billion poll automation contract of the Commission on Elections that was nullified by the Supreme Court, the P728-million fertilizer fund scam involving former Agriculture Undersecretary Jocelyn “Joc-Joc" Bolante and the $2-million bribery charge against former Justice Secretary Hernando Perez. And now there is that $329-million broadband agreement between the Department of Transportation and Communication and an allegedly notorious Chinese company.

Cases like those mentioned above were among those that probably led 1,476 expatriate businessmen in Asia to give the Philippines the worst rating of 9.4 (out of a possible 10 for the worst) in the poll conducted by the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy last March. Based on the summary given by PERC, Agence France Presse wrote a story saying that “foreign businessmen perceive[d] the Philippines to be the most corrupt economy among 13 countries and territories across Asia." Two months later, PERC said it did not single out the Philippines as the most corrupt country in Asia.

But the perception remains, and now the Philippines has the dubious distinction of being one of the most corrupt countries in Asia. If this perception remains, one of the major causes is probably the snail’s pace at which major corruption cases are being resolved. For instance, no Cabinet or Cabinet-level official has so far been penalized, although four such officials have been recommended “for punitive action," according to the PAGC.

The corruption trial of Estrada has been dragging on for more than six years. Recently, when it was disclosed that a decision could be expected in two months, fear was expressed in official circles that whichever way the decision went, there would be tumult and disorder all over the land. Fear of disorder should not be used as a basis for deciding a corruption case. The primary considerations should be: (1) Is there enough evidence to convict the accused? (2) Will the decision do justice to both the accused and the people against whom the wrong was allegedly committed?

In its report, PERC said that the corruption situation in the Philippines “is bad and has been bad all along. People are just growing tired of the inaction and insincerity of leading officials when they promise to fight corruption." Robert Broadfoot, PERC managing director, cited specifically the unresolved corruption case of Estrada and the opposition’s [corruption and electoral fraud] charges against President Arroyo."

The lack of closure in the high-profile cases, among other things, is what fuels the perception that the present administration is insincere in its protestations that it is determined to stamp out corruption. Broadfoot said credible corruption trials could convince businessmen that the Philippines is serious about fighting corruption.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo could begin setting the house in order by agreeing to the setting up of an independent commission composed of private individuals of unimpeachable integrity that will resolve, once and for all, the corruption and electoral fraud charges against her and by ordering the quick resolution of major cases on which the administration has been dragging its feet. A government cannot fight corruption with flowery, illusive rhetoric.

Confidence building

Confidence building

In putting an end to unexplained killings and disappearances, the buck stops with the president and commander-in-chief. This was pointed out during the recent multisectoral summit on extrajudicial killings, by the United Nations’ rapporteur on human rights, and by other sectors worried over the continuing deadly attacks on left-wing militants and journalists.

The commander-in-chief can show that she’s in command of her troops by ordering the military to come clean on the disappearance of activist Jonas Burgos, son of the late press freedom fighter Jose Burgos. Instead the government refuses to release even a report on the license plates used in the getaway van of the armed men who kidnapped Burgos at noon last April 28 from a crowded mall in Quezon City. The plates were later found on another vehicle at the camp of the Army’s 56th Infantry Battalion in Norzagaray, Bulacan. The vehicle was reportedly impounded from illegal loggers by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the 56th IB.

Bulacan accounts for one of the highest cases of militants killed or reported missing in what relatives say were enforced disappearances. It is part of the region that used to be under the command of Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan, tagged as a “butcher” by militants. But military officials in Central Luzon as well as in other regions have consistently denied involvement in extrajudicial killings, insisting that most of the purported victims were slain in legitimate counter-insurgency operations.

The government is not the only one to blame for the failure to ferret out the truth. Verifying the military’s version of what is happening has been complicated by the refusal of left-wing groups and relatives of alleged victims of state-sponsored killings and disappearances to cooperate with authorities in any investigation. But the refusal to cooperate is also rooted in a mistrust that is not entirely misplaced, given the military’s long history of human rights violations in the campaign against the communist insurgency. Gaining that trust and cooperation will require some confidence-building gestures on the part of the government. Coming clean on the case of Jonas Burgos would be a good start.

Another look at nuclear power

Another look at nuclear power

Nuclear power, if properly harnessed, can meet the rising energy demands of developing countries such as the Philippines, cutting power costs for both household and industrial users. The idea of drastically bringing down air-conditioning bills and manufacturing costs can be irresistible to many quarters.

But before the government expends a lot of time, effort and taxpayers’ money on studies to harness nuclear power for peaceful uses, there are several things to consider. One is that while nuclear power can cut electricity bills and is cleaner than energy derived from fossil fuels, nuclear waste is toxic, volatile garbage that cannot be recycled and is non-biodegradable. The world’s best minds have not yet found a way to dispose of nuclear waste without posing a threat to the environment.

Another factor that must be considered is the site for a nuclear plant. The $2.3-billion Bataan Nuclear Power Plant was mothballed partly because it was built near an earthquake fault. The Philippines lies along the so-called Ring of Fire – a section of the planet that is littered with active volcanoes and earthquake faults. One nuclear accident can be catastrophic for the country.

Proponents of nuclear power argue that, except for the Chernobyl accident in the former Soviet Union, there has been no major nuclear disaster in the other countries that harness nuclear power for peaceful purposes. But here lies another factor that must be considered: if corruption and sloppy work have given us roads that disintegrate in a downpour and bridges that collapse from the weight of regular vehicular traffic, we are likely to end up with an unsafe nuclear plant like the one in Chernobyl rather than those in Japan or South Korea.

Corruption must also be a serious consideration, given the country’s experience with fat commissions in the construction of the Bataan nuclear plant. The late dictator Ferdinand Marcos was never made to answer for the $80-million commission he reportedly received from power plant builder Westinghouse. If building personal fortunes is the overriding consideration in the latest efforts to harness nuclear power, the idea must be abandoned immediately.

This won’t be a big loss to the Department of Energy. It can always focus on expanding the country’s use of alternative forms of energy, including wind, natural gas and geothermal power. These energy sources produce clean fuel without safety risks.

Discouraging cheating

Discouraging cheating

Over a year after the qualifications of Philippine nurses were compromised by a cheating scandal in the nursing board examinations, the government is finally set to file criminal charges against the operators of two review centers. Certain quarters are calling for similar charges against the operators of another review center plus the indictment of suspected sources of the leaked test questions, believed to be personnel of the Professional Regulation Commission. Investigators have not identified the possible beneficiaries of the leaked questions in the June 2006 nursing board exam. If anyone is ever identified, the person should also be prosecuted and barred from the nursing profession.

Apart from prosecuting the suspected culprits, the government should consider a proposal to include course reviews in the regular school curriculum. Graduates of all courses that require licensure examinations want refresher courses before taking the exams. The review program for nursing graduates can be free. Schools, after all, gain prestige from the good performance of their graduates in professional licensure examinations. Or else schools can charge fees that are lower than those in review centers.

The government need not shut down existing review centers. Graduates of certain nursing schools may believe they can get exam pointers from these review centers that they cannot hope to obtain from their schools. But the review centers will have to compete with the review programs that will be included as part of the regular nursing curriculum. Review centers may also be required to have formal link-ups with nursing schools.

In the wake of the nursing board exam scandal, the government should also be on the lookout for cheating schemes in other professional examinations. Similar scandals have rocked the medical board examinations as well as the bar exams. Schools and fraternities have been implicated in previous cheating scandals.

The best way to discourage cheating is by sending the culprits to prison — both those who leak test questions as well as the beneficiaries — and by imposing stiff penalties on schools whose operators participate in any form of cheating in examinations. The nation awaits the outcome of the nursing board case.

Lackey

Lackey

We do not know if Raul Gonzalez spends time looking at the portraits of his predecessors. He should. His portfolio has been held by public servants, quite a few of whom took their positions seriously, and didn’t view it as an opportunity to be a lackey; some viewed it as the summit of their legal careers or a stepping stone to the Supreme Court. Two, in particular, established the possibilities for integrity while holding office: Jose Abad Santos and Jose Yulo. For all time, we would have thought, but how mutable time has proven in terms of the institutional erosion Gonzalez represents.

Abad Santos in 1922 originally stayed above the fight between Governor-General Leonard Wood and Filipino politicians, until Wood told Abad Santos that it was a fight between Americans and Filipinos: at which point Abad Santos resigned saying if such a line was being drawn, he had no recourse but to side with his countrymen.

Reappointed under subsequent American governor-generals, and then under the Commonwealth, Abad Santos then took pains to resist political pressure, whether from legislators or even the President of the Philippines: he would not hire or fire on the basis of purely political considerations, and he would not file or drop cases for political convenience. He would go on to serve in the Supreme Court and become the foremost Filipino martyr of World War II.

Jose Yulo was offered the position of secretary of justice four times. Each time, he declined. When he finally did accept the position, as the inauguration of the Commonwealth loomed, he attached a condition. He accepted, he said, “But only on one condition: that the Department of Justice be detached from politics.” Yulo would go on to become Speaker of the National Assembly, but he did so without wrecking the judiciary or leaving a reputation for partisanship while he held the justice portfolio. Two decades later, when President Ferdinand E. Marcos wanted to put together an impressive first Cabinet, he convinced the elderly Yulo to serve again, an appointment that conferred prestige on the administration.

We are used to Cabinet officers excusing every possible instance of petty politicking, on the grounds that they are merely “alter egos” of whoever happens to be president. But even the most obsessively political of our presidents (that is to say, all of them) put a premium on the justice portfolio as a flagship for their administrations. The present disreputable state of the position can be firmly traced to the present administration.

Raul Gonzalez takes what can only be described as a malicious pleasure in using his office for the partisan interests of his president. When the Senate expressed interest in pursuing allegations of wiretapping, Gonzalez said he’d start looking into the Aragoncillo spying case. He made a big to-do about asking the Americans for copies of court transcripts.

For what? The Americans investigated, then punished, one of their citizens, Leandro Aragoncillo, for leaking classified documents to his Filipino pals. Definitely a crime for an American. Is it a crime for a Filipino, under our jurisdiction? Only if we are still an American colony, with citizens and officials bound by an oath of loyalty to the United States of America.

Is there something about our government we don’t know? Does Gonzalez serve two masters—and expect everyone else to be liable for punishment for crossing Gonzalez’s apparent boss, Uncle Sam?

Gonzalez would be the first to insist he serves no master but our Republic—what he really wants to do, as he told the press, is warn the Senate it can expect “tit for tat” when it comes to investigations. He mentioned the Kuratong Baleleng case, too: suggesting his interpretation of justice is as crude as it gets. Anything and everything can be papered over, forgotten, dismissed, so long as President Macapagal-Arroyo is left alone. Embarrass the President, and the full weight of the justice department will lean on whoever dares to fight with the Palace.

So by all means, let him hide behind the President’s skirt, and let him sneer that he is only her alter ego. It only goes to show the President is foursquare behind Gonzalez: and that he is not the secretary of justice, but a crude lackey, a disgrace.

Purge or whitewash?

Purge or whitewash?

Corrupt officials crowd the corridors of power, but Malacañang is reluctant to send them to jail or even to just let them go. The Presidential Anti-Graft Commission (PAGC) found sufficient evidence of graft and corruption against 92 presidential appointees over the last few years, but the really big cases seem to be gathering dust in the Office of the President (OP). The PAGC serves as the investigation arm of Malacañang in graft cases involving presidential appointees, but it is the OP that decides whether to suspend or dismiss erring officials and endorse the filing of charges against them to the Office of the Ombudsman.

Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said the OP had disposed of all but 35 of those cases, with four of the remaining cases involving members of the Cabinet, and had until the middle of September to act on them. The two most recent OP decisions saw the dismissal of the chair of the National Labor Relations Commission for allegedly extorting P200,000 from the owner of a recruitment agency and the firing of the head of the Intramuros Administration for allegedly failing to liquidate P2.2 million in cash advances to cover the expenses for the eviction of squatters and cutting by half his agency’s share of parking fees estimated to reach almost P6 million annually.

Curiously for an administration that is not exactly publicity shy, few people, if any, seem to have heard about the dozens of graft cases that Malacañang has reviewed and acted upon, except for these two cases. And even then, these are far from earthshaking in an era of multimillion-peso scandals, when even minor functionaries at the Bureau of Customs or the Bureau of Internal Revenue have been found to own houses in posh villages and fleets of expensive cars and to travel abroad as often as senators and congressmen. It’s either that the OP has been conducting a quiet purge of penny-ante grafters or it has been operating a giant whitewashing machine that puts all the PAGC’s efforts to waste.

Suspecting that the OP is stonewalling the really big cases, several lawyers in the PAGC are said to be thinking of resigning. What is especially frustrating for them is the OP’s inaction on cases involving heads of government corporations, who are said to be close to First Gentleman Mike Arroyo.

But maybe these lawyers are getting carried away by their idealism. The cynics would be quick to point out that to this day no case has been filed against another close friend of Mr. Arroyo, former Agriculture Undersecretary Jocelyn Bolante, who could not account for some P728 million in fertilizer funds. The Senate has investigated the case and the Commission on Audit has concluded that the money was indeed misused. However, despite all the documentary evidence provided by the Senate, the Office of the Ombudsman still has not brought formal charges against Bolante, who has skipped to the United States in the meantime. So what makes the PAGC lawyers think that the cases they have built against officials with powerful connections would fare any better and get anywhere?

The PAGC was reportedly endowed with a P1-billion grant from the United States and allocated the same amount by the Philippine government. If the most that it is permitted to do is pin down officials who extort P200,000 or fail to account for a couple of millions in government funds, it might as well be dismantled. There’s no sense in throwing away billions to catch officials who steal a couple of million pesos. The PAGC should not be used as a show window for a cleanup that is really intended to sweep the dirtiest scams under the rug.

New Englishes

New Englishes

FILIPINOS have long learned to read, speak and write En-glish. Call it what you will, "American English, Philippine style" or "Philippine English" or whatever, it is still English language. And it is one of many new Englishes spoken and written in many countries of the world, from the Philippines to Singapore and Malaysia, from India, Ceylon to Pakistan, from North America, Australia, New Zealand, to South Africa.

Unlike Filipinos who learned American English, in those other countries the peoples there learned English from the British. And today, as I wrote in this column last Thursday, English is being learned by millions and millions of young students in China, South Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Germany, Austria and Greece. In these nations, with strong national identities, they are aggressively promoting bilingualism. And their citizens, young and old alike, are remarkably becoming proficient in English.

And here in the Philippines, our people have learned English long, long ago. As a matter of fact there was a time when English and Filipino were considered both as official languages, until some language nationalists succeeded in making Filipino as the national language in the 1987 Constitution.

And, very recently, a group of educators, savants, writers and two National Artists in Literature went to the Supreme Court to stop a Department of Education order implementing a presidential directive mandating that English be used as the medium of instruction for math and science in public schools, beginning with the third grade and for all subjects in secondary schools.

This is strange, indeed. They are prominent persons who are what they are today because they read, speak and write in English! And they want to deprive our young students of learning a second language? They don’t want our youth to acquire English skills which would surely be useful to and help them compete in a globalize world where English is growing rapidly as an international language.

Instead, they insisted that Filipino and the regional languages should be used as the primary media of instruction. They said that the government’s failure to do it has, "led to serious difficulties in learning among elementary and high school students, such as ineffective communication in the classrooms, low academic achievement and a high dropout rate."

They continued, "the harmful effects of using a foreign language for learning are not just limited to low academic achievement and cognitive growth, it impairs the emotional security and sense of self-worth and the ability to participate meaningfully in the educational process by lower class children who develop an inferiority complex as they are stigmatized by their use of the native tongue."

Furthermore, they added, "the use of Filipino would enable them to learn to read and write since it is easy for them to understand… This change will make students stay in school longer, learn better, quicker and more permanently, and will in fact be a bridge to more effective learning in English and Filipino."

These are quotations from their petition filed with the Supreme Court. If you, the ordinary citizens, have become breathless or moved to mirth or irritation by just reading their long-winded, boring, unbearable, run-on and hard to read sentences, and getting lost in the thick verbiage, what more of the fifteen magistrates of the land?

Wouldn’t those learned justices, who write their decisions well, vividly, and wisely in plain English that every one can understand, throw that petition (of those savants, linguists and writers), which smacks of pedantry, into the garbage heap?

Already, according to the Social Weather Stations, our national proficiency in English has declined by 10% over the last 30 years. And, sad to say, we are being left behind, particularly by China where some 175 million people are now studying English, in the global march to English proficiency.

Indeed, English has become the lingua franca of the world.

The rot must be stopped

The rot must be stopped

Gloria Arroyo has nothing to fear about a renewed investigation by the Senate into the "Hello Garci" tapes. One, she is in no danger of being impeached at the House which is packed with her running dogs. Second, she can nonchalantly shrug off any embarrassment that may arise as the inquiry unfolds; she has long demonstrated by her actions that she has the hide of a hippopotamus.

Let’s put aside Gloria’s person and her obsession to carve out a legacy. After six years, we know her and her lying, cheating and thieving ways as well as the back of our hand. As to her legacy, she will be long remembered for, first, grabbing the presidency and, second, for stealing the 2004 election to stay in power.

Let’s take her out of the equation and focus our attention in grappling with the dangers exposed by the "Hello Garci" scandal. The issue goes beyond Gloria, who is already a lame duck and just marking time until her exit in 2010. The very future of the Republic is at stake.

Let’s stop being silly like Joker Arroyo, who apparently has lost his liberal vision and democratic moorings in his dotage. The "Hello Garci" controversy goes beyond the admissibility as evidence of the Arroyo-Garci recordings as Joker insists.

At this point, whether Garcillano was talking to his dog or to a ventriloquist is a subsidiary issue. We are talking about an intelligence agency, the Intelligence Service of the AFP, which has turned rogue by mounting a politically motivated wiretapping operation in violation of the law.

This is not the first time Isafp has engaged in contemptible and condemnable political action. Remember Isafp’s cooking up of a report about Ping Lacson’s hundreds of millions of dollar deposits abroad?

Isafp commanders and their superiors have perjured themselves in denying they had wiretapping equipment in their inventory. They have since denied any involvement in other wrongdoing such the kidnapping and killing of militants. So what’s the worth of the word of liars? What other skeletons are rattling inside Isafp’s secret closet?

We hope the Senate inquiry could come up with the answers. We also look forward to new laws that would put an end to the we-are-above-the-law mentality of these intelligence people. And not only of the intelligence types in the military. The danger farther down the road is a military completely beyond control of the civilian authority. Let us stop the rot before it infects the whole body.

Gloria may have condoned, if not ordered, the Isafp’s illegal actions. No matter, a single diseased sample does not make for a pathology infecting all.

We have given up on Gloria. But we continue to believe our people will one day – and may that day dawn soon enough – come to enjoy the blessings of democracy and of the rule of law as vouchsafed by the Constitution.

Traffic mismanagement

Traffic mismanagement

Malfunctioning traffic lights, theft of copper wires, the use of jumpers to steal electricity — all these things have been trotted out as reasons for the traffic jams that have been plaguing motorists at all hours of the day especially on the northbound lane of Roxas Boulevard for several weeks now. How about incompetence and traffic mismanagement? These factors no one will cite.

The traffic slowdown started at around the time that the ministerial meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations were held in Manila, when some bright guys must have fiddled with the traffic lights to ensure smooth traffic flow for ASEAN participants emerging from the Cultural Center of the Philippines complex. Now traffic jams have become a daily nightmare from the Vito Cruz intersection all the way to Rizal Park, affecting traffic flow up to the Redemptorist church in Baclaran, Parañaque. The traffic snarls are occurring even as Manila’s Baywalk has been cleared of restaurants and parking along the boulevard has been banned.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to deal with the reasons for the gridlock that have been cited by those tasked to manage traffic in one of the busiest thoroughfares in Metro Manila. But officials of the Manila city government, the Metro Manila Development Authority and the Manila police are all scratching their heads and pointing to each other as the one responsible for untangling the mess.

Traffic managers have often blamed the continually increasing vehicular density in Metro Manila for traffic jams. But this is where management skills come into play. There are traffic schemes to ease gridlocks. And if traffic cops do their jobs well and do not accept bribes, bus and jeepney drivers cannot turn three lanes of a four-lane thoroughfare into a virtual terminal. If a computer glitch that wreaks havoc on one traffic light cannot be fixed for months, that’s the human factor at play. But working traffic lights and smooth traffic flow cannot be a priority for government officials who can part traffic with their blinkers, sirens and security escorts. Motorists will just have to get used to traffic gridlocks. There is no cure for human incompetence and neglect.

Everyone’s at risk

Everyone’s at risk

The technology that unites the mighty and obscure, the wealthy and the humble of means, isn’t television (class lines get delineated by the programs people choose to watch) but the cell phone. Politically, the battle for hearts and minds since 2000 has been waged by means of text messages. And whether it’s President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo sending instructions to her subordinates, an overseas worker keeping tabs on the kids at home, bankers or security guards, the ties that bind are maintained by means of the cell phone.

When news first broke that a conversation allegedly between the President and Election Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano had been intercepted and recorded, a troubling thought sent shivers down the spines of many people. If it can happen to the President, people said, it can happen to anyone. That troubling thought has once more gained currency following the revelations made by Sen. Panfilo Lacson in a privilege speech last Tuesday.

We will set aside, for now, why Lacson’s witness, retired T/Sgt. Victor Doble, took so long to detail the circumstances surrounding the tapping of Garcillano’s phone. Doble explained how the phone tapping was done. He says it was undertaken by the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (Isafp) with the assistance of someone, or some people, at Smart Communications Inc. The media relations machinery of Smart then kicked in, taking pains to deny that the company has a policy of conniving in the tapping of its subscribers’ phones. It also denied that its officers or rank-and-file condone, much less assist, wiretapping activities.

But the allegation has been made, and what’s more, what was alleged is not beyond the realm of possibility, according to the statements of Smart itself. It is possible, the company said, that someone, acting in an unauthorized manner, might have consorted with the Isafp and helped it. Of course, it can be said that anything is possible, but the question is: Did it happen? And if so, how could it have happened?

The privacy of communication is a constitutionally protected right; it applies to everyone, the exceptions being clearly spelled out in our laws. Our laws are so zealous in this regard that the anti-wiretapping law tries very hard to make any intercepted communication of little or no value in court.

Still, the allegations are grave enough, in terms of their implications to not only national security but to civil liberties, as to require a thorough investigation. There are fundamental issues of governance -- not just political, but corporate -- at stake here. There are issues involving civilian control over the military, and combined politico-military influence over private enterprise, or people who work for private corporations.

If the Isafp did conduct surveillance operations, who ordered it? If an officer did, why didn’t the civilian authorities know about it? If a civilian official authorized it, on what basis? And if somehow, Smart or some of its employees assisted the Isafp, how could it happen without management finding out, or being able to properly determine how it might have happened once allegations were made? Of course, there is a more sinister question: Could Smart have resisted at all a military “invitation” to assist in eavesdropping?

There are technological questions that need to be resolved, as well. Lacson, by way of Doble, suggests intercepting cell-phone calls is quite easy, as is recording conversations for future use and abuse. We have no shortage of technologically knowledgeable people who can verify or dispute this claim, outside of the private firms and public agencies that have a vested interest in dismissing such allegations out of hand.

Good corporate governance, not just effective public relations, suggests Smart would be wise to undertake a more thorough investigation of these allegations. If the Isafp can snoop on its subscribers, then kidnappers and extortionists can do the same, if all that eavesdropping requires is a pliable low-ranking technician. The economy in general, not just Smart, can ill-afford a blue-chip stock taking a hammering in the local or New York bourses because of investor concerns over the vulnerable security of telephone communications in the Philippines.

Automation can only worsen election fraud

Automation can only worsen election fraud

Pending before the Commission on Elections are bids from private contractors to automate voting. Exasperated by the slow counting of ballots—along with the cheating that accompanies the process—many Filipinos are clamoring for electoral reform. Automation is now seen as the panacea to the stubborn disease of election fraud.

Some Filipinos, however, warn that automating the vote count can only make things worse. One of them is Roberto Verzola, ironically an information technology expert.

Verzola is described as a pioneer in the local desktop computing and Internet scene. In 1982 he built the first Filipino computer. In 1991 he set up the first online systems at both chambers of Congress. Later he was awarded by industry the title of “Father of Philippine Email.”

Yet, it is because Verzola is an IT icon that he knows only too well how automation could make election cheating easier. Verzola is not just an engineer; he is also a convener of the election watchdog Halalalang Marangal, which monitored irregularities in the last polls.

Verzola writes in an online article: “The misfocused objective of ‘minimizing human intervention’ will result in fewer instead of more witnesses when fraud does occur making it easier for cheats to cover up their crime once they break the system.”

In many proposals to automate elections the public will not be able to witness the vote count. They will only be shown the totals after the automated canvass is done. The result: loss of transparency.

Flawed assumptions

The automation proposals are based on what Verzola calls flawed assumptions:

• Automation eliminates human intervention. “It will not,” says Verzola. “Automation can only reduce, but never eliminate, human intervention. Automated systems will always have points of human intervention…”

Vezola points out: “Reducing human intervention can actually work in favor of the cheats, who will now need to recruit fewer accomplices and deal with fewer potential witnesses to the fraud.”

• Automation minimizes if not eliminates cheating. “It can do no such thing,” says Verzola. “If they work as intended, automated machines can only: a) speed things up, and b) follow more faithfully the instructions of those who program them. If they are reprogrammed to cheat, the machines will follow the new instructions just as faithfully and quickly.”

• Safeguards can prevent cheats from manipulating an automated system. “This is an illusion,” says Verzola. “Cheats can master automation technologies as well as anybody else. Sooner or later they will be able to identify the system’s weak points and break it.”

• The main cause of cheating is the slow manual count. “This confuses the symptom for the disease,” Verzola writes. “Obviously, cures based on wrong diagnoses will probably be wrong too.”

Actually, counting at the precincts is not slow. For the most part, it is over within several hours. Moreover, the precinct count is the most transparent part of the whole process.

“Here, like the audience in a basketball game, the public can see each vote counted and the candidates’ score updated, vote by vote,” Verzola says. “Cheating that occurs at this level often involves brazen, in-your-face kind of acts that no machine can stop and no cheat can hide.”

Maximize transparency

Verzola is not entirely against election automation, however. What he does propose is “not to minimize human intervention but to maximize transparency, or the ability of interested third-parties and the public in general to double-check and audit the system.”

He points out a proposal to use digital imaging technologies to make more copies of election returns at the precinct level. “The more copies of the ERs circulate the more difficult for cheats to cover-up their crime.”

A systems expert has suggested LCD projectors at the municipal level. “Projecting ERs on a big screen enables more people in the audience to audit the ongoing canvass,” Verzola says.

In last May’s midterm elections, Halalang Marangal conducted a “citizen’s tally,” which asked nonpartisan volunteer precinct watchers to use cell phones to text the results to the watchdog’s databases.

“Once they adopt ‘maximizing transparency’ rather than ‘minimizing human intervention’ as objective, technical experts can no doubt come up with even better schemes,” Verzola says.

“Unfortunately,” Verzola says, “the attention of Congress has been focused on hardware-intensive proposals that will not only waste our scarce resources automating the most transparent portion of the whole electoral process but may even make it easier for future cheats to cover up their manipulation of the results.”

Besides—although Verzola did not say so—hardware-intensive options, which cost billions of pesos, to automate elections are where the proverbial killing could be made. Wink, wink.

Cyber-Ed dreams

Cyber-Ed dreams

Aside from it being the most exciting that will happen to the Philippine educational system since the Thomasites, it is, without a doubt, the best response to the challenges we face in the basic education sector today,” Education Secretary Jesli Lapus said in a DepEd statement about the Cyber-Ed Project (CEP).

The statement continues: “The Cyber-Ed Project uses satellite technology to provide an efficient and cost-effective solution to the need to deliver educational services to public elementary and secondary schools throughout the country. It links these schools to a nationwide network that provides 12 video channels, wireless wide area networking, local area networking and wireless Internet connectivity.

“A total of 37,794 schools, or 90 percent of all public schools nationwide, would be connected in the next three years. These schools would receive live broadcasts featuring lectures and presentations from master teachers as well as coursewares on demand and other valuable resource materials.”

Lapus also said: “The real challenge in basic education lies in narrowing the disparity between those who perform well and those who do not. Those in the far-flung areas will benefit from this technology since they will be given access to our best teachers and our best resource materials.”

The CEP, the department says, is based on China’s E-Education Project which covers some 500,000 schools and universities.

The project will cost P26.48 billion. Funding will come from a loan from China for 86 percent of the cost, so that the Philippines will shoulder only 14 percent or P3.71 billion. We will have to pay for the loan over the next decades.

Lapus explained that satellite-based distance learning technology is widely used worldwide—in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Chile, El Salvador, Panama, Guatemala, Honduras, Thailand, India, Indonesia and China.

In the countries where satellite-supported MDE (Modern Distance Education) technology is successfully used, students in spacious classrooms watch and listen to teachers—the best in their fields—on TV or on their computers. One computer per student is the norm for lessons are done in real time. The teacher giving the lesson is often doing so live. The lessons are even interactive. This means each student uses his or her computer to answer or ask questions.

Most of those enrolled in MDE schools are teenagers and older high school and college students—as well as adults taking continuing-education courses. Their classrooms have all the space for the TV sets, computers and other equipment. The schoolbuildings are equipped with satellite discs and are wired to receive and send all sorts of multimedia transmissions.

If Secretary Lapus’ vision comes true, we would be envied even by China and the USA. For we would become the world’s greatest achiever in primary and elementary pedagogy and in the use of information communications technology (ICT) for six to 12-year-old children.

Ground-zero realities

Many experts oppose the Cyber-Ed Project for technical and financial reasons. We will only focus now on whether the department’s CEP indeed addresses and solves the most urgent problems of Philippine public-school basic education.

The most urgent problems now of our public school system as purveyor of basic education all arise from fundamental lacks.

(a) The lack of school buildings and classrooms. This school year, 41,000 classrooms are needed despite the large size of classes and the 3-shift use of schoolhouses. Some pupils sit on the floor and write on their laps. Some classes are held on staircases, the teachers look up to their pupils from the landings below. Where will the TV sets and computers—ideally one for each child—be placed? The average number of pupils in a basic education classroom is 43.9. If five eight-year-old classmates share one computer will they learn anything?

(b) The lack of electrical power in areas where pupils severely need the most help—in slums and in mountain and island communities of the archipelago. These are where you find the schoolchildren most left behind by those in the richer areas. How can the TV sets and computers receive satellite-fed lessons if there is no electric power?

(c) Lack of good and competent teachers—because many have become OFWs—in English, Math and Science. Does CEP address this lack adequately?

(d) Lack of thorough and methodical training and assessment of teachers. Indeed, the Cyber-Ed Project would be able to provide first-class TV and multimedia training and competency upgrading of teachers. What about teachers in far-flung areas mentioned in (b) above?

(e) Lack of good, error-free teaching materials, textbooks, teaching manuals, etc. that every child and teacher should have. Will Cyber-Ed use the electronic versions of the same error-riddled textbooks and guides?

There has also been a lack of analysis of the project as a means of “narrowing the disparity between those who perform well and those who do not” among the littlest children in the public primary and elementary schools. Those who are most behind now, will even become greater victims of the “knowledge and information gap.” For the best performers in the urban areas will end up being the most benefited by the CEP while the worst performers in the slums and the mountaintops will become the most disadvantaged.

Also not given weight is that MDE/Cyber-Ed—in the USA and China—has been found to be inappropriate for kids in primary and elementary schools.

Fine-tuning

Fine-tuning

Monetary officials are worried that terrorists could take advantage of loopholes in the Human Security Act to launder funds. Senators, for their part, want to introduce more safeguards in the HSA to prevent the state from abusing wiretapping powers. Law enforcers, meanwhile, have been so spooked by provisions in the new law that leave them no wiggle room for making mistakes that no terror suspect has been arrested so far by the police since the HSA was passed. Instead the cops have left the counter-terrorism battle to the military, not only in Basilan and Sulu but also, it seems, even in Metro Manila, where over a thousand soldiers have been deployed ostensibly to conduct civic operations.

The biggest danger in these developments is that the campaign against terrorists will suffer because a new law has paralyzed those who are supposed to enforce it. This paralysis must be avoided. The terrorist threat is real and terrorists never sleep. They bide their time, waiting for targets to let down their guard, and then strike. There are other laws that can be applied in going after those who plan to commit mass murder. These laws are inadequate – precisely the reason counter-terrorism forces sought new tools from the legislature to fight the terror threat. But if everyone is scared to enforce the new law, public safety can be compromised.

A big deterrent to the enforcement of the HSA are provisions – 22, as counted by authorities – that could land counter-terrorism forces in prison for more than a decade and require them to pay fines of at least P500,000 for certain methods of arrest and interrogation. A number of these methods have long been employed in regular law enforcement. No law enforcer wants to serve as the guinea pig in testing the provisions, which are meant to protect the public from state harassment.

There is a common enemy here, and it’s neither lawmaker nor law enforcer. The HSA was passed because legislators recognized the need for it. But the law can use some tweaking. While the HSA is undergoing fine-tuning, the battle against terrorism must not be derailed.

Freezing the ball

Freezing the ball

Here we have a case of agents of the state apparently having engaged in a criminal act. Compounding the offense, their superiors apparently perjured themselves before official bodies in repeatedly denying the men and the unit to which they were assigned had the technical capability to undertake the alleged criminal offense.

Comes the Senate which is proposing an inquiry in aid of legislation that would seek to prevent a repetition of the illegality. The Palace answer? It would not only not cooperate in the inquiry. It would also actively block the investigation by preventing the appearance of officials in the executive department from attending hearings.

The case is the wiretapping which was allegedly mounted by the Intelligence Service of the AFP.

The targets were sundry opposition personalities, one Palace operator (Mike Defensor) assigned to liaise with the opposition and a Comelec commissioner named Virgilio Garcillano. In the course of the wiretapping, the Isafp agents caught on tape somebody who sounded like Gloria Arroyo talking about cooking the results of the 2004 elections with Garcillano.

The administration has been stonewalling and muddling investigations into the "Hello Garci" tapes since Day One (remember Ignacio "I-Have-Two Tapes" Bunye?). We understand why the Palace has been moving heaven and earth to block investigations. If the Garci tapes are authentic, it means Gloria Arroyo stole the 2004 elections and her stay in Malacañang is under illegitimate pretenses.

We were, therefore, not surprised when Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita yesterday said the Palace would invoke EO 464 to prevent people from the executive department from attending Senate hearings.

It’s probably for the best, Malacañang again seeking refuge in an issuance the Supreme Court has declared unconstitutional. The Senate can again go to the Supreme Court and seek a tighter ruling on when executive department officials can be prevented by the President from attending inquiries in aid of legislation.

The ruling clearly says executive privilege may only be invoked when it involves department secretaries. It also sets specific conditions the legislature has to meet in inviting department heads. But it is also categorical in saying officials who are not department heads cannot be considered as enjoying executive privilege, which attaches to the President by extension.

It will be recalled that EO 464 was issued on the eve of the appearance of Marine Brig. Gen. Francisco Gudani and Lt. Col. Alexander Balutan before a Senate hearing into election rigging in the Lanao provinces. The hearing was called as an offshoot of the "Hello Garci" scandal. Gudani and Balutan were subsequently punished for violating a direct order from the AFP chief to ignore the Senate invitation.

The Supreme Court said Gudani and Balutan could not possibly be among the officials who require presidential approval before they can attend congressional hearings.

The way is clear for the Senate to invite all those perjurers from the Isafp and the AFP. So we are perplexed by Ermita’s mention of EO 464. A Supreme Court rebuff is a certainty. We guess the game plan is to freeze the ball until Gloria exits in 2010, which has been the strategy of the Palace since Bunye came up with his I-have-two tapes announcement.

It’s the basics, stupid

It’s the basics, stupid

Fifteen years after a congressional commission defined the problems besetting the education system, much remains to be done to check and reverse the worsening state of basic education. Some of the commission’s recommendations have been adopted, such as the establishment of the Commission on Higher Education and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority. But it seems the separation of higher learning and vocational education from the responsibility of the old Department of Education, Culture and Sports has only underscored the knotty state of basic education and along with that, the problematic bureaucracy and workings of the new but graft-prone Department of Education (DepEd).

As the Inquirer series, “Education in Crisis,” demonstrated, despite the commission’s findings and recommendations, education has taken a turn for the worse. A Unesco report ranked the Philippines 74th in terms of the Education Development Index, below Mongolia, Vietnam, Indonesia and China. Results of the National Elementary Achievement Test and National Secondary Achievement Test showed that students could only correctly answer less than 50 percent of the questions. And Philippine students performed poorly in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science study, ranking 41st in a field of 45 in Science and 42nd in Math.

Apparently the education system faces two major challenges: access to education, and issues of quality. The commission already identified 15 years ago the need to stress basic public education because that’s all the formal schooling the masses of Filipinos get and because they are entitled to that constitutionally. But the shortage of classrooms has become graver through the years -- some 41,000 as of this year, which means P16 billion is needed for the construction of new classrooms. The student-teacher ratio is the worst in the region so that the Philippines has an average class size of 43.9 students in public elementary schools and 56.1 in public high schools.

The sticky problem of access to education can be seen in the high dropout rate. Fifty-one percent of Filipinos have had only elementary education. Only 14.3 percent of rural poor Filipinos graduate from high school or have higher educational attainment.

Access, of course, refers to “quantity.” And when numbers are involved, can corruption be far behind? This seems to bug Sen. Edgardo Angara, who headed the congressional commission. He said that international donors and business concerns had given the DepEd a tremendous amount of money but the department had nothing to show for it. No assessment has been made of the impact of the scarce resources put by donors and businesses into the DepEd. The needs of the DepEd are “a bottomless pit,” he concluded.

Angara also expressed suspicion about DepEd statistics, which he described as “inaccurate, sometimes even falsified.”

Eventually, issues of quantity, including accuracy of statistics, have a bearing on the other major problem of Philippine education: quality. In fact, the report had suggested the close link between quantity and quality, arguing that since throwing money into the system would not be good enough, then it would be better to go for value-added -- in another word, quality. “There’s only one thing we can do,” the commission report said. “We must extract more efficiency and more productivity from both our education budget and our education department.”

There’s the rub. As Angara has said, there has been no impact report on the money poured into the DepEd by donors and businesses. For example, multilateral and bilateral institutions have poured millions into textbook development, but the textbook regime of the DepEd remains under a cloud of doubt over defective and substandard textbooks. Moreover, Congress keeps on passing laws establishing new public schools without checking if existing schools are delivering the goods well. Meanwhile, the government is pushing for an ambitious cyber education program to would be backed by international funding, except that even Filipino IT experts doubt if the Philippines has the competence to establish and manage such a program; and in any case, what’s immediately needed is to address the basic lack of classrooms and teachers, not the lack of multimedia.

Obviously education reforms are needed, but they should start at the heart of the matter: a bureaucracy that is supposed to address the needs of the education system but can’t get the basics right.

Closure

Closure

The alleged victim of poll fraud is dead, and wiretapped conversations or other forms of illegally acquired communication are inadmissible as evidence. These have not stopped several senators from pushing for a reopening of the investigation on the vote-rigging scandal where the purported smoking gun is a recorded phone conversation between a man named Garci and a woman he addressed as Ma’am. Garci was widely believed to be former election commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, while the woman asking him about her vote was widely believed to be President Arroyo.

Nothing was ever established and the “Hello, Garci” tapes were never authenticated by neutral experts. Now an intelligence agent has re-emerged after two years to claim that he was the one who tapped the conversations. Vidal Doble, formerly of the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, also claimed he could not make his revelation earlier because his superiors had placed him under detention — a claim denied by the AFP.

As of early evening yesterday, senators were still arguing after a group including administration lawmakers decided to refer Doble’s case to a smaller body. Malacañang, meanwhile, prepared for battle, with officials threatening to bar members of the executive branch from facing the Senate in connection with the scandal. The secretary of justice also announced that his department had obtained documents on an espionage case in the United States that could prove damning for certain opposition figures. Those figures are widely known to include Sen. Panfilo Lacson, who had brought Doble out of hibernation, and deposed President Joseph Estrada.

Will there ever be closure in the vote-rigging scandal? Garcillano has stood firm on his story, denying that he rigged the 2004 vote in favor of President Arroyo. The President’s closest rival, actor Fernando Poe Jr., died several months after the elections. Closure here is unlikely. But if senators are bent on reviving the investigation, they should make sure it would lead this time to pieces of legislation. There are two issues here: poll fraud and illegal wiretapping. A congressional probe of the vote-rigging scandal should lead to electoral reforms. And Doble’s testimony should at least lead to the further fine-tuning of laws governing electronic surveillance. Something more than a political free-for-all should come out of this scandal.