AN exhibit opened in June in honor of Juan Bautista Garces Gorordo, marking the 100th year since he joined Sergio Osmeña Sr. as one of the most influential men of Cebu.
Gorordo had just turned 47 when he was appointed auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Cebu. Less than a year later, he assumed office as head of the diocese and its first Cebuano bishop.
“We wanted to honor him, to revisit who this individual was,” said Dr. Joy Gerra of the Casa Gorordo Museum. The museum hoped “to encourage Cebuanos to learn more about our own history.”
It took a week to celebrate Gorordo’s installation as auxiliary bishop in June 1909, wrote Dr. Resil Mojares in “Casa Gorordo: Urban Residence in a Philippine Province.”
“Houses were hung with adornments; games, serenatas and fireworks attracted droves of people to the public squares; parades and band music enlivened the city streets. . .There were receptions at the grand salon of the Seminario de San Carlos and at Plaza Hamabar, as well as a free meal for the poor in the parish houses.”
The book includes a photograph of Gorordo’s installation as bishop, surrounded by church officials and Osmeña, then speaker of the Philippine Assembly and three decades away from the presidency.
To prepare for this year’s exhibit, researchers reviewed historical accounts, scanned fragile photographs and chased leads from both church and secular sources.
Among their finds was a marker, surrounded by weeds, near the church in Barili town. The town erected the marker in 1962, 100 years after Gorordo’s birth there on April 20, 1862. (His father Juan Isidro Gorordo, according to Mojares’s book, had served briefly in Barili as the collector of wine taxes.)
Also in the exhibit is an 1899 photograph of the bishop at his mother Telesfora’s deathbed. That same bed remains today within Casa Gorordo, a portrait of the bishop by its side. Also on display are framed illustrations that show the plazas and city streets as they looked in the bishop’s day.
There are pews and a cross from the family altar, as well as a statue of San Cayetano. Louie Nacorda of the Cofradia de San Juan Bautista believes it was probably commissioned by the bishop himself, San Cayetano being “the patron saint of clerical administrators.”
Gorordo had entered the Seminario de San Carlos at age 12. At 19, while still a student, he began to teach Latin and Moral Theology. His students, Mojares wrote, included the future senator and publisher Filemon Sotto.
Poor health kept Gorordo, at age 28, from traveling to China as a missionary. Still, he managed to keep teaching in the seminary and serve as chaplain in the Cebu Cathedral and the Hospital de San Jose.
Born two months after her great grand-uncle’s death, Josefa Revilles grew up with stories of Bishop Gorordo’s eloquence, both in Bisaya and Spanish. She came home from the US this year to help arrange for a novena and a banquet on June 24. (It was on St. John the Baptist’s feast day in 1909 that the bishop formally assumed office.)
“We have to prepare, even if it’s just for a small celebration,” she told her relatives. “Just to honor him. Maayo na lang gani kay nakaabot ta ani (We’re fortunate to have lived long enough to see this celebration).”
She recalled many stories of the bishop’s generosity. After his death on Dec. 20, 1934, about 40 percent of the bishop’s estate, then worth P200,000, was donated to the church. He had also donated 54 hectares of land for the Eversley Childs Leprosarium.
His charity, said Gerra, indicated “that this was a man who, from his privileged position, saw the changes Cebu was going through, and also the anxieties brought about by these changes.”
More of the bishop’s accomplishments are featured in the exhibit, which will run at the Casa Gorordo on Lopez Jaena St., Cebu City until Aug. 15.
(First appeared here.)
10 July 2009
06 November 2008
Poll Mall
BARACK Obama won a mock election in a Cebu City mall on Wednesday morning, but apart from the outcome, it was the speed of the results that impressed local observers.
“I wish we could have the same in the Philippines. It makes voting less costly. You don’t need watchers. You get the results very quickly,” said Rep. Nerissa Soon-Ruiz (Cebu Province, 6th district) after she “voted” using one of three machines flown in by the US Embassy in Manila.
Two of the machines use the same technology that a team of Filipino inspectors checked during a visit to the United States in 1993, according to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) website.
One is an optical mark reader that requires voters to shade the ovals beside the names of their chosen candidates. These ballots are then fed through a scanner that counts the votes.
Also on display was a direct recording machine—a terminal similar to an ATM, where voters simply touch the screen to pick their candidates. A paper receipt allows voters to check that their choices were accurately recorded, before they cast their ballots, again by touching the screen.
“We have the budget to purchase all the computers, but the problem, foremost, is that not all areas have electricity,” said Soon-Ruiz. “But we will, hopefully, have certain areas in 2010 where the elections can be automated.”
Asked what he thought of the voting machines at the “election watch party” the embassy hosted at the SM North Wing, businessman Sabino Dapat quipped: “Only one word: Envy.”
“How I wish we could have something like this in the Philippines, so we won’t have to go through several days of anxiety and there would be fewer opportunities for people to cheat,” said Dapat, a trustee of the church-based group C-Cimpel, which has monitored elections in Cebu since 1992.
While citizen involvement makes Cebu’s elections credible, Dapat said it’s high time the country used more advanced technology in its elections.
Cebu City Councilor Sylvan Jakosalem said he finds it “unbelievable” that voting and counting technologies already in use for decades have yet to be widely used in Philippine elections.
Using these would mean “quick results, less work for Comelec, and less tension among the voters and the politicians. That’s a big plus.”
Deputy Chief of Mission Paul Jones, who led the embassy’s 30-member team in Cebu, explained that each state, not the federal government, decides what machines to use for the elections.
But more important than the technology used, he said, was the reminder of “what both our countries share, which is our commitment to democracy.”
By noon local time (midnight in the US East Coast)—less than 18 hours after polling centers opened in the United States—both CNN and CNBC called the elections in favor of Obama, the first African-American to win the US presidency.
Half an hour later, the Cebu mock election’s results were announced: 211 votes for Obama, 95 for Republican candidate John McCain.
“We cannot say it’s the lack of budget (that’s keeping the Philippines from automating its elections). It’s the political will of the people running the country,” said Jakosalem. “Sad to say, but they prefer the old system.”
Related story here.
“I wish we could have the same in the Philippines. It makes voting less costly. You don’t need watchers. You get the results very quickly,” said Rep. Nerissa Soon-Ruiz (Cebu Province, 6th district) after she “voted” using one of three machines flown in by the US Embassy in Manila.
Two of the machines use the same technology that a team of Filipino inspectors checked during a visit to the United States in 1993, according to the Commission on Elections (Comelec) website.
One is an optical mark reader that requires voters to shade the ovals beside the names of their chosen candidates. These ballots are then fed through a scanner that counts the votes.
Also on display was a direct recording machine—a terminal similar to an ATM, where voters simply touch the screen to pick their candidates. A paper receipt allows voters to check that their choices were accurately recorded, before they cast their ballots, again by touching the screen.
“We have the budget to purchase all the computers, but the problem, foremost, is that not all areas have electricity,” said Soon-Ruiz. “But we will, hopefully, have certain areas in 2010 where the elections can be automated.”
Asked what he thought of the voting machines at the “election watch party” the embassy hosted at the SM North Wing, businessman Sabino Dapat quipped: “Only one word: Envy.”
“How I wish we could have something like this in the Philippines, so we won’t have to go through several days of anxiety and there would be fewer opportunities for people to cheat,” said Dapat, a trustee of the church-based group C-Cimpel, which has monitored elections in Cebu since 1992.
While citizen involvement makes Cebu’s elections credible, Dapat said it’s high time the country used more advanced technology in its elections.
Cebu City Councilor Sylvan Jakosalem said he finds it “unbelievable” that voting and counting technologies already in use for decades have yet to be widely used in Philippine elections.
Using these would mean “quick results, less work for Comelec, and less tension among the voters and the politicians. That’s a big plus.”
Deputy Chief of Mission Paul Jones, who led the embassy’s 30-member team in Cebu, explained that each state, not the federal government, decides what machines to use for the elections.
But more important than the technology used, he said, was the reminder of “what both our countries share, which is our commitment to democracy.”
By noon local time (midnight in the US East Coast)—less than 18 hours after polling centers opened in the United States—both CNN and CNBC called the elections in favor of Obama, the first African-American to win the US presidency.
Half an hour later, the Cebu mock election’s results were announced: 211 votes for Obama, 95 for Republican candidate John McCain.
“We cannot say it’s the lack of budget (that’s keeping the Philippines from automating its elections). It’s the political will of the people running the country,” said Jakosalem. “Sad to say, but they prefer the old system.”
Related story here.
31 August 2008
Target: 10% by 2010
CEBU’S educators and entrepreneurs will have to work better as partners to help the local economy thrive in business process outsourcing, an industry projected to generate US$130 billion by 2010.
"The same key drivers of the industry are our own challenges: talent, business environment and new sites for expansion,” said Oscar Sañez, chief executive officer of the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP), in the Sun.Star Economic Forum at Parklane International Hotel.
"Our inability to meet these challenges can seriously affect our competitiveness,” he said.
Outsourcing and off-shoring (O&O) in the Philippines drew US$5 billion into the economy in 2007, from only $1.5 billion in 2004. Industry players in the Philippines have set a target of $13 billion--about 10 percent of the projected global market--by 2010.
To do that, the BPAP set a target of 290,000 to 560,000 qualified graduates nationwide from 2007-2010. This, however, will require improvements in the general education system, which currently loses up to a quarter of its pupils between Grades 2 and 3 because families can’t afford to send the children to school.
Read the full story here.
"The same key drivers of the industry are our own challenges: talent, business environment and new sites for expansion,” said Oscar Sañez, chief executive officer of the Business Processing Association of the Philippines (BPAP), in the Sun.Star Economic Forum at Parklane International Hotel.
"Our inability to meet these challenges can seriously affect our competitiveness,” he said.
Outsourcing and off-shoring (O&O) in the Philippines drew US$5 billion into the economy in 2007, from only $1.5 billion in 2004. Industry players in the Philippines have set a target of $13 billion--about 10 percent of the projected global market--by 2010.
To do that, the BPAP set a target of 290,000 to 560,000 qualified graduates nationwide from 2007-2010. This, however, will require improvements in the general education system, which currently loses up to a quarter of its pupils between Grades 2 and 3 because families can’t afford to send the children to school.
Read the full story here.
Mining a city's memories
A FEW weeks ago, the American historian Michael Cullinane came upon “a whole bundle” of records that, he hopes, will reveal new information and insights about why the principalia of San Nicolas joined the revolution of Tres de Abril. Cullinane already knows this subject better than most Cebuanos, but the process of uncovering history, he says, “never ends.”
In an interview at the Casa Gorordo Museum, Dr. Cullinane shares his fascination with the origins of the Cebuano political elite, as well as Cebuano history in general—a scholarly interest he has sustained since he first visited the Philippines as a Peace Corps volunteer in the early 1970s.
The local stories and personalities that get overlooked in the national histories: they’re what fascinate Dr. Cullinane.
“Almost all the national events took place in Cebu also, but they took place differently. For instance, how did the Philippine-American War operate in Cebu? The best book on that war, in my opinion, is the one by Resil Mojares. So why not use it? Teachers can give some introductory material about the Philippine-American War in general, and then, drawing from Resil’s work, say, ‘Here’s what happened here.’”
Cullinane serves as the associate director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is credited with helping set up the Cebuano Studies Center at the University of San Carlos. Most recently, he wrote “Ilustrado Politics: Filipino Elite Responses to American Rule, 1898-1908.”
“There’s a tremendous amount of material that I, in my lifetime, cannot even come close to exhausting, so I’ve defined things that I do want to exhaust,” he says. “I’ve read all the notarial records from 1818 to 1873, and 1888 to 1903. My job on this trip was to close the gap, but it’s too much. So I’ll keep coming back until I do.”
Read the full interview here.
In an interview at the Casa Gorordo Museum, Dr. Cullinane shares his fascination with the origins of the Cebuano political elite, as well as Cebuano history in general—a scholarly interest he has sustained since he first visited the Philippines as a Peace Corps volunteer in the early 1970s.
The local stories and personalities that get overlooked in the national histories: they’re what fascinate Dr. Cullinane.
“Almost all the national events took place in Cebu also, but they took place differently. For instance, how did the Philippine-American War operate in Cebu? The best book on that war, in my opinion, is the one by Resil Mojares. So why not use it? Teachers can give some introductory material about the Philippine-American War in general, and then, drawing from Resil’s work, say, ‘Here’s what happened here.’”
Cullinane serves as the associate director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and is credited with helping set up the Cebuano Studies Center at the University of San Carlos. Most recently, he wrote “Ilustrado Politics: Filipino Elite Responses to American Rule, 1898-1908.”
“There’s a tremendous amount of material that I, in my lifetime, cannot even come close to exhausting, so I’ve defined things that I do want to exhaust,” he says. “I’ve read all the notarial records from 1818 to 1873, and 1888 to 1903. My job on this trip was to close the gap, but it’s too much. So I’ll keep coming back until I do.”
Read the full interview here.
14 April 2008
All rice
THAT Giada de Laurentiis: she made me think about the rice crisis.
There I sat, trying to read the latest sermons in the op-ed pages, when the sight of Miss de Laurentiis smacking her lips after a spoonful of sweet rice pudding dragged me off the couch.
Off to the kitchen, then, where a cup of rice grains promptly plopped into a pot, joined by three cups of milk, some sugar and the lip-puckering zest of a fragrant lemon. A little bowl of raisins sat on the countertop, for the pudding’s finishing touch.
Manang Giada, she made it look oh-so-simple. She didn’t even have to stir the pot.
So back I went to the living room, just in time to hear Vir Sanghvi praise a batch of thin rice crepes, filled with spiced potatoes and lined with butter, “a sure cholesterol catastrophe.” Not that he minded, this Mr. Sanghvi: the screen showed him tucking into one of the famous rice plates of southern India’s Udupi. There, he said, rice “sits at the center of religious belief.” On one such plate, spicy coconut cream and tomato sauces, hot vegetables and coriander-encrusted clams surrounded the real star, a mound of boiled rice, its heat steaming up the television screen. My belly growled.
To temper my rice craving, I turned to the news, but rice appeared everywhere. Television crews showed bare warehouses where NFA-stamped sacks, now empty, sprawled on the floor. Farmers’ cooperatives spoke in defense of their private financiers. (So who really benefits from subsidies?) Spooked by pests and bad weather, Vietnamese officials said they would limit rice exports to make sure their own people had enough. Meanwhile, more rice farmers in the Philippines and China decided it made more sense to leave the paddies to high-rise property developers.
By the time I remembered, it was too late.
In the pot that Giada inspired, a thick, yellowish-brown lump of sticky rice lay. I had forgotten the Goldilocks rule of cooking with milk: the temperature had to be just right. I tried two half-hearted teaspoons, but found the results too sad. I carried the failed pudding outside, and the dog looked at me askance. So into the garbage bin that pot of rice went. Since then, for reasons involving vanity and conscience, I have watched carefully the portions of rice I cook or order, and eat. With no influence over hoarders and no control over any rice field, all I can do, like most consumers, is prevent waste.
As if my Giada-induced guilt wasn’t enough, the April 21 issue of Time adds: “Even if Asia manages to keep its rice bowl full, high prices and shortages may still filter down to the world’s poorest countries… Tight world supplies create a zero-sum calculus. Vietnamese rice going to the Philippines is rice that is unavailable for Africa, or for the NGO’s that feed the world’s most vulnerable populations.” Oh, boy. I will never attempt to cook rice pudding again.
(Appears in today's issue of Sun.Star Cebu)
There I sat, trying to read the latest sermons in the op-ed pages, when the sight of Miss de Laurentiis smacking her lips after a spoonful of sweet rice pudding dragged me off the couch.
Off to the kitchen, then, where a cup of rice grains promptly plopped into a pot, joined by three cups of milk, some sugar and the lip-puckering zest of a fragrant lemon. A little bowl of raisins sat on the countertop, for the pudding’s finishing touch.
Manang Giada, she made it look oh-so-simple. She didn’t even have to stir the pot.
So back I went to the living room, just in time to hear Vir Sanghvi praise a batch of thin rice crepes, filled with spiced potatoes and lined with butter, “a sure cholesterol catastrophe.” Not that he minded, this Mr. Sanghvi: the screen showed him tucking into one of the famous rice plates of southern India’s Udupi. There, he said, rice “sits at the center of religious belief.” On one such plate, spicy coconut cream and tomato sauces, hot vegetables and coriander-encrusted clams surrounded the real star, a mound of boiled rice, its heat steaming up the television screen. My belly growled.
To temper my rice craving, I turned to the news, but rice appeared everywhere. Television crews showed bare warehouses where NFA-stamped sacks, now empty, sprawled on the floor. Farmers’ cooperatives spoke in defense of their private financiers. (So who really benefits from subsidies?) Spooked by pests and bad weather, Vietnamese officials said they would limit rice exports to make sure their own people had enough. Meanwhile, more rice farmers in the Philippines and China decided it made more sense to leave the paddies to high-rise property developers.
By the time I remembered, it was too late.
In the pot that Giada inspired, a thick, yellowish-brown lump of sticky rice lay. I had forgotten the Goldilocks rule of cooking with milk: the temperature had to be just right. I tried two half-hearted teaspoons, but found the results too sad. I carried the failed pudding outside, and the dog looked at me askance. So into the garbage bin that pot of rice went. Since then, for reasons involving vanity and conscience, I have watched carefully the portions of rice I cook or order, and eat. With no influence over hoarders and no control over any rice field, all I can do, like most consumers, is prevent waste.
As if my Giada-induced guilt wasn’t enough, the April 21 issue of Time adds: “Even if Asia manages to keep its rice bowl full, high prices and shortages may still filter down to the world’s poorest countries… Tight world supplies create a zero-sum calculus. Vietnamese rice going to the Philippines is rice that is unavailable for Africa, or for the NGO’s that feed the world’s most vulnerable populations.” Oh, boy. I will never attempt to cook rice pudding again.
(Appears in today's issue of Sun.Star Cebu)
24 March 2008
On trying to listen to Jun Lozada
INFLEXIBLE errands kept me away from Rodolfo "Jun" Lozada Jr.'s much-publicized visit here, so I didn't get to hear first-hand his comments about the "Archdiocese of Malacañang" or see how the crowd reacted to him. I didn't know how much time he spent discussing the "spiritual harassment" he has suffered, and how much time went to the message he was flown here to deliver. I got the sense that he revealed no new evidence, but that he stayed consistent to the allegations he raised in recent weeks. But like I said, all that is second-hand information.
As necessary as compression is in our work as journalists, it also often leads to losses of nuance or errors in translation. Out of everything a speaker says in an hour, for instance, the journalist may end up highlighting a 10-minute bit of the speech that the speaker never intended to be his central message. "What new thing did he say?" is a common question that reporters will hear from persnickety editors. "What new revelations did he make?"
So the charge that some of Lozada's champions recently made is valid. Why, they asked, have Cebu's media zeroed in on Lozada's criticisms against local church leaders? Why have political leaders tried to "spin" the events as yet another sign of the (often-manipulated) divisions between the capital and local communities?
Here's an attempt at an answer. The reason Lozada's barbs have caused an uproar goes beyond the fact that Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal remains a well-loved and respected leader of the Cebuano community—no matter how opaque, how cryptic his political opinions have, at times, been. Calling him a "congressman in a cassock" isn't just flattery that some of our lawmakers haven't earned; it is also incredibly careless. It raises doubts about just how careful Lozada and his supporters have been in the accusations they've raised about the broadband deal.
Which is a pity, because it's only going to make it more difficult for a lot of people to pay attention to what Lozada has to reveal—and it's already demanding enough to try to listen and see past the posturing of certain senators. Yet one must keep trying.
All this reminded me of one of the most interesting discussions in a Media Ethics class I participated in last year, which centered on Edmund Arens' 1997 paper on "discourse ethics" and how media workers could use it to restore a sense of purpose in our work. For Arens, discourse ethics challenges media practitioners to see how well we have lived by three universal ethical principles: (1) orientation toward truth, (2) truthfulness, and (3) justice.
An orientation toward truth means, first, that anyone who wishes to communicate should make sure they have proof and explanations, and should limit themselves to pronouncements "of whose truth they are convinced." Arens also reminds us that there are stories that need telling—whether it's the silences that our more guarded public officials or community leaders keep, or the existence of those who, after getting the doors of schools and workplaces slammed in their faces, make a living off our garbage bins.
Communication informed by discourse ethics, according to Arens, is a "cooperative search for a mutual understanding of the disputed claims." It won't suffice to listen to and examine only the claims of the contending parties. Everyone who can should be allowed to take part, because "justice that assumes the task of advocacy means criticizing and denouncing those communicative and social relations in which human beings have no voice, in which there is no word from them, in which they are not heard."
(Appears in the Op-Ed pages of Sun.Star Cebu's 24 March 2008 issue.)
As necessary as compression is in our work as journalists, it also often leads to losses of nuance or errors in translation. Out of everything a speaker says in an hour, for instance, the journalist may end up highlighting a 10-minute bit of the speech that the speaker never intended to be his central message. "What new thing did he say?" is a common question that reporters will hear from persnickety editors. "What new revelations did he make?"
So the charge that some of Lozada's champions recently made is valid. Why, they asked, have Cebu's media zeroed in on Lozada's criticisms against local church leaders? Why have political leaders tried to "spin" the events as yet another sign of the (often-manipulated) divisions between the capital and local communities?
Here's an attempt at an answer. The reason Lozada's barbs have caused an uproar goes beyond the fact that Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal remains a well-loved and respected leader of the Cebuano community—no matter how opaque, how cryptic his political opinions have, at times, been. Calling him a "congressman in a cassock" isn't just flattery that some of our lawmakers haven't earned; it is also incredibly careless. It raises doubts about just how careful Lozada and his supporters have been in the accusations they've raised about the broadband deal.
Which is a pity, because it's only going to make it more difficult for a lot of people to pay attention to what Lozada has to reveal—and it's already demanding enough to try to listen and see past the posturing of certain senators. Yet one must keep trying.
All this reminded me of one of the most interesting discussions in a Media Ethics class I participated in last year, which centered on Edmund Arens' 1997 paper on "discourse ethics" and how media workers could use it to restore a sense of purpose in our work. For Arens, discourse ethics challenges media practitioners to see how well we have lived by three universal ethical principles: (1) orientation toward truth, (2) truthfulness, and (3) justice.
An orientation toward truth means, first, that anyone who wishes to communicate should make sure they have proof and explanations, and should limit themselves to pronouncements "of whose truth they are convinced." Arens also reminds us that there are stories that need telling—whether it's the silences that our more guarded public officials or community leaders keep, or the existence of those who, after getting the doors of schools and workplaces slammed in their faces, make a living off our garbage bins.
Communication informed by discourse ethics, according to Arens, is a "cooperative search for a mutual understanding of the disputed claims." It won't suffice to listen to and examine only the claims of the contending parties. Everyone who can should be allowed to take part, because "justice that assumes the task of advocacy means criticizing and denouncing those communicative and social relations in which human beings have no voice, in which there is no word from them, in which they are not heard."
(Appears in the Op-Ed pages of Sun.Star Cebu's 24 March 2008 issue.)
12 March 2008
On the right to information
The right to information in the Philippines first appeared in our Constitution 35 years ago, in the early days of Martial Law. Yet while such a right has been recognized in both the 1973 and 1987 Constitutions, the wave of reform that led many countries in the past decade to adopt freedom of information laws has yet to redefine Philippine shores.
Since 1998, various lawmakers' drafts of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) have failed to emerge from the Philippine Congress as an enforceable law. In the past decade alone, at least five other countries in Asia have enacted FOIA legislation: Thailand (1997), South Korea (1998), Japan (1999), India (2002) and Pakistan (2002).
The lack of such a law has not kept Filipinos, for the most part, from gaining access to public information. Thanks to a Supreme Court that has interpreted the law in favor of free expression and informed debate, the contours of the right to information have slowly taken shape. It's because of the Court that information on all laws, the civil service eligibility of government workers, and the terms of any proposed settlement relating to the allegedly ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses—to cite a small part of a long list—are considered matters of public concern, where access to information is guaranteed.
In April 2006, the Supreme Court ruled that the executive branch could not escape congressional requests for information without asserting its right to do so and its reasons. The Court declared void two sections of Executive Order 464, in which President Arroyo, invoking the separation of powers and the rule on executive privilege, had ordered public officials to gain her consent before appearing in a congressional inquiry.
Last week, President Arroyo revoked EO 464. But as concessions go, it is too little, too late. It strips her advisers and secretaries of an excuse to skip congressional investigations, but it doesn't guarantee they'll reveal anything anyway.
For this protected stonewalling, Congress shares part of the blame. You see, even as it failed to pass a law that would define the right to information more clearly, Congress has succeeded in enacting laws that spell out the right's limits.
Among these is Republic Act 6713, or the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees. Its implementing rules state that citizens can be denied access if: "the information, record or document must be kept secret in the interest of national defense or security or the conduct of foreign affairs; disclosure of the information will endanger the life and safety of an individual; and the information, record or document falls within the concepts of established privilege or recognized exceptions provided by law, settled by policy or jurisprudence." Four other conditions exist.
Why Congress has failed to enact FOIA legislation is worth examining. One possibility is the lack of incentive for government transparency. In a Congress dominated by the elite, reform-oriented provisions in the Constitution may not get legislated because these do not complement lawmakers' political or business interests. (Case in point: the constitutional prohibition on political dynasties.) In a sense, then, gaps in access to information may simply reflect larger disparities in the socioeconomic and political pecking order. In information, as with wealth and political influence, the gap between the haves and have-nots runs deep and wide.
(Appeared in the 10 March 2008 issue of Sun.Star Cebu)
Since 1998, various lawmakers' drafts of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) have failed to emerge from the Philippine Congress as an enforceable law. In the past decade alone, at least five other countries in Asia have enacted FOIA legislation: Thailand (1997), South Korea (1998), Japan (1999), India (2002) and Pakistan (2002).
The lack of such a law has not kept Filipinos, for the most part, from gaining access to public information. Thanks to a Supreme Court that has interpreted the law in favor of free expression and informed debate, the contours of the right to information have slowly taken shape. It's because of the Court that information on all laws, the civil service eligibility of government workers, and the terms of any proposed settlement relating to the allegedly ill-gotten wealth of the Marcoses—to cite a small part of a long list—are considered matters of public concern, where access to information is guaranteed.
In April 2006, the Supreme Court ruled that the executive branch could not escape congressional requests for information without asserting its right to do so and its reasons. The Court declared void two sections of Executive Order 464, in which President Arroyo, invoking the separation of powers and the rule on executive privilege, had ordered public officials to gain her consent before appearing in a congressional inquiry.
Last week, President Arroyo revoked EO 464. But as concessions go, it is too little, too late. It strips her advisers and secretaries of an excuse to skip congressional investigations, but it doesn't guarantee they'll reveal anything anyway.
For this protected stonewalling, Congress shares part of the blame. You see, even as it failed to pass a law that would define the right to information more clearly, Congress has succeeded in enacting laws that spell out the right's limits.
Among these is Republic Act 6713, or the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees. Its implementing rules state that citizens can be denied access if: "the information, record or document must be kept secret in the interest of national defense or security or the conduct of foreign affairs; disclosure of the information will endanger the life and safety of an individual; and the information, record or document falls within the concepts of established privilege or recognized exceptions provided by law, settled by policy or jurisprudence." Four other conditions exist.
Why Congress has failed to enact FOIA legislation is worth examining. One possibility is the lack of incentive for government transparency. In a Congress dominated by the elite, reform-oriented provisions in the Constitution may not get legislated because these do not complement lawmakers' political or business interests. (Case in point: the constitutional prohibition on political dynasties.) In a sense, then, gaps in access to information may simply reflect larger disparities in the socioeconomic and political pecking order. In information, as with wealth and political influence, the gap between the haves and have-nots runs deep and wide.
(Appeared in the 10 March 2008 issue of Sun.Star Cebu)
08 March 2008
Turning Japanese
CORRUPTION charges have cast an unflattering light on official development assistance (ODA), but these programs remain vital for small and medium enterprises (SME) that want to capture foreign markets.
Two studies point out SME exporters in the Philippines need ODA grants to improve quality control and food testing, among others, and to plug gaps in credit so they can sell more to Japanese buyers.
What hobbles Filipino exporters? Tight credit facilities, high packaging and shipping costs, and the lack of government support to set up food testing centers appear in a list presented by Dr. Rosalina Palanca Tan of the Ateneo de Manila University.
She surveyed Japanese exporters as part of a project commissioned by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies and the Philippine Exporters Confederation to explore the effects of the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA).
"We compete with Ecuador and Taiwan to supply bananas to Japan, with Mexico for mangoes and with Hawaii for papayas," Tan told participants of a JPEPA forum last week at the University of San Carlos. "We also compete with China to supply Japan with vegetables and processed food, and with Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam for fresh, processed or canned seafood."
Exporters need to take advantage of a shift in Japanese consumers' preferences from expensive US or European brands to cheaper but high-quality products from Asia, she added. Among the items Filipino exporters can sell Japanese buyers more of are fermented beverages, children's toys, animal feeds, sugar, fish fillets, apparel and motor vehicle bodies.
ODA programs—although dragged into controversy recently by allegations of corruption in the national broadband deal with China's ZTE Corp.—can focus on helping SMEs improve their efficiency or make up for the lack of credit, Tan said.
One way to make the JPEPA more favorable to Filipino exporters, she added, is to compel Japan to develop "import promotion programs" and conduct more "buying missions" for Philippine products. Japan can also accredit more private testing centers in the Philippines, particularly for food products.
In separate study, Amelia Bello of the University of the Philippines Los Baños raised the need for technical assistance so that agricultural products can hurdle Japan's strict safety and phyto-sanitary standards. Assistance can also explore the use of Japanese seeds "to eliminate the risk of taste failure," she added.
The JPEPA will compel Japan to remove immediately the tariffs on shrimps, prawns, asparagus, dried bananas, mangoes and copra, among others. Tariffs will be gradually eliminated from fresh yellow-fin tuna, prepared or preserved tuna, fresh bananas, dried pineapples, and fruits containing added sugar.
Japan buys 23 percent of the Philippines' agricultural exports and is the second largest market, after the United States. Between 1991 and 2001, however, agriculture's share in total exports from the Philippines has dropped from 35 percent to single-digit levels, Bello said.
Although it's the top supplier of tropical fresh fruits, the Philippines appears only 16th in the list of top food sources for Japan. The JPEPA, which advocates say will ease Filipino producers' access into Japanese markets, awaits ratification by the Philippine Senate.
(First appeared in the 3 March 2008 issue of Sun.Star Cebu)
Two studies point out SME exporters in the Philippines need ODA grants to improve quality control and food testing, among others, and to plug gaps in credit so they can sell more to Japanese buyers.
What hobbles Filipino exporters? Tight credit facilities, high packaging and shipping costs, and the lack of government support to set up food testing centers appear in a list presented by Dr. Rosalina Palanca Tan of the Ateneo de Manila University.
She surveyed Japanese exporters as part of a project commissioned by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies and the Philippine Exporters Confederation to explore the effects of the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA).
"We compete with Ecuador and Taiwan to supply bananas to Japan, with Mexico for mangoes and with Hawaii for papayas," Tan told participants of a JPEPA forum last week at the University of San Carlos. "We also compete with China to supply Japan with vegetables and processed food, and with Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam for fresh, processed or canned seafood."
Exporters need to take advantage of a shift in Japanese consumers' preferences from expensive US or European brands to cheaper but high-quality products from Asia, she added. Among the items Filipino exporters can sell Japanese buyers more of are fermented beverages, children's toys, animal feeds, sugar, fish fillets, apparel and motor vehicle bodies.
ODA programs—although dragged into controversy recently by allegations of corruption in the national broadband deal with China's ZTE Corp.—can focus on helping SMEs improve their efficiency or make up for the lack of credit, Tan said.
One way to make the JPEPA more favorable to Filipino exporters, she added, is to compel Japan to develop "import promotion programs" and conduct more "buying missions" for Philippine products. Japan can also accredit more private testing centers in the Philippines, particularly for food products.
In separate study, Amelia Bello of the University of the Philippines Los Baños raised the need for technical assistance so that agricultural products can hurdle Japan's strict safety and phyto-sanitary standards. Assistance can also explore the use of Japanese seeds "to eliminate the risk of taste failure," she added.
The JPEPA will compel Japan to remove immediately the tariffs on shrimps, prawns, asparagus, dried bananas, mangoes and copra, among others. Tariffs will be gradually eliminated from fresh yellow-fin tuna, prepared or preserved tuna, fresh bananas, dried pineapples, and fruits containing added sugar.
Japan buys 23 percent of the Philippines' agricultural exports and is the second largest market, after the United States. Between 1991 and 2001, however, agriculture's share in total exports from the Philippines has dropped from 35 percent to single-digit levels, Bello said.
Although it's the top supplier of tropical fresh fruits, the Philippines appears only 16th in the list of top food sources for Japan. The JPEPA, which advocates say will ease Filipino producers' access into Japanese markets, awaits ratification by the Philippine Senate.
(First appeared in the 3 March 2008 issue of Sun.Star Cebu)
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