Croaking time

By Rod Kapunan
http://manilastandardtoday.com/2013/04/27/croaking-time/

Like those frogs croaking in crescendo to welcome the coming of the raining season, our politicians are doing the same.  They do not only croak   the same old promises that have gotten us nowhere, but do every conceivable gimmick to get the trophy that could make or unmake their lives.  Like those wart-wrapped toads, they come out with their usual croaks saying, “tuloy tuloy ang serbisyo,” tungo sa pagbabago at pag-unlad.”

If we ask: what service are they talking about when our people now pay for them at a much higher rate on top of the tax and VAT they pay?  What change has taken place when after that Edsa swindle saw the rise of political dynasties with the same faces elected, only substituted at times by their wife, and children?  What progress  when poverty level is at 28 percent, a figure that tells us we have no right to become a state?  The National Statistical and Coordinating Board cannot be wrong for even Wikipedia, the “holy grail” of the mainstream media, admitted that our poverty level is at par with Haiti.

Had it not for the massive earthquake that hit that country on January 12, 2010 killing an estimated 220,000 and leveling to the ground all the man-made structures, Haiti would have been much richer than this land lorded over by hypocrites. I say this because we cannot set aside our freedom even momentarily for us to convert that to something we could eat.  We always demand an election like an addict enjoying the artificial nirvana after given his dosage of the heroine.   In fact, we are the only people who would go berserk if denied of our right to vote, but would meekly accept being terminated from our job.  We easily resign our fate to  the Divine Will if we could not put food on top of our table, but could be provoked to violence if not allowed to open his mouth in the name of freedom of speech.

It is this kind of misplaced priorities that made us the laughingstock of the world, and fortunately the kind of lunacy that has been exploited by our politicians.  Our legislators no longer think and craft laws that would be good for our people.   Many of those laws they lately enacted were handed to them for legislation by their foreign brokers.  Our executives from the President down to the municipal mayors have become the enforcers of those foreign-dictated laws.  

Our systematic action to dismantle our laws that were designed to protect our national interest in effect makes us the only nation that allowed ourselves to be put back into our  cage as colony.

For instance, when Senator Edgardo Angara was then aiming to become President, the first thing he did was to pass a law  deregulating tuition fees and providing subsidy to private colleges and universities.    Angara did that with an eye of ingratiating himself to the teachers, whose number exceeded the number of soldiers and policemen we have.  Angara wanted to marshal the school operators and teachers to rally behind as the so-called “ama ng edukasyon.”

Indeed, Angara managed to get their unstinting support.  He also made happy few parents who wanted to provide their children the luxury of private education through government subsidy.
  
But little did the majority who set aside their monthly savings to pay for the educational plans of their children realized that once they enter college they could no longer avail of it because the cost of  tuition has skyrocketed beyond the original guarantee made to plan holders.

Thousands failed to enter college, and  worse finance companies committed outright swindling by not refunding even the amount paid by them.

That was the biggest finance fiasco that happened in this country, yet nobody could recall it happened because of the ambition of one politician, and now peddling his son to be his successor in the Senate.  Even as thousands of parents and children wailed for the loss of their educational benefit, not one politician stood up in their defense by prosecuting and sending to jail those that caused the collapsed of the educational plan system.

Another is the subservience of our legislators in acting as bastoneros of multinational corporations.   They passed a law to purposely make it stringent for our local entrepreneurs to violate the intellectual property rights law.  Instead of protecting our entrepreneurs, the burden was tossed to them to prove they did not violate the copyright and patent law.  

Other countries that value their sovereignty demand that anybody who claims his copyright or patent was violated should prove it beyond doubt before their courts.  They would not let their government  be used to muzzle their local entrepreneurs or close down local industries, or allow their law enforcement agencies to act as watchdogs in monitoring potential violators, and rewarding them from the largess confiscated or from the penalty imposed for the alleged violator.

The exorbitant amount of penalty slapped on them obviously amounts to robbing them of their capital, while corrupting our law enforcement agencies through their reward system which is not allowed in countries like China and India.   More than anything else, anybody who claims his copyright or patent was violated should present before the court that his product is registered in his country of origin. That now prevents multinational firms from harassing our local entrepreneurs and industries like suing them to purposely ease them out of the market.

Recently, the Supreme Court of India rejected attempts by Novartis AG, to patent a cancer-cure drug.  That paved the way for the generic production of Glivec medicine.   The decision could effectively reduce by one-tenth its original price.  The original would cost a patient $2,600 a month, but if manufactured  by an Indian generic manufacturing company, Cipla, the cost could be reduced to $175 per month.

Sadly enough, we have here spineless legislators, justices and lawyers.

rpkapunan@gmail.com