2016: Our watershed election in 21st century

by YEN MAKABENTA

With national problems coming to a head, with government officials and politicians more brazen in looting the national treasury, and with Pope Francis discreetly making suggestions from the sidelines, the national election in 2016 is shaping into what historians and political observers call a “watershed election” for our people and our republic.

The term “watershed” is normally used by political scientists and historians to describe a national balloting that marks the end of one period and the beginning of another.

According to William Safire, in his authoritative Political Dictionary, a watershed election is “a campaign that decides the course of politics for decades; one that is especially memorable, or that proves to be a divide between historical periods.”

The metaphor has a descriptive basis. Watershed literally means “a water-storage area making the surrounding region fertile, or providing a city with its water supply.” A second meaning is “dividing line” as between storage areas.

The political meaning, says Safire, comes from both the nourishing meaning (of the vital water-holding uplands), and the epochal meaning (a line between two areas, or a moment between two eras.)

On May 9, 2016, some million Filipinos—most of them members of the new generations (Generations X and Y)—will go to the polls to elect a new president, a new Congress, and a new set of local government officials.

Historically, this election will be one of the most important in national history; and it will certainly be our most important in the 21st century—more significant than the 2010 election which gave us in two big hammer blows the presidency of Benigno Aquino 3rd, and the unlamented 15th Congress.

The transitional character of the political exercise rests on the likelihood that the election could usher a major political realignment in the Philippines for the following reasons:

First, the election will be a referendum on Noynoy Aquino and his erratic and incompetent government. It will write finis to the Aquino domination of national politics that began in 1986 when Madame Corazon Aquino was thrust into the presidency by People Power and installed as the head of a revolutionary government; a leadership that subsequently continued when her son Noynoy was elected president in 2010.

With Noynoy unmarried and Kris Aquino still possessed of enough good sense not to move into politics, the Aquinos’ hold on the presidency will decisively come to an end, when a new president is sworn into office on June 30, 2016.

With no real political party in command, and the Liberal Party exercising only token leadership, there is no political party that dominates national politics today. If a new and serious political party is established to contest the 2016 election at all levels, a major political realignment could result.

More than the fate of the Aquinos, 2016 will be a watershed because the campaign will almost surely bring up front the surpassing questions of what new course the nation will follow, what a new set of leaders can do to fix the Philippines, and what a new government can do raise up our people from grinding poverty and underdevelopment.

Uppermost in many minds is whether besides saying goodbye to President Aquino, we will finally be rid of Butch Abad, of Dinky soliman, of Leila de lima, of Jericho Petilla, and infamous acts of commission and omission while serving in the Cabinet of President Aquino.

Some of them (especially Butch Abad) we will still behold for some time longer, because they will likely stand trial at the Sandiganbayan for unprecedented loss and carelessness, looting of public money.

We will know there’s a new sheriff in town when Abad no longer has the keys to the treasury.

We will know it even more if Noynoy follows the fdootsteps of his hated predecessor, Gloria macapagal-Arroyo, and is indicted for the billions in public funds that he funneled into the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), and for his bribery of the Philippine Senate to secure the conviction of former chief justice Renato Corona.

Can the horse of President Aquino still spring a surprise in the 2016 election? Will VP Binay show that beneath his dark skin is the color yellow?

Will a new candidate come in and enter the field, and like an avenger proceed to beat the field and run away with the prize.

Electability, not winnability
The winnowing of the field of 2016 presidential aspirants is superficial and haphazard because the public and the media are distracted by false concerns about “winnability,” and by premature preference surveys, that do not raise the questions that need to be asked. It is being driven totally by public relations. No one is discussing issues, and developing party platforms.

This is the reason why VP Binay has been the frontrunner from Day One and has not been seriously challenged. He is a frontrunner almost by default, despite being pummeled from pillar to post by Senators Trillanes, Cayetano and Pimentel – the three horsemen of the Apocalypse in the Senate.

“Winnability” is like a worm that is infecting the way the public views the declared and prospective candidates.

Because of it, issues are not being debated. The Senate has sunk into deep slumber. Candidates do not even bother to explain why they have inexplicably placed their names in the race for the presidency.

The word does not exist in the English lexicon of political scientists and pundits.

Winnability should be used to describe the election, not the candidate, because it means “capable of being won.” An election is winnable, in the same way that a sports title or a lotto prize is winnable.

On the other hand, candidates are gauged and assessed on the basis of their “electability” – which means the capability to get elected.

The late Speaker Ramon Mitra memorably raised the issue of “electability” when he called his critics, “unelected and unelectable” back in 1990.

I suspect that it was political consultants and PR operators who started the use of “winnability” – to telegraph the prospects and appeal of their clients.

As usually happens, the media uncritically adopted the term. And they applied it liberally on every aspirant who came along. The term became entrenched when political parties and coalitions adopted it as a yardstick for candidate selection.

It was the senatorial election that cemented the niche of winnability in national politics.

It was by the same shoddy process that the terms “fiscalization” and “salvaging” were uprooted from their English meanings and became common usage in this country.

So what’s my point here?

We should be studying the electability of candidates, not their so-called “winnability,” because winnability points the public and our political class in the wrong direction. We should be studying issues, statistics and data, not PR points.

How can we have a real working democracy, if our politics cannot even be grammatical?

yenmakabenta@yahoo.com

Hiding won’t eliminate poverty

ON DISTANT SHORE
By Val G. Abelgas

While Pope Francis were calling on Catholics, especially the wealthy and powerful, to see the importance of solidarity with the poor and the needy during his five-day visit to the Philippines, the Aquino administration was busy insulating the Pope from the poor by hauling them from the streets where the revered visitor was scheduled to pass.

The more than 100 homeless families, consisting of close to 500 individuals, who call Roxas Blvd. and other major streets in Manila their home, were hauled to a flashy resort called Chateau Royale in Nasugbu, Batangas purportedly “for an evaluation on their possible inclusion to the Modified Conditional Cash Transfer program.”

Secretary Dinky Soliman said the Department of Social Work and Development has done this before although she could not explain why the poor families were removed from the streets on the night of December 14, one day before the Pope was scheduled to arrive, and dumped back on the streets on December 19, shortly after the Pope flew back to Rome.

The street children, who roam the city streets to beg for alms, were reportedly taken to detention centers, and obviously left to roam the streets again after the Pope’s departure.

The hauled and hidden homeless families regret that while they were able to experience some comfort for five days, they were deprived of the opportunity to earn money and receive blessing from the Pope.

It was not the first time the Aquino administration has tried to hide the true condition of the poor in the Philippines from important visitors. During the visit of US President Barack Obama in April last year, the DSWD also hauled the homeless families to Island Cove in Cavite obviously to hide them from the visiting American leader.

In May 2012, while delegates to the Asian Development Bank annual meeting discussed ways to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor in the region, the Aquino administration tried to hide the ugly sight of poverty by putting up walls that hid the squatter shanties along the esteros near the site of the ADB.

Probably thinking the ADB delegates didn’t see the sorry sight beyond those walls, President Aquino went on to boast what he described as economic gains made by his administration.

And even as he boasted of his administration’s alleged economic strides, the Social Weather Station reported that the number of Filipinos who rated themselves as poor increased by two million from the last such survey in December the previous year. The survey found that 55 percent of the respondents or 11.1 million considered themselves poor, nearly the same figure as this year and the previous year.

Lawmakers and militant groups are now rightfully demanding the resignation or ouster of Soliman who earlier said the street urchins were removed from the streets because they would have been “vulnerable to syndicates and discriminated” had they stayed in the area, only to admit later that the homeless families were taken to the Batangas resort at government expense.

The lawmakers also want to know where the DSWD got the money to pay for the cost of accommodation in the air-conditioned cabins, which Soliman said cost P4.3 million.

Instead of sweeping the problem of extreme poverty under the rug, party list Rep. Lito Atienza said the government should address it. Kabataan Rep. Terry Ridon, on the other hand, said, “The Pope would have wanted to see the Philippines, warts and all. Let us not pretend that we are a first-world country.”

“They (poor Filipinos) were the reason why the Pope went here. It’s difficult to understand why they have to be hidden from his sight,” said Quezon City Rep. Winston Castelo.

The Church was also unhappy, comparing the move to the Marcosian era “when the window dressing of Metro Manila was done to make it look good for visitors.”

“I think the timing was not prudent. We should have instead brought the street kids in front of Pope Francis,” said Fr. Anton Pascual, executive director of Caritas Manila, the social action arm of the Archdiocese of Manila.

The incident brought to the fore once more the hypocrisy of the Aquino administration, who rode to power on the crest of an anti-corruption and anti-poverty campaign. It also brought into serious doubt the administration’s premier poverty alleviation program, the Cash Conditional Transfer (CCT).

The program cost P29.2 billion in 2011, P39.4 billion in 2012, P44 billion in 2013 and more than P50 billion last year, amounts that could have been spent better in low-cost housing, massive vocational training and job generation programs.

Under the CCT program in the Philippines, each household receives a P500 monthly allowance to subsidize its basic food needs plus P300 for every child that goes to school. A maximum of three children can get the allowance. While the World Bank described it as a “prudent safety net” for poor families during tough economic times, the danger here is that like the overseas workers program, the CCT program is boosting the mendicant mentality among Filipinos and that like the OFW program, which was launched as a temporary program during the oil crisis in the 70s, the CCT program might become a permanent policy that would instill dependency and complacency among the poor Filipinos.

While the CCT gives temporary relief to the poor, the Aquino administration still has to address the problem of poverty in the long term because economic growth would be meaningless unless it trickles down to the people. And for it to be an inclusive growth and to benefit the greater number of people, it needs to address the issue of unemployment and underemployment.

Aquino cannot go on hiding the homeless or building walls to isolate the rich from the poor, and illusions from reality. Instead, he should start removing the walls of corruption, injustice and insensitivity that have prevented the poor from rising out of poverty.

(valabelgas@aol.com)

Police corruption and torture chambers

PerryScope
By Perry Diaz

Once respected for its professionalism and dedicated service to the country, the Philippine National Police (PNP) is faced with the biggest challenge in its existence. Formed in 1991 when the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) Act was enacted, it merged the Philippine Constabulary and the Integrated National Police into national law enforcement force under one command, the PNP Director General (DG) who reports to the DILG Secretary. However, the appointing authority is the President of the Philippines. A graduate of the Philippine Military Academy, the DG carries the rank of a four-star general.

Currently, PNP has about 150,000 personnel, which makes the DG one of the most powerful officials in the country. Although, the PNP is under the administrative control of the DILG Secretary, the DG exercises great amount of autonomy and discretion in running the PNP.

“Hulidap” cop surrenders.

Since its creation, the PNP had been beset with charges of anomalies and irregularities including allegations of protecting gambling lords, smuggling syndicates, and other criminal activities. There are also allegations of police officers involved in extortion and kidnapping for ransom, which is colloquially called “hulidap.” It was coined from“huli” (arrest) and “dap” (kidnap). Typically, a hulidap operation involves a police officer arresting someone on bogus charges and then keeping him or her for ransom.

One of the police’s most brutal methods used in extortion or to extract confessions for crimes is the use of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment.

Above the law

Last December 4, 2014, Amnesty International (AI) released a 120-page report titled “Above the Law: Police Torture in the Philippines.”According to the report, the police use an array of torture methods, including: electric shocks; beatings; punching and kicking; striking with wooden batons or metal bars; burning skin with cigarettes; waterboarding; near-asphyxiation with plastic bags; forcing detainees to assume stress positions; stripping detainees naked and tying and pulling genitalia with a string; hanging detainees upside down; mock executions; shooting; and rape.

Recently, AI’s Secretary General, Salil Shetty, was in Manila to launch the “Stop Torture” campaign. He said that although the Philippines had enacted the Anti-Torture Act five years ago, not a single official has been convicted. “The single, most important reason why there is torture in the Philippines is they [police] get away with it,” he said.

“Wheel of torture”

“Wheel of Torture”

One method of torture that AI exposed was the “Wheel of Torture” game, which the police used for fun. The wheel is divided into sections like a pizza pie. Each section is labeled with the kind of torture to use. One section is labeled “20 seconds Manny Pacquiao.” If the wheel landed there, the officers would punch the detainees – mostly suspected drug traffickers — for 20 seconds. Another section is labeled “3 minutes Zombies” and another “30 seconds Duck Walk.”

The “wheel of torture” was allegedly stationed at a secret torture chamber in Binan, Laguna. According to the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), the secret torture chamber was not an official detention center. At the time it was exposed, about 40 prisoners were illegally detained there.

AI said the torture of suspected criminals by the police has thrived under the administration of President Benigno Aquino III. Shetty accused Aquino of not doing enough to reform the PNP. According to CHR records, there were 457 torture cases reported from 2001 to the middle of 2014. In 2013 alone, there were 75 cases reported, the highest in a single year.

Attempts by AI to establish dialogue with Aquino, the DILG, and the PNP to discuss the report were ignored. However, presidential spokesman, Herminio Coloma, told the media: “The government is pursuing its efforts to prosecute those violating the anti-torture law.” The PNP also issued a statement contradicting AI’s findings and insisted that major reforms on human rights had been successfully implemented. But the truth of the matter is: there has never been a single conviction for torture, to which Shetty said, “If you don’t acknowledge the problem, there can be no solution.”

Preventive suspension

PNP Chief Alan Purisima

On the same day the AI report came out, Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales coincidentally issued a six-month preventive suspension order against PNP Chief DG Alan Purisima over an allegedly anomalous contract the PNP had entered into with a courier service in 2011. The graft complaint against Purisima and 11 other PNP officers — including three generals — involved in the transaction stemmed from a contract with WERFAST Documentary Agency for the delivery of firearm licenses even without proper accreditation.

Initially, Purisima refused to comply and turned to his friend President Aquino for guidance. He sought a meeting with Aquino; however, Aquino told him that he had to comply with the suspension order.” Meanwhile, the search is on for the next PNP chief. Purisima is due to retire in November 2015.

With the police torture scandal and the suspension of the PNP’s top honcho, the PNP’s image may have been irreparably damaged. Indeed, it would be virtually impossible to restore its good name.

Gone were the days when the PC was looked upon as the defender of the people. But as it turned out, it’s quite the opposite – the people fear that it has become a predator preying on those they were sworn to protect. Surmise it to say, a majority of police officers are honest and incorruptible. However, many see them as a band of hoodlums in uniform.

Disbanding PNP

“Daang matuwid”

What is sad is that Purisima, who is one of Aquino’s trusted friends, has digressed from the “daang matuwid” (straight path) that Aquino had set to follow when he assumed the presidency. And Aquino’s initial reluctance to enforce the Ombudsman’s suspension order gave the impression that Aquino was too protective of his friends in government.

Police torture and the Purisima scandal have brought to the fore the issue of disbanding the PNP. Many are of the opinion that the PNP has outlived its usefulness and something should – nay, must! – be done about it. Either it is reformed, overhauled or disbanded. Some people even suggested that it should be surgically bisected into its original components – the Philippine Constabulary and the Integrated National Police — with some modifications to improve their performance.

But restructuring or dividing the monolithic PNP just to improve its performance wouldn’t achieve the ultimate goal, which is to stop police corruption. You can tell the police officers to follow a “daang matuwid” and rest assured it would still be “business as usual.” It takes more than sound bites to stop corruption. It takes leadership and the political will to take politics out of politics, which begs the question: Does President Aquino have what it takes to stop police corruption?

(PerryDiaz@gmail.com)

Roxas’ P13-B pork/campaign kitty

by RIGOBERTO D. TIGLAO

Very few of this newspaper’s readers, I’d bet, have heard of this Administration’s “Pamana” program, and it’s probably the way they want it to be.

In billions of pesos. (Pamana funds include P1.5 billion from the budget item “Socio-Economic Component of the Normalization Process”

“Pamana” stands for the “Payapa at Masaganang Pamayanan,” purportedly intended, as an interior and local government department paper claims, to fund programs aimed at “addressing the root causes of armed conflict through interventions on the ground.”

The 2015 budget allocated it a huge amount of P7.3 billion. Add to that a related program called “Socio-Economic Component of the Normalization Process,” costing P2.5 billion, and this Administration has a further P9.7 billion kitty that it can use in any way it wants, just as long as the funds are spent in “seven Pamana zones,” supposedly where the problem of insurgency exists.

These are, as they appear in a government list, the “Cordillera, Bicol-Cordillera-Mindoro, Samar, Negros-Panay, Davao-Compostela Valley-CARAGA, Central Mindanao, Zamboanga-Basilan-Sulu-Tawi-Tawi.”

“Conflict areas” they certainly are, but any political analyst would recognize them as regions that are not only the country’s vote-rich areas but also – such as Central Mindanao – where “traditionally” the political bosses deliver the votes.

That P9.7 billion fund is larger than the budgets of such departments as tourism, science and technology, and trade and industry. It is nearly the equivalent of the P10 billion allocated for socialized housing.

It doesn’t seem coincidental that the Pamana funds of the Interior and Local Government department, headed by Mar Roxas – still the President’s likely candidate in 2016 – have steadily increased from P1 billion in 2012 to P1.5 billion in 2014 to a huge P3.1 billion this year.

The DILG received under the 2015 budget law another P1.5 billion for its
participation in the “Socio-Economic Component of the Normalization Process.”

What does the DILG Pamana funds finance? According to its report, “(small) local roads, evacuation centers, water supply systems, community infrastructure projects, as well as “capacities of LGUs.” How are the funds released? Mainly through the municipalities.

That is, Pamana is just like pork-barrel funds, the only difference being, that here, they are utilized in the “conflict” areas. Who decides which municipalities receive the Pamana funds? Not Congress, but the Interior and Local Government secretary, Roxas.

The Commission on Audit could have enlightened us if Pamana funds, indeed, are “addressing the root causes of the conflict.” Its latest publicly-available audit report on the DILG proper (i.e. the department itself, not its attached agencies), however, is only for 2012.

Strangely, it reviewed all the DILG programs such as that on implementing the “Performance Challenge Fund” and on protecting senior citizens. Nothing, though, on its Pamana funds – whether it used these funds appropriately, or even if it used at all the P1 billion given it in 2012. Does that mean that COA would provide the public with a report on the DILG’s use of its 2015 Pamana fund of P3 billion, two years later, in 2017?

The P3 billion DILG Pamana funds, together with the P1.5 billion for the “normalization process,” aren’t the only pork-like money Roxas can disburse at his whim.

The bigger one actually, is the DILG’s P5.7 billion allocation from the P21-billion Bottom-Up Budgeting Projects (BUB), as I discussed in my column on Friday (“The new pork is BUB, boys”, Jan 20).

The DILG’s BUB allocation, in fact, is the biggest, followed by that of the Agriculture department, with P4.3 billion worth of BUB projects. DILG under the 2015 budget also has P1.8 billion for its Potable Water Supply project and P1.2 billion “Housing Program for Informal Settler Families.” (Why is the DILG involved in such tasks that are really those of other departments?)

Noble the purported intentions of these programs are, they take on a diabolical motive if one realizes that it will be Roxas who will determine which municipality or even barangay would get a BUB project, a potable water well, or a housing unit.

Altogether, this pork-like kitty directly under Roxas’ control this year amounts to P13.3 billion. Support his bid for the presidency in 2016, or promise to do so, and you’ll get your share of these funds for your town.

I bet that amount will increase to P15 billion in 2016, as nobody is protesting such scandalous de facto campaign funds being given by Congress to Roxas.

No wonder that despite his consistently low voter-preference ratings (despite the efforts of mercenary pollsters to boost them), Roxas isn’t giving up. Why, he even exudes an inexplicable confidence.

tiglao.manilatimes@gmail.com
FB: Rigoberto Tiglao

Instituting lies

By Emil Jurado

In my over half a century as a journalist—and I have gone full circle in print, radio and television—I have never seen an administration that has institutionalized lying like this one.

Take, for instance, that sour note during the journey of mercy and compassion of Pope Francis to the Philippines. In welcoming the pope at Malacañang, President Aquino showed his rudeness, arrogance and bad manners. He castigated the clergy in front of the pope by accusing priests and nuns of being silent to the alleged abuses of the past administration, which he said he was still trying to rectify.

Worse, Mr. Aquino also lied through his teeth. It’s a fact that some members of the clergy, notably retired Archbishop Oscar Cruz of Dagupan and Lingayen, was former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s arch-critic!

I know presidential spokesmen are paid to tell lies about their boss, but when Sonny Coloma says that the President was just telling the truth, he simply insults our intelligence.

* * *

Still, the biggest liar of all in the Cabinet is the woman with a streak of red on her hair. I am talking about Department of Social Welfare and Development Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Soliman, who has been exposed as hiding the homeless in a resort in Nasugbu, Batangas when the pope came to town.

That was a clear attempt to show the Holy Father that there were no homeless street dwellers along his route.

This was supposedly not the first time. Last year, during the Asean Summit, the homeless were brought to Island Cove resort in Cavite.

And remember when Soliman said in a Cabinet meeting that there were no longer Yolanda survivors living in tents? Well there still are, and they are still many!

A congressional investigation is a kid-glove treatment for Soliman. My gulay, she deserves to be tarred and thrown in jail!

With one lie after another, lying may as well be the legacy of the Aquino administration. 

* * *

Alphaland President Mario “Babes” Oreta sent a letter to former Makati Vice Mayor Ernesto Mercado amid reports that the latter may implicate Alphaland in his testimonies against Vice President Jejomar Binay. This was in connection with the Alphaland prime property deal with the Boy Scout of the Philippines. Oreta warned that whatever the former vice mayor would say against the deal could “blow up in Mercado’s face.”

Sure enough, Mercado told the Senate Yellow-Ribbon subcommittee of three-Senators Koko Pimentel as chairman with Alan Peter Cayetano and Antonio Trillanes as members, about how the Vice President got P200 million as “kickbacks” from the Alphaland-BSP deal on the former Sime Darby (Goodrich) property at the corner of Ayala Avenue Extension and Malugay Street in Makati. But he did not have a shred of evidence that the deal was anomalous. It also showed that Mercado was lying.

In the first place, it was Mercado who negotiated and signed the contract with Oreta. In that negotiation, in Oreta’s words in his letter, he told Mercado, “I am sure you will remember that you made less than subtle hint that some ‘benefits’ were due to you for agreeing to conclude the project, and I am sure that you will also remember what I explained to you that Alphaland was a joint venture company with the Ashmore Group and that every transaction was a joint venture company with the Ashmore Group and that every transaction was closely scrutinized by Ashmore.” Thus, it was impossible for Alphaland to agree to give you such ‘benefits.”

Santa Banana, in other words, it was Mercado who was asking for “kickback” that Alphaland could not give because Ashmore would not be a party to corruption. No less than Senator Pimentel said that there was no proof supporting Mercado’s allegations.

So will the sub-committees continue with the hearings?

No wonder the Vice President dared the Senate panel to come up with its committee report.

In the same statement of Binay, he asked how Mercado became a whistle blower under the Witness Protection Program when all he has been saying have been allegations bereft of evidence.

That the Alphaland-BSP deal was not only above board but good for the Boy Scout of the Philippine is clear. But, what is sad about it that private corporations having deals with government are now being dragged into it simply because some senators are salivating to become either President or Vice President.

Indeed, politics is like looking into a garbage can.

‘Responsible parenthood’ and ‘ideological colonization’

by FRANCISCO TATAD

A couple of local broadsheets have upset many readers by quoting Pope Francis on their front pages as saying, “Don’t breed like rabbits.” This wasn’t a simple case of a “sound bite biting back,” as a colleague on this page has suggested; it was a case of the conscript media manipulating the quote to make it appear as though the Pope were reproaching Filipinos for being excessively procreative. They aren’t, and he wasn’t; he never did.

The quote was taken from the Pope’s airborne press conference on his flight back to Rome at the end of his four-day apostolic and state visit to the Philippines. The transcript of that interview, translated unofficially from the Italian into English by one of the traveling journalists, has been published online, and shows the context of how the “rabbits,” as it were, came out of the forest.

How did the talk about rabbits begin? In trying to explain the Church’s position on responsible parenthood, the Pope cited the case of one woman he had met some months ago in some parish somewhere (certainly not in the Philippines), who had undergone seven caesareans already, and was pregnant again with her eighth child.

The Pope said he had rebuked her, saying, “Do you want to leave seven orphans?” He lamented the fact that some people seemed to think that in order to be good Catholics, “we have to be like rabbits.” He did not use the verb “breed” though—the press freely supplied the idiom. Nor was the Philippines alluded to in the Pope’s statement. For me, “breeding like rabbits” is not pejorative per se; it becomes so not because it suggests too many baby rabbits arriving all at once, but because it suggests Mother Rabbit and Father Rabbit leaving their baby rabbits to fend for themselves as soon as they are born.

Not the population, but the policies and structures

Apparently the papal quote threatened quickly to acquire a life of its own. So in his regular Wednesday audience at St. Peter’s in Rome, where he was most effusive about his visit to the Philippines, the Pope also spoke of the relationship between poverty and population. He said large families (which no longer exist in most countries) do not cause poverty, but wrong economic policies and structures do.

It was the propaganda broadsheets, which have long been pushing for what Francis has called “ideological colonization” of Philippine society that put their own slant on the ‘rabbits quote’ to make it appear that the Pope was admonishing the Filipinos, for whom he had nothing but the highest praise. This is the exact text:
“Christoph Schmidt (CIC): How does the Church respond to the criticisms about its position on birth control given that the world population is growing so much. And to the criticism that poverty in the Philippines is due to the fact that Filipino women have an average of three (3) children each?”

This question proceeds from a defective premise—-“that the world population is growing so much.” This expresses an ideological position rather than a cold scientific fact. Although Africa, China and India continue to grow, Singapore, Japan and the whole of Europe have fallen into a demographic recession, and the hardest- hit countries are going through a cruel “demographic winter,” without any apparent hope of Spring.

Depopulation the real problem

Now, because of advances in medical science, people have stopped dropping off like flies. Yet despite declining birth rates, the world’s actual population continues to grow, no matter how marginal. This allows population controllers to turn a blind eye on the advancing specter of “depopulation,” which is this century’s real problem, and to continue chanting the mantra about “overpopulation.”

UN statistics show the following population growth rates for some countries: Japan, -0.02%; UK, – 0.48; France, -0.49; Switzerland, -0.38; Spain,-0.77; Portugal, -0.37; Germany, 1.07; Belgium, -0.05; Austria, -0.01; Italy, -1.13; Denmark, 0.36; Russia, -0.51, etc.

Philippine population growth rate declining

With respect to the Philippines, the birth rate, according to the UN, is down to 1.72 %, and falling. The total fertility rate, as the journalist above points out, is 3 children per woman of childbearing age, just a notch above the replacement level of 2.1. The Pope understands this better than many journalists and politicians, thus his answer:
“Pope Francis: I think the number of 3 (children) per family that you mentioned, it is the one experts say is important to keep the population going—-three per couple. When it goes below this, the other extreme happens, like what is happening in Italy. I have heard, I do not know if it is true, that in 2024 there will be no money to pay pensioners (because of) the fall in population.

“Therefore, to give you an answer, the key word is the one the Church always uses all the time and even I use it: it is responsible parenthood. How do we do this? With dialogue. Each person with his pastor seeks how to do that responsible parenthood.

“That example I mentioned shortly before, about that woman who was expecting her eighth (child) and already had seven who were born with caesareans, that is an irresponsibility. (That woman might say), ‘No, but I trust in God.’ But God gives you methods to be responsible. Some think that, excuse me if I use that word, that in order to be good Catholics we have to be like rabbits. No. Responsible parenthood!

This is clear, and that is why in the Church there are marriage groups, there are experts in this matter, there are pastors, one can seek and know many, many ways out that are licit and that have helped this. You did well to ask me this.

“Another thing in relation to this is that for the most poor people, a child is a treasure. It is true that you have to be prudent here too, but for them a child is a treasure. (Some would say) ‘God knows how to help me’ and perhaps some of them are not prudent, this is true. But let us also look at the generosity of that father and mother who see a treasure in every child.”

Corruption is now the system

One point which the Pope failed to reiterate as part of his answer was something he already said to his Filipino audience, and which he said in answer to a separate question in his airborne news conference. Namely, “the effect of corruption.”

“Corruption is the order of the day in today’s world, and the corrupt attitude easily and immediately finds a nest in the institutions,” the Pope emphasized. This is absolutely true under Aquino where “corruption has become the system,” according to the National Transformation Council.

Aquino has tried to blame corruption solely on past administrations, but it has grown exponentially under his watch since 2010. From the pork barrel system alone, which the Supreme Court has declared unconstitutional, and where it has directed the prosecution of all those involved in its manipulation and misuse with dispatch, the unpunished plunder by top government officials in the last couple of years has reached hundreds of billions of pesos.

False claims about ‘responsible parenthood’

The danger is real that just because the Pope has started talking about “responsible parenthood” to the media, Aquino will now claim he is on the same page as the Pope on this question. After all, he had no inhibition in calling the Pope his “kindred spirit” during his courtesy call at Malacanang. Secondly, he had the temerity to call the Reproductive Health Law, which puts the rights of married couples and parents in the hands of the State, a “Responsible Parenthood” Act, and to bribe the members of Congress in order to ram it through despite the wide and vigorous opposition to it across the length and breadth of the islands. Thirdly, Aquino’s understanding of “responsible parenthood” has nothing in common with the Church teaching on the same subject.

For Aquino “responsible parenthood” allows the State to dictate on married couples how they are to live their conjugal lives, how many children they will have and when they are to have them, how they are to educate their children on the most important moral and religious aspects of their being. This is authoritarian control, which has no basis in the moral law or in the Constitution.

Erroneous ruling on population control

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court erred when it called the RH Law a population control measure but in the next breath forgot that the fathers of the Constitution at the outset had rejected the idea of population control, and the finished document itself contains nothing allowing it. This judicial amnesia was obviously induced by the “ideological colonization.”

Correctly understood, “responsible parenthood” is practiced when a married couple (of one man and one woman) decides to avoid a new birth for a short while or even indeterminately for serious reasons, and in respect of the moral law. Alternatively, a married couple practices responsible parenthood when despite all their difficulties they decide to raise a large family out of their love and generosity—-in “full recognition of their duties towards God, towards themselves, towards the family and towards society in a proper hierarchy of values.”

What will Aquino do about Garin?

But it is one of the least understood ideas by the administration. Just how severely Aquino misunderstands it we shall soon see when he finally deals with the proposal to have former Congresswoman Janet Garin of Iloilo named as Secretary of Health, directly in charge of the implementation of the RH Law against the fundamental human rights and constitutional liberties of the Filipino people.

Garin is a population control fanatic in the service of the global population control lobby who was at the forefront of the effort to ram through the said law. One of her more scandalous acts of late was to assure her former colleagues in the House, in the company of another pro-RH fanatic, CHED’s Patricia Licuanan, that the congressmen who were earlier told they would lose their pork barrel of P70 million a year after the Supreme Court had declared the Priority Development Assistance Fund and Aquino’s Disbursement Acceleration Program unconstitutional, would instead receive P108 million in 2015, through some other special arrangements.
She is no friend of the Filipino people.

fstatad@gmail.com

MILF killing of PNP commandos an omen

Manila Times Editorial

IT’S happening again. Aquino administration officials, including those involved in the campaign to give the Moro Islamic Liberation Front a substate or autonomous region to be called the Bangsamoro (the Moro country or the Moro state or the Moro nation), and their brownnosing followers in the military, are blaming the at least 49 Philippine National Police Special Action Force (PNP-SAF) commandos killed by warriors of the MILF last Sunday.

The slain commandos, said PNP Chief Leonardo Espina, were pursuing a well-known terrorist belonging to the Southeast Asian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah. That man, a Malaysian, Zulkifli bin Hir alias Marwan, is among the United States’ most wanted terrorist and has a $5 million bounty on his head. Marwan is said to have been with a Filipino bombmaker, Basit Usman. He is a commander of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), an army of former or current MILF members, who have been committing outrages against Christians and government units whenever they feel aggrieved over something.

The MILF leaders have been talking from both sides of their mouths about the BIFF.

That is why it is not clear to government police and military if these fighters are still MILF men or now enemy defectors.

Two years ago, in Al-Barka, Basilan province, 19 government soldiers were killed in pursuit of terrorists. MILF fighters ambushed and massacred the 19 soldiers. Investigators appointed by the Aquino administration concluded that the 19 slain soldiers were to blame because they had not given the MILF authorities information about what they were doing. But how could they have done that when they were in hot pursuit of enemies of the Republic? How could they inform the MILF, which is made up of the same warrior terrorists they were going after?

The House ad hoc panel on the Bangsamoro Basic Law suspended its hearings. The Senate also suspended its hearing on the Bangsamoro Basic Law.

“Certainly, the death of the policemen sets back everything. How can we proceed if these threats are happening? On whether we can rebound from this, it will depend on the report of the [government] agencies [on the incidents],” Chairman of the House committee Rufus Rodriguez said. He has asked the authorities of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, the PNP and President Aquino’s Office of the Presidential Assistant on the Peace Process to submit results of their investigation on the massacre of the 49 (some say 52) PNP commandos by February 6.

Antipolo City Rep. Romeo Acop, a retired police brigadier general, said the viciousness of the MILF is unforgivable. “How is killing of people who are performing an official duty justified? In all norms of conduct, that is not justified,” Acop told The Manila Times. He added that “the MILF should be made answerable. Otherwise, the government will lose its credibility.” But the Aquino government has long ago lost its credibility!

Congressman Acop’s words are diametrically opposed by Aquino officials eager to get on with Congress’ passage of the Bangsamoro Basic Law to please the MILF, their Malaysian patrons and the Western Powers. These officials are agreeing with the MILF commanders’ claim that the PNP commandos deserve to die because they entered MILF “territory” without coordinating with the MILF command.

Even before the creation of the “symmetrical to the Philippine government” (meaning independent) Bangsamoro state, the MILF separatist rebels already have their “sovereign” territory that our Republic’s policemen cannot enter.