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Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

Last Monday, Rep. Walden Bello of Akbayan Party delivered a scathing speech condemning former President GMA for high corruption. He said that corruption was the signature of the Arroyo government. He condemned the allies and cohorts of the previous government, whose acts he called porcine. He said that GMA should be brought to the National Penitentiary, and that she doesn’t deserve to be in Congress. (Download the speech here)

The speech was delivered shortly after former President GMA had her oath-taking before the members of Congress as the representative of the 4th district of Pampanga.

In the House of Gloria, what Walden did cannot be tolerated. Walden was interrupted several times during his speech, with one veteran representative saying that it was taking too long. Another representative – remember him, his name is Rep. Marcoleta of Alagad – complained that Walden, a professor and a public intellectual, was tackling too many issues, and it was too much for his brain to handle. Read the rest of this entry »

Rep. Abante during the Anti-Discrimination Bill hearing

Here’s some good news: three candidates from the conservative bloc lost in the senatorial and congressional elections. Bienvenido Abante, an incumbent representative in District 6, Manila City, lost to his rival Sandy Ocampo, a former congresswoman and currently Manila’s deputy mayor. Atty. Jo Imbong, legal counsel of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, ran for senator under the Catholic church-backed Ang Kapatiran Party, is among the bottom-dwellers in the senatorial race. Another pro-life bet, ex-senator Kit Tatad, has been unable to surpass the Top 20 benchmark.

Rep. Abante, as Chair of the House Committee on Human Rights, blocked the passage of a bill penalizing discrimination against lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgenders. Last year, Rep. Abante filed a bill criminalizing same-sex marriage and prohibiting co-habitation among between partners of the same sex.

He also opposed the enactment of the RH Bill, a controversial measure that provides access to reproductive health information and contraceptives.

Atty. Imbong, on the other hand, is the CBCP lobbyist that has rabidly campaigned against the RH Bill and Anti-Discrimination Bill in most congressional hearings. A “pro-life” advocate, Atty. Imbong has labeled the above bills as part of the Church-opposed DEATH bills, a cluster of measures promoting divorce, euthanasia, abortion, total reproductive health, and homosexuality (same-sex marriage). Read the rest of this entry »

Elections is fiesta season in the Philippines. And if we truly are what we eat, then Filipino politicians are aptly symbolized by pork and grease.

The culinary theme is not green, yellow or orange, it’s cholesterol. Everything is deep-fried, served with fat and layered with oil. When politicians speak of the vote-rich L to L corridor, they actually mean liempo to lechon.

Grease is a main-stay in Philippine politics. Political affiliations shift – expect the entire Lakas machinery to go to Villar (ok, some are LP-bound) – but what  isn’t going to change is grease. Once, in a sortie in Tarlac, the whole LP entourage went to the ancestral home of the Aquinos for lunch, which consisted of tocino, homemade corned beef swimming in oil, and fried hito. My face is the epicenter of oiliness, but these dishes make my face seem fresh and healthy.

If it isn’t homemade grease, it’s fastfood oil – with MSG. If the L sign means ‘Lechon’, then V is vetsin (or Vitter Villitants, but that’s another story). When meals are not hosted by local politicians, we get our regular dose of fat and MSG from Jollibee or McDonalds. Breakfast at McDonalds in SLEX, late-night post-sortie dinner in KFC NLEX. Gone were the days when you carry bags of local pasalubongs at the airport; I actually found myself carrying in Davao City’s airport McDo take-outs that we bought from a drive-thru in Gen San – and it didn’t feel absurd.

In a solo sortie in HK, what started as a silly wish – eating dimsum filled with broth – ended up becoming an obsession as the day began transforming into a classic monster. There was the usual high-energy activities, the small crises that required troubleshooting, coordinating with Manila for other events – everything was Multitasking 2.0. Eating dimsum became a rallying point, my own liberation day, and maybe a cry for help. But the chance to go to a dimsum house didn’t come. I remember having breakfast, lunch didn’t take place (there was some time for snacks, but that was it), and soon after, Risa and I were at the airport, tired, each nursing a cup of warm drink from Starbucks, sitting quietly while waiting for our flights. Dinner was out of the question, and dimsum was, well, a figment of my own chismis.

I was tired and hungry when I finally reached home a few hours later. But the moment I stepped inside my apartment, next day’s sortie was already there, waiting. I opened my laptop, googled McDonald’s, and, by opening a new document, started a new day.

(Epic fail for the that one-entry a day challenge. No excuses, but hey, it’s 15 days till election day. Next blog should be about preparing for debates. I’m blogging from Legaspi City, and we’re waiting for Ms. Kris for a sortie in Legaspi and Tabaco.)

24 days before D-day. If I don’t do this now, I won’t be able to do this at all.

The challenge is to blog about the campaign trail, an entry a day. I’ve told someone before that I’ve been remiss with my blogging duties because of the campaign – the hectic schedule, and the rare lulls that are oftentimes spent to catch up with errands that are left behind.

Why not blog about the campaign trail, he suggested.

He’s right. A senatorial campaign is a strange monster . You jump in, you get swallowed. I suppose writing about it would make it easier to digest.

There is more familiarity in a party-list campaign: you deal with constituents you’ve worked with, the niches are clear, and the scale follows boundaries that you have traversed in the past. You know your hooks, you’ve been there, you’ve done that, and you know the limits of the system itself. It is a known playground.

But now, the campaign trail doesn’t end. The next day and its own mob of tasks, statements, and meetings have a way of creeping from behind, without warning, an intruder that has the gall to welcome you to your own home. A week becomes a continuous, seamless loop of days. Before you sleep, no matter if its at 2 or 4 am, you need to meet your deadlines, and then wake up early so you could do some finishing touches, make the sound bite sharper, or the point more resonant.  You are completely aware that it could be for naught, especially in country where politics is a narrative of personal dramas, not of platforms or issues. So you just go ahead, praying that what you’re doing can make a dent.

I admit that there are moments when we ask ourselves why we are doing this. The party-list race is our comfort zone, and had we opted to limit ourselves in that arena, the campaign trail would unfurl with a certain predictability – the kind of messages you can and cannot deploy, the numbers you need to crunch. A party-list campaign would still be hard, but definitely not as hard as a senatorial bid.

But in the middle of the daily grind, we constantly get reminders why we are here – an old woman who handed Risa some money as contribution to her campaign; a student who professed his support, unabashedly, and delivered what is perhaps the most compelling speech about change that I’ve heard since this campaign started; the father who introduced Risa to his young girl, and started conversing with her as people went in and out of the LRT. All of these happened when we weren’t preaching to the choir, while eating in Jollibee or while in transit. It is when we are with them that I realize that we haven’t lost our moorings.

So what does it mean to be Rep. Jules Ledesma of Negros Occidental?

As a member of the House of Representatives, he received P4.2 million a year for operational expenses, the so-called Representative’s Block Fund (RBF). Since they don’t have to report to Congress how the RBF was spent, you may actually say that it is their discretionary fund. That’s P12.6 million in one term, and that’s on top of his monthly P35,000 salary.

That’s nothing, of course, compared to unpopular pork barrel. Rep. Ledesma received at least P70 million a year for his Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) and his lump sum DPWH fund for hard or infra projects. I said at least because the pork barrel that you receive depends on your proximity to the powers that be, so if you are a member of the majority there’s a huge chance that you’d get more. You may also clinch more projects through congressional insertions, which means that while the annual General Appropriations Act (the national budget) is being crafted by the Executive, you insert certain items  in the budget of government agencies. There is just an agreement between the line agency and the representative that the allocation would be released to the solon because it was included at his behest. Since it is hard to determine if Rep. Ledesma got additional porks from Madam President or if he was able to insert any items in the past three budget cycles, let us assume that he got at least P210 million for the entire term.

(Do the PDAF and the DPWH lump sum fund go directly to the solons? Not really. But they have a say on how it will be used. Corruption happens when, in the case of hard or infra projects, the solons intervene in the awarding of the project to contractors that they favor and get a kickback from the deal. Soft projects are easier to pocket, since they are usually given in cash to local government officials close the solon thru financial assistance, livelihood projects, etc. How much actually goes to corruption requires investigation, but Budget Sec. Rolando Andaya once said that as much as 40% of the pork barrel goes to the pockets of politicians. Coming from a cabinet secretary, we can say that 40% is an underestimation.)

Rep. Jules Ledesma got at least P222.6 million for this term.

If he was only present thrice for the session, then the presence of his highness in the august chamber of Congress cost taxpayers P74.2 million a day. He said that he was actually busy performing his duty in his district. FTW, mister. In the Rules of Congress, it is clear that his main duty is to legislate and attend plenary sessions.

Our hard-working solon filed three bills, all of which are local:

• HB03057 – AN ACT RESERVING CERTAIN PORTION OF PUBLIC DOMAIN AND DECLARING THE SAME ALIENABLE AND DISPOSABLE FOR TOWNSITE USE OF THE MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT OF SALVADOR BENEDICTO, PROVINCE OF NEGROS OCCIDENTAL AND FOR OTHER PURPOSE
• HB04150 – AN ACT DECLARING A PARCEL OF LAND OF THE PUBLIC DOMAIN AN AGRICULTURAL LAND FOR TOWN SITE PURPOSE OF THE MUNICIPALITY OF SALVADOR BENEDICTO, PROVINCE OF NEGROS OCCIDENTAL, AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES
• HB06254 – AN ACT DECLARING THE 1ST OF JULY OF EVERY YEAR A SPECIAL NONWORKING HOLIDAY IN THE CITY OF SAN CARLOS, NEGROS OCCIDENTAL IN OBSERVANCE OF THE CITY’S CHARTER DAY

Taxpayers paid him P74.2 million per bill. Expensive bills. Grab a copy, they’re probably laced with unobtanium.

There you go, the perks of being Jules. Shocked? Don’t be. After all, Rep. Jules Ledesma is just one out of many.

Manila Rep. Bienvenido Abante (Vice Chair of the Committee on Human Rights) filed a bill to criminalize same-sex marriage in the Philippines.

On its face, the bill is both farcical and dangerous. I’ll explain why later, but let’s go through the bill’s salient points first:

• Over-all framework: In line with the constitutional declarations recognizing the sanctity of marriage, it seeks to criminalize the ‘highly immoral, scandalous, and detestable act’ of same-sex marriage.
• It penalizes several acts:

1. Failure to declare one’s true sex or gender for the purpose of securing a marriage license. The penalty is imprisonment from 7 to 12 years and a fine ranging from P50,000 to P100,000.
2. the issuance of marriage license to persons of the same sex or gender, which it seeks to penalize with imprisonment from 6 to 10 years and a fine from P50,000 to P100,000.
3. solemnization of marriage between persons of the same sex or gender (same penalty )
4. cohabitation between persons of the same sex or gender who live together as ‘husband and wife’. This merits the highest penalty: imprisonment from 10 to 15 years and a fine from P100,000 to P150,000.

• Offenders who are in public service shall be dismissed and barred from being employed by the  government. If the offender is legally authorized to solemnize marriage, then his license shall be revoked permanently.
• If the offender is a foreigner, he or she shall be deported immediately.
• If enacted, the bill would require the Local Civil Registrar to ascertain – thru the birth certificate – the true sex or gender of the parties applying for marriage license. Any marriage license issued or any marriage solemnized in violation of the law shall be deemed null and void.

Let’s make a distinction between the intention of the bill and the its substance. The intention is clear: it wants to prohibit commitment ceremonies for LGBT couples. These ceremonies are not legally binding, but for a bigot like Abante such an expression of love must be grating that he feels it should be criminalized. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, Manila Rep. Bienvenido Abante, a Baptist Pastor-turned-legislator, pious and close to God, delivered a speech to declare that the Ondoy tragedy is an Act of God.

I would not debate on the issue of God and disasters. I won’t even go into this ‘holier-than-thou’ stance and claims that our so-called wicked ways led to this divine punishment. What I do know is that storms are getting deadlier because of climate change, a phenomenon caused by humans, by our lifestyle. From what I see, too,  garbage – plastics, in particular – clogged the Metro’s drainage, waterways, & creeks, and thus aggravating this problem.

But I will tell you more about Rep. Abante. Talk to him and you’d get the sense that he  seriously believes that he’s the voice of God, to the point that he treats his flatulence as a wisp of the Holy Ghost. He can silence you (Oh, that he did to several LGBT activists in a hearing of the House human rights committee), and he struts as if the post-deluge sun shines from his bottom.  His breath smells of incense.

Rep. Abante used to be the Chair of Congress’ Human Rights Committee. He blocked the passage of an anti-discrimination bill that protects the rights of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders. He’s also rabidly against the Reproductive Health Bill. As the current chair of the Committee on Information in Congress, he  also championed a pro-censorship measure, the Right of Reply Bill.

For all his piety, he was put in the Hall of Shame of Human Rights Watch, a prestigious international human rights NGO based in New York.

But look – Rep. Abante may be close to God, but he’s no Noah. So when the floodwater was rising in Manila, when hundreds of families in his district were scampering to find floating devices, a Philippine Coast Guard rubber boat was reportedly deployed to fetch Rep. Abante’s son and his barkada in Philippine Columbian Sports Club in Paco, Manila.

That must be the so-called ‘Act of God’ that Rep. Abante is talking about, the one he’s really familiar with – when public officials play god, and use their power to push for their own interests over the survival of the people.