Category Archive for: bayan

komentaryo

ChaCha: Duterte’s endgame #SONA2018 #NoToChaCha

The Duterte government is on overdrive, providing us all with requisite distractions from the fact that the Duterte-appointed consultative committee has drafted a federal constitution to the President’s liking, and we’re all back to this discussion, not about whether or not we even want charter change, or if it’s necessary at all, but about how it’s going to happen.

Let that sink in.

Duterte’s propagandists and chacha advocates have been able to bring it to this point when we’re not even discussing whether or not charter change will happen but how it will happen. The President and his people have muscled their way through this charter change push — we’re talking THREE different federal constitutions after all since August 2016 — and it has been able to do this by utilizing what we’ve seen government do consistently and viciously the past two years: chaos-by-design.

We complain that his communications team is terrible, that they are incompetent, but that is part of the grand design. One controversy over one incompetence over one corruption controversy, on loop, layered with the President’s big mouth, and here we are: faced with the threat of charter change so close, sold as a done deal, discussed as if we, the people, have no choice in it.

It is as Duterte and his men have planned. And I realize now that ChaCha was always been Duterte’s endgame, federalism not just a campaign promise he made, but a promise made to him.  (more…)

komentaryo

ENOUGH

President Duterte has said he would resign if “enough women” protest the incident in South Korea, where on stage, in front of his Cabinet members and the Filipino community, he decided it proper to ask a woman he had handpicked from the audience to give him a kiss on the lips.

The woman said in an interview: “Nag-black<out> ako, hindi ko ma-explain, kinakabahan ako, natatakot, excited ako, thankful. Kasi kahit nasa Pilipinas ka, suntok sa buwan na makikita mo ‘yung President.” She then said the kiss was nothing but a way to entertain the audience – echoing what Duterte said after the incident. But her words highlight a critical fact of this encounter: the power relations between the President of the Philippines, and a female audience member.

It is Duterte’s power as President that made this encounter possible. It is Duterte’s power as President that dictated this woman’s reaction, which the President should have known to handle with dignity and distance: this reaction is borne of the fact of his position. But Duterte decided this moment was about him, and that he would use his power over this woman to ask for anything. The mere fact that he asked for a kiss already reeks of malice. (more…)

komentaryo

The right questions about #BuhayCarinderia: and some hope for DOT

New Tourism Secretary Berna Romulo-Puyat had no choice but to hit the ground running, what with a Department of Tourism that’s suffered for two years under one Wanda Tulfo-Teo, who (and I repeat) already had a blind item against her as early as November 2016, only so many months into office. That blind item would be confirmed as true by the complaint of Concerned DOT Employees in June 2017, a complaint that was left ignored by the Office of the President and Bong Go’s Presidential Action Center.

Romulo-Puyat should also be looking at all those “shows” that have USec Kat de Castro traveling the country, talking about different sites, eating food, doing activities — it is so badly made, and it is unclear who it is talking to, that it is clearly a waste of public funds given just its lack of clear vision, audience, and goodness gracious, terrible production values. And please please, nip that proposal to build a Nickolodeon in El Nido, and to hold the Miss Universe pageant in the country AGAIN, when there has yet to even be an accounting of the money DOT spent for the last Miss U Pageant here.

Hoorays are in order though: Romulo-Puyat is looking into the travesty that is Cesar Montano, and thank heavens for that. This is a man after all who already had a corruption complaint filed against him — again with Go’s Presidential Action Center — in March 2017, which is also proof positive that Duterte’s “no to corruption” stance is only applicable to some people, but not to others (it took him two years to fire Wanda Teo after all).

But Romulo-Puyat shouldn’t just be looking at whether Buhay Carinderia is legal or not. She should be looking at whether the project is even well thought out, if it is necessary at all, and if in fact it will serve the karinderya owners, the communities that cradle them, and tourism — the kind that will bring in foreigners because of our food. This is not merely about whether it’s above board, it’s about whether or not the P80-million pesos the P320 million pesos could not be used for better, say, for real projects that push for the karenderya, bakery, street food, as reason enough for tourists to visit.  (more…)

komentaryo

Damage control, the Tulfos, and returning the P60M pesos

Will it matter at all that the Tulfos are returning the P60 million pesos that it received from the Department of Tourism’s (DOT’s) advertising fund placed with PTV4?

The answer is no. Because while that’s P60M in taxpayers’ money that changed hands from DOT to PTV4 to the Tulfos’ production outfit Bitag Media, and of course we want it returned, there is little here that tells us it won’t happen again. Neither is there any indication that more of it isn’t happening. See, there are just too many other questions about this triumvirate of two government agencies and one private company, bound together by the Tulfo name. There are too many questions that demand answers.  (more…)

komentaryo

#WandaTeo, the Tulfos, conflict-of-interest: What innocence?

On May 7, the Tulfos and Department of Tourism Secretary Wanda Tulfo Teo announced through Teo’s lawyer Ferdinand Topacio that the Tulfo brothers’ Bitag Media is returning the P60 million pesos they received as payment for DOT ad placements on the show Kilos Pronto — a Tulfo show that is blocktimer on PTV4.

This, after Teo insisted that there was no conflict-of-interest since the DOT’s deal was with PTV4, not Bitag Media. This, after the Tulfo brothers went ballistic online, calling out other media personalities who put into question their sister, and the brothers themselves — because this is basic: if YOU are blocktiming with a network, that network is NOT supposed to give you ads. In fact Bitag Media has to find its own ads in order to pay for whatever blocktiming amount they are paying the network. This set-up, no matter how they spin it? Is highly irregular.

Topacio yesterday “insisted that Teo and her brothers are innocent,” and here I’m going to tell you how that is impossible.  (more…)