Category Archive for: gobyerno

komentaryo

HR1109, ConAss, ChaCha, GMA Forever? WTF!

It is everything and confusing, this whole enterprise of the Chacha or Charter Change. Because really, you listen to these congressmen and it seems like ChaCha isn’t related to a ConAss or Constituent Assembly isn’t related to GMA staying in power. And where is House Resolution 1109 – which was passed Tuesday night – in all of this?

The ConAss is one of the ways through which changes to the 1987 charter or constitution may be made. The ConAss will create a bicameral Philippine congress, which will bring together the Senate and Congress, to amend and revise the existing constitution. This process of changing the constitution we’ve come to call ChaCha.

BUT HR 1109 actually convenes a constitutional assembly that will be allowed to amend the constitution even without the Senate. To the proponents of this resolution — and the majority of Congress — this will only mean inviting the Senate to join in the ConAss. And yet, really, if the senators don’t need to vote, why the f*^! would they want/need to be there?

On the level of congress, the fact that HR 1109 was going to be discussed in the plenary – that is, to be debated on by the representatives – was problematic to begin with. HR 1109 was rejected by the committee on constitutional amendments two weeks ago, and yet on Monday (June 1), the committee wanted it to be discussed in the plenary.  When BayanMuna Rep Satur Ocampo raised the issue of rules, i.e., no resolution should be up for discussion in the plenary without being approved on the committee level they thought that it would take a while before HR 1109 would be brought up again.

But on Monday night, the committee on constitutional amendments suddenly has a positive vote for HR 1109 being brought to the plenary. By Tuesday afternoon, it was clear that they were going to railroad it – they after all have the numbers.

Now how will all this keep GMA in power?

Once the ConAss is convened, then the process of ChaCha will be underway. The goal is really to change our system of government from presidential to parliamentary, which will allow GMA to run – and obviously win – for congresswoman in her native Pampanga. Given that she has majority of the congressmen in her pockets, and these congressmen will necessarily win – by hook or by crook – in the 2010 elections (which Def. Sec. Puno has promised will happen, obvious ba kung bakit?), this will allow GMA to get elected as Prime Minister.

This was actually the headline of the Philippine Daily Inquirer on May 13: “GMA may run for PM. The use of “May” here isn’t “possibly run for PM”; instead it is “allowed to run for PM”.

Congress has said that having passed HR 1109, they are now aiming for a July 27 opening of the Constitutional Assembly, after GMA’s State of the Nation Address. Of course they also insist that there will be a referendum naman, to find out if the nation agrees with the amendments to the constitution. But really, diyan pa ba naman sila hindi mandadaya?

And as Sen. Pangilinan says, there is no money or time or capability for that referendum. The Comelec isn’t ready, which makes that referendum even more suspicious.

Besides, why the rush? Why the seeming desperation? As stuartsantiago says in “kon-ass (kokak)”, quoting from ellen tordesillas, this is because “Operation Gloria Forever” is “behind schedule.”

GMA and her cohorts insist that HR 1109, the ConAss and the ChaCha, are all about removing the 40% limit on foreign equity on land and businesses in the country.  But this is even more reason to fight the ChaCha. As it is, our farmers are fighting for land and life; as it is, the multinational/transnational corporations are oppressing our workers, controlling wage and benefits, disallowing unions, functioning autonomously from the State.

Using this as an excuse should get us even angrier. Salt on an open wound? Insult to injury? Or, what do they take us for? Stupid?

RAGE!  Today, June 3, in the streets of Congress. Come as individuals, as groups, as Filipinos who want to Oust GMA!

It is so fluggin’ time.

komentaryo

sex without love*

If there’s any soundbite that I absolutely hated hearing in relation to the Hayden Koh sex videos, it’s from Boy Abunda, saying that sex, whether on video or not, must be about LOVE.

Goodness. Is this the dark ages? How many women have been oppressed precisely by this notion of love? I love you girl, therefore sleep with me. This dialogue is what has brought women to bed, before they are of an age when they can handle it, before they are even aware of their bodies. This is what has allowed for women’s bodies to be made into objects, because they enter the bedroom and think, oh, I love this man and this must be the way to prove it.

Love is what has allowed women to imagine love triangles to be acceptable, precisely what has kept all these women in Hayden’s bed and on his camera, what has allowed for Vicky Belo to imagine that she must stay, to prove she loves him.

Talk of love in relation to these sex videos is an injustice to love.

But maybe this is really just us, as audience, in over our heads about these sex videos, enamored with the ongoing debate, the continued media coverage, the chismis. It really is so juicy, yes? But all of these seems like we are, as audience, unprepared to deal with sex as sex, period. Ill-equipped to deal with the kind of technology that propagates videos of two people getting it on. Unprepared to look at sex in the eye and view it for what it is: two bodies articulating desire.

For who’s to say there was sex but no love or any emotions, and vice versa? This is only obvious when the act is done with no consent, and that would make it rape, no ifs and buts about it. And yet this isn’t porn either, nor your usual sexy movie. Both of these are done for profit, and presume what it is that the audience wants to see, over and above anything else.

But these Hayden videos have more than consent, and just run-of-the-mill movie sex. It has enjoyment. It has desire. It has libog, in the Pinoy sense of lust-desire-passion-tulo-laway-bodies-against-each-other-bahala-na-si-Batman sense. Only real life – not necessarily true love – would allow for that kind of desire. And two bodies acknowledging that desire, acting on it, enjoying it, is difficult to ignore. And maybe shouldn’t be debased to the level of just a sex video.

Or easily, and simply, oppression of one woman, or two or three. In the aftermath of these videos, we are told to see only the woman’s body, and how she had no idea something like this was going to be released to the public. All we’ve seen, in fact, and considered, are the women’s bodies. What about Hayden? Is he not objectified as well in this whole enterprise of sex videos? Yes, he taped these sexcapades, but it is obvious that he was not the one who released them. That makes him a victim, too. And he is twice victimized by the fact that no one has seen him as victim. I’m not saying Katrina and the other girls aren’t victims, too, I’m saying that they are not the only ones.

But again, to us as audience, Hayden is not victim because we imagine that he is the one in power here. He’s the one in a position to enjoy the sex, the videotaping, the different positions. But what of the women? Did they not enjoy it as well?  Isn’t it possible that in this whole enterprise of sex-video-talk, that we are the ones bringing the discussion to the level of shame and embarrassment?

Isn’t it that it is us, as audience and chismosas, who have oppressed Katrina and Maricris and whoever else will come out in these videos, as women whose lives are now over? And aren’t we the ones to actually, and truly, give Hayden an even bigger ego, as we refuse to even acknowledge that he is oppressed too?

In our insistence that only the woman is oppressed here, aren’t we also allowing for Hayden to get away with it? To get away with imagining his power to be more than it actually is, to be something to be proud of? In the age of masculinity studies and hypermasculinity experimentation, this can be turned around in his favor, you know. And after all, despite the threat of losing his license to practice medicine, he will still find himself a career – if only in the eyes that have objectified him through these videos. And maybe if only as Vicky Belo’s constant man, the one she proves her true love through (an absolute craziness in itself, of course).

In the process, what we fail to do is bring this discussion to the level of sex as truth, as real, and as something that we must all – particularly the women – deal with and be responsible about. In the age of technology, yes, but also in the age of sex without love, or at least questionable/ unstable/dishonest love. Here, women are being taught to have the stomach, the mind, the heart, for every other consequence that happens after the sex. We are being told that we will be alone, with no laws to help us, no reproductive health consciousness to bank on. As such, we must all bring this to the level of responsibility, of talking about it beyond the chismis, of making women – and men – realize that in the end, we do pay. For what our body wants, and for heeding its otherwise normal desires, in the face of a society that has yet to be  mature about sex. And love.

Over and above whether it’s on video or not.

*Title taken from Sharon Olds’ poem :

Sex Without Love

How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice-skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other’s bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the     come to the     God     come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners: they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health–just factors, like the partner
in the bed, and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

From Strike Sparks, Selected Poems 1980-2002. U.S.: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. Page 24.

komentaryo

in defense of Nicole

This is a translation of the transcript of Joms Salvador’s comments on the unthinking and insensitive soundbites that have come out of Nicole’s last sworn statement.  Click here for the original Filipino version.

I could not help but respond to the views this note on Nicole’s “retraction” has elicited.

First, on the basis of what’s preferable or not, it is true that it would’ve been better had Nicole and her family not “backed out”, if they didn’t get tired and just pushed through with the fight. From any given perspective — as a woman, as a Filipino, even as a victim — no one can say that in the eyes of the public, it was better that Nicole had executed her last affidavit.

But on the point of what is right and what is wrong — a moralistic enterprise that has as its by-products the notions of whether Nicole is scared or brave, selfish or selfless, shameful or decent — this should not be an issue here.

The reason is simple: we are not Nicole, we are not the woman who has had to face the distaste and ambivalence of the public, we are not the Filipina victim who is fighting a rapist, protected by both the US and Philippine governments.

Also, given thatNicole has conceded, has backed out at this point, does this mean that she wasn’t raped at all? If we analyze her affidavit well, she did not say that she wasn’t raped. What she said was this: she wasn’t sure if a rape happened. She said that maybe it was her fault, maybe she did or said something that allowed for her and Smith to become intimate.

Nowhere in the affidavit did Nicole say that she was taking back all the circumstances that surrounded the rape in Subic on November 1 2005: Smith carried a practically unconscious Nicole from the Nepture Bar as if she were a pig; Smith raped Nicole inside a moving Starex van; after which, Smith left Nicole on the sidewalk of Alava Pier, with her pants down and a used condom sticking to her skin. No one has said or proven these to be untrue, no one has said that none of these instances didn’t happen.

The Filipina Nicole was raped on November 1 2005 in Subic Philippines.

American soldier Daniel Smith raped her.

The law and the decision of the Makati Regional Trial Court are clear about Smith’s verdict: Smith took advantage of Nicole’s drunken state. Physical and circumstantial evidence proved that Smith raped Nicole.

Or have people conveniently forgotten this so that they can continue to view and judge Nicole based on the stereotype they so wish her to be?

Lastly, in order to understand Nicole and this last decision she has made, it is important to understand what rape is, and what happens to women victimized by it, especially for the ones like Nicole, who was raped by a soldier of the most powerful imperialist country in the world, who holds the most puppet-government in Asia by the neck.

This is the thing to do, instead of brandishing moralistic rhetoric to blame the victim of rape.

between the Philippine Daily Inquirer, among other major newspapers, posting images of her for all the world to see and calling the affidavit a “retraction” which IT IS NOT; between the conservative old men who fight among themselves (wow, namecalling! how macho!) and who think they are more intelligent than the rest of us because they (1) love to quote from the law (as if this has excused the Americans from trampling on this country time and again) and (2) blame everything on activism (as if they know what it means, when all they prove is that it has now become fashionable to be America-loving anti-activist fascists), and the women and men across generations who have said that Nicole is a disappointment, a waste of our time, a loser. what has become clear is this: we do not understand. and like the American soldier Daniel Smith, we would much rather work on the presumption that Nicole was a woman who deserved what she got (oh, pray tell, which kind of woman is this?), instead of seeing November 1 2005 for what it is: the night that a Filipina named Nicole was raped by American soldier Daniel Smith, period.

rape has nothing to do with the social class, the career, the life of a woman — much less how much she drank — at that point of becoming victim. rape has everything to do with a man eaten up by hubris, and imagining that he can get away with violence.

komentaryo

stimulus via SSS? utang na loob!

i will not even get into the legality of Chairman Romula Neri’s decision to use Social Security System’s funds for Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s stimulus package — Rep. Liza Masa is doing a good job of that already. nor will i get into the probability that this will expectedly be used by GMA to win the 2010 elections, because her government always seems to think that the downtrodden will be easily impressed by contractual jobs, with little pay and no benefits (oh such little faith in the intelligence of the oppressed masses!).

what i will insist on is this: the Social Security System is in no position to give out its money, because it has yet to even serve its members. and you know i’m not even one to complain about long lines (i come from the University of Pila after all) and rude employees (i’ve had my share of government offices after all).  all i ask is that the SSS be able to give its members what’s due them: our I.D.’s when we need them and access to our benefits with as little of those bureaucratic hassles as possible.

and yet what we are treated to is an unfair system that puts members through hell because it is disorganized, unjust, and downright unacceptable.

let me begin with this: those of us who live in the Mandaluyong and Pasig areas have to go all the way to Quezon City to get our Identification Cards processed because both the Mandaluyong and Pasig SSS branches have broken I.D. card machines. Mandaluyong has had a broken machine for oh, three years? and the Pasig branch for over a year. this is not just inconvenient, it is unforgivable given the fact that in order to get any — ANY! — of your benefits you must have at least your SS ID claim stub.

but of course when you are desperate, and in need, you will go that length of traveling from wherever you are in this country to that rare SSS branch that has an SS I.D. machine. so i get there at 7:30 AM, thinking that i was to early only to find that i was too late. i was number 442 — four hundred f*** forty two! — and my I.D. application was only going be entertained four hours later.  i had to wait outside the building, in the heat, with no food and no clean comfort room.

when you finally face the scowling SSS employee, she processes your papers with nary a smile, and you are told to return at 7AM the following day for the I.D. picture. and i do, at a little over 7AM, only to find that they started giving out cards at 5:30, when the first member arrived. and i was now number 96 — an improvement nonetheless, i think.

but now the issue is this: you are told to wait inside the building and not outside, and you are told to sit in proper order on the row upon row of seats. you are also told by the Security Guard that if you step out for any reason, you might lose your place and there will be no getting it back, sorry na lang kayo. and as the airconditioning is on high (it’s a huge space after all), and i’m stuck in my assigned seat (the guard is a scary scary man), i am forced to keep my pee in, kidney stones and UTI be damned!

i listen to those around me, and i realize that i am better off.  two men who met while waiting, started talking about having to leave — one for Dubai, the other for “Saudi” — both as construction workers. they expect to get their I.D.s today because they need it to travel.  meanwhile, a pregnant lady two seats to my left who, by the looks of it was well into her third trimester, was talking about how much money she needed for giving birth, and how difficult it has been being pregnant and trying to get her SSS maternity benefit. the old man beside me was holding his forms for dear life, newly-employed as he was, and needing an SSS I.D. to get his employment papers properly processed. he should’ve been there to collect retirement benefits.

we were all finally being told to enter these cubicles with the oh so rare computers for I.D. processing, one-by-one. and when we are done with the process of putting in a Personal Identification Number (P.I.N. — which not everyone had a sense of), and giving our electronic thumbprint and signature, we are told this: your I.D.s will be delivered via snail mail in seven months. SEVEN F*@%^ MONTHS!

and i couldn’t help but wonder about those who needed it already, because they are due to fly out and work elsewhere for home and family. i wonder about the old man whose papers might only be processed when he has his I.D. in hand. i do think about how unfair the whole process has been, because the difficulty is uncalled for.  had there been a machine in Mandaluyong, i can’t imagine that i would be number 442 OR 96. had there been more machines, and more people manning them, as well as more people printing out those I.D.s, i can’t imagine that it should take seven months to get these via mail.

and ultimately, i can’t imagine that any of this can’t be fixed with the P12.5 billion pesos of SSS money that Romulo Neri has so generously decided to dole out for the stimulus package. it is unbelievable that given the horrible third world system of the SSS, which puts its members through hell in its incapacity to serve properly and punctually, it is so willing to spend on “saving the world” even when it is not clear about where the money’s going. that the SSS will be “spending” its members’ money — that which they work hard for, that which they fall in line for, that which they expect must be easy to claim — makes this all the more despicable.

SSS Chairman Romula Neri wants to save the world. and as a member who has been oppressed by the SSS’ (lack of a) system, my response is simple: utang na loob!

komentaryo

post-SONA blues 2: what’s in a txt (message)?

In her last SONA, the one thing that seemed like a good thing was this:

Para sa mga namamasada at namamasahe sa dyip, sinusugpo natin ang kotong at colorum upang mapataas ang kita ng mga tsuper. Si Federico Alvarez kumikita ng P200 a day sa kaniyang rutang Cubao-Rosario. Tinaas ito ng anti-kotong, anti-colorum ngayon P500 na ang kita niya. Iyan ang paraan kung paano napananatili ang dagdag-pasahe sa piso lamang. Halaga lang ng isang text.

 

Texting is a way of life. I asked the telecoms to cut the cost of messages between networks. They responded. It is now down to 50 centavos.

The first paragraph was complete with the presence of Manong Federico, in a barong, obviously uncomfortable, but who apparently had more reason to be there than elsewhere. The second was greeted with canned applause, and GMA’s wide smile.

But of course it took only a day to realize that the promise of 50 cents per txt message is an empty one.

Both Smart and Globe have been selling their own versions of “unlimited text messaging” for the longest time, where you pay a certain amount for a fixed number of txts within your network. For Smart’s Unlimitxt for example, you pay P20 for 100 txts to other Smart numbers, plus 10 free txts to other networks; Globe’s version of this is called EverybodyTXT20. These promos in fact, defeat the point of GMA’s promise.

Which as it turns out, can only be availed of if and when we pay P20 pesos to register for the 50-cents-per-txt promise. And you wonder: given the P20 pesos=100 txts promos, why would you settle for a P20 pesos for 50-cents-per-txt promo? Considering that both these options only last a certain amount of time – which, by the way, is never mentioned in these telecom companies’ advertisements, nor was it mentioned by GMA – none ofthis makes rational sense.

Malacanang’s press office itself released a statement talking about the telecom companies’ promise to continue with their “promos” – all of which require a P20-peso registration fee. Without realizing it, that press statement admitted to one thing about its boss: that she had lied through her teeth about the 50-cents-per-txt promise.

Kaya pala isang sentence lang ang inaksaya ni GMA sa pangakong ito. Mas mahaba pa ang pasakalye gamit ang kuwento ni Manong Federico.

And without knowing it, GMA, in her desperate need to make a promise – any promise! – that would deserve some amount of celebration from the ignorant and/or ill-informed, had opened up a can of worms. As TxtPower via Tonyo Cruz has pointed out, if there’s anything that these promos tell us, it’s that both Globe and Smart are overpricing their consumers with the standard rate of P1.00 per txt, and even with a false promise of 50 cents per txt. TxtPower also insists that it’s entirely possible that without interconnection charges and GMA’s beloved VAT, both of which can be removed, txt messaging could cost as low as P1.00 for 100 txt messages.

TXTPower: one point. GMA: liar with zero points.

Globe and Smart: m/tr/illions of pesos in profit.