Category Archive for: komentaryo

kultura

Taxes, freelancers, cultural work: Amnesty and kindness

One of the more critical battles that any cultural institution should be waging at this point is the one against the unjust taxation of freelance cultural workers.

This was one of Daang Matuwid’s most unkind tax policies, which was put into effect by former tax chief Kim Henares, for whom it didn’t matter how much a person earned, what mattered was that government could collect taxes on those earnings.

I had hoped President Duterte’s men would take a look at this tax policy, and realize that freelancers and cultural workers are in a category of employment that is unlike “self-employed professionals” (doctors and engineers and lawyers), and unlike workers who suffer through contractualization.

At the very least, I wished they would declare a tax amnesty, just to bring back freelancers and cultural workers into the tax system, no questions asked, no penalties to be paid for honest but foolish mistakes. It’s just the kinder thing to do. (more…)

kultura

Good news, bad news for culture

Ever since President Duterte came into power, the only time(s) we’ve ever had a sense of what he thinks of arts and culture is when he appoints people to cultural institutions.

And then there are those instances when we just hear people speaking as supporters of the President.

Say, Freddie Aguilar saying he had been promised a Department of Culture and in place of that, the chairmanship of the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA). Or that time last year when we were told about an arts and culture agenda being built through the funds of someone who had campaigned for the President. This was an arts and culture agenda based solely on cultural organizations, none of which could stand for the collective needs of cultural workers. There was no transparency as far as building that arts and culture agenda was concerned, and even as we were told that the documents would be released, it’s been months and we’ve seen absolutely nothing. (more…)

komentaryo

RH push overshadowed by Sotto, Leni condom-talk

Given all that has been happening, half borne of the discourse of confusion and noise, the other half just the utter lack of information, I almost missed what might be one of the best New Year’s presents we could get from President Duterte: his Executive Order 12.

Here, the President essentially orders all relevant government offices “to intensify and accelerate the implementation of critical actions necessary to attain and sustain “zero unmet need for modern family planning” for all poor households by 2018, and all of Filipinos thereafter, within the context of the RPRH Law and its implementing rules.”

(more…)

komentaryo

Who’s afraid of a yahoogroup?

COMMUNICATIONS Secretary Martin Andanar, that’s who.

It’s still unclear to me what he thinks his office should be doing, but it sure continues to do very little towards actually providing the public with correct, proper, and urgent information.

Instead it’s been revealed that Andanar is doing this: listening to the pro-Duterte noise on social media, printing out “information,” and making it an urgent and important concern because OMG! it has gone viral.

And what is it exactly? Well, screencaps of YahooGroup messages, with email addresses and names of anti-Duterte personalities, but also some messages that seem to have come from the staff of Vice President Leni Robredo. Reading through these messages, all of it seems harmless enough, and honestly, any destabilization plot that happens on a yahoogroup—one that is so easy to hack—should not be taken seriously by government.

Ah, but of course Andanar takes it so seriously! (more…)

komentaryo

Social class before beauty

The first time I heard about the tax on cosmetics, it had already been framed against the hashtag #DontTaxMyBeauty. But as with many things that happen via hashtags, there was little fleshing out of what this so-called Vanity Tax was going to be about.

A day after the hashtag happened, the three-page House Bill No. 4723 was uploaded online, but many remained disinterested in what it contained: it is easier to jump on the bandwagon of calling something anti-woman, than to actually sit down and read about it after all. Media fed the frenzy – the better to get hits with; days after, there is still little critical discussion about this proposal and the backlash against it, even as politicians weigh in using big words like “sexist.”

This, in a country that has allowed the Miss Universe to happen at such a large scale, using government resources and the face of Chavit Singson. One can only wonder what we actually mean by sexist – or feminist – these days. (more…)