by admin | Dec 15, 2015 | Editorial
This week, the huge chunk of Philippine voters got a pre-Christmas treat of something to ponder or pick on.
Right at the heat of campaign or no-campaign seasons as yet, Liberal Party and President Noynoy Aquino’s fair-haired boy played light on a claim that Davao City’s peace and order calling it a myth.
The peace and order situation in the country’s biggest city got into Roxas, sensing that this single fact is helping propel presidential competitor Rodrigo Duterte to scrape the ceilings of social media survey groups.
And it is yet Duterte’s second week after fulfilling a nail-biting submission of his Presidential bid at the Comelec, officially killing all speculations about this fairly unpredictable man’s not running from a fight.
With most people sensing that a discipline-blighted Philippines has no need of a Wharton economics degree, people looked at Davao, a city that thrives in the borders of terror as a possible redemption.
Sitting on an island while its neighbors make money out of kidnap-for ransom, terror bombing and drug-trade, it would be legendary for Davao to just sit there and be topping country’s peace and order situation.
Well, like every social scientist would say, peace and order is never just about instilling fear, because that can happen in a civil unrest and yet there is no peace. And order.
But unlike those lit with unrest, Davao has its police organization, justice system and penology all worked up. This is the city that had a mayor offering a nice punch to a prosecutor for the latter’s apparent ego trip.
And when a heaping serving of justice is needed and the systemic legal process is excruciatingly slow, this is also a city that has a mythical blindfolded lady in draping robes.
Here, criminals and undesirables have a nasty habit of getting found, lifeless and a bloating lesson for everyone with the intent to beat the country’s wretched systems.
Here, either criminals, die or they flee, whichever is profitable for them. So, you have a city that some ranking services hoists up as among the world’s most peaceful.
And this, apparently irked Mar Roxas and his minions.
Roxas is simply wanting to hit on Duterte, but a Wharton School training tells him to pick on Davao’s Peace and Order, calling it a myth.
You see, at Daang Matuwid which Roxas vows to continue, they also have this nasty habit of opening up their mouths faster than their economic brains to process. Some have a queer way of saying it: foot and mouth disease.
That is when they contrive of saying something brilliant, they end up hurting their feet.
This said, you have Mar Roxas, former DILG Chief who has the police under his command, also bolstered saying Davao police are epic failures. And he said it, as if it is Mamasapano and he was kept in the blind despite his being DILG.
Indeed the police have lost a significant chunk of morale with the way the politics is gaining into the DILG. They even said what Robredo built in years, it only took a single Yolanda incident to wash out.
And as the Daang Matuwid has been a constant war cry for the Liberal, every time Roxas or its Liberal party lame duck president opens its mouth, some bad thing is going to happen.
This has become a battle between what is mythical and what is legendary.
What is just unfortunate is that which is legendary peace and order is now tagged as mythical, while the myth in Daang Matuwid has been stuffed to us as legendary. So you ask, where the fail is?
by admin | Dec 5, 2015 | Editorial
Election heats up this early and the journalists take on the mission of information nevertheless.
In fact, journalist watch groups said the Philippines is the world’s third most dangerous place for media practitioners.
In its “Killing the Messenger” report, the London-based International News Safety Institute (INSI) said 14 journalists were killed in the Philippines last year. This is next to Syria with 20 journalists killed and Iraq with 16.
Also late last year, bullets effectively silenced three radio commentators in Mindanao within two weeks. Not one killer has been apprehended. In the Philippines, particularly here in Bohol, newspaper reporters as well as radio commentators are never immune to the death threats; three Boholano journalists have been proof of that.
In fact, this is still this persistent belief that broadcaster Chairman Mao Lim died because a hitman did him in following his attacks against drug protectors.
In a place where anyone can buy radio time and where part-time commentators attack or malign their enemies on air with no one organization to police them, the probability of death soars high.
With people still too juvenile to see that newspaper writers are just messengers. Those slighted by these perceived attacks, often resort to hiring professional killers to “silence” the commentator or news reporter, which is never really resolved.
The National Union of Journalists in the Philippines (NUJP) said that killing of journalists in the Philippines has remained unabated even during the present administration. “The apparent apathy of the government toward killings and attacks against press freedom emboldens attackers to inflict harm as they go unpunished,” the NUJP said in its Facebook page.
Now this hypes up a huge bit with elections looming.
For certain, politicians now want nothing but good image to go with their names. The same is true with governments.
Unfortunately however, journalists who still keep a high regard for their ideals keep the mission, as the loyalty to the public is never diminished by the flurry of campaigns.
Of course, with government fast becoming a cabal of dirty men whose inadequacies often see print or getting broadcasted, silencing these journalists become the first order of the day.
The silencing however comes in phases, depending in the gravity of the situation.
More so often, it starts with the critic ganged up by hacks whose ideals are paid by a few hundred pesos.
And the more crooked journalists are not into the pay; the media ID is as potent as a gun.
When journalists also gallivant into other sources of income, they often end up lumped in a baying bark team.
Then there is always that threat of libel. For governments, it is pressure in the weirdest form of threat.
Journalists especially news writers are, by job rules, never allowed to opine. The least they could do is quote a source, them being messengers of truth. So, a paper, or a broadcaster always relies on a source.
When a libel is cast over a journalist or a news organization, it is always a red flag.
This would always be seen as threatening the public’s access to information.
by admin | Nov 30, 2015 | Editorial
A local weekly, not the Bohol News Today plastered in its front page, the unspeakable and the unmentionable.
The long rumored presence of a death squad here in Tagbilaran has been brought out of the hush-hush circles into the open. Now, not only did this paper muster the courage to shake off a popular belief that God-fearing Boholanos would always value life, it also exposed the apparent overwhelming support for the unconventional way of sweeping the dung off the streets.
The death squad uses a rather expensive modus in sweeping off the social dirt: through a hail of bullets.
The victim whom the paper cited, comes from a prominent family. He bit the dust and hugged dirt this time, even though as reported, he was less of a drug user and pusher but more of into getting things in his own creative way.
There are two things we need to get across here: First, this paper has finally blurted out what everyone kept mum about. Second, that this paper called it well-funded, means it can only be funded by those who have the means. On this, the police said these are perpetrated by rivals in the business.
So, can we say that even thievery is now a business and it can get you shot by your rivals? Maybe, if he got shot for drugs, we may have to believe so, the business being very lucrative.
But if the poor guy was like the one in Rizal street, or the spirit leaving the body near Coke, or the kid shot in front of Capitol, then it’s an entirely different apple and the paper was a tad close to saying what we deemed as honest appraisal of the killers and their mastermind.
This revelation, makes our world now less lonelier.
When we have been vocal about our belief that we have created our Frankensteins, we have only our people to blame. We have to tell you this, and we aint telling you nothing since then.
Well, it is just that we pity out law enforcers who stake their necks down the line everyday.
We then believed the police and their fastidious task of putting the drugs genie back in the bottle. It’s as daunting a task as a ton of cunning wont work with a genie all too powerful in and out of the bottle. So the vaudeville of arrests and raids have escalated into the death of several police officers and all these are the least publicity that an investment hungry Bohol needs.
So, the death squads come to even up the score.
What is just sad is the insinuation roughly puts us admitting that there is already a breakdown in the justice system.
You let loose a death squad and you will have more police work on the line.
The worse thing is, with the police staking out all their reputation and their balls, it seems this would be them again who would be dampening up the blame.
by admin | Nov 12, 2015 | Editorial
There is always nothing wrong with generosity, especially when there is this expansive knowledge that people are not getting decent measures of what they need.
That generosity however, to be called such, must be only for that sole reason of charity or compassion and its breed of reasons other than getting something in return.
A few days ago, President Benigno Aquino recommended a bill that would start jacking up state workers pay to about 45%, for congressional approval.
The pay-out would be implemented in 4 rounds of annual increases, beginning January 2016.
The increase, which would benefit 1.3 million government workers would cost the government P226 billion, according to sources.
Almost at the same time, a Senate Bill was passed on third and final reading, a move to increase the country’s Social Security System pension by P2,000.
Packaged in an amendment to the Social Security Act of 1997, the Senate Bill passed on a 15-1 vote.
The dissenting cross-out comes from Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, who said the move could lead to the SSS bankruptcy.
Of course, for people who do not look hard, this is good news: a salary increase that would alleviate the purchasing power of state workers and one that moves them a bit nearer their counterparts in the private companies.
For those getting social pensions, P2,000 more is 2000 reasons to be happy that the government has finally appreciated their work.
The next question: where would the government get the money it would bankroll in the pay-rise?
Tax, most certainly.
In Asia, the Philippines and India have the highest corporate income tax tare based on taxable profits at 30%. Add up to that the 12% value added tax.
For VAT, other than China and India, the Philippines continue to be among the heavily taxed consumers.
Experts have said that it there was an efficient tax collection system in the Philippines, the tax we collect can already keep the country out of this dire situation of economic depravity in less than a decade. But with the inept system that we have, the government loses over half of its collections to corruption, the rest by irrational spending by government.
With the state of economy the Philippines is having, the only reason for the government to be gallantly generous is the upcoming elections.
What will the salary increase approval do? It would make people look at the executive as that who sides with them and this tends to create a division in government: the executive and the legislative.
Legislators who would vote against the increase would be hated, while the executive would bank on a no-reasonable vote but for the shine of money, the ploy works.
This early, talks are already circulation in the barangays saying that the loss of Administration candidate can mean the total scrapping of the social benefits program, the stopping of the raise and the withdrawal of social security pension increase.
Or the plan pushes through and effectively puts the burden of upbringing a bankrupt economy back on its feet.
Either way, this rather untimed generosity will have people always losing.
by admin | Nov 10, 2015 | Editorial
In the past weeks, we heard the lonely voices from the wilderness.
The call was a scream for accountability, but nobody seemed interested in listening.
No less than the environmental advocates who have now claimed the call for advocacy has long been over resounded the wail of frustration.
Baptizing themselves as environmental activists, leaders of farmer sector groups led by the band of brave and diligent men and women of the Bohol Nature Conservation Society (BONACONSO) took the cudgels to blast on the alarming inaction by authorities against the syndicated abuse to Bohol environment.
It is syndicated, they alleged as it has become a systemic kind that puts the government itself in a situation that makes them part of the problem.
The government is mandated to protect and conserve the environment, but apparently,
by admin | Nov 9, 2015 | Editorial
In two days beginning Thursday last week, police authorities from 47 stations all over Bohol spun to action.
Whether it was ordered or not, police stations stirred and their chiefs of police called their men to a command conference to swoop down on drug personalities and effect the biggest raid in the history of Bohol.
The plan was to offer the heads of 50 or more drug personalities by the 50 raids, to appropriately mark a big day for Bohol police.
Historic, it would be as it would be a tribute to the 50th birth anniversary of Bohol’s top cop, PSSupt Dennis Agustin.
PNP senior officials, or whosoever conceptualized the move, have every reason to do so.
Agustin, upon assumption to Bohol, took to heart the order he received from Police General Prudencio Bañas, who shared a dreamy goal of declaring Bohol as the first drug-free province.
Both Bañas and Agustin had less than a couple of months in newly assigned posts: Bañas to head the regional police while Agustin has the provincial force under him.
What the two apparently did not know was that, they were pitifully dipped in a cauldron where drugs is allegedly stirred into distribution by forces beyond the commerce of men who have no balls of steel.
PD Agustin proved he was no less than that, by horning his way into the police organization and spearheading that infamous crusade that took his some of his finest officers despite shaking a hornets nest which is too close to Camp Dagohoy.
Police officers and station commanders of less timber, have to play it cool, and looked the other way.
Not on the 50th birth anniversary of the provincial police chief.
Those two days netted for Bohol and the police organization P5 million worth of drugs and money, over 50 personalities and an undetermined number of hassling trial appearances for police officers involved in the raids.
We need to congratulate the police for doing so.
The subliminal message beyond these raids however is that: the police have just shown us a reason to believe that they all know who in their respective areas of jurisdiction are into drugs.
For them to be able to sweep a massive raid in two days netting that much number of personalities, drugs and paraphernalia, it must indeed be a huge and sweeping problem, this drug affectation is.
Secondly, another troubling message we get from this is: (and authorities can refute us) the drug campaign in Bohol can all be called “artificial” and “half-hearted” on the very least.
No matter how successful the raids convey to all of Boholanos, the sub-currents tell us, how come the police stations, on non birth days of local officials could not muster the same magnitude of raids, if this was not just for show?
Would this bolster the claim a topnotch lawyer has been persistently announcing on the air: that police, who happen to be getting lifeblood from the local leadership, could do nothing with the problem, if they want their lifeline to be alive?
If this tells us that, then nobody in the high ranks of the police organization in Bohol realized the repercussions of a seemingly harmless, in fact gloriously planned sweeping raid.
The biggest realization we prayed not any ordinary Boholano can connect, is that by the raid, police have just haphazardly shown a drama which projects how extremely powerless and how farcical this local drug enforcement is.
This should not also connect the allegations that, not much of court convictions happen especially to the big-boys in the industry. The courts, according to out information, has been a beneficiary of monetary allowances from the provincial government.
Feeding the hand that feeds, still remains to be one act Boholanos could not do.
Well, except for the Boholanos who claim to be one, but their heart and soul, they have sold to the devil.
So therefore, the 50 raids for the 50th birthday of the police director shown a 50/50 image of the police and drug enforcement. And we hope they will live through this, alive.
