by admin | Nov 9, 2015 | Editorial
Before a new and fancier tale of the “daang matuwid” can be spun, let us be a good-news spoiler, and let us state this in the language that majority of our supra-politicized citizens will not always understand.
The World Bank, in its 2016 Ease of Doing Business report, said that, of 189 countries it studied, the Philippines did not improve its ranking from 95th to 65th, as the Aquino Administration expected and short of announced for 2016. The ratings moved, sliding down from 95 to 103 among the 189 countries.
The ease of doing business is a global indicator of the good business climate an investor can expect when coming with a business in a country.
The International Finance Corp. (IFC) recently broke the downgrade news: a rain in the parade now readied by the Aquino Administration. Next week, Aquino plans an elaborately embellished Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) ministers’ forum in Manila. Here, leaders of the world’s biggest and most dynamic countries fringing the Asia Pacific region will be in Manila.
President Aquino sees this opportunity as one he can show how the Philippines is faring as the new Asian economic tiger. Or more correctly, how World Economic Forum billed “Asia’s new economic miracle” is governing.
And the WB report can be, finally proven to be hoax.
On this, the Department of Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima locks and loads its verbal arsenal shooting at the WB, whom it claims as erratic and questionable. We pity the visibly incensed Purisima. After all, as an avid insurance broker for the Philippines, painting rainbows over death is a classic line he uses always. He put on the country’s dreamy but false economic make-up, using a cash stash of tax money to buy credit ratings from the world’s top credit rating agencies.
Now, no amount of make up can de-odorize the country’s overall ranking decline in most of the 10 sub-indicators of the Doing Business program.
To Purisima’s side is Guillermo Luz, of the National Competitiveness Council, who also came out flaring about the report alleging its use of unsound and erratic methodology.
But, protest, the Administration may, the whole world would always see this as a bitter country for failing to make good its miracle concoction. And so, BizNews Asia, bannered in its cover story. “If you want to start a business, don’t start it in the Philippines.”
Considering that there are 189 economies, the Philippine rankings belie the claims of Daang Matuwid.”
Coming still as a time when an international embarrassment of the planting bullet scam greets APEC leaders at the airport, there might be no stopping the tag that this government has been led by incompetent and corrupt. This time, unfortunately, there is no President Arroyo to blame.
One good thing from this, it’s telling the Aquino Administration that the few good things they have owned credit will now be ascribed to somebody else’s.
This is something the businessmen leaders of APEC will smell. For us, Ave Maria Purisima.
by admin | Nov 1, 2015 | Editorial
All Saints Day and All Soul’s Days are sure weird days.
For once in a year, or twice for that matter, cemeteries all across the Christian world teem with people whose idea of remembering their departed is nothing short of spectacular.
On these days, people pick back at the forgotten and eloquently speak good of them, laying the freshest of the most expensive flowers, lighting the biggest and the most thought provoking of candles to elaborate the truth that whoever is down there has no need of all these accoutrements.
Well, to sort out these people, we find several kinds, or unkinds of them by the tombs.
Some are media men, eloquently broadcasting the departed’s good deeds and ornately embellishing their now so good deeds, as if such make the rotten flesh as tasty for the feasting organisms under the whitewashed niches.
Some are more solemn in their tributes: taking the long and hassly trek to the otherwise packed cemeteries, bringing with them flowery intentions and burning desires for the departed to just remain down there and make life as palatable as over the times when they were still alive when life was twice as miserable.
Some others however have nothing of the sort.
Their visit to the cemeteries is to resurrect the dead, stirring the departed enough for them to squirm from their caskets, if they still can, reminded of their folly.
Just as recently too, some people managed to break the tradition and re-opened an otherwise sealed casket of a case.
And instead of seeing a dessicated issue behind the closet, the Ombudsman saw skeletons.
Buried somewhere was the issue of an grossly undervalued assets of the Provincial Government, offered for a joint-venture agreement with a private company. And it was not an ordinary grave digger and under-taker who found that.
The Ombudsman, whose noses are as accurate as bloodhounds, saw that at P150 million, a property of over a billion including its franchises, when offered at that amount is grossly reeking of stench of corruption.
Well, when it got uncovered, cemetery caretakers immediately grabbed long shovels and commenced work.
Some poured their best perfumes namedropping the USAID citing first and best LGU-PPP innovations (despite being undervalued).
When they argued that the SP authority granted is above board, they forgot to see the implications that the SP also expressly greenlighted the sale as a tragic act of collusion to rob the people.
Of course, they would say that the RTC in 2001 dismissed these cases as warrantless, and that the possibly friendly Ombudsman in the Visayas dismissed these charges in 2008.
When the case got resurrected by the Ombudsman in 2014, the denied motion for reconsideration tells us that something indeed oozed out of the sealed deal.
So now, the stench wafted into our noses. And this is something a paid hack’s poured perfume all over the shroud could not cover.
As the perfume fails to mask the escaping smell which the bloodhounds at the anti-graft body found, whether it’s All Saints or All Soul’s Day, or pre-election grind, we come to the burial sites and see.
It is a stench, escaping every election, they said.
It is. But in those past elections, the rancid odor of the rotten deal did not catch the Ombudsman’s senses until now.
And when people attest that the water and power is evidently serving better now than before, that is a non-issue.
You sell a muscle car for a patently cheap price because all you can do is run it on third gear is wrong. When the buyer can run it firing all cylinders, and it screams as its glides past our fancy, it is still purring graft.
Luckily, it does not smell funny to those who have grown accustomed to the stench. Simply ask the shovel wielder grave diggers and you’ll get see why they’ll never pinch their noses over exhumed bodies.
by admin | Oct 19, 2015 | Editorial
We have seen it happen and are seeing it again now.
Every time a storm threatens to enter the Philippine Area of Responsibility, we know something would be up and every tourism stakeholder would be crossing their fingers again.
A storm entering the PAR would almost always mean flight cancellations and suspension of sea trips.
This has always been bad for Bohol, who broadcasts to the whole world that it is a tourism paradise which aspires to feed its economy with the revenues the industry generates.
Then, the shippers and sea travelers also hold their breaths. You see, a storm-induced flight or sea travel cancellation nullifies the carrier’s responsibilities. This also burdens the traveler with the discomfort of losing another holiday, and everything which he has invested in a much sought after dream vacation.
Well, for some of them, the sound of a storm brewing in the Pacific is enough to get them the latest updates from orld weather watchers and bulletins.
The wonders of today’s technology however prove to be so much for the world. Less.
The changes brought about by today’s climate makes science seem like a dart game where players hit more or less.
And when the national weather bureau failed to declare a gale warning while the coast guard saw fit to suspend trips, all the more people got confused. The Coast guard is also so mandated to call the shots when they see waves making sea trips by small crafts dangerous.
Fast crafts, Bohol’s aces on the sleeves headed off to safe harbors while the angry seas played to the stirring tempests.
But the planes, only very few are affected.
Which really states one thing. This is that which we have been saying since then.
Bohol’s precarious position in beckoning tourists can be as fickle. An inclement weather is all it takes to make this position sour.
Which pushes us to reiterate that which we have been insisting that should happen to Bohol.
While Panglao Airport is still in the beginning stages of construction and the only visible work done on it is the agitation it has caused tourism stakeholders, the need for Tagbilaran emergency apron to operate is in dire.
When planes are the only link of Bohol to the outside world when the seas get rough, then Bohol must assert to fortify this link.
Election season may be bad time for this, but it may also be a good time.
When election gives politicians the perfect reason to keep off projects, it is also elections when people can force politicians to perform better than ordinary.
So, when local leaders can always have elections as reasons for non-performing, voters can also compel politicians to finally work.
And let’s not keep the waiting, waiting.
by admin | Oct 5, 2015 | Editorial
We have a strong reason to believe that Bohol is lining up in the runway for a lift off.
Its natural resources abound. The fresh water which flows out to the sea each day eloquently talks about the excesses that Bohol has, which other places in the world can only dream of.
The land lavishly spreads Bohol’s bounty and this speaks of how the soil pays back the sweat that waters the diligence of every Boholano farmer.
Boholanos have been known for being warm, hospitable and hardworking: traits that make them assets by investors, who are lured by these other givens.
And the character of the Boholano, although already a deck-ful of aces, is even hyped by the heaping serving of skills, incomparable with similarly trained workers.
What we are telling is that everything, or almost everything has been set: the playing field is ripe with the promise of a good pay-back.
The conditions are almost perfect here, just a minute tweaking can already make a little over-the-break-even thresholds because worksman-ship and craftsmanship is innate in the Boholano.
The outer environment which is way beyond the worker however is still messed.
Other than inefficient government bureaucracy, circuitous business processes, corruption and inadequate infrastructure form the barriers, which keep the province from really taking flight, politics takes its nastiest self out.
While the country relentlessly pushes for competitiveness, we know of government offices and agencies sleeping on the job, taking things cruise through and sit on business proposals like they are cushions or simply butt wipes.
A business permit is easier to get in Dauis over in Tagbilaran, or maybe in some other areas. We also know that if the applicant is a political butterfly, things are a little bit harder.
Here, there are still processes than can be done faster depending on the obesity of one’s grease money.
While in business, a reliable and fast internet is a plus-plus factor, the only speed Boholanos can get is the quickness local officials talks about these plans.
And then, there is a challenge in keeping the peace now in the otherwise underperforming province.
While the internal security operators here stamp their feet to convince people that Bohol is insurgency free, the Commission on Audit hints that the continued presence of the army tells otherwise.
Death by shooting or execution in Bohol is high, at least a couple or people is killed weekly. Drugs have suddenly become alarming some people are now into the propensity that 70% of the crime cases in Bohol are drug related.
So here is everything but political will. Now that elections are looming and nothing has been as tangible from our leaders here today, the future can be defining for Bohol.
But the question remains. Shall we see the will soon?
