Pacquiao’s tax case is about money, not feelings

pacquiao

A Facebook post from a former journalist and, recently, a shill for a mining company on Manny Pacquiao’s tax troubles:

Welcome to the apathy of the Philippine government, they don’t care how much joy Manny gave to the people as long as govertment [sic] has something to steal.

And that seems to be the recent general sentiment over the Bureau of Internal Revenue’s garnishment of P1.1 million in two of Pacquiao’s bank accounts.

How dare a government agency, people–including people in government–are saying, actually do its job? What, they say, is a few million (the tax case involves P2.2 billion) against the hope and joy that Pacquiao’s victory brought the Filipino people by winning a boxing match so soon after the tragedy that hit the central Philippines?

The simple answer, really, is that the BIR didn’t. It did dare to run after a boxing champion, congressman, and patriarch of a fledgling political dynast. But that was not after the Pacquiao-Rios fight.

Nobody stood by the window of the BIR National Office Building, smoking a cigar in the dark, and said “Let us fuck over the Filipino people even more by taxing their national hero. If anything like that happened at all, it happened in 2011, when the case was first filed. read more »

Oh, Nancy Binay…

nancyb

Nancy Binay, Constitutionalist, civil rights champion, and, of late, Senator of the Republic, has chimed in on a bill that is aimed at preventing political families from fielding relatives and various scions for political posts in successive, simultaneous, or overlapping terms.

The passage of the bill at the committee level at the House of Representatives was hailed as historic by ACT Teachers party-list Representative Antonio Tinio.

“For the first time, an anti-dynasty bill has reached the committee level and has been approved,” he said almost tautologically.

Binay, though, daughter of the vice president and sister to a Makati mayor and a Makati district representative, warned that passing such a bill “may limit what the Constitution says about who can run.” read more »

Anti-Social Media: Primae donnae at a press conference

Here’s a story from the sidelines that our friends at Spinbusters may have missed: Reportorial feathers were ruffled at a press conference by Budget Secretary Florencio Abad last Thursday because reporters on the Finance beat wanted first crack at the secretary. read more »

The people behind EDSA Tayo are EDSA too

Edsaus

Much has been said about the EDSA Tayo prayer vigil/rally/something something set for September 11 at the EDSA Shrine, very little of it from the organizers themselves.

Many, including the apparent leading lights of the supposedly spontaneous “Million People March” at the Quirino Grandstand on August 26, have either distanced themselves or have denounced the so-called “Million People March 2”, saying it has nothing to do with them.

Our favorite activist of convenience even made a plea over Twitter to “STOP calling the EDSA protest on September 11 ‘MillionPeopleMarch2’ because it is NOT. Thanks.” And although this website is not a fan of some of the organizers of the EDSA Tayo rally and also finds the coincidence of it falling on the late Ferdinand Marcos’s birthday questionable, they are at least to be commended for having the balls to come out for something that, if online traction is any indicator, will bring in much fewer people than the August 26 protest. read more »

Begin the love-in

proclamation

In case you were looking for something to show that politics in the Philippines is more about candidates than any actual polis, consider the diabetes-inducing wave of goodwill flowing from magnanimous officials-elect.

Senator Aquilino Pimentel III has extended an olive branch to defeated United Nationalist Alliance candidate Juan Miguel Zubiri months after Zubiri accused him of being a wife beater. Months after Pimentel called Zubiri a “fake senator”, to wit:

“Zubiri is the face of dagdag-bawas and other insidious and malevolent forms of electoral fraud in this country. He is one good reason why some of our people completely distrust elections and politicians.” (Press statement, March 12, 2013)

He was referring, of course, to the 2007 mid-term elections, when he was cheated out of a Senate seat. Zubiri resigned before Pimentel could be officially proclaimed the proper winner of those elections. Soon after his resignation, Pimentel and Zubiri were on TV holding hands and presumably slapping asses and talking about how they’re actually very good friends.

Until the 2013 elections, anyway. read more »

Keep it clean, LP

teampnoy

United Nationalist Alliance senatorial candidate Juan Miguel Zubiri has accused the Liberal Party of spreading malicious text messages about him and other UNA candidates.

In a press statement, Zubiri said UNA has “been warned early this week by our friends in the administration camp that a demolition job will be initiated by the spin doctors in the admin camp against me, Senator (Gregorio) Honasan, (San Juan Rep.) JV Estrada and (Cagayan Rep.) Jack Enrile.”

Zubiri said the party’s source told them “the LP has budgeted several millions to do this demolition job against us.” read more »

Lapu-Lapu City: Serious Business

Lapu-Lapu City is apparently up in arms over a TV commercial that shills diapers and also “gravely insults” the city named after Datu Lapu-Lapu, former ruler of Mactan.

The ad, for EQ diapers, implies the Battle of Mactan was not fought because Lapu-Lapu refused to  pay tribute to the King of Spain but because Ferdinand Magellan gave him inferior diapers as a gift.

Here it is in all its gravely insulting glory:

 

Lapu-Lapu City Mayor Paz Razada said in a press conference that “distorting history and making the Battle of Mactan look funny on TV is a lame attempt to promote a product.” She has demanded an apology from the diaper company and wants the ad pulled off the air.

“I am disturbed to hear young children talk about the ad and consider it as a true reflection of history,” she also said, which, really, says more about the country’s education system than anything else. If our kids cannot tell the difference between make believe and history, parents and teachers are to blame, not advertising creatives who were only doing their jobs.

This isn’t the first time that EQ has gravely insulted history to sell its diapers, either. It has released an ad featuring Cleopatra, which sparked fierce protests across Egypt, and an ad with an Elvis Genie, which doesn’t even really exist.

In the past, the city also took umbrage at a local fish being referred to as a Lapu-Lapu. Since 1996, the Lapu-Lapu fish has been referred to–by virtue of an ordinance–as the “Pugapo”, its original and unappealing name. The city council passed the ordinance because it  “exposes Lapu-Lapu City to ridicule and embarrassment because more often the city is identified with the fish rather than with the hero.”

The council has yet to propose and put to a vote another true travesty against Lapu-Lapu, the 2002 Lito Lapid movie of the same name.

Sorry, guys

—

(Thx for the input, D.B.!)

Laguna Governor ER Ejercito ushers in the campaign season with Gangnam Style

 

That’s that bullshit right there. Rather, that’s Laguna Governor Emilio Ramon Ejercito dancing Gangnam Style in a Boy Scouts of the Philippines uniform on national TV.

Now, we can’t prevent public officials from appearing on TV to plug their movie or whatever. We can’t prevent them from making movies that we can’t prevent them from appearing on TV to plug either.  We can’t even keep them from campaigning early by appearing on TV and putting out “advocacy ads” before the official campaign starts. But can we, somehow, try to stop them from dancing on national TV? Maybe switching channels whenever a politician whips out their special talent will have some effect.

There’s nothing wrong with dancing, per se. I mean, we do not live in some backwater town where dancing and rock and roll are banned. But that sort of dancing has been the staple of campaign sorties since people started getting bored of things like platforms and policy issues.

Sure, it entertains the masses and makes them feel they are close to a candidate’s heart. But politics should not be about entertainment, and if  history is anything to go by, the masses are rarely ever really close to a victorious candidate’s heart.

TV host Vice Ganda does not mince words when he tries to convince Ejercito to dance to Gangnam Style: “Gov, pag nasayaw mo ito, naku, lahat ng bagets ay boboto na sa iyo (Gov, if you can dance this, all the kids will vote for you).”

Maybe “convince” isn’t quite the right word since Ejercito begins dancing as soon as the music starts playing. He does it well, too. He has obviously put a lot of time, if not thought, into learning to dance that silly little dance. The thought is disturbing considering he should be attending to other things, like running a province that has the town with the highest income in the country, and had two high-profile murders in the same year.

His sons soon join in the dancing, showing people, as Vice Ganda calls it, “Gangnam Style, the Ejercito Way.” Clearly, they have also spent a lot of time rehearsing their moves. This will probably come in handy when the actual campaign season starts, or when they have to dance at their own campaign sorties a few years from now.

Why you trippin’?

With the Philippines banking so much on tourism, having crowd-sourced travel website TripAdvisor declare the Philippines fourth on a list of top 10 Asian “destinations on the rise” is good news. Or, at the very least, big news, going by these stories on the Philippine Star and on DZMM TeleRadyo.

 

The DZMM story goes, and no translation will be provided:

 

Sinabi pa ng report na ang naturang pagkilala sa Metro Manila ay matapos mailunsad ng Department of Tourism (DOT) ang bago nitong campaign na “It’s More Fun in the Philippines,” kung saan pinapakita na maraming maaaring gawin sa Ka-Maynilaan tulad ng shopping, clubbing, dining at iba pang entertainment at lifestyle offerings.

 

To be fair, the Yahoo news report that both the Philippine Star and DZMM cite did not say that. The story merely said the “recent accolade for Manila comes as the Department of Tourism on Wednesday launched a new international television campaign promoting entertainment and lifestyle offerings in Metro Manila. ” What it also does not say is why inclusion on the TripAdvisor list is an accolade for Manila, or if it is one at all. Neither does it say how TripAdvisor came up with the list.

 

Not, you know, that that’s important or anything. Maybe it’s because we’ve been investing, or promising to invest, in better airports. Maybe it’s because things are looking up for our economy. Maybe it’s because we have two Catholic saints now instead of just one. Maybe tourist volume has been rising. Maybe there’s a huge influx of international flights coming into Ninoy Aquino International. It’s certainly not because Philippine aviation has been upgraded on aviation safety lists.

 

This report on USAToday explains how Manila made it to the list of “destinations on the rise” in Asia. Apparently, winners were chosen based on “an algorithm that took into account factors including traveler feedback quality through reviews and opinions on destination accommodations, restaurants, attractions as well as interest through clicks on TripAdvisor, and ‘want to go’ pins placed by travelers on the TripAdvisor Cities I’ve Visited Facebook app.” That sounds totally legit.

The Do-Nothing Panel

An ethics complaint has been filed against Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III and the Senate Committee on Ethics and Privileges is busy preparing for hearings on it.

 

Unfortunately, those preparations are the same ones the committee was doing more than a year ago: deciding on the rules that it will use in ethics cases.

 

In January 2011, while Senator Panfilo Lacson was in hiding from the law, the committee’s chairman, Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano, set a meeting with the members of his panel. “We will have [an] organizational meeting of the committee on ethics and first agenda will be the rules,” he told reporters then.

 

“The intention is to assure that I will not be bias or prejudice. We will not make rules in accordance with the pending complaints. I will be a mediator rather than advocate,” Cayetano said.

 

And Cayetano was true to his promise. The committee did, indeed, not make rules. At all.

 

The senator said in an interview on DZMM this morning that the committee has to meet again to finalize the rules.

 

Ang naging status po noong magdedesisyon na kami sa finality  ng rules ng komite noong Hunyo ng nakaraang taon, doon na po pumasok ang mabibigat na hearing sa Senado tungkol sa PCSO scam, sa 2004 at 2007 elections, at iba pang mga hearing. Matapos po nito ay pumasok rin po ang impeachment ni CJ Corona. Kaya ang nangyari po noon, hindi na po masyadong maganda ang attendance ng hearing ng Ethics Committee at hindi na bumalik yung consensus sa gagawing rules.

 

The senator says there were “several meetings, technical working groups and hearings that were working on the rules of the committee” before the members basically just lost interest. Who, after all, wants to have a mechanism in place to hold senators accountable, a mechanism that might one day be used against him?

 

Why was there a need to craft new rules for the ethics committee? Cayetano explains in Filipino that, during the 14th Congress, “the Ethics committee became controversial because there were always accusations within the Senate that cases were political in nature, or members of the Senate were using the committee against other members.” He neglects to mention that those accusations came from him and other allies of Senator Manuel Villar Jr., then aspiring for the presidency and facing an ethics probe.

 

Funnily enough, the head of the Ethics committee at the time was Senator Lacson, who was also Villar’s accuser.

 

Given the probe on Villar was partly political in nature (and achieved nothing in terms of accountability), Cayetano was right that better rules were needed when trying senators for disorderly conduct. He was wrong in not pushing for those rules to be finalized and adopted. As committee chairman, he certainly had the power to call for meetings and it should not have been impossible to get two to three members of the seven-member panel to attend.

 

Not shown: The Rules of the Senate Committee on Ethics and Privileges. Because they don’t exist.

 

In his radio interview this morning, Cayetano mentions failed attempts in past Congresses to come up with a Code of Ethics for senators. He does not mention, however, whether he will try to come up with one.

 

And this is what is the most irksome about Cayetano. For all his statements and speeches about transparency and justice and good governance, he has done little in the way of legislation. It is not uncommon for his office to issue statements that sound great but are not backed up by bills or resolutions that will actually make things happen.

 

According to a GMA Network News report in 2011, Cayetano beat only Senator Joker Arroyo in the number of bills and resolutions filed. Considering Arroyo only filed 17 resolutions by then, that is really not saying much.