The First Pork Barrel Fugitive

The Philippine pork barrel scandal (I've written about it several times -- one post is here) may be heating up. The former chief of staff of one of the senators allegedly involved seems to have left the country, leaving no forwarding address

Jessica Lucilla “Gigi” Reyes, former chief of staff of Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile who was linked to the P10-billion pork barrel scam, left the country late last month and has yet to return, acting Immigration Commissioner Siegfred Mison said Thursday. 

Mison said Reyes left the country for Macau on Aug. 31. 

“Based on our records, she has not returned,” the immigration chief said. [ ... ] 

Reyes allegedly was one of those who served as “conduits” for channeling public funds to Janet Lim-Napoles, the alleged mastermind behind the scam.

There are several possible explanations: She could just be vacationing, though I'm not betting on that one; she also could be on the run, fearing arrest; or she could have been urged to leave by people who are endangered by her possible testimony.

I'm still assuming that this will be swept end as such things seem to always do here: a few showy 'reforms' will be made and then the theft will go on as before. Her disappearance is consistent with this, though it could also be consistent with a genuine clean-up, however unlikely that would be.  

Philippines Trails Most of Southeast Asia

Here are a couple interesting graphs I came across, showing that the Philippines ranks far behind most of its

neighbors in unemployment and foreign direct investment (FDI); the two being related, of course – the lack of investment leading to a scarcity of jobs.

As an aside, I think the unemployment figures are patently phony; a walk down just about any street will make it clear that far more than 7% are not working.

Until the Philippines opens up its economy, there will not be enough investment to create jobs for the fast-growing population, and Filipinos will have to continue to leave to find opportunity. About 10% of the population (and a far larger percentage of the workforce) is outside the country, and one of the biggest elements of Philippine GDP is the money sent home by these people to their families.

Unfortunately, the economy will not be opened anytime soon, since that would require the elite families (the Aquinos, Cojuangcos, Ayalas, Lopezes, Osmenas, and their cronies) to give up the stranglehold they have on the economy and the government.

(Sorry for the markings on the graphs -- go to the original site and they will be explained).

Manny Pacquiao for President?

He'd probably win.

Philippine boxing great Manny Pacquiao is harboring thoughts of running for president in his beloved homeland when he finally hangs up his gloves, he revealed to AFP in an exclusive interview. 

Giving his strongest hint yet that he will push to the top of the political tree when he finally retires from the ring, the “Pacman” — a hero and congressman in his home country — admitted he had considered the presidency of the 95 million-strong nation.When pressed on whether he had thought about shooting for the top job, the softly-spoken 34-year-old replied “Yes”.

Aquino and the Pork Barrel

As Texans say,
"Big hat, no cattle."

In his two-hour State of the Nation speech, President Aquino did not devote even one second to the congressional pork barrel scandal. Nor did he cut the pork barrel budget by even a centavo.

The amount budgeted is P27 billion. The amount allocated for theft was not divulged.

Aquino talks a lot about cleaning up corruption, but when it comes time to act, nothing much happens.

The Philippines Is Blowing Another Opportunity

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a free trade area that is being negotiated among many of the leading more-or-less free economies of the Pacific Rim. It started in 2005 as an agreement among Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore. Since 2010, a number of other countries have been negotiating an expanded group, to include Australia, Canada, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, the US, and Vietnam.

Just this week, Japan announced that they intend to join as well (actually, they have wanted to join for a while, but they just had an election and the Prime Minister won big, so now he feels emboldened to make big moves).

Japan will finally sit down at the table with 11 other nations in Malaysia on Tuesday to negotiate the trade rules for the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement after years of contentious political wrangling. 

The current TPP participants … have already gone through 17 rounds and aim to reach an agreement by year’s end. Late-comer Japan has only three days left to state its case before round 18, which started July 15, ends on Thursday. 

But Japan, whose GDP accounts for more than a fifth of all 12 TPP nations combined, still has a solid chance to be on the leading edge of drafting new trade and investment rules for the Asia-Pacific region.

As the Japan Times notes, a basic requirement for membership is that economies be open to competition. Japan, for example, wants greater access to other countries for its automobiles, but has long had high tariffs against agricultural imports – they would have to give up their tariffs on rice and beef.

The Philippines badly needs to be in on this, for a couple reasons. Most obviously, they need to be able to trade with these countries, and any time a trading group is set up, those outside the group suffer, as importers in each member country will tend to prefer to buy from exporters in other member countries.

The other reason is that membership would force the Philippines to open itself up to competition, which its horribly inefficient businesses (and their horribly abused customers) desperately need.

And that, of course, will not happen, because the families who own the country will not allow it.  A few months ago, the Trade Secretary admitted that the country “isn’t ready.”

The Philippines is not yet ready to join the international free-trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the head of the Trade Department said Wednesday. 

"We can pursue it, but is it wise to lobby for it? Let’s just wait until we’re ready. We’re not going to actively pursue negotiations for us to join. It can be distracting and we have no resources for it," Trade Secretary Gregory L. Domingo told reporters. 

“We’re not yet ready for the TPP. We have to do some more homework first on our environment, labor and investment on the equity side because we have many restrictions,” he added. 

Doesn't sound like he wants in very badly, does it? Those restrictions he mentions will almost certainly never be removed, because doing so would require the approval of the very people who could be hurt by any changes in the economy. The country’s unwillingness to accept foreign competition was demonstrated again this week, when the courts ruled that FedEx is not allowed to operate here.

… the appellate court said international freight forwarding was a public utility. It upheld its earlier ruling declaring FedEx (Federal Express Pacific Inc.), a foreign corporation, disqualified by the Constitution from involvement in public utilities in the Philippines.

Update on Philippine Pork Barrel Spending

Last Friday, I posted about the pork barrel allocations that each Philippine Senator and Representative has, which I called ‘an invitation to corruption’. I also speculated about how congress members could funnel much of the money to their own pockets – use the money for construction projects performed by a family company.

Well, I’m right about the corruption, but wrong about how they do it. The Philippine Inquirer has a four-part series about a scam involving five senators and twenty-three representatives (that’s more than a fifth of the Senate and about a twelfth of the House).

Links to the four parts are here. The full details are interesting, but I’ll summarize how they (allegedly) did it, because it’s very, very simple.

They worked through an outside facilitator, Janet Lim Napoles, who set up a bunch of phony NGOs, each of them headed by her employees (most of whom seem to be relatives). The NGOs collected from the politicians’ pork barrels and then the profits (after various other officials were paid off to say the work was done) were split between the politicians and the facilitator.

Cool, huh? The total amount involved is (allegedly) ten billion pesos (about $250mil).

Prediction: The whole thing will the swept under the rug, maybe a couple scapegoats will take the fall, and then everything will go on as before.

Pork Barrel Spending in the US and the Philippines

In the US, ‘pork barrel’ (or just ‘pork’) is a derogatory term applied to wasteful government spending – generally applied to spending that is intended to benefit only a particular representative’s district or senator’s state and thereby buy votes for that person.

The typical way it is done is to attach such projects to major bills, where they will presumably attract little attention (or they are attached by the leadership in order to buy the beneficiary’s vote). The stimulus bill was laden with billions in pork projects and the immigration bill passed by the senate includes a provision declaring Nevada a border state (which will surprise most geographers) and spending a bunch of money on promoting travel to Las Vegas.

Here in the Philippines, the corruption is much more open. Here, each member of the congress is given an amount of money to spend in any way s/he pleases. This is openly referred to as his/her pork barrel (e.g., a paper will write “the project was paid for from Rep. Gomez’s pork barrel”). The proper name is the Priority Development Assistance Fund, but nobody calls it that.

The amounts involved are not trivial, considering the poverty of the country. Each senator gets two hundred million pesos annually (about $5mil), while each representative gets seventy million. Given that there are twenty-four senators and almost three hundred reps, this totals out to over twenty-five billion pesos, about 1.5% of the country’s budget.

You can buy a heck of a lot of votes here for P200mil, the going rate being I think P200/vote (and in a congressional district, P70mil goes even farther). Most is not used for outright vote-buying, however. I understand that the usual thing is to build something in the district, thus securing votes, and have it built by the politician's family construction company, thus pocketing the money. Sort of a two-fer.

If need be, of course, the profits from the project can be used to buy more votes at the next election, which allows you to hit the trifecta.

I don’t know if they have to report how the money is spent. There probably is some sort of pretense at reporting, but given how things are done here, I would expect any reporting to be very vague and limited, hidden from the public, not reported on by the press, and not audited in any way.

The Filipino Reaction to Criticism

I've noticed that Filipinos, when faced with any form of criticism, whether it is something like a complaint to the manager of a restaurant about poor food or service, or something about their country, such as crime, corruption, crappy infrastructure, or whatever, will respond in one or more of three ways:

• Deny that there's a problem ("The food is excellent, sir, you're the only one to complain")
• Use the equivalence argument ("It happens in your country, too")
• Shift the blame ("It's all the fault of the US")

What they don't do is fix the problem. But then, why should they, if there is no problem and it's somebody else's fault?

The Myth of ‘No Divorce in the Philippines’

It is often said, as this article states, that the Philippines is the only country in the world in which there is no legal divorce. Malta had previously shared that distinction.

The fact is, though, that the Philippines allows for divorce; the country simply chooses, for whatever reasons, to fool itself into thinking that it doesn’t by the simple expedient of not using the word.

The Philippines officially recognizes two solutions for a failed marriage: legal separation and annulment. Although the term is the same as is used by the Catholic Church, the annulments are granted through a civil process.

Though the grounds for annulment mostly echo church rules, there is a catchall category called ‘psychological impairment’ that is so broad that it can cover almost anything, the Filipino equivalent of ‘irreconcilable differences’.

The annulment process is outrageously expensive (estimated cost: P250,000 to P1,000,000 -- $6k-$25k), and way out of the reach of the average Filipino (the average Filipino’s solution is to simply ignore legality and move in with someone else), in part because a psychologist must be paid to testify about the ‘psychological incapacity’ (this can be done whether or not the respondent has even been interviewed by the psychologist, which is an indicator of how seriously anyone should take the whole charade). If one wishes a church annulment as well, in order to be allowed to remarry in the church, you can add more expense on top of that.

Nonetheless, the incidence of annulment is rising, with the number of cases doubling over the past decade. Certainly the number of cases (10,000 or so per year) is still very small for a country of a hundred million people, but given that probably well over 90% of the populace are totally frozen out by the costs, the numbers seem to indicate that annulment is not that rare among the well-to-do. At least two senators, for example, Loren Legarda and Pia Cayetano, have received annulments, and the wife of a third, Ralph Recto, was also formerly married. There may be others in the senate, but these three come to mind. The president’s sister, actress Kris Aquino, is currently seeking an annulment.

I doubt that the word ‘divorce’ will be allowed anytime soon, since the Church will oppose it for theological reasons, and the lawyers (and psychologists) have a financial interest in maintaining the status quo. And here’s the president on the subject, in an article entitled “Aquino: No to divorce, yes to remarriage after legal separation”:

Aquino, however, said he recognizes that "there are unions that no matter what interventions are done, no matter what counseling is done, they really cannot stay together and there are dangers to either one or both parties." 

For cases such as these, legally separated couples should be allowed to remarry, Aquino said.  

"Legal separation, it will be very, very stringent, you really have to ascertain that there really are irreconcilable differences … At the end of the day they should be allowed to remarry.”

Even by the standards of politicians, that’s a particularly weasel-ish position. If anyone can explain how his version of separation differs from divorce, I would love to hear it.

But apparently that’s the way Filipinos want it – they want to have divorce, but also want to pretend they don’t.

The Showbiz/Politics Connection in the Philippines

Being famous is always helpful in launching a political career, going back to the days of Congressman Davy Crockett, so it’s not surprising that actors and other celebrities gain office in many countries (Ronald Reagan leaping first to mind).

But I don’t think any country can come close to the Philippines, where half of the current Senate has significant showbiz/media connections, and a third have been actors or broadcasting personalities.

Eight of the twenty-four senators have been actors or hosts of broadcast shows:

• Ramon (Bong) Revilla – Movie and TV actor (his father is also both an actor and a former senator).

  

  Senator Revilla

• Jose Ejercito, Jr. (aka Jinggoy Estrada) – Movie actor (another whose father was a popular actor, who is also a former president and current mayor of Manila).
• Pia Cayetano – Her father (a senator) had a TV show called Compañero y Compañera. She took over hosting the show upon his death, and now co-hosts a radio version of the same show with her brother (also a senator). She also has hosted other radio shows.
• Alan Peter Cayetano – (see above)
• Vicente (Tito) Sotto – Co-host of the longest-running variety show on Philippine TV. His wife (Helen Gamboa) is an actress and singer.
• Loren Legarda – Before entering politics, she was a popular TV news presenter.
• Bam Aquino-- He worked for ABS-CBN Foundation (ABS-CBN is one of the Philippines’ two major TV networks, and a media conglomerate). He also hosted a TV show. His cousin Kris (sister of the president, daughter of the former president) also is a movie actress and hosts TV shows.
• Lito Lapid – Popular movie actor.

Another four senators have strong connections to the TV/movie industry:

• Ralph Recto – Married to Vilma Santos, one of the country’s most popular actresses ever (my wife was the world's biggest Vilma Santos fan). Vilma’s a governor these days, but continues to have movie and TV roles.
• Sergio Osmeña III – His wife is a Lopez, the family that owns ABS-CBN and numerous other media properties.
• Grace Poe-Llamanzares – Both adoptive parents were extremely popular actors (her father ran for president in 2004). Before election to the senate she chaired the Philippine movie and TV ratings board. Her half-sister is an actor/singer.
• JV Ejercito – Father was a popular actor and president, numerous other family members are in entertainment (and politics).

It bothers me that I see the politics/media/Hollywood relationship growing, with children of politicians frequently entering the media as a career, among other manifestations. I don't think politics-as-a-branch-of-showbiz has been healthy for the Philippines, and I doubt it will be any more so for the US.

Only in the Philippines: Child Rape Suspect Re-Elected Mayor

Here's an article from an Australian newspaper on the success of the dynasties in the recent Philippine elections, which I've commented on here and here.

There are a couple things mentioned by The Age that I haven't heard before, but which (unfortunately) don't shock me:

Records show that 160 families have continuously served in both houses of the Philippine parliament since 1907.

And:

The Singsons, the oldest political clan whose members have held power since 1823, won nine elective posts. One of the winners was Ronald Singson, who three years ago was sentenced to 14 months in jail in Hong Kong for cocaine possession. He regained the lower house seat he had vacated after the conviction.

The impunity of leading Filipino politicians is the subject of another point that I have to admit did shock me. Cynical as I am about Philippine politics, apparently I'm not cynical enough:

Jose Rodriguez was unopposed as mayor of San Marcelino, north-west of Manila, although he is on trial for the alleged rape of a 12 year-old girl in 2010. He denies the charge.

Holy crap! I understand about 'innocent until proven guilty' -- but that's a legal rule, not political. I would have thought that, anywhere in the world, being charged with raping a child would be considered a disqualifier for any office. But apparently it's considered no impediment here.

Update: How could I forget the Ampatuan Dynasty? Despite apparent involvement in the mass murder of fifty-eight political opponents and reporters. they won nineteen seats, including three mayoral posts.

The Dynasties Roll On (Part 2)

The twelve candidates I identified in this post as having likely been elected on Monday are now officially the winners. As you will recall, no doubt, ten of the twelve are closely related to other top politicians. To complete our survey of the Philippine senate, let's look at the twelve holdover members (elected in 2010).

Ramon (Bong) Revilla – Father was a senator, wife is in congress, brother is a mayor, and sister is married to a governor.
Jose Ejercito, Jr. (aka Jinggoy Estrada) – Father was president and is the newly-elected mayor of Manila, his half-brother was just elected to the senate, and his father’s mistress is currently mayor of San Juan City Jinggoy, his father, and his half-brother have also all held the mayoralty of San Juan).
Pia Cayetano – Daughter of a former senator, her brother is also a senator, and his wife is a mayor.
Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. – Father was president/dictator, his mother is in congress, and his sister is a governor.
Ralph Recto – His grandfather was a senator, his father in congress, his wife (a popular actress) is a governor.
Vicente (Tito) Sotto – His grandfather and granduncle were both senators.
Sergio Osmeña III – His grandfather was president, his father was a senator as was a cousin; other relatives hold or have held many offices.
Teofisto Guingona III – His father was a senator and vice-president, his mother is a mayor, his grandfather was a governor and senator as well as holding other offices.

Four of the 2010 electees do not seem to have major family connections. Juan Ponce Enrile, the current Senate President and long a major figure in Philippine politics (he was Minister of Defense for Marcos and played a key role in the dictator's overthrow), was an illegitimate (though acknowledged) child -- his father is referred to as a ‘powerful regional politician and renowned lawyer.’ But that doesn't seem enough to make the cut for this list.

The others are: Miriam Defensor Santiago, Franklin Drilon, and Lito Lapid.

There are political dynasties in the US, of course -- the Bushes and Kennedys come to mind, but there are others. I'm sure the same thing is also true in most other countries -- it's hard to believe that there is anyplace where connections aren't helpful.

But the difference in the Philippines is that it is so pervasive. In toto, eighteen of the twenty-four members of the senate are scions of political families. Three-quarters -- a similar analysis of the US Senate would not come up with anything approximating seventy-five family-connected senators. In fact, I doubt that you would find anything similar anyplace other than the House of Lords or somewhere else where a hereditary principle is involved.

Is It Vote-Buying if the Bills Are Worthless?

There is a lot of vote-buying in Philippine elections – a very large portion of the electorate is very poor.  Exactly how much is something that defies quantification, but I will take the word of those who seem to know.

But this is apparently a new twist on an old game:

Fake peso bills were used by candidates from this province in a massive vote buying spree in last Monday's [mid-term] elections, a police report said. 

Senior Superintendent Isaias Tonog, police provincial director, told reporters that fake peso bills are now circulating in several towns of Northern Samar after [the] counterfeit money [was] distributed to voters by candidates. Voters were given P3,000 to P7,000.  

Tonog disclosed that P200, P500, and P1,000 fake peso bills have been retrieved by his men in the towns of Lavezares, Rosario, Lao-ang, and Pambujan as of yesterday and more fake peso bills have been reported in several other towns in the province. "I've been receiving reports that fake peso bills are now circulating in several municipalities and this could be in all towns of this province." [ … ] 

He said the proliferation of fake peso bills is hurting the economy because the business establishments are reluctant or do not anymore accept P200, P500, and P1,000 peso bills for fear they are bogus. 

P3000-P7000, by the way, is about $75-$175. This is more than I had thought -- I had been told that votes were being bought for twenty-five to fifty bucks. But I guess if you're handing out bogus bills, it doesn't matter if you get a bit lavish.

The Dynasties Roll On

Philippine Senators are elected to six-year terms, with half the Senate (12 of the 24) elected every third year. Of the twelve candidates who currently appear to have won (counting isn’t complete), ten are closely related to other high-ranking politicians. They are:

Grace Poe -- Adopted daughter of two major movie stars, one of whom (Fernando Poe) very nearly won the presidency in 2004.
Alan Peter Cayetano – Son of a former senator. His sister is also a senator, and his wife is a mayor, who also took over his congressional seat when he moved up to the senate.
Francis (Chiz) Escudero – Son of a former congressman and cabinet member, grandson of a mayor, great-grandson of a governor.
Loren Legarda – Married at the time she entered politics (later annulled) to the governor of Batangas, Antonio Leviste. Other Levistes held the governorship previously and at least one congressional seat (although I can’t figure out the exact relationships).
Nancy Binay – Her father is vice-president and a former mayor of Makati (a big piece of metro Manila); her mother is also a former mayor of Makati; her brother is the current mayor; her sister is in the congress.
Juan Edgardo (Sonny) Angara -- Father current senator (term-limited), aunt former representative and governor, uncle new governor.
Benigno (Bam) Aquino – Almost too many to mention. His cousin is the current president and his aunt was president. We’ll leave it at that for the moment.
Aquilino (Koko) Pimentel III – Son of a senator.
Cynthia Villar – Wife of a senator, sister of a mayor, mother of a congressman.
JV Ejercito-Estrada – His father was president and former mayor of San Juan (another big piece of metro Manila) and was just elected mayor of Manila; his mother (who was the father’s mistress) is the current mayor of San Juan; his half-brother is also a senator; various other relatives hold office, including a cousin who is a governor.

The other two, the only ones without family connections, both of whom are current senators being re-elected, are former military officers who achieved fame by leading coups -- Antonio Trillanes, who led a coup attempt against Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (he was elected in 2007 while in jail); and Gregorio (Gringo) Honasan, who led one against Corazon Aquino. In both cases, they were freed by the next president.

(Note: The twelve existing senators are covered in this post). 

With the continuing election and re-election of the same families, there is little likelihood of any substantive reform in the Philippines. The same policies of protectionism and crony capitalism as have long been practiced here by the intermarried business and political elite will continue.

Until something changes, nothing will change.

The Truth Doesn't Hurt if You Pretend It Isn't True

An American posted an op-ed in one of the Cebu papers the other day, detailing why he hates the place (apparently his wife is from here, which I presume is why he stays). A few excerpts:

I am a guest in your country and as such have no agenda, not seeking money, fame nor advantage, therefore I will take a moment to tell you the truth of what I have seen here. 

I’ve been walking around the Mactan airport and taking notes.  The international terminal is falling apart; the security belt where  you place your luggage is being held together by black masking tape.  The ceiling tiles are black from soot and age, ready to fall apart.  There is no free WiFi high speed Internet connection and almost all of the power plugs available in the dilapidated waiting areas to run laptops like mine have been yanked out. 

The taxi drive on the way to the airport itself was something akin to a thrill ride at Hong Kong Disneyland. 

There is no modern transportation system in your city of Cebu. None. You have no bus system and no Metro. It is a frightening experience to get from one end of this city to another.

It really is amazing that a city of this size can have no public transit system of any kind. None. Nada. Zip.

Cebu at night is a medieval nightmare. 

Every building in the downtown area is manned with white-shirted, armed security police who  shoulder shotguns or automatic machine guns. They are not there for decoration. 

Your city is filled with noise and confusion. Your city has no bicycle lanes. Almost no city streets have white lines down the middle and yellow freshly painted on either side. Cebu is a city in chaos. 

Traffic police – if they do exist – must all be sleeping on the job. If there are any traffic laws being enforced, they are done so by officers wearing uniforms coated with invisible ink.

I have been here for almost a year and I have never seen any form of traffic law enforcement. The total lack of enforcement means, of course, that each driver does exactly as he pleases, with predictable results.

Your city of more than one million people has no central park, hence no quiet place for residents to leave the noise behind and take a few moments to commune with nature.

It rather surprises me that this has turned out to be the thing I miss most about the States. I want to be able to go to a park and look at trees and walk on grass. There’s nothing like that here. I think the biggest public space in Cebu City is probably Fuente Osmena, which is just a largeish traffic circle, covering maybe a half acre or so.

Even in Manila, I think there is only the Luneta downtown. The rest of that city has no parks, as far as I know.

The guy goes overboard and engages in a lot of hyperbole. And why he thinks the lack of bike paths and white lines in the middle of roads are the biggest problems here is beyond me.

But with that aside, everything he says is true: No parks, garbage everywhere, no public transportation, noise, chaos, no traffic laws, crime, corruption -- yep, all true.

And then read the comments, and you’ll know why these things will never get fixed. Almost every comment is denial and excuses, including the old standby – racism. Filipinos honestly don’t realize that their country is dysfunctional.

Comelec Loses Touch with Reality

I mentioned the Philippines’ Commission on Elections yesterday in regard to their new rule banning the sale of liquor not just on election day, but for four days preceding the election. Now they have come out with a new rule, intending to limit vote-buying (a common practice here) by forbidding large withdrawals from banks.

For the first time, a "money ban" will be imposed for the May 13 midterm polls in a bid to counter the expected deluge of vote-buying operations with only a few days left before Election Day. Based on Commission on Elections (Comelec) Resolution 9688, the poll body has decided to prohibit withdrawal of cash or encash checks worth more than P100,000 as well as transport or possess cash exceeding P500,000 beginning May 8 to 13. "The Commission finds it necessary to adopt a multi-tiered approach to prevent and apprehend vote-buyers, particularly the regulation and control of the flow of cash, which is the primary medium used in vote-buying," Comelec said. Under the resolution, the Comelec is prohibiting the withdrawal of cash, encashment of checks and conversion of any monetary instrument into cash from May 8 to 13 exceeding P100,000 or its equivalent in any foreign currency, per day.

So, they are basically shutting down the economy from now until the election. P100,000 = $2,500, by the way, not a huge amount of money.

Fortunately, the central bank is pretty much telling Comelec to shove it, since the ruling violates several laws.

But the Bangko Sentral has refused to comply, asserting that it would "disrupt normal business and commercial transactions in the Philippines." [ … ] 

"The BSP is also constrained from enforcing the Comelec resolution because this would necessarily entail looking into bank deposit accounts. This is essentially unsound and in violation of Republic Act (R.A.) No. 1405, as amended (Secrecy on Peso deposits), and R.A. No. 6426 (Secrecy on foreign currency deposits)," it added.

The cash withdrawal restrictions, BSP is saying, are illegal in addition to being really, really stupid.

The part of that second linked article, quoting another of Comelec's fantasy-world rules, that really makes me laugh is this:

Resolution 9688, issued May 7, also empowers ordinary citizens to arrest vote buyers and vote sellers. 

“Persons who committed, [are] actually committing or [are] attempting to commit vote-buying and vote-selling, an election offense, can be arrested by any law enforcement officer or private person without warrant,” the resolution read.

Hilarious. Let's examine how that might work: Juan de la Cruz (the local equivalent of America’s Joe Sixpack) sees his barangay captain (the wardheeler) handing out money at a rally. He walks up and says, "You're under arrest."

Do you think the captain's thugs will kill Juan or just beat the snot out of him?

No Booze on Election Day. or the Day Before, or the Day Before That, or ...

Some people in the US complain because the bars are closed on Election Day. Jimmy Breslin, a well-known journalist and writer who ran for office in New York City in the sixties, began his concession speech by saying, "I am mortified to have taken part in a process that required bars to be closed."

I bring this up because the Philippines is having an election next week, and they're banning liquor sales for five days.

The Commission on Elections (Comelec), in its resolution dated February 26, decided to extend to five days the usual 48-hour or two-day liquor ban prior to the elections. 

Comelec assistant regional director Reddy Balarbar said the resolution is timely, adding that election-related violence is on its peak during the homestretch of the campaign leading to the Election Day due to numerous campaign rallies and early celebrations of some candidates. 

Liquor ban shall take effect from May 9 to May 13, the Election Day. 

Comelec resolution 9582 prohibits any person, including owners and managers of hotels and establishments, to sell, furnish, offer, buy, serve, or take intoxicating liquor anywhere in the Philippines.

Violation of the liquor or alcohol ban is considered an election offense and is punishable with imprisonment of not less than one year but not more than six years and shall not be subject to probation.

I know some expats who are really upset by this, and are rushing out to stock up.

As an aside, when I lived in the Chicago area, we lived just off the golf course of a country club, a couple hundred yards from the clubhouse. It always amused me that the club's bar was our precinct polling place.

Made perfect sense, actually -- a big room (they pushed tables out of the way to make room for the voting booths), plenty of parking, and it wasn't being used that day anyway.

Philippine Political Dynasties (Part 2 of Many)

I have been meaning to return to this subject, but I figured I would wait until next week – the elections are then and I could tell you which families won. Parties mean relatively little here – most politics is organized around the competing clans vying for power (and often cooperating in splitting up the spoils). In Part 1, for example, I used Cebu (where I live) as an example, discussing the Osmenas and Garcias: the leading candidate for governor (a Garcia) is the brother of the current governor, who is the daughter of the preceding governor.

But the post I just did about the Maguindanao Massacre reminded me to post about the particularly ugly clan politics of that area.

The two principal clans in that area of Mindanao are the Ampatuans and the Mangudadatus. The massacre took place when one of the Mangudadatus was running against one of the Ampatuans  for governor. The Ampatuan was the son of the Ampatuan who was the incumbent governor at the time. His uncle was governor of a neighboring province.

In the current election, there are eighty candidates running in Maguindanao who bear the name Ampatuan (there may be other clan members running who have other names).

This includes the wives of two of the top Ampatuans who inconveniently can’t run themselves because they are in jail awaiting trial for ordering the massacre.

The  Mangudadatus are small-timers by comparison, with only eighteen candidates bearing that name.

 It’s hard to see how the Philippines can ever advance with such a feudal political system.

Philippine Justice is a Bit on the Slow Side

A common complaint of many Americans (including me) is the slowness of the justice system. When Americans come to the Philippines, however, they realize that the system at home is absolutely zippy by comparison.

You may or may not have read about a case a few years ago in which 58 people were massacred in Mindanao – they were members of one of the local political clans and journalists who were killed (apparently) by one of the other clans.

The Maguindanao massacre, also known as the Ampatuan massacre after the town where the mass graves were found, occurred on the morning of November 23, 2009, in the town of Ampatuan in Maguindanao province, on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. While the victims were on their way to file a certificate of candidacy for Esmael Mangudadatu, vice mayor of Buluan town, they were kidnapped and brutally killed. Mangudadatu was challenging Datu Unsay mayor Andal Ampatuan, Jr., son of the incumbent Maguindanao governor Andal Ampatuan, Sr., in the forthcoming Maguindanao governatorial election, part of the national elections in 2010. The 58 people killed included Mangudadatu's wife, his two sisters, journalists, lawyers, aides, and motorists who were witnesses or were mistakenly identified as part of the convoy.

Well, the government is pledging that it may be resolved (at least partially) sometime in the next few years.

The government is aiming to speed up convictions in the country's worst political massacre to ensure justice amid fears the trial could drag on for years, the country's top justice official said. 

Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said the government wants judgments against the Ampatuan clan, accused of being behind the murder of 58 people in 2009. 

"The marching orders of the president is that during his term up to 2016, there's got to be convictions," de Lima told AFP in an interview. 

She concedes it may be impossible to convict all the suspects but hopes they can at least get the "principal accused". 

So they are really pushing to convict at least some of the killers in just seven years? I guess they could have set the bar a little lower if they really tried: “We hope to have it resolved in this millennium, but if not then surely the next.”

How to Tell When a Country Is in Trouble

A good indicator that the government of a country is floundering is when they gin up nationalist hysteria. This idea was satirized a few years back in a movie (which I never saw) called Wag the Dog. As I understand it, the plot of the movie revolves around a US president who is facing domestic difficulties and starts a war to distract attention.

(Shortly after the movie came out, the Lewinsky scandal erupted, and a few days after Clinton admitted he had been lying about it, he bombed the Sudan. But that was no doubt a coincidence).

The Falkland Islands serve as a great barometer of conditions in Argentina. In the early eighties, when the military junta was in trouble, they invaded the Falklands, and all of a sudden, the people of Argentina were backing the government. Unfortunately, this sort of thing is only a short-term fix, and when Britain kicked Argentina’s butt, the junta was overthrown.

Now Argentina is in financial trouble (again), with soaring inflation (again), and facing the possibility of defaulting on their debts (again), and guess what’s happening? The president is trying to distract the public by talking about the Falklands (again)

Argentinian President Cristina Kirchner fired off a stream of angry tweets Wednesday night after a United Nations meeting where she championed the cause of wresting the Falkland Islands from British rule.

The Twitter rant follows a referendum in which Falkland Islanders voted overwhelmingly to continue under the empire of the Union Jack.

I’m guessing that Bolivia must be having problems these days, because their president is complaining about a piece of land that Chile took from them in a war 130 years ago.

Bolivia's president said Saturday he would file a suit against Chile at the International Court of Justice "in the coming days" in a bid to reclaim access to the sea lost in a 19th century war. […]

Bolivia lost its access to the sea in the 1879-1884 War of the Pacific and today is the poorest country in South America. Previous attempts to negotiate the redrawing of the border have failed.

Morales said earlier this month that bilateral negotiations with Chile over the border dispute would be a "waste of time."

There was an interesting contrast here in the Philippines recently. The Philippines has a similar dispute with Malaysia over the province of Sabah: Filipinos say ‘It’s ours’, Malaysians say, ‘Tough, we’ve got it’.

Recently, in a story the background of which is too long and complicated to explain, a group of Filipinos invaded Sabah and apparently tried to take it over (or something). The whole thing would have been funny, except that a bunch of people died.

The most interesting thing about the whole mess to me, though, was the reaction of the Philippine government. At present the economy here is going reasonably well (by Philippine standards), and the official response by the Philippine government was mostly embarrassment. Other than urging that the Malaysian government exercise restraint in dealing with the invaders, the government pretty much took a hands-off approach.

Besides the fact that things are going relatively smoothly, the Philippine government had another good reason for wanting to keep things calm with Malaysia. China claims that virtually every island in the South China Sea (known here as the West Philippine Sea) and its other coastal waters belongs to it. In regard to the Philippines, China is claiming a group of uninhabited (but possibly oil-bearing) islands called the Spratleys. China is also claiming islands belonging to other neighbors, including Malaysia. If China tries to enforce its claims, the Philippines will need every friend it can get.