Bureaucracy

On the morning of my 18th birthday, I was woken up by my father, who greeted me, "Welcome to the legal world."

This morning, I finally got off my ass, like a schoolkid who pressed the Snooze button too many times, and got around to registering for next year's midterm elections. Yes, I beat the deadline by a day.

Before you start lecturing me about doing things at the last minute, I do realize that I could have registered earlier. I was fully aware of that even as I pulled into the compound where the Comelec office is at half past six this morning to find a line of people that had already stretched all the way to the main road.

I had actually attempted to register on Saturday. Although I arrived at the Comelec at eight in the morning then, the line wasn't as long as it was today. I got my form and filled it out as I fell in line, enduring the heat for a good two hours. Then my dad swung by the Comelec, saw the queue, and told me it would be four p.m. before I would be done. He suggested I come back on Monday, so I left the line.

My dad told me I should have come a lot earlier—six in the morning, at least, two hours before the office would even open—if I didn't want to wait so long. So I planned to wake up early Monday, but that fell through because I'd fallen asleep too late Sunday night.

Fast forward to today. Though I did think to get to the Comelec office earlier, I (naively) didn't think that everyone else would be thinking the same thing, too. Not that I'm complaining—as I said, I know the consequences of doing things at the last minute, and I was ready to deal with them.

The local Comelec office kept things in order pretty well. At eight in the morning, two Comelec employees went through the queue of voters and stapled a priority number to each registrant's application form. They were accompanied by a cop who weeded out those who had cut in line. (May I just say that I have never, ever understood why people think it's okay to cut in line. It's disrespectful and uncivil. Unless you're dying and need urgent medical attention, back of the line, pal.) They would entertain 350 people in the morning and 250 in the afternoon. I was Registrant #160 P.M., and the Comelec employee, irritated by people behind her hounding her for priority stubs, very politely told us to "eat lunch and come back in the afternoon."

So I headed for the Land Transportation Office, another government office notorious for long lines and red tape. I was expecting another two or three hours or so of squeezing myself into tight spaces and filling out complicated forms, but the LTO office was surprisingly uncrowded when I got there, and it took me all of 30 minutes to get my Student's Permit, which I can turn into a license in five months' time. Oddly, though, I was offered those little red wallets you're supposed to keep your permit in for P30 at almost every window I had to go through. I had to decline because I didn't have change with me, so I'm not sure if they issue government receipts for those things.

I had enough time to go back home, rest a little, and eat lunch before going back to the Comelec. When I got there at a little before one, there was still a small crowd around the entrance, and a small-voiced woman was screaming out names at the door. They were collecting the forms of those with priority numbers in batches of 20 and calling them out. The crowd could barely hear her amidst the chatter. People were growing impatient and started to complain. "How disorganized," I heard one say. "These Comelec people are stupid," commented another. I had to shake my head.

Not much later, another Comelec employee emerged from the office's balcony on the second floor, wielding a megaphone. "Good afternoon," the woman began. She asked everyone not to crowd around the entrance, give his form to the Comelec employee at the door, and wait for his number to be called. Easy peasy.

At half past three I was in line at the stairway. Fifteen minutes later, I was waiting to have my picture taken. At four p.m. I walked down the crowded stairway and squeezed my way past the small crowd that had begun to gather at the door again, thankful that I had been spared the worst of Philippine bureaucracy while doing my civic duty.

Have you registered yet? What's your #votersregistration story?

True story

Let's hope this won't be my last post.

On yesterday's events at Quirino Grandstand

Now that the Iglesia Ni Cristo's Grand Evangelical Mission at the Quirino Grandstand in Rizal Park is over, I think it's worth clarifying the circumstances around the event and contextualize how media organizations treated the story in the days leading up to Tuesday.

Most media outfits have prominently and ill-advisedly angled the GEM story on the Church's alleged support for impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona. This angle has little basis in fact, but the newspapers and TV stations ran with it anyway, probably because it was an easy way to get hits and readers.

Reports have also frequently taken to calling the gathering a "prayer rally"—a term the Church has not used in recent memory. Maybe newsrooms haven't done away with the term because another religious group known for more frequent massive gatherings at the grandstand uses it.

The fact is that the event is what the Church calls it—a Grand Evangelical Mission, where members invite friends and loved ones to listen to the teachings that the INC espouses in a bid to attract converts to the faith. The GEM is no new thing. It is a cornerstone of the Church's missionary activities. The INC has been conducting evangelical missions such as this one since Brother Felix Manalo began preaching the Church in the Philippines in the early 20th century.

True, the Church has not conducted a missionary activity of this size and magnitude in recent years, which is another point reports have used to justify the Corona support angle. Mainstream media has failed to properly contextualize the gathering in this regard. At the beginning of the year, the Church leadership declared 2012 the Year of Intense Propagation of the Gospel (Filipino: Taon ng Puspusang Pagpapalaganap ng mga Salita ng Dios) to ramp up its missionary efforts as the INC approaches its centennial anniversary in 2014. The massive GEM, held not only in Luneta but in several other sites across the country, is in line with this year's theme, and not with any partisan political issue.

Anyone who might have still been speculating about the political intentions of the gathering should know that throughout the one-and-a-half hour event, there was only hymn-singing and a study of the INC's teachings (as is normal in this kind of activity). Not one mention was made about any political issue, much less Corona's impeachment. Any argument about a politicized INC gathering should by now be dead in the water.

I think the intention of the event can be better seen through the experience of tour guide Carlos Celdran, who was "surprised and pleased" at the atmosphere during the event. "You guys truly are a show of force. Disciplined, United, Dignified and EGALITARIAN," Celdran said on his Facebook page. "You have a lot to teach us all about being Filipino."

Penoy

So let's see, what has Aquino managed to do so far? Chase after his predecessor using slipshod, ill-advised legal tactics, check. Throw a hissy fit after a co-equal branch of government catches his mistake, check. Throw another hissy fit after the same co-equal branch of government decides to finally give the land that his family has claimed for decades to the people who actually own it, check. Throw a massive tantrum and pick an unbelievably childish fight with same co-equal branch of government, check. Send his spin doctors all over the media to widen his bullying efforts, check.

Promise to gradually disavow public tertiary education and focus instead on creating a workforce of merely employable sub-professionals—and thereby giving up on national development efforts—check.

This whole Corona impeachment issue has revealed Aquino for whom he truly is: an inexperienced, whiny, inconsolable brat with more hubris than hair. Even this early on, we know that Aquino is a forgettable President.

On fairness, balance and the worldwide Interwebs

Noemi Dado wrote about a video that recently made the rounds that claims facts about the Cojuangco-Aquino family. It's a treasure trove of biting accusations, dubious data and water-cooler fodder. You can watch it here.

The merit of the video is another matter. All I'll say about it here is that it looks like propaganda to me, so I won't accept what it says at face value.

I hoped that Ms Dado would have, too, especially since she wrote the post for BlogWatch, a reputable online "citizen media" site that, in theory, should be fair and balanced. In fact, she said on Twitter that she wrote the post in the interest of fairness and balance.

However, when you look at her post, you can tell where she's leaning towards. She begins with "Thou shalt not be ignorant," then proceeds to reproduce, in full, the description of the video, which explains the motivation behind it and where it sources its facts. After posting the entirety of the description, she inserts excerpts of comments about it by historian Xiao Chua. Not the entirety of Chua's Facebook note, just the first few paragraphs. In fact, the body of Chua's reaction, which Dado excluded from the post, largely disproves the arguments of the video, but she makes no mention of it. This is followed by a long list of tweeted reactions to the video, the overwhelming majority of which were approving of it.

You'll have to read her post yourself, but I think you'll find that she herself approves of the video. The tweets she posted about the issue reveal her stand, too.

Fielding criticism from bloggers, she said she posted about the video in the name of fairness and balance. Her aim, she said, was to present all sides. But the post itself betrays a lack of will on her part to keep the discussion fair. Furthermore, her tweets, more than anything else, challenged the Cojuangco-Aquinos and their supporters to disprove the video.

Of course, we all have our own personal biases, human as we are. But the lack of balance in Dado's post, which (I will repeat) she wrote in the name of fairness and balance, is a disservice to her readers and to the discourse on the matter. She says she presented both sides, but instead she presented one of them, then inserted excerpts from the other. Inserting Chua's comments was a nice gesture, I guess, but I think it was a cop-out, a token act. It didn't balance her discussion of the issue.

I pointed this out to Dado on Twitter (in much fewer words, obviously), and she said, "Well if you think I was not balanced, maybe you can make a blog post about it and share it here instead of splitting hairs." She suggested I curate my own Twitter reactions, and added, "Sorry na lang if that is all I found. Verify it yourself." I found her response disappointing, especially since I only pointed these out to her because she had written the post in question for want of fairness.

In short, she said she was fair, and I (and many others) begged to differ. The discussion kind of disintegrated from there.

These are the times we live in.

Tonight I thought I'd stop by AS on my way to dinner to find out what was going on. They're having a cultural night, with performances from various artists that depict the history of the struggle of the university and its students.

What an auspicious way to spend the night before the university makes history once more. Tomorrow, UP students and administrators will walk all the way from Quezon City to Mendiola, along with other state and private universities, to signify their opposition to Noynoy Aquino's abhorrent policies. They will march in opposition to yet another hefty budget cut the national university is poised to sustain. They will march in opposition to cuts to the budgets of state tertiary schools. They will march in opposition to Aquino's gross underfunding of the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) and of public health in general.

Simply put, UP will march all the way from Diliman to Mendiola because our President has neglected his responsibility to his nation's youth and people too gravely.

Frankly, I do not think Aquino will be shaken in the least by tomorrow's demonstration. His policy—to gradually drop quality tertiary education from the list of his government's responsibilities—has been rock solid since last year. No matter how resonant our call is—and more fundamentally, how crucial quality college education is to the development of a nation—he will probably not listen to it.

But what will matter is that he will know that we know what he is doing. He will know that we won't forget, neither will future generations, and neither will history. He will know that even as he has not been in power for two years, we already know what he will be remembered as: the President who shirked his responsibility to the nation's future.

UP is on strike.

Starting yesterday, the University of the Philippines Diliman went on strike to oppose the Aquino government's continuing neglect of its responsibility to state universities and colleges.

San Juan Representative JV Ejercito paid a visit to the AS steps, where youth leaders, UP officials and some of his fellow congressmen spoke for greater state subsidy. He said more than 100 lawmakers have signed a manifesto supporting the call for state support for tertiary schools.

Student Regent Kristina Conti said such a manifesto, though nice, is really an empty gesture because there isn't any overt action accompanying it. Sure, you want more financial support for state universities, but where's the money?

Kabataan Partylist Representative Mong Palatino, meanwhile, said that however determined Congress might be to increase the budget of SUCs, Aquino will still have the final say. Even if both houses of Congress agree to add to the budget of state schools, when the budget bill reaches Aquino's desk he can still choose to veto such additions. This is why it's a good idea to pressure Malacañang and the Department of Budget and Management about state subsidy for SUCs, he says.

In 2010, Aquino said, "We are gradually reducing the subsidy to SUCs to push them toward becoming self-sufficient and financially independent" because they had the "ability to raise their income." By income-raising ability, he probably means leasing public lands meant for academic use in shady and nonbeneficial deals, or shifting the burden to supposedly state-funded scholars by charging them higher tuition and laboratory fees.

The sad truth is that Aquino's outlook on quality state-supported tertiary education in the Philippines is this: "I don't give a shit." He does not care about training and creating our future engineers, social scientists, artists, journalists, filmmakers and novelists. He does not care about securing the country's industrial, cultural and social future.

He does not care about the future of this country.

His communications team will, of course, say that he does, and will point to his myopic programs—the Conditional Cash Transfer and Public-Private Partnerships—as evidence. Perhaps some will believe their drivel.

But those of us who know what's really at stake, who really understand why there is such an uproar over Aquino's admitted policy on quality tertiary education in this country, know that he has no sense of history, that he has a complete lack of ability to see beyond the horizon. Any president who looks at quality college education as an unwanted burden on the state does not understand what quality college education really means, especially if that president went to a private university and is a rich haciendero.

It's only been two years since his ascent to power, but we all know that for all the history and prestige he used to climb to the top, he will be a forgettable president.

We will not forget.

Mutya Ng Kongreso

Really, is this even a question. Why would anyone even bother to pit anyone against The Miriam Defensor-Santiago. Puh-lease. Many choices less trivial than this one at mutyangkongreso.com.

Flex our WHAT?

A WWII-era warship originally commissioned in 1943 being sent into contested (and arbitrarily named) waters = Philippines flexing naval muscle.

I'm Dean and I am for an intellectual Reproductive Health debate.

I really don't care anymore if you're for or against the Reproductive Health bill. The debate has rotten to such a level that I'm willing to talk to anyone about the bill so long as they don't drag "moral" or religious arguments into the discussion. So long as you don't quote the Bible, the Koran or Oprah Magazine on me or invoke your favorite saint or the friendly creature that lives in the tree in your backyard, we're good.

In support of a secular RH bill debate

Much has been said about the issue of Reproductive Health in the Philippines. The debate is sure to rage on for some time yet, tonight's Harapan debate on ABS-CBN being little more than the televised version of the discussions that happen all over the country every day.

My qualm about the debate is that religious groups have such an insistent voice in this discussion. In last night's debate I was disappointed to find out that the CBCP's spokesperson and at least two medical experts affiliated with the Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas were speaking in opposition to the RH bill. Rodrigo Tano, a Protestant bishop and chairman of the Interfaith Partnership for the Promotion of Responsible Parenthood, spoke in support of the bill, as well.

I'm not surprised that religious groups have a say on the matter of reproductive health in a society as conservative and religious as ours. The CBCP, I need not mention, has been furious in its offense against the bill, occupying all the airtime and column space the networks and publishers will allow them. Catholic teachings, of course, prohibit the use of artificial family planning methods, although Jay Salazar has pointed out that many clerics were in favor of contraception.

The church to which I belong, the Iglesia Ni Cristo, is opposed to natural family planning methods and advocates the use of modern family planning so long as it is not abortifacient; this has been the church's stance since at least the 60s. Ka Eduardo Manalo, the Church's Executive Minister, explained the INC's stand to Rep. Rogelio Espina, chairman of the House committee on population and family relations, in a letter he wrote in October of last year.

The Interfaith Partnership for the Promotion of Responsible Parenthood, Inc., comprising several Christian denominations, similarly expressed their support for legislated Reproductive Health.

The fact, however, is that these opinions do not matter in a secular debate such as this. Or at least, they shouldn't. 

Much of the time that could have been spent discussing the merits of the bill in last night's debate was wasted on irrelevant religious banter; for a fleeting, painful moment the discussions swerved into excommunication and priestly celibacy. Many anti-RH bill tweets sadly professed that to prevent the bill's passage was to preserve our country's morality, as if anyone has a right to define morality for 90 million people based on their religious beliefs.

This is my problem with the debate. I am a non-Catholic Christian living in a secular democratic state. My being non-Catholic doesn't make me any less Filipino than Oscar Cruz; why should my opinion matter less than his?

So why don't we stick to our beliefs—you to yours, I to mine—and discuss the bill in a secular context? To do otherwise, that is, to use any religion's argument in any way in the RH debate, is to disrespect all other religions. It is, more importantly, an insult to democracy.

In simpler terms, I don't care what your or my religion's stand is, it doesn't matter in the debate.

Of course, I don't expect pious Catholics to oppose their Church's teaching, the same way I don't expect my brethren in my own faith to oppose ours. This is precisely the point, without getting too wordy: you do what is right in your belief, I do what is right in mine, and let's argue the RH bill without stuffing the King James Version down each other's throats. The result, hopefully, will be a bill that is forged on common ground and that respects the diversity of our country's culture and faith.

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DISCLAIMER: I am a member of the Iglesia Ni Cristo. These are my personal views and opinions. They do not necessarily reflect those of the INC.