IN THE SUMMER of 1977, four young students graduating from the Ateneo de Manila high school applied for the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) program, hoping to become Air Force cadet officers when they start their first year of college in the Ateneo University.

College graduation picture of Noynoy taken from the Ateneo yearbook (The Aegis 1981)

The fact that they wanted to become military cadet officers was in itself unusual; at that time, military training for male students was compulsory, and most students avoided the training like the plague by pulling strings or calling in favors in order to get medical or special exemptions.

What made the group of four even more unusual was the fact that two of the aspiring military cadet officers were sons of prominent opposition figures detained by the military.

The first was Teofisto “TG” Guingona III, son of 1973 Constitutional Commission delegate and human rights lawyer Teofisto “Tito” Guingona Jr., who was arrested at the declaration of martial law in 1972, and again detained in 1978.

And the second,  Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Aquino III, son of Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. who, by this time had become a permanent fixture in Fort Bonifacio where he was being tried by a military tribunal on charges of murder and subversion.

“We joined the officers training course, apat kami n’un [with Noynoy]: sina TG Guingona, Vergel de Dios, and me,” recalls Galland Diaz, now a practicing attorney and a volunteer in the Aquino presidential campaign. “Lahat ng kaklase namin ayaw ’yang (ROTC), they would try to be exempted from that.”

Unit dissolved

So why would sons of detained opposition figures want to become proteges of the same institution that had jailed their fathers? Diaz recalls that the young Aquino was in no way conflicted. “It was in them to want to become leaders. Probably he (Noynoy) wanted to prove he is not just like any Tom, Dick and Harry there who can march left, right, left.”

“We wanted to become officers at that time,” Diaz says. “An officer carries a position of respect and authority. It means you can take command, take full responsibility, take full authority.”

Unfortunately for the four adventurous souls, there was not enough adventure to go around. The ROTC leadership thought the batch of aspiring officers was too small, and so decided to dissolve the group.

Perhaps it was all for the better; five months later, Noynoy would have more to worry about after the military tribunal found his father guilty of the charges of murder, subversion, and illegal possession of firearms, and sentenced him to death by firing squad. The sentence was suspended, but it would always hang over the Aquino family like a sword.

Diaz says few classmates and friends could really begin to understand what the Aquinos were going through at that time. The seventies were a colorful time to be a youngster, and for the well-off students in the Ateneo University, it was easy to be detached from the rest of the country.

Days of ‘baduy’

“Ang uniform namin nuon, maong, t-shirt, rubber shoes,” Diaz says. “Kung mag-corduroy ka nu’n, medyo nagpapa-impress ka na nu’n.”

“When we attend parties, long sleeves ka, pare-parehong long sleeves, ’yung niknik. Medyo loud colors na madulas na material na medyo loose. By today’s standard, ’yun ang baduy talaga, pero nu’ng araw hit ‘yun.”

Soirees were the norm, Diaz says, with the men sitting in one corner and the women in another, and never the twain would meet until the lights dim and the music starts. But once the music stops, the men and women immediately retire to their respective corners to whisper among themselves and compare notes.

At a time when college life meant fun, freedom, and shiny shirts and bell-bottom pants, the young Noynoy Aquino would try to live the life of a regular young adult whose family was caught in a very irregular circumstance, Aquino’s former classmates recall. It was a time to be “free-spirited”; but for Noynoy Aquino, it was also a balancing act between growing up and maturing too fast.

Living history

“You know that the number one victim of martial law was his family. While we were reading it in books, they were living it on a day-to-day basis,” Diaz says. “He became a man faster than most of us. The guy lived through it, we just read through it.”

Diaz would know. He was Aquino’s classmate from their short-pants days in Preparatory school (“We were about six years or seven years old.”) to graduation from the University.

“You wouldn’t really notice him, he was just like us,” Diaz says. Noynoy was the quiet, well-off kid who tried just a little bit harder than the rest to get better grades, or be more successful, or be more honest than the rest.

“There are times when students do things to pass,” Diaz laughs, recalling some less than honest practices in school. “Sa kaniya hindi pwede ’yun eh. Si Noy, iba ’yung nakakulong ang father mo, you cannot afford to have any scandals.”

This meant leaving parties and gimmicks earlier than the rest, if only to beat the martial law curfew. “Extra cautious siya parati, he could not afford to be involved in anything that would cause trouble.”

Yet the young Aquino would not shirk from a challenge, or a gauntlet thrown his way. One time, he debated fiercely with a college professor when his other classmates would rather meekly hold their peace. “Dinebate ni Noy [yung professor] on principles,” Diaz says, adding that the particular professor actually liked to test his students to see who could stand up (to him) and hold his ground. “He will test you if you have the guts to explain your side. Eh kami ’pag mali kami, okay na. Siya (Noynoy), hindi eh, they debated on it.”

Collects late slips

High school life appeared to have been a simpler time for the young Aquino, with nothing but the concerns of growing up in an upper middle class school. His high school yearbook photo showed a baby-faced bright-eyed teenager with his hair parted on the left and swept carelessly to the right.

The write-up in his high school yearbook described him as the “successor of Ricky Avancena [grandson of President Manuel Quezon] as president of the class… coolest guy with the hottest temper.”

“His hobby: collecting  late slips. Pepsi fanatic who hates water. May ari ng ‘chikot ng bayan.’ Ano ang telephone number ni…”  the write-up says of the young Aquino. The fact that he drove his own car while in high school spoke volumes of his economic and social standing, and certainly earned him “pogi” points with the girls.

His college yearbook photo showed a longer-haired side-burned Aquino, still with the same toothy smile. His college write-up is as convoluted as most college write-ups go, as students struggle between verbosity and profundity.

“To be understood or misunderstood is not so much a struggle as it is to understand or misunderstand the longing for inner peace in each man’s heart. A sincere life is not to go above and beyond others and oneself… at high altitudes, a moment’s self-indulgence may mean death.”

It continued: “Should you ever come across me in your thoughts, never fail to include yourself, and your fellowmen, for in our longings, never at a moment forgetting one another, we together will struggle.”

Quiet, chatty

“I met senator Noy in college, around 1978 maybe,” recalls Carrie de Vera-Torres, another batchmate at the Ateneo. “My first impression of him was that he looked a lot like his father, then-Senator Aquino who was jailed in Fort Bonifacio. The father was a known passionate contra-bida in the life of Marcos, but Noy was just a regular guy, quiet to others, chatty to the people he knows.”

Asked what Noynoy was like as a college student, Torres says the senator was a “roly-poly,” in apparent reference to an easy-going nature. “He gave me the impression that he fulfilled all his requirements in school, just like everyone else.”

Torres adds that Noynoy was politically active in college, although not in a radical way. It was an activism that was more involved with engaging fellow students to participate in school processes. “Having martial law during most of our teenage school life made us complacent,” she says. “Bahala na sila mag-decide was the attitude. Senator Noy was part of that rally to end the apathy and complacency.”

“I remember when we invited Imee Marcos to Ateneo. Perhaps he was uneasy with the fact that Imee is the daughter of his father’s jailer. He didn’t attend the forum that the student council sponsored. He was lurking by the doorway of the auditorium. I teased him though, what if you end up dating her (Imee)?”

Sikaran student

Noynoy had other things to keep him busy as well. Diaz remembers that while most other students would practice Karate and other more popular forms of martial arts, Noynoy tried a different martial art – Sikaran – that is somewhat similar to today’s streetfighting.

“At that time he was engaged in martial arts, seryoso siya d’un,” Diaz says. “Hindi pa uso ang streetfighting nu’n, he was engaged in that already. I guess even at that time it was in him to be a fighter.”

Then of course there were the parties and the night life. Diaz remembers that they would hang out at the Where Else Disco. “Ang tawag nu’n, disco.’Yung mga disco naman nuon sa Makati, wala pa sa Cubao.”

Professor Gloria

It was also in the Ateneo where he bumped into another personality who would later figure prominently in his life. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was an associate professor in the Ateneo, and taught microeconomics.

Since Noynoy was majoring in economics, he naturally ended up taking the class of the future president of the Philippines. Perhaps he minds that idea now, but Diaz says that 30 years ago, he and his classmates certainly enjoyed the class of the petite economics professor.

“At that time we looked at Gloria as somebody who had the repository of all economic knowledge,” Diaz says.

And it didn’t hurt that the cute professor liked to wear tight-fitting outfits.

“At that time, she was pretty eh, she was very pretty as a professor,” Diaz says. “Kaya ma-eenganyo ka eh, you would attend her classes.”

Noynoy would get a B+ from Professor Gloria Arroyo, not bad, says Diaz, who passed the course by the “skin of my teeth.”

“Kaya siguro si Noynoy got a B+ kasi maganda si Gloria nun,” Diaz laughs.

During those college years, it wasn’t yet clear where the batch was headed after graduation. Diaz remembers that most of their college friends took up law, and that Noynoy probably would have taken up law as well had he not had to leave for Boston to accompany his father in exile.

Family picture of the Aquinos taken from Facebook.

A calling?

Torres says she could see at that early stage that Noynoy would probably follow in his father’s footsteps and enter politics. “It was like it was his calling. You know, like inheriting your parents’ business.” But it never occurred to her that he would aim for the Presidency at some point.

In fact, Torres says, she was surprised to find a much more mature man in Noynoy when she met him again, this time as a congressman of Tarlac. Remembering the easy-going “roly-poly” guy in college, the change was remarkable. “I felt he has so much on his shoulders now. Perhaps the next time I can ever have the same conversations we had in our 30s would be when he is done being President of the Philippines.”

But the man remembered so fondly by his classmates would not join them in their graduation march.

Noynoy would leave with his family for Boston in March 1980 after President Ferdinand Marcos granted Ninoy permission to seek medical treatment for his ailing heart. It was the start of a three-year exile. So when members of Batch ’81 of the Ateneo de Manila University marched up the stage, Noynoy was in faraway Boston.

But before Noynoy would leave, Torres remembers a particular incident with her friend.

“When we were practising for our graduation march, he (Noynoy) snuck into our line (not his, of course), in front of me. I told him to get to his line and he told me that he wasn’t attending the ceremony that he was leaving for Boston (soon) to be with his family. I never saw him so happy.” – PCIJ, April 2010

EVERY Thursday afternoon two scores ago, a pack of students from the University of the Philippines in Diliman would jump on a bus and roar off to the cheap restaurants of Cubao or Quiapo. On Fridays, when they also finished classes early, the students would catch the second-run shows in the movie houses of Cubao, where a double feature cost only 60 centavos, or half the peso and twenty for a new movie. Sometimes they would have money left for a burger.

In 1970, Villar graduated with a degree in Business Administration, Major in Marketing from the University of the Philippines in Diliman. (From The 1970 Philippinesian, UP yearbook))

It was the late sixties, and while the rest of the world was into Woodstock and Marxist revolutions, Filipino students were slow to challenge authority. For Manuel Bamba Villar Jr. and his Thursday Club buddies, life was about finishing college, having fun, and catching a good movie now and then.

Much has changed since then. The young man clad in jeans and t-shirt then now wears tailored suits and owns more than a billion pesos in assets. The boy who was called “Bamba” by friends – after his middle name and after a popular song of the sixties, Villar would later don the titles of congressman, Speaker, senator, and then Senate president. The boy whose only aim then was to finish college now seeks the Presidency of the Republic.

Still and all, a few pegs link the present to the past: Villar wears today like a badge on his shoulder what he claims is a past mired in poverty, even as his detractors say he was not really dirt-poor as he purports to be.

Also, Villar and his Senate colleagues Joker Arroyo, Francis Pangilinan, and former Senators Noli de Castro and Ralph Recto would later form the Wednesday Club, perhaps a modern-day version of Villar’s old groupie in college. Every Wednesday, the group would have lunch together at the Senate lounge or in some hotel restaurant and talk about anything and everything from politics to gossip.

Villar the student

Villar entered UP in 1966 to take up business administration (BA), majoring in Accounting. He came from Mapua High School, where he was remembered as a smart and good-looking kid who was even nominated Campus King, recalls Manny Castro, a member of the Cardinals and Robins for Villar (CRV), a volunteer group of Villar’s high school classmates.

In the second semester of his third year in UP, Villar joined the Pan Xenia fraternity.  According to the Philippinesian, then UP’s official yearbook, Villar was also a member of the UP Junior Executives Circle (UPJEC), the UP Junior Philippine Institute of Accountants (UP JPIA), and the UP Student Catholic Action (UPSCA).

Danilo Pineda and Rolando Panlilio, his contemporaries at Pan Xenia, remember Villar as a hardworking student. His dedication and focus were qualities that caught the fraternity’s attention. Students were accepted into Pan Xenia by invitation only.

Pineda says Villar was not an outstanding student but excelled in accounting – the subject that his classmates consider to be their toughest. Girls admired Villar for his accounting prowess, adds Panlilio.

Because of his family’s business, Pineda and Panlilio say, Villar had less time to hang out with his brods after class.

“’Pag uwian, ’di mo na sya makikita, bigla na siya mawawala. Nu’n pala, sabi niya sa ‘kin, ‘Brod, ganito kasi ’yan, ’di kasi ako pwede kasi hahalinhan ko pa si Nanay,’” says Panlilio.

But former classmate Antonio Arcilla says Villar did hang out on a more regular basis with a different club, one that was not in the UP yearbook.

Thursday Club

After his accounting classes ended at 7:30 p.m. on Thursdays, Villar and his classmates would take the bus to Cubao or to Quiapo. They would eat at affordable food joints like Hong Ning, Ma Mon Luk and Chopsticks House in Cubao.

Sometimes, they would go to more expensive places like Barrio Fiesta along EDSA, at the time known as Highway 54. It became a weekly habit that gave birth to the Thursday Club..

To this day, the Thursday Club meets regularly every last Thursday of the month. Villar used to attend but Arcilla, who calls the meetings, says he had stopped inviting him two years ago

“Naawa ako kaya hindi ko na inimbita,” says Arcilla. Villar’s college classmates noticed that Villar sometimes falls asleep in the middle of Thursday Club meetings. When he does, Arcilla normally gives the signal to pack up.

Was the Thursday Club a precursor of Villar’s Wednesday Club in the Senate? Arcilla says he never gathered the courage to pop the question to the senator.

Average student

Arcilla recalls hanging out with Villar at the Benton Hall, the old Business Administration and Economics building, which now houses the UP Diliman Gender Office, Center for International Studies, and the Office of Anti-Sexual Harassment.

“Siyempre mga usapang binata, mga kalokohan,” says Arcilla. “You’re just relieving the stress ng klase.”

Many BA students, Villar included, stayed at the library but not always to study. “Kasi ’yun lang ang may aircon sa buong building,” Arcilla says. “Anyone who goes into the library hindi makakapag-aral kasi ang ingay-ingay.”

When it came to grades, Arcilla says Villar was an “average” student. In Villar’s batch of accounting majors, only one graduated with honors.

“Alam mo kami, we never talk about grades. Napag-usapan na namin ’yan. Kasi if you get a one, ’yun ang pinakamataas, hindi mo ipagyayabang. If you get a five, lalong hindi mo sasabihin,” says Arcilla.

Aside from their usual food trips and the 60-centavo double-movie treats on Fridays, Arcilla recalls playing arcade games with Villar at the old Quezon Center in Cubao. Arcilla was the type who lost his cool over bad scores in pinball but Villar was the exact opposite.

“Siya lang ‘ata ang hindi pa nagagalit sa class namin,” says Arcilla. “’Pag napipikon na siya, tatalikod lang yan. Wala na, tatahimik na.”

Arcilla best remembers Villar for being concerned about others. Arcilla once ran for second vice president in the Junior Executives Circle or UPJEC, where he and Villar were members. The vice president was also the manager of the BA lounge, who received a regular honorarium. Some time before the nomination, Arcilla told Villar he needed the money.

Villar was nominated for the position. Arcilla recalls that they just looked at each other and then Villar withdrew from the nomination.

Pan Xenia

Panlilio’s most memorable memory of Villar comes from the future senator’s initiation rites in the fraternity that included seniors hitting the neophytes with a paddle. In his batch, only Villar pushed through with his application. While he was hitting Villar, Panlilio said he was coaxing the latter to just quit, to test how much he wanted to join the fraternity.

“I was telling him, ‘mag-quit ka na!‘ Then he would answer me, ‘No, master,’” says Panlilio. Villar passed the rites, the only one in his batch of 17 applicants who was made a member.

“Mahirap ‘yung ikaw lang ang mag-isa sa batch kasi lahat ng atensyon ng mga brod sa ’yo naka-focus,” said Panlilio. “Lahat ng discouraging acts, whatever, tatanggapin mo.”

Villar was the first Pan Xenia brod to finish the application process by his lonesome.

An activist, briefly?

Former UP president Francisco Nemenzo says Villar’s years in college were the peak of student activism. Smart students who wanted a career in student politics preferred to join leftist organizations for the necessary political machinery come election time.

Cynthia Aguilar before, and today Las Pinas Rep. Cynthia Villar, majored in Finance. She was Villar's classmate since his third year in college. The 1970 Philippinesian.

Villar was in UP to witness the First Quarter Storm, a series of student-led protests in 1970.  In one interview, Villar claimed that he joined the leftist student organization Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan (SDK) for a month, only to try it out.

Being an activist, according to Nemenzo, was the “fashionable” thing to do at the time but only a small number of students in truth were militants.

“To tell you the truth I’ve been involved in leftist activity since 1960. The reputation is undeserved. During the peak of student activism there was only a small group. Others would just wait and see,” says Nemenzo.

Still, the activists were “sizable enough” to project an image of a militant university to the public, Nemenzo says, adding that most other students were at the time simply focused on their careers. Villar, he says, apparently stayed on the second track.

Nemenzo notes that most activists were from the middle class, while students from lower-income groups strove to conquer the promise of more stable incomes after college, so it was less likely they would risk getting kicked out for activism.

Arcilla says he had heard about Villar joining some of the rallies, adding though that the  nature of the College of Business Administration students contravenes the faith of the activists.  “You cannot expect the ordinary BA student to be there. Kasi nilalabanan nila (activists) ang capitalism. And what is BA (Business Administration)?”  asks Arcilla.

Candidate Bamba

It was in college, however, where Villar first cast his hat into the electoral arena, albeit with sad results. He ran for vice president in the UPJPIA under Arcilla’s ticket. They lost.

Villar would later join male friends in organizing the UP Society for the Emancipation of Men (UP SEMen), supposedly “to have a strong voice in a predominantly female studentry while promoting camaraderie among business students.” The group has changed its name to the UP Society of Emancipated Men and is now accredited as a UP student organization.

(Because SEMen was not yet accredited during Villar’s time, the UP yearbook does not show him being an officer in any student organization.)

Forty years after college, Pineda, Panlilio and Arcilla all say that they had never thought Villar would become a politician. What they did foresee only was that he would meet with success in business.

“Hindi siya ang class valedictorian but I think he learned the most. Kasi siya ’yung pinaka-successful.  And I’m not just talking about learning from books,” says Arcilla.

All close buddies of Villar from college, the three swear this much about the senator: He has  not changed since he took the bus with them to Cubao for cheap movies and treats. To them, Manuel B. Villar Jr to this day remains their La Bamba. – PCIJ, April 2010

HIS LAW SCHOOL study buddies spew out superlatives when asked for proof that Gilberto Cojuangco Teodoro Jr., candidate for president of the administration Lakas-Kampi party, is true “Galing at Talino.”

Teodoro finished at the top of his class at the University of the Philippines College of Law in 1989. The same year, he passed the bar with a score of 86.185 percent, landing No. 1 among thousands of examinees.

Teodoro tops 1989 bar exam with a score of 86.185. (From UP Law Center)

And yet, this “very intelligent,” unconventional nerd was, they add, also a “very unassuming” and “very cool” person. Even as he was scoring quite well in class, Teodoro also dabbled in basketball, often went home straight from school, was never linked to anyone romantically, and not once hooked up with the activists on campus.

They called him plain “Gilbert” back then. His father and namesake had served as Social Security System administrator, and his mother, representative from their home province of Tarlac. He was so unassuming that one of his study group buddies did not realize Gilbert was so fully pedigreed until some time later.

Most Sundays before the bar exam, Teodoro hit the books with three batch buddies and now fellow lawyers – Antonio La Viña, who is now dean of the Ateneo School of Government; Rodrigo Lope Quimbo, who is now a partner in the Quisimbing Torres Law; and Jaime Hofileña, who is now a partner in the Poblador Bautista and Reyes Law.

Quiet, likeable

La Viña and Quimbo knew all at once about Teodoro’s parents being public figures. Hofileña did not until after another classmate told him about it. It was while studying together for the bar that the three say they witnessed the brilliance of Gilbert.

Quimbo says Teodoro struck him “like a quiet guy who was very private… but (also) very bright.”

La Viña describes him as “likeable and approachable… very bright, seemed to be always prepared.”

Asked to put a label on his study buddy, Hofileña paced his thoughts, and then says he thinks “nerd” would be more like it. Nonetheless, “the results show: he finished top of his original batch. He topped the bar… if it wasn’t for our study group.”

Teodoro was good in class as also in their private study sessions they held at the house of La Viña or Hofileña, but never in Teodoro’s house.

The four would exchange notes, answer past bar exam questions, quiz one another, and most times, Teodoro gave the precise answers. “It was at this time when I knew that he would top the exams.” Quimbo recalls. Even during the study sessions, he says Teodoro was “very focused” and “very driven academically.”

Scary brilliant

Despite this, Hofileña says studying all the time was never Teodoro’s way. “I never see him studying there, that’s the problem.”

His intellect was very impressive, even daunting, according to La Viña. “It was scary being with Gibo who had memorized every constitutional provision and all the relevant laws and could cite all the SCRA (Supreme Court Rulings Annotated) volumes for many Supreme Court decisions.”

He was so brilliant Teodoro always had answers to their questions, even without having to consult law books. It reached a point when Hofileña says he felt inadequate during the study sessions. Teodoro remembered the finer points that the others did not notice at all. “It seems he has a gift for studying,” but did not seem to be studying as hard, and between study sessions, also played hoops with Hofileña.

His routine was pretty well established: He would attend class, tarry just a while in campus, and then disappear. Once in a while, he would be spotted at the library, just for brief periods.

Hofileña tells of a “legend” about Teodoro that went around at the law school. “Legend has it that he never even entered the library. Legend also has it that he had his own library at home.”

Teodoro was so absorbed in his academics not one of his friends knew or heard about his being a member of any organizations or fraternities, except only for their bar exam study group. Not one of his friends also recalls him having any romantic relationship back then.

This story of a brilliant student starts and ends the trip to memory lane of Teodoro’s years in law school for his review buddies. Social life? Night life? Gimmicks? There is hardly anything more they could say about Teodoro as he was nearly totally inactive in school.

Conservative lot

Former UP president, Dr.Francisco Nemenzo, is not surprised at all.  Despite all talk of the state university being the hotbed of activism, Nemenzo describes UP law school students as conservative by nature because of their respect for authority and reverence for the laws.

The years Teodoro spent at the law school – 1985 to 1989 – was also a period that witnessed the decline of student activism, and the UP College of Law had turned its focus on memorization rather than political discussion.

Many students who transfer to UP from other schools like Teodoro did not automatically turn activists, Nemenzo says. Teodoro obtained his undergraduate degree in Commerce from De la Salle University in 1985, and finished secondary school at Xavier University in 1981.

Teodoro obtained his masters of laws degree from Harvard Law School in Boston, Massachusetts in 1997.

Hofileña sees another side to Teodoro’s non-involvement in campus politics. The law school and its faculty, he recalls, had no united stand on issues, the university respects one’s personal choice to be or not to be activists.

Besides, he says Teodoro was very busy with other commitments outside school, including being a member of the Sangguniang Kabataan in Tarlac and learning how to fly planes.  “He was some sort of a reserved officer in the Air Force.”

That early, he had jumped into politics, a natural thing to do, according to Hofileña, for one born to the part almost.

“I think that even then he was motivated by a calling for public service that characterized also his own father’s public life,” La Viña says. “At the same time, Gibo was not necessarily interested in holding power for its own sake.”

Yet while they were just students, Hofileña says Teodoro and his study buddies shared the same, simple goal: to become lawyers. Running for president was not part of it at all. Thus, when Teodoro finally decided to do so, even his law school friends were stunned to some degree.

UP Law Batch ’89 Graduation. (From the files of Atty. Tony La Viña)

Changed for better

“He became congressman for three terms and had a Cabinet position. He has the political pedigree. He has that material,” Hofileña concedes but adds that he did not foresee Teodoro gunning for the presidency either. “I did not think he would run for President but I always knew he was destined for great things,” says Quimbo.

Just the same, to these friends, “Gibo” has not changed much at all.  If at all, he has changed for the better.

“Gibo now is more mature and progressive than he used to be,” La Viña says. “Although we later became good friends, our political positions on many issues differed a lot. Gilbert tended to be quite conservative on issues where I thought radical, even revolutionary change, was necessary.”

La Viña describes “Gibo” as “more pro-human rights and pro-poor than I thought was possible.”

Hofileña sees “still the same humble guy we knew way back in his college years… brilliant, very intelligent; he answers questions very well… knows what he says but in a very unassuming way.” The new twist though is his campaign has compelled him to be a little bolder.

And despite his crazy schedule in politics and public service, just like the good old days, his study buddies say “Gibo” still remembers how to have fun.  And “fun” in Teodoro’s book, according to Quimbo, is “singing karaoke with the boys.” – PCIJ, April 2010

Our latest offering is a series of stories about the gigs, gimmicks and exploits in college of three candidates for president — the Liberal Party’s Benigno C. Aquino III, the Nacionalista Party’s Manuel B. Villar Jr., and the Lakas-Kampi’s Gilberto C. Teodoro Jr.

These stories were written by communication students who are now working with the PCIJ on internship basis. We sent them out to field to discover how these candidates were like when they were students their age.

Our interns interviewed close friends and buddies of the candidates to get anecdotes and insights into the youthful persona of our subjects. As well, our interns mined libraries and private files for photographs to see how our candidates looked like many years ago, or before they heeded the call of politics.

It is our hope that this, our little journey back in time with our interns, could help inform and inspire our voters, most especially the young ones, to take their honored place as citizens on May 10, 2010.

• Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III: ‘Roly-poly’ digs ROTC, gigs, debating teacher
• Manuel B. Villar Jr: La vida de La Bamba: Cheap films, frat, fun
• Gilberto C. Teodoro Jr: ‘Scary brilliant’ guy, zero social, love life
• Photo Slideshow: The candidates as young men

THIS HAS become one star-studded election season, but few are under the delusion that artistas have suddenly been seized by profound political or social consciousness.

Longtime observers of the showbiz industry say it’s really mostly about money. “There’s not much principle involved,” says entertainment columnist Isah Red. “Usually, the talent manager handles the deal so the celebrity endorses (a politician) and there’s quid pro quo. But of course, no one will categorically admit that it’s like that.”

Yes! Magazine editor in chief Jo-Ann Maglipon shares Red’s observation. She also says that in general, it is the politicians who seek endorsement from celebrities and not celebrities who go out of their way to voluntarily recommend politicians to voters.

“I know one celebrity, a certified crowd-drawer who wasn’t seeking to become the endorser of politicians,” she says. “He nevertheless did a tour of dinners with top candidates because everyone wanted to get him.”

“The pay is really good,” adds Maglipon, explaining why even an initially uninterested celebrity would be enticed to endorse a politician. “I understand it’s P20 million and above (for top celebrity endorsers). It has reached P50 million (for some), I don’t know if anyone has been paid P80 million, but others have business deal(s).”

Part of the game

Maglipon says that endorsing candidates in exchange for money is already part of the culture among local celebrities. “They think that their services were acquired as an endorser because they were big, so they think they’re entitled to be paid for it,” she says.

Often, too, celebrities start to convince themselves of a politician’s worthiness only after they have struck a deal with the latter. This, according to Maglipon, indicates that principle isn’t the endorser’s primary motivation in campaigning for a candidate.

“I don’t know how many seconds or days later that self-convincing is made,” she says. “But if the celebrity actually knew what the (candidate) was about, and did not have to sit (down) with him, then that means the celebrity studied the politician’s platform and background.”

Yet while she believes majority of the current crop of celebrity endorsers were paid for their services, she says there are still cases where the celebrity really does believe in the candidate he or she was paid to endorse.

Indeed, while Sarah Geronimo isn’t about to say whether or not she really received a multimillion-peso fee to endorse the Villar-Legarda tandem of the Nacionalista Party, she tells PCIJ that her political endorsements were borne out of principle.

“It’s more than just political strategy,” says the young, popular singer and star of recent blockbuster movies. “Our joint advocacies brought us together.”

Meeting of minds?

According to Geronimo, it was her concern over issues about women’s rights and overseas Filipino workers that convinced her to back the Villar-Legarda team. She also says she considers it an honor, at her age, to have been chosen to help spread the message of the ticket’s campaign.

GMA-7 star Dingdong Dantes meanwhile is among the celebrities who reportedly appeared for free in the TV ad that launched the candidacy of the Liberal Party’s Benigno Simeon ‘Noynoy’ Aquino III for president.

Dantes says that while he made it a point to look at the platforms of other candidates, the legacy of Aquino’s family – former Senator Benigno Aquino Jr. and former President Corazon Aquino – was a big factor in his decision to support Noynoy Aquino. He says that his support for Aquino solidified after discussing issues about education with the candidate.

Dantes continues to be active in the Aquino campaign, even organizing the Advocates of Youth and Students for Noynoy Aquino (Ayos NA). “I consider my efforts just the same as those campaigning for him in the streets, in their families, in their own homes,” he says. “The only difference is that I have the privilege of being in front of many people, there are people who can listen to me, and sometimes they believe in what I believe in.”

More than money

He says he isn’t being paid for his services, but volunteers that he has received a small token from Aquino: a small frame containing old five-peso coins from Aquino’s collection, autographed by the senator’s late mother. “For me,” Dantes says, “that’s more than enough, that’s more than any monetary compensation.”

Maglipon, though, cites another reason why some celebrities would endorse a candidate even without payment: prestige. “If you are a star who is asked to endorse a political candidate, the higher the post, the higher your standing is in the showbiz community,” she says. “That means they trust you to bring in the votes, you must be hot, endorsees must like you, the public must like you.”

She rues the fact that involvement of local celebrities on relevant national issues leaves much to be desired. Notes Maglipon: “You can barely hear a peep from movie stars (before the elections) when politics is concerned. How do you then translate that to endorsing a politician? How do you then assume that you can tell the people how to vote, over something as important as who will run this country next, who will make the laws?”

The veteran journalist points out that in other countries, celebrity endorsers have become effective political players.

“They know who they’re voting for, and they know why they’re backing a candidate using their credibility, their stature, their prominence,” she says. “They actually have an articulation of their position, not just during election period, but throughout, when policies are being made and policies are being done.”

At the very least, she says that local celebrities should rethink accepting payment for endorsing a candidate – especially for one who is running for president.

“Over many other issues and products, this is the one thing that celebrities should not be paid for,” says Maglipon. “If you’re going to endorse a person for the highest post in the land, I think your standards should be far above money because what you will do is for the country.” – PCIJ, May 2010

IT IS the lawyer who knows the law, it is the fisherman who knows how to fish, and it is the architect who knows how to design buildings. So why should voters rely on celebrities in choosing whom to pick as their political leaders?

But perhaps “rely” is too strong a word. Still, there’s no sugarcoating the fact that in this country, celebrity endorsements have helped many a politician win. In far too many cases even, celebrities themselves have been voted into public office with little to show beyond their showbiz credentials.

“It’s called transference,” communications consultant Fernando Gagelonia says of the fusion of showbiz and politics in the Philippines, which has made celebrity endorsements part and parcel of political campaigns. “You’re beautiful, you’re moneyed, you’re successful, and I want to be like you.” Even if it is only as far as making the same choices of one’s idol in the polling booth, apparently.

It’s also called a shortcut, especially for those who have little political stock. Or as Gagelonia puts it, “If you are not a familiar face to the public, people will remember who endorsed you.”

Obviously, the endorser can’t be just anybody. Here in the Philippines, where majority of the population are glued to their TV sets for three to seven hours a day, there’s no question from whom someone seeking election into a public office should ask for help.  Says Yes! Magazine editor in chief Jo-Ann Maglipon: “If you want instant recall, if you want immediate rapport with a large audience, there is nothing like having a celebrity endorser.”

An ideal world

In an ideal world, of course, celebrity endorsers don’t matter. After all, says Rolando Tolentino, dean of the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communications, “What needs to be sold are the platforms of politicians, their ethical positions, where they’re coming from, where they’re planning to deliver the country in the next three or six years — that should be the basis of choice.”

That it isn’t can be traced in part to the cult of personality that is Philippine politics. This in turn seems to be the result of a multiparty system that has failed to encourage the development of unique policies and ideas, and has instead degenerated into a mindless free-for-all for votes and not much else every three years.

Political strategist Ronald Jabal of AD&R Strategic Communications, Training and Research says that the usually overcrowded senatorial race in particular is highly dependent on candidate awareness and name recall. And as pointed out by Maglipon, the easiest way to achieve high awareness and recall is to tap a celebrity for an endorsement.

“It may sound stupid,” says Jabal, “but that’s the name of the game.”

Mega-wives

For example, he says, a large part of the victory at the 2001 polls of Senators Francis ‘Kiko’ Pangilinan and Ralph Recto can be credited to their showbiz wives.

Pangilinan is married to ‘Megastar’ Sharon Cuneta while Ralph Recto’s wife is ‘Star for All Seasons’-turned-politician Vilma Santos-Recto.

Cuneta’s selling prowess is unquestionable. She can sell anything to the public – from burgers to milk to movies. Jabal is only one of many who believe she helped sell her husband’s candidacy.

It also helped that years before running for the Senate, Pangilinan had carefully cultivated his image as a public-serving lawyer under the klieg lights of ABS-CBN’s news and current affairs department, hosting several shows on TV and radio.

Recto, meanwhile, had already served nine years at the House of Representatives before gunning for a Senate seat. But he apparently still considered his wife’s wattage useful at the hustings. In truth, in a move that demonstrates how showbiz trumps history, Recto – grandson of nationalist Claro M. Recto – even ditched his surname and campaigned as Mr. Vilma Santos for greater name recall.

Twins?

Yet another example of a Senate seat won by way of a celebrity is that of Ma. Ana Consuelo ‘Jamby’ Madrigal, the shipping and banking heiress who had her first brush with national politics as part of the Estrada Cabinet. After the ouster of her political patron, Madrigal made a bid for the Senate in the 2001 polls, but lost. Three years later, she tried again – and surprisingly placed fourth in the race.

The difference in Madrigal’s two runs was that in her second try, her handlers thought of having young actress Judy Ann Santos as her endorser. In fact, they went as far as engineering the looks of the endorser and the endorsed in posters and TV ads so that the two could almost pass as twins.

At that time, Santos and the popular action star Robin Padilla dominated the primetime ratings with the action-packed television series “Basta’t Kasama Kita.” Santos, who started out as a child star, also had a huge masa following by then, and enjoyed a wholesome image.

Turnaround

Many people were thus surprised when Madrigal, now aiming for the presidency, suddenly denounced the use of celebrities in political campaigns.

“Paying actors P30 million for endorsements is an insult to the Filipino intelligence,” Madrigal said in a presidential forum last February. “I have seen the folly of my ways and I will not repeat that because I do not believe you repeat a mistake. I also don’t believe you should perpetuate lies (with) a thick budget.”

Madrigal may just be an astute student of political campaign strategy, though. According to Jabal, presidential and vice-presidential candidates cannot rely on the showbiz endorsements alone. They have to brush up on issues that matter, he says, as the public somehow demands more from people running for these posts.

Failure to launch

Then again, there is the faltering campaign of the administration’s presidential candidate Gilberto ‘Gibo’ Teodoro Jr., who, Jabal says “sticks to issues.”

“But people find it boring,” he concedes. Not even the catchy “Sulong Gibo (Forward Gibo)” song by the popular pop rock band Rivermaya has managed to keep the public’s attention on Teodoro long enough for many of them to listen to what he has to say. Ironically, Teodoro has not made much use of the celebrity of his running mate, Edu Manzano, a former TV host, as well as father of VJ and model-actor Luis Manzano and ex-husband of Vilma Santos-Recto.

In any case, there is also such a thing as too much star power, says Malou Tiquia, founder of the political PR and lobbying firm Publicus Asia, Inc. She cites in particular the celebrity-filled ‘Hindi Ka Nag-Iisa (You Are Not Alone)’ TV ad that introduced Benigno ‘Noynoy’ C. Aquino III of the Liberal Party (LP) as a presidential candidate.

Drowning in stars

The stars, says Tiquia, drowned out the commercial’s message, which was that Aquino was continuing the legacy of his illustrious parents, assassinated opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr. and former President Corazon C. Aquino. Tiquia also says that there was not even an attempt to tell people what the candidate stood for — a crucial omission for someone who has set his sights on leading the nation.

Jabal, for his part, says that artistas should be used only as “teasers” in a presidential campaign. In Aquino’s case, he says it was unfortunate that stars were “overused” so early in the game.

“Puro artista ang naging simula, naging kengkoy (The start was so full of celebrities, it became ridiculous),” he remarks. “And he (Aquino) is not even known to hobnob with stars.”

Too late

Actually, despite their media dependency, Pinoys are also quite jaded and can easily be turned off by mere song-and-dance routines or by endorsements that appear to suddenly come out of nowhere.

Tiquia notes that many eyebrows went up when vice-presidential candidate Senator Loren Legarda of the Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC) showed up in TV ads with singer-actress Sarah Geronimo, weeks after Legarda’s numbers failed to surge to present a formidable challenge against her main rival, LP’s Manuel ‘Mar’ Roxas II.

According to Tiquia, Geronimo’s involvement in the Legarda campaign should have been part of its early stages, to prevent the perception among the public that the star was merely being used to prop up Legarda’s sagging survey showing.

The resulting perception was regrettable, says Tiquia, since Geronimo was a great choice as endorser. Says the strategist:  “Sarah’s background may be good for any candidate. She rose from poverty to become an idol of young people.”

Overwhelmed

Geronimo also endorses the presidential candidacy of Legarda’s running mate, Nacionalista Party (NP) standard bearer Manuel ‘Manny’ Villar Jr. But not only has her wholesome image failed to rub off on Villar, it has also been overwhelmed by the less-than-wholesome images of some of the candidate’s other celebrity endorsers: comedian Dolphy, TV host Willie Revillame, and boxing champ Manny Pacquiao.

Although popular with the masses, all three men have reputations as womanizers. Revillame has also been accused of beating up his ex-wife.

Jabal, for one, says that the three would certainly not appeal to feminists. Their endorsement of Villar has even prompted no less than Monsignor Pedro Quitorio of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines to ask, “Why should we select a person who is immoral if we are aiming to build our nation?”

Tiquia says careful candidates go as far as making sure that contracts with paid star endorsers contain a morality clause. The provision, she says, requires endorsers to refrain from actions that may cast a bad light on themselves, and a shadow over those they endorse. The requirement stays well after the votes are counted.

The Godfather

But then there’s that political puzzle called Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada, the black sheep scion of a well-to-do family who made his name in action films before entering politics. A self-confessed ‘lover of women,’ Estrada was elected as the country’s chief executive in 1998, but had his term cut short by a popular uprising three years later. He was subsequently arrested, put on trial, convicted of plunder, and then set free by presidential pardon. Shortly after making a comedy movie last year, he announced his presidential candidacy and has since emerged as a major contender for the post, at least according to voter-preference surveys.

When he was still president, Estrada had sued a national broadsheet for calling him an “unwitting ninong (godfather)” of a bigtime, but questionable business deal. What he may well be, though, is the godfather of this country’s star-crazed politics. – with additional reporting by Jaemark Tordecilla, PCIJ, May 2010

BARANGAY ADDITION HILLS, MANDALUYONG CITY – It’s a historical moment in the country’s electoral history that also turned into a mammoth fiesta for local candidates here who, in defiance of election rules, hang columns of posters and tarpaulins outside the Andres Bonifacio Integrated School.

After all, about 27,000 voters were expected to cast their ballot at the school

Yet even as the official campaign period lapsed last Saturday, on the street leading to the school’s entrance gates, candidates for mayor and Congress in Mandaluyong City laid out lines of “banderitas” featuring their names and faces.

Interestingly, the flashy ‘banderitas’ can only be seen on the street where the school is located.  A resident said the campaign materials were displayed only last Saturday. This has always been the practice of candidates in Mandaluyong, the resident said.

Meanwhile, the street vendors, mostly children, lost no time to partake of the “fiesta” atmosphere and came ready with snacks, fruits, and drinks for sale. – PCIJ, May 2010

Barring last-minute surprises in the election count, the Noynoy-Nognog tandem will lead the next casting at Malacañang Palace in the next six years, according to funny-boned Filipinos.

Nognog, dark-skinned Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay in real life, will also be installed as the country’s “first black vice president,” they say.

Two characters from the popular cartoon The Simpsons portraying “Noynoy” and “Nognog”

But before he could become president, Noynoy, who goes by the full name Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III, may need to convince closest rival Joseph Estrada to concede.

Estrada can’t and won’t, supposedly because when he voted, his victory had been guaranteed. Proof of this, and so the tale is told, was that after Estrada fed his ballot into a PCOS machine, it popped this message: “Congratulations!”

In the most serious moments, trust Filipinos, acclaimed to be among the world’s happiest peoples, to joke and pun and laugh at themselves.

The last elections, a historical moment for being the country’s first national automated balloting, sparked a bumper harvest of humorous tricks and treats across media old and new. The jokes have been played most often on the candidates for national office by jokesters of all political persuasions.

It is not that poverty and politics are a laughing matter. On the contrary, these are matters so serious with implications so grave hence the resort to humor by some Filipinos.

For one, through jokes anyone could fire off sharp commentary without inflicting real or serious injury. For another, because jokes are made to provoke laughter, the jokester is allowed to submit the most acerbic opinions with minimal accountability, or even complete anonymity.

Painless, faultless

Criticizing in a painless, faultless manner – that could well be the reason why Filipinos resort to jokes in the era of elections or other acute political debates, according to anthropologist Dr. Clemente Camposano, director of the Institute of Political Economy in the University of Asia and the Pacific (UA&P).

Jokes, he says, allow people to talk about real problems “in a manner that does not create tension.” In a sense, the lightness of jokes allows Filipinos, deemed to be generally non-confrontational, to engage in political debate with minimal complications.

And because hard political talk is the acclaimed domain of the intellectual, the affluent, and the elderly jokes have turned into an accessible platform for political discourse for those much younger and with less money and education. The problem emerges, however, when to the average Juan and Juana, the joke remains just a joke, a laughing matter.

Dr. Maria Rhodora Ancheta, who has studied patterns and images of humor, says, “the comic’s object… as people will remember it is really just (to elicit) laughter. Parang as soon as I laugh, okay na ’yung joke na ’yan.”

Public conversation

But political jokes in particular are an important public conversation, except that its content values are too often eclipsed by facetious form, she says.

For instance, she says comedians tend to always play on the periphery to mask the seriousness of politics, leaving to their audience a big burden: how to sift the serious messages from a comic rendering of the big issues.

Ancheta, a professor at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, also studies the cultural context of images in literature. Sometimes, she says, political jokes veer away from folk precepts well established in literature.

She says: “Sabi nila, ’pag may dwende sa bahay, swerte raw at masagana ang buhay. Eh bakit may dwende sa Malacanang pero mahirap pa rin ang ’Pinas?” [They say that a house where a gnome dwells is a lucky and blessed house. But there is a gnome at Malacañang, so why is the Philippines still so poor?]

”Dwende sa Malacañang” is a moniker that some Filipino comics have bestowed on outgoing President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, in reference to her Lilliputian frame.

In this instance, Ancheta notes that the joke suggests that Malacanang Palace and the home are parallel concepts, poverty is the problem, and that Arroyo is to blame for the people’s destitute state.

Yet aside from Arroyo, those who seek to succeed her have found themselves too often at the receiving end of jokes.

B1go Teodoro

Bigo, C-5 at Tiyaga

Online, jokesters have christened administration candidate Gilberto ”Gibo” Teodoro Jr., who championed the campaign ”Galing at Talino,” as ”Bigo” Teodoro.

Nacionalista Party candidate Manuel B. Villar Jr. had proclaimed himself as the aspirant with ”Sipag at Tiyaga.” In the jokesters’ book, that reads as ”C-5 at Taga,” in reference to a controversial road project that supposedly benefited Villar’s real estate project and earned a huge right-of-way payment for his family-owned company.

Liberal Party candidate Benigno C. Aquino III, thrust to national prominence by his pedigree as son of democracy icons Cory and Ninoy Aquino, did not have a personal pitch. He got this from the comics: ”Mama at Papa.”

Impersonator and satirist Willie Nepomuceno likens jokes amid a heady political exercise to popping candies because “it perks you up a little, pass it on and delete and it’s just a thought.’

Nepomuceno has parodied nearly all male Philippine presidents from strongman Ferdinand E. Marcos to Fidel V. Ramos to Joseph Estrada. These days, Nepomuceno parades on television as “Noynoy Palaboy,” his comic styling of winning presidential candidate Aquino.

While candies offer a sugar fix or a virtual adrenaline shot, Nepomuceno says jokes amid the confusion and noise that mark elections are also “a way of letting off steam… of (making) you think.” This seems especially true, he notes, for two groups of citizens – the most politically aware and the most unhappy about the country’s state of affairs.

Decade of jokes

The past two decades may well be considered the halcyon years of political jokes in the Philippines, judging by the volume and speed of spread of jokes, across old and new media platforms, vented at political personalities.

And it is probably not only because Filipinos have gotten funnier. Greater assertion of freedom of speech, text messaging, as well as blogging, social networking, and a slew of freeware applications on the Internet have all allowed a downpour of comic content online.

Put a check to vote for “C5 at tyaga”

What used to be the domain of trained professionals, online publication has become accessible to anyone with message or content to push in a jiffy, thanks to Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and blogs.

Without any firm standards of quality, the Web has allowed everyone to post or upload funny or serious commentary, and instantly, it spreads virally — exponentially, unpredictably — through networks of readers across the globe. This is also the route that has been charted by the untraceable, if virtually unstoppable, group text.

The May 2010 elections yielded jokes of varying shades of green, black, brown and dark. During the campaign period, social networking sites and popular blogs meshed caustic commentary with piping pranks.

On Facebook, fan pages poked fun at the presidential candidates. One of the most popular was the anti-Villar fan page called “Sige MANNY VILLAR ikaw na ang MAHIRAP.” It has enrolled 126,082 members.

Other popular pages include the “Sige Noynoy, Hindi ka na Magnanakaw at Anak ka na ni Ninoy at Cory,” and the “If Erap Estrada is elected president again, I’M LEAVING THE COUNTRY!”

On these fan pages, the edited images of the candidates have been uploaded beside which fans could post their own quips and status messages.

‘PCOS’ tweets

Twitter has also become a playground for political satire.

On Election Day, tweets by an anonymous twitter account named “PCOS machine” started to draw traffic. It posted tweets on the glitches and mishaps in the automation process such as, “Please don’t blame us PCOS machines. We’re doing our best. Just shade the bilog na hugis itlog and I’ll do the rest for you.” Another read: “@CF card – I’m not talking to you. You almost ruined my career.”

“Sige Manny Villar, ikaw na ang mahirap…”

Three days after the vote, the authorities found 60 PCOS machines at the house of a technician in Antipolo City. The incident sparked this tweet from the “PCOS Machine”: “f I find out that they’re actually having an outing in Antipolo and I wasn’t invited, somebody gonna get a hurt real bad.”

Political humor has become a staple fare of bloggers. “Professional Heckler,” a popular blogger, has become an even bigger name on the web for his relentless bashing of politicians. YouTube has hosted a smorgasbord of funny video clips, including spoofs of the candidates’ political advertisements. Villar’s “Dagat ng Basura” ad has morphed into various jocular versions.

But it is not only the candidates who have commanded top billing on the humor mill.

Toward the end of the campaign period, Acting Justice Secretary Alberto Agra grabbed the punters’ attention after he issued a resolution absolving two members of the Ampatuan clan from the Maguindanao Massacre. For his action, he became the “Agra-vating” or “Agra-byado” weekly special on the web.

Aquino’s youngest sister, television star Kristina Bernadette Aquino, earned her fair share of jokes as well. This happened after Kris’s younger son Baby James Yap blurted out the name of “Villar” when asked at a campaign rally about his choice of presidential bet. An abundance of online jokes has also focused on a supposed plan by Aquino to hire Kris and showbiz buddy Boy Abunda as Cabinet members.

The top TV networks that are incessantly locked in a ratings war were not spared, too. The so-called hologram technology that ABS-CBN Channel 2 and GMA7 separately claimed to be their cutting edge in the coverage of the elections triggered this comment from “Professional Heckler”:

“GMA News and Public Affairs ushered in a first on Philippine television. Howie Severino became the first Filipino to be beamed in ‘a hologram’ on live TV. But rumors say it wasn’t really Howie but his boss, Jessica Soho, who was supposed to be beamed first during the coverage. There wasn’t just enough ‘beam’ to make it possible.”

Always with zing

Truth is, according to impersonator Nepomuceno, political jokes, while meant to entertain, “always offer purposeful commentary, message or comic object.”

As a matter of course, he says he puts a light touch to important news so he could help raise awareness without alienating people. “I’m just a facilitator… More or less okay na sa akin basta may naiwan na akong seed of thought.”

While all media platforms have been invaded by jokes during the elections just concluded, Nepomuceno says text jokes are his favorite because these are “simpler and raw, easily digestible, nothing fancy.”

“I’m not a techie, and (gets) easily bored with too much text copy. They’re too fancy for me,” he says, adding that “too much jokes in one serving gives you an overdose and makes the whole thing bland.”

They are fun and light but there is a downside to jokes, according to UP’s Ancheta. Sometimes, after a good laugh, she rues that ”nobody thinks about thinking.”

Camposano of the University of Asia and the Pacific says that as much as Filipinos love to laugh about politics, they also take politics seriously. “People die for their candidates. People kill for their candidates. People spend billions [on] their campaigns…. Why would you invest 220,000 pesos for a 50-second spot on TV? It’s serious.”

Still and all, he sees a need to distinguish between a serious discussion of politics and the way Filipinos take politics seriously. “Elections are very much a personal enterprise,” he says. Whether it is some kind of reward, relationship, or opportunity, elections affect the future interests of individuals, she notes.

In her published studies of the hugely popular comic strip Pugad Baboy (Swines’ Nest) of cartoonist Apolonio “Pol” Medina Jr., Ancheta illustrates why the fictional Pugad Baboy community appeals to Filipinos. In the comic strip, “distant things are internalized, we share our personal struggles with the community, the micro and the macro are deeply intertwined,” she says,

Politics matters

Adds Ancheta: “Remember the parallelism within the Gloria-dwende joke? Apparently, in the Filipino mindset, we liken any space we occupy or value to our concept of home. Thus, politics matters to us.”

Camposano laments, however, what he calls the lack of a civic culture, hence the lack of “inclusive and serious political discourse,” in the Philippines. To candidates and voters, politics seems to be built largely on selfish interests,” and this, he says, may explain why many Filipinos end up trivializing politics rather than becoming involved.

In Ancheta’s view, it’s a chicken-and-egg situation. It is said that Filipinos should consider themselves “lucky” if they could get honest public officials elected. If luck remains the arbiter of elections, how is anyone supposed to trust the public sphere enough to do more than laugh, and finally work for change? “We have yet to see a reward for good citizenship,” she says.

“Much of the laughter that we have is really a lack of space. We laugh a great deal because we need to survive… to cope with pressure,” adds Ancheta.

“[And because] we’re not a talk-about-it people… we’re the culture that says, ‘Sorry, yeah, hayaan mo na lang, bahala na, bahala na s’ya’… given the misery of our situation, joking becomes our outlet.” - PCIJ, May 2010

“Yung EDSA ’86 ba, kailan naganap?”

“Hindi ko po talaga alam, sir.”

The PCIJ asks young people what they know about the 1986 People Power revolution.

PAGLANSANG KAY HESUS The nailing of Christ to the cross is re-enacted during the Kalbaryo or the Calvary of Christ in the central Negros city of La Carlota. The start of the Holy Week also signals the start of the tiempo muerto, the dead season also called the off-milling season that lasts for up to six months. Photo by Julius D. Mariveles

CUARESMA or Holy Week is the time when Filipinos reflect on the agony of Jesus Christ. It is also the time when the mamumugon — the workers in the vast haciendas or plantations of Negros Occidental — slip into a suspended state between life and death, a seeming purgatory on earth.

This is Tiempo Muerto, the dead season in the Philippines’ sugar bowl, a period between the planting and harvesting of sugarcane. It lasts from April until August, and is a season that the sugar plantation workers dread more than the typhoons that enter the country also around this period.

To both the dumaan or the regular farmhands and the sacada, the seasonal ones, Tiempo Muerto is the tigkiriwi, which literally translates to the pained expression on their faces, as work either slows down or stops in the fields. Wages then plummet to less than one U.S. dollar a day, not even enough to buy a kilo of well-milled rice.

“Mangita gid ko trabaho sa iban nga kampo (I have to look for jobs in other canefields),” says third-generation sugarworker Renato Britanico when asked what he does during tigkiriwi. At best, he may earn P130 a week for weeding the canefield or doing other minor jobs.

LESS THAN A DOLLAR A shopping list for the day amounts to only P32 or less than one US dollar. Photo by Julius D. Mariveles

Britanico and the rest of the more than 300,000 workers in Negros’s sugar industry also wait for government’s help during the dead season. Sometimes it comes, Britanico says, but the aid is never really enough.

“We buy only the bare essentials,” said Benisa Robaton, a mother of two, as she clutched a shopping list one afternoon during last year’s tigkiriwi. At the time, her husband still managed to find some work in the sugarcane fields, but Robaton seemed to be already watching the household budget like a hawk. On her list were coffee, cooking oil, onions, garlic, kerosene, and a pack of vetsin (monosodium glutamate) seasoning. It did not include rice. She estimated that she would spend at least P32 that day for the goods.

THREADBARE CLOTHES The clothes hanging outside the house of a sugarworker can tell a lot of things. Photo by Julius D. Mariveles

Cuaresma, of course, ends with the celebration of Kristo conquering death, heaven imposing its desire on earth. But Tiempo Muerto may soon last more than the usual four months in Negros Occidental with the impending implementation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Free Trade Agreement (AFTA) in 2015 — if some sugar industry insiders and observers are proven correct. Should that happen, though, the province and many of its sugar farmers who ignored the summons of the 1985 sugar crisis to reform, innovate, and be more competitive, would be largely to blame.

Among other things, AFTA will bring the tariff on sugar imported from the 10 ASEAN member-countries down from 10 percent this year to five percent next year. ASEAN includes Thailand, the second largest exporter of sugar in the world after Brazil.

Before AFTA, tariffs and sugar prices were much higher and the benefit to sugarplanters much bigger. To help local producers adjust to the mandated AFTA rate, however, the tariff has been lowered gradually through the years. In 2011, it was at 38 percent; this was brought down to 28 percent in 2012, and then to 18 percent in 2013.

Ebb and flow pattern

In the last 23 years, total sugar production in the country has marked an irregular ebb and flow pattern, and this, alongside a steady rise in farmgate prices until 2010. From the pits of P9.15 per kilo in 1992, farmgate price hit the roof at P32.50 per kilo in 2010, but started to dip again to P30.84 in 2011, P28.03 in 2012, and P27.09 in 2013.

The price decline in the last three years was matched by slight decreases in the Philippines’ sugarcane output — from 28.4 million metric tons in 2011 to 26.4 million MT (seven percent decrease) in 2012, and further to 24.6 million MT (another 6.9 percent decrease) in 2013.

Sugar Production, 1990 to 2012

More interesting, however, is the fact that by 2012, Negros Island’s sugarlandia grew by 50.97 percent to 183,051 hectares, from just 121,249 hectares in 1990. In 1990, Negros Occidental alone accounted for 51.15 percent of the 235,269 hectares of total land planted to sugar in the country. Twenty-two years later, 42 percent of the 433,000 hectares of land devoted to sugar-growing in the Philippines could be found in Negros Occidental.

For generations now, the economy of Negros has depended on sugar, hitherto a Philippine cash crop protected by preferential treatment in the U.S. market until 1974, when the Laurel-Langley Agreement lapsed. Indeed, the sweet reed has sustained the affluence of many hacendados or landlords particularly of Negros Occidental who, by many accounts, are mostly given to opulent consumption, gaming, and partying.

But the ties that bind sugar workers and hacendados have been constantly affirmed in a parade of Philippine elections. Members of many hacendado clans are perennial winners of local elective positions to this day. As a power circle also called “the sugar bloc,” they have propped the path to victory of candidates for president and other national positions by delivering either campaign funds or votes, or both. Indeed, aside from sugar, some scholars say packing votes for their favored politicians has become a second cash crop in Negros where “hacienda politics” rule. (See Sidebar)

Political leaders, too

For sure, the hacendados of Negros Occidental have had bitter experiences in the sugar business. During the 1980s, they saw their profits fall as sugar prices went into a precipitous decline, bottoming out to a historic low in May 1985 at three U.S. cents a pound. More than 150,000 sugar plantation workers lost their jobs as a result, and thousands of families across the province soon went hungrier than ever.

SHARING A labor organizer and neighbor of the Negre family gives several pieces of eggs to children of Gabriel Negre to be cooked for supper. The Negres are one of the poorer families in one of the haciendas in Murcia town. Photo by Julius D. Mariveles

In the past, the workers could rely on cradle-to-grave support (however minimal in many cases) from their plantation-owning masters. But with the hacendados’ once reliable source of wealth suddenly in crisis, many workers were left to fend for themselves.

In time, some hacendados shifted from growing sugar to growing other crops. But most others simply waited out the crisis and persisted in growing the reed, or leased their land for others to cultivate it.

Stuck on sugar

A land seemingly stuck in time, Negros Occidental stayed stuck on growing sugar after the crisis when the commodity’s price started to climb again. From 1990 to 2012, Negros Occidental expanded the size of its land planted to sugarcane, while other Philippine provinces either did so only slightly, reduced their sugar-growing estates, or shifted to other crops.

In 2012, sugar contributed PhP70 billion or roughly US$1.5 billion to the national economy, according to the Sugar Regulatory Administration (SRA). While this may seem impressive, sugar is no longer the country’s top agricultural export, that spot having long been taken over by coconut oil.

By the time Corazon ‘Cory’ Aquino came to power in 1986, sugar was being called a “sunset industry” due to the lack of modernization in the farms and mills. It was during this time, too, that the sugar sector saw attempts to diversify with the conversion of large tracts of sugarcane lands to prawn and fish ponds or to high-value crops, as well as ornamental flowers, including orchids.

Sugar Farmgate Price, 1990 to 2012

In 1988, Cory Aquino also signed the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL), which stipulated in part that original homestead owners and their heirs would be allowed to keep and till only up to 24 hectares of their farmland. The rest of such landholdings were supposed to be distributed to the tillers or workers. And yet today, by official data, some sugar plantations are as big as 50 hectares in size on Negros Island, and others even bigger at 100 hectares.

Because many of these Negros sugar plantations are also “inefficient,” according to some industry insiders themselves, they are most vulnerable to the market changes that will be brought about by AFTA’s full implementation.

Gina Martin-Bautista, a Negrense sugarplanter who heads the SRA, believes the tariff drop to five percent poses a threat to the livelihood of at least 62,000 farmers and 600,000 workers of the country’s entire sugar industry.

In a paper presented to the Asia-Pacific Sugar Conference in 2012, Martin-Bautista says cheap imported sugar would also lead to a decline in the production of local sugar. She noted that among the factors affecting the profitability of producing local sugar are the fragmentation of farms due to agrarian reform, the lack of financial capability by small farmers, and the lack of infrastructure support from the government.

Sugar Import vs. Sugar Export

Smaller share

In fact, a 2011 study by Walden Bello and Risa Bernabe for the Philippine Peasant Institute for the Active Citizenship Foundation pointed out that while AFTA went into motion in 1992, the budget allotted to agriculture has not improved significantly.

Citing Bureau of Agricultural Statistics (BAS) data, the study found out that the share of agriculture in the national budget dropped from five percent during the administration of Cory Aquino to three percent under the Ramos presidency. The figure climbed slightly to four percent under the Estrada government but went back to around three percent during the Arroyo administration.

Today, agriculture’s share of the national budget is at 5.54 percent according to the Expenditure Program by Sector of the Department of Budget and Management. The percentage represents the Department of Agriculture (DA) budget lumped with that of the Department of Agrarian Reform or DAR. In peso terms, however, the DA received P68.5 billion this year, or less than last year’s allotment of P73.6 billion.

In his budget message for 2013, President Benigno Simeon ‘Noynoy’ C. Aquino III had said that the amount set aside for agriculture would go to improving farmers’ incomes to produce 20 million metric tons of rice. The rest would go to corn, fishery, and coconut-based products.

Aquino, Corazon Aquino’s son and scion of the Cojuangco clan of sugar plantation owners in Tarlac province, did not mention how much would go to sugar.

Quick ‘fix’

Then again, the current administration does not seem to have found it necessary to make drastic reforms in the country’s agricultural sector. The most apparent “fix” it has done in agriculture so far is to change the names of programs. To be more precise, it has taken to changing the previous administration’s “Ginintuang Masaganang Ani (GMA or Golden Bountiful Harvest)” prefix to agricultural programs to “Agri-PNoy,” so that instead of, say, “GMA Rice Program,” there is now the “Agri-PNoy Rice Program.”

In any case, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has cited the country’s mutual trade with Malaysia as an example of how the Philippines would benefit from AFTA. In a July 10, 2013 article posted on its website, DTI cited data from the National Statistics Office showing that the country exported a total of US$1.017 billion worth of goods to Malaysia in 2012, down slightly by 7.38 percent from 2011’s US$1.099 billion. The same report, however, says electronics remains the country’s top export product to Malaysia.

AFTA was established in 1992 with the Philippines as a signatory under then President Fidel V. Ramos. At the time, the former armed forces chief turned president was upbeat about the Philippine economy, describing it as a “tiger cub” supposedly on the verge of earning its “stripes” through a process that he called “entigerment.”

AFTA hews to the globalization framework of promoting free trade through elimination of tariffs and non-tariff barriers among the 10 ASEAN member-states. It was conceived to “serve as a catalyst for greater efficiency in production and long-term competitiveness.” Put simply, to give consumers better quality products and much lower prices.

At least 8,000 items or products in six countries — Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, Brunei, Thailand — and four other less developed ASEAN members (Cambodia, Laos, Burma, and Vietnam) will no longer enjoy tariff protection for these products that will be traded, or are already being traded, freely.

With tariff barriers down or gone, AFTA promises cheaper consumer goods in the ASEAN market, higher market competition, and access for ASEAN products to a consumer market of close to half-a-billion people, according an article posted on the website of the Tariff Commission of the Philippines.

‘Primed & ready’

DTI Undersecretary Adrian S. Cristobal, chair of the Committee for the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) is confident that, “the Philippines is primed and ready for the integration of economies among the 10-member states of the ASEAN by 2015.”

Not everyone in Negros Occidental agrees with Cristobal, however.

For instance, Negros Occidental Governor Alfredo Marañon III does not see the government having made or making sufficient preparations for 2015. In contrast, he says, sugar farmers in Thailand, the Philippines’ main Asian competitor, have been enjoying subsidies and flexible credit schemes. “There, if you fail to pay your loans there would be restructuring,” says Marañon. “Here your lands would be foreclosed by the banks.”

Locally produced sugar prices are likely to fall by 2015 but planters would still have to contend with high costs of production, says Rafael Coscolluela, national president of the Confederation of Sugarcane Producers Associations, Inc. Compounding these problems is the lack of efficiency of sugar mills in extracting sugar.

Earlier this month, Coscolluela attended a DTI-organized forum for businessmen and industry leaders. Recalling what went on at the forum, Coscolluela says, “What the (officials) essentially said is there is nothing to worry about. AFTA is already upon us and most industries have already been affected, but the effects are not as bad as the doomsayers said it would be.”

The big ‘but,’ says the former SRA administrator and Negros Occidental governor, is that the most affected sector is agriculture, especially sugar. “The industry has always been on its own for quite a long time (now),” he adds.

Wages & profit

Still, indications are sugarplanters have been making hay (in the form of sugar) while there is some sunshine left in the industry.

Computations made by SRA show that the earnings of planters increased by P10,000 per hectare over a four-year period starting in 2010, beginning at around P42,000 per hectare with a cost of production of P70,000 per hectare. The computations were based on the 65-percent share of the planters computed at a price of P1,700 per 50-kilo bag or LKG.

Considering that sugarcane is harvested only once a year, though, a sugarplanter may need at least 10 hectares to be able to support a family comfortably. But those who have less may still be better off than sugarworkers.

CHILDREN OF THE CANE With nothing much to do, these children of Gabriel Negre, a worker in one of the haciendas in Murcia town, stay inside their ramshackle hut made of used sacks and bamboo. Photo by Julius D. Mariveles

Assuming that they are being paid the minimum wage, plantation workers have been getting a maximum daily rate of P255 while those in non-plantations receive only P245, based on the latest Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board VI order that took effect on November 29, 2013.

Compared to past wages, that’s already good going. In the last 10 years, wages have climbed slowly at a rate of less than P10 a year.

These rates, however, are applicable only outside of Tiempo Muerto. A prolonged period of tigkiwiri could only widen the gap between the hacendados and the sugarworkers.

Tiempo Suerte, too?

Yet what could be bitter pill for the sugar industry may actually turn into a sweet treat for most Filipinos who are all consumers of sugar and sugar-based food and other products. What may be Tiempo Muerto to Negros’ sugar producers could even spell Tiempo Suerte to most Filipinos who are sugar consumers.

This is the prognosis of Caesar B. Cororaton, a research fellow at the Global Issues Initiative (GII)/Institute for Society, Culture and Environment at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. In a 56-page paper published in September 2013, Cororaton concludes that AFTA’s tariff cuts in 2015 would result only in slight production decline but that its economic impact will be offset by lower prices for sugar-using industries.

Tariff cuts, he says, may cause transitory pain for some sectors but the positive overall effect is to help the economy by lowering prices for consumers, and even cutting poverty incidence by 0.285 percentage points.

Cororaton’s study, “Economic Impact Analysis of the Reduction in Sugar Tariffs Under the ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement: The Case of the Philippine Sugar Sector,” assumes that the decline in sugar tariff and production output will encourage a shift to other crops.

“The reduction in sugar tariffs generates several economy-wide effects,” writes Cororaton. “One of these effects is the resource reallocation from sugarcane farming activities to the rest of the agricultural sector. Thus, output of the rest of agriculture improves.” Smaller farms in the sugar sector could in fact be more productive than bigger ones, he says.

He argues that cheaper sugar as a result of reduced tariffs could benefit a whole range of sugar-using industries, notably those processing or manufacturing milk, ice cream, fruits, vegetables, bakery products, cocoa, chocolate, softdrinks, animal feeds, flavoring extracts, and other food items.

By his estimates, reduced poverty incidence could also become a windfall from cheaper sugar. “Real income improves across household income groups,” he says, although the improvement in income is “not uniform across groups.”

The good news, Cororaton says, is that “those between the fifth and the eighth decile benefit the most. As a result the poverty incidence declines from 26.34 percent to 26.27 percent.”

A boxing bout

Like a virtual boxing match, trading sugar under the AFTA framework will require the Philippines to slug it out “against the heavyweights of the sugar industry,” notably Thailand and Brazil.

SRA’s Martin-Bautista tells PCIJ in an interview this week that if the industry is to survive, the cost of production should be brought down. The landed cost of world market sugar is between P800 and P900 for every LKg or 50-kilo bag, far lower than the current cost of production in the Philippines of P1,000 to P1,200 per LKg. “It would have to be less than a thousand pesos per bag if we are to compete,” says Martin-Bautista.

The high cost of production of Philippine sugar, she says, derives from the high cost of labor and farms not fully mechanized and have been broken up into small ones on account of agrarian reform. SRA classifies about 90 percent of sugarcane farms as “small” — five hectares or less; to be viable, sugarcane farms should measure from 30 to 50 hectares.

Martin-Bautista anticipates that in a down market, landowners would be compelled to reduce their labor force to be able to cut production costs. She also says that the government’s agrarian reform program has triggered “cynicism” among planters who refuse to invest in farm mechanization because they could not put up their land as collateral in obtaining loans from banks.

“We hope to move forward when the agrarian reform program ends this year,” she says. “We hope that there would be no more new notices of coverage.”

Asked if the government and the landowners have prepared well enough to put the industry on competitive footing when AFTA finally comes into force, Martin-Bautista says, “I hate to say this but it was only when I took over the SRA (in August 2010), it was only then that a convergence program of sorts among government agencies was put into motion.” She asserts that it was only then when agencies were “made aware” of the problems of the sugar industry and told to give commitments to “support it, finally.”

Since then, she says, the government has started to roll out support services to the industry like farm-to-market roads and shallow water wells. But Martin-Bautista says these pale in comparison to the subsidies for power and water irrigation systems and loans for sugar farmers in other countries like Thailand get from their governments.

Coscolluela, for his part, says that the industry itself has long been preparing for AFTA’s implementation. It has produced, he says, several versions of a “Sugar Industry Roadmap,” the latest of which is for the 2011-2016 period that calls for an increase in areas planted to sugarcane from 400,000 to 465,000 hectares and a production target of 75 tons cane per hectare from 63 TC/hectare. It hopes to increase yield efficiency to 2.1 bags per ton of cane from the current 1.9 bags per LKg/TC.

Not on plate of pols

For some reason, though, as late as the May 2013 elections, politicians vying for local posts in Negros Occidental themselves failed to engage in substantial discussions regarding the possible effects of AFTA on agricultural products, including sugar.

But now provincial officials seem to be trying to play catch-up. At the very least, Negros Occidental’s Third District Representative Alfredo ‘Albee’ Benitez has filed House Bill No. 52 or the “Sugar Cane Industry Development Act of 2013,” which envisions the transformation of the industry “from the limited raw and refined sugar production” into a diversified one. It also calls for the establishment of special economic zones and the promotion of block and corporate farming to achieve economies of scale needed for efficient sugar production and financial and infrastructure support from the government.

Martin-Bautista also believes that despite AFTA, not all is bleak for the sugar industry.

For one, she sees good tidings in the investments of business heavyweights Lucio Tan, Manny V. Pangilinan, Ramon Ang, and the Gokongweis into sugar milling and bio-ethanol production. “Because of these big players,” she says, “I am now getting all the attention and I am being asked to make sure that the industry will survive.”

For another, she finds it encouraging that a U.S. company has asked her if the Philippines could sell sugar that would be used to extract a chemical for Spandex, a synthetic fiber. Ironically, one of the most popular uses of Spandex is for undergarments that cinch waists bloated by sugar- and fat-laden products.

Plain inquiries or deals in the bag? Only time will tell. Until then, Tiempo Muerto looms in sugarlandia. — PCIJ, April 2014

HEIDI MENDOZA, commissioner of the Philippines’s Commission on Audit, has been nominated to a senior position in the United Nations.

In a press advisory released from New York oct. 5, the UN said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, following consultations with Chairs of Regional Groups, informed the General Assembly of his intention to appoint COA’s Mendoza “as the new Under-Secretary-General for Internal Oversight Services for a five-year non-renewable term.”

Appointed in 2011 to the COA , Mendoza  is the chairperson of the Audit Committee on Public Sector Auditing Standards Board and External Auditor for the Food and Agriculture Organization, World Health Organization and International Labour Organization.

A certified public accountant, Mendoza has over 20 years of service in government particularly in the field of audit, investigation, fraud examination, anti-corruption and integrity advocacy, the UN noted.

THE WAR on drugs in the last nine weeks — or even before Rodrigo R. Duterte took his oath as president a fortnight ago on June 30 — has yielded ever bigger numbers of casualties, arrests, and “surrenderees,” and a volume of cases filed in court.

This is according to the Directorate for Investigation and Detective Management (DIDM) of the Philippine National Police (PNP) that has been monitoring the conduct of anti-drug operations from May 10, 2016 — or the day after the last elections.

A copy of DIDM’s report to PNP Director-General Ronald “Bato” de la Rosa that PCIJ obtained showed that from May 10 to July 10, 2016, police operations against illegal drugs have yielded the following results:

• 192 persons killed;

• 8,110 persons arrested;

• 3,001 cases “referred”; and

• 3,477 cases “filed in court.”

The report also said that from May 10 to July 11, a total of 35,276 persons have “surrendered” to the authorities.

The DIDM report is a separate dataset from that produced by the PNP National Operations Center (NOC) on its “Monitoring of the Anti-Illegal Drugs Accomplishment” that covers the period from July 1 to July 13, 2016.

Getting the numbers right in the PNP’s war on drugs is hampered in large measure by the fractious but parallel agencies assigned to operations and case monitoring.

In this instance, the DIDM and the NOC reports seem to be focused on the same monitoring pegs — numbers of people killed, arrested, surrendered, etc. — but across different time frames.

But if their numbers are correct and identical, except for the covered periods in their respective reports, a comparison of their data would yield clustered numbers for the period before the birth of the Duterte administration, and in the two weeks since it assumed power.

Thus, from May 10 to June 30 — the day Duterte took his oath as President — and again from July 1 to 13, 2016, the war on drugs, according to the PNP’s DIDM and NOC, yields these clustered numbers:

• 57 killed from May 10 to June 30; 135 killed from July 1 to 13, 2016.

• 6,266 arrested from May 10 to June 30; 1,844 arrested from July 1 to 13, 2016.

• 31,260 “surrendered” to the PNP from May 10 to June 30; 4,016 “surrendered” to the PNP from July 1 to 13, 2016.

Note that in addition to the number of suspects who reportedly surrendered to the police, the PNP NOC, in a separate report, said that more than 60,000 “drug users” and about 6,000 “drug pushers” had been located or had “surrendered” to local and barangay officials under ‘Oplan Tokhang,’ the anti-drug war operations on the village level.

What the PNP’s NOC reports do not reveal, though, are the numbers of cases “referred” and “filed in court” that the DIDM report shows.

What the DIDM report does not offer, and which the PNP’s NOC reports enroll are the number of “houses visited” under ‘Oplan Tokhang.’ — PCIJ, July 14, 2016

HE HAD repeatedly denied the existence of the so-called Davao Death Squad or DDS at a Senate hearing just four months ago. Yet last week, retired Senior Police Officer 3 Arturo Bariquit Lascañas suddenly made a turnaround, saying not only that he had been one of the “pasimuno” or major players in the DDS, but also that then Davao City Mayor and now President Rodrigo Roa Duterte had ordered the killings done by the group.

His lawyers said Lascañas had been moved to make the confession because he had been suffering from nightmares about the massacre of a family in Davao that included a woman who was then seven months pregnant and a young boy. In the press conference last week, lawyer Arno Sanidad also said that it had been “maybe a month or two months back” that Lascañas decided to come clean in public about the DDS and his role in it.

But Lascañas may have had laid plans for a tell-all far earlier, having started writing a journal sometime in 2015.

That journal – written by hand on yellow paper – has now reached some 70 pages. In it, Lascañas has apparently scribbled notes about his own career, Duterte’s rise to power, and the supposed bloody exploits of the DDS.

Among the few pages he shared with PCIJ is one describing what would later lead to the DDS. Lascañas wrote that after Duterte won “by a slim margin of votes” over then Davao City Mayor Zafiro Respicio in 1988, “the Anti-Crime Task Force was organized by the Mayor (RRD). The Task Force was led by then Major Ernesto Macasaet, a very close friend of Mayor Rody Duterte.”

“The Anti-Crime Campaign of Mayor Duterte was so serious and remarkable in its inception, crime rate of Davao City were (sic) observed in its low level since Mayor Rody became mayor,” wrote Lascañas. “He hit hard the organized crime group in the city, w/ the full cooperation of the police force, then the Davao Metropolitan District Command.”

‘Bloodletting formula’

Later pages, however, have this prediction: “Mayor RRD’s entry into the Presidential Derby 2016 could be a Divine Trap. It would lead him to his political waterloo. Win or lose, sooner or later, he would become the most hated political figure in Philippine history.”

According to Lascañas, Duterte is a “physically, morally, and spiritually disturbed person. He is for flesh, blood, and power no matter what.”

“What he wants, he gets,” Lascañas wrote in his journal. “What matters (to) him most is his personal and political security.”

He continued, “If ever he will win the presidency and apply in the whole country his Davao formula of bloodletting on the premise of peace and order and illegal drugs, eventually he will lead this country (to) hell, and deceptively perpetuate himself to lifetime in power.”

“And the rest, ” Lascañas said, would be “lethal history, evil prevail(s).”

‘Like brothers’

Duterte had six full terms as Davao City mayor between 1992 and 2016, during which extrajudicial killings there became rife. (He was a congressman from 1998 to 2001 and was vice mayor from 2010 to 2013, while his daughter Sara was Davao City’s chief executive.) Lascañas had worked with the Davao City police for 34 years during that period, too. From 1992 to 2001 alone, the Davao media attributed at least 150 deaths in the city to the DDS and then Mayor Duterte’s war against drugs. In September last year, self-confessed DDS hitman Edgar Matobato told the Senate that the DDS, allegedly under Duterte’s orders, killed some 1,000 people from 1993 to 2013.

During his testimony at the Senate, Matobato had also pointed to Lascañas as the head of the DDS. He said Lascañas was “talaga ang parang sa tingin ko, parang kapatid, parang kuwan na sila, close na close na sila ni Mayor Duterte (in my view, like a brother, he and Mayor Duterte were really close).”

According to Matobato, Duterte once even told Lascañas, supposedly after yet another ‘hit’: “’Tur, kung wala ka, hindi malilinis ang Davao (‘Tur, without you, Davao would not get cleaned up).”

A few weeks later, however, Lascañas would label almost everything that Matobato said at the Senate as “lies.” And as proof that he was not as influential as Matobato had said, Lascañas told the Senate that he had been unable to do anything – “wala akong nagawa” – when two of his brothers who had been involved in drugs were killed in separate incidents by “elements of the Davao City police.”

Lascañas also said that when his daughter, then a new nursing school graduate, tried to apply for a job at City Hall, she was not only rejected, but was insulted as well. And this was, he said, when he had been struck by “severe illness” and was on dialysis.

A journal of guilt?

This was in 2015, which was also the year when Lascañas apparently took up pen and paper and began writing what he would later describe as a journal of his guilt.

“I faithfully believe that I am at peace with my Divine Creator if my conscience is clean and clear,” Lascañas said in one of the journal’s pages shown to PCIJ. “My clean and clear conscience is my direct guide to make righteous decisions to repent of all my mortal sins that will lead me to submit to the will of GOD.”

“If to follow GOD’s will will lead me to prosecution, incarceration, loss of human dignity, and painful death, so be it,” he also wrote. “THY WILL BE DONE.”

Lascañas recently sought religious guidance after making up his mind to come forward. Last Feb. 20, he contacted Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, with whom he had a heated exchange when he testified at the Senate in October last year and denied almost everything that Matobato had said.

Under close guard

At that hearing, though, Lascañas had admitted that that Philippine National Police Director General Ronald ‘Bato’ de la Rosa had put him under close guard by a team of policemen. The team, which included SPO4 Sanson “Sonny” Buenaventura (said to be yet another of Duterte’s trusted aides), escorted Lascañas from Davao to Manila and back. De la Rosa himself was present when Lascañas testified at the Senate in October 2016.

“He was under duress and could not move and talk freely,” says someone privy to what was happening to Lascañas at the time. “He was also afraid that he and his family would be harmed by the policemen he would implicate and most of all, the president. He was worried about the personal safety and security of his family members who were still in Davao.”

Moreover, Lascañas had earlier reportedly received more than enough signals to stay mum. According to the source, “a senior PNP official met with Lascañas before his testimony at the Senate to gauge whether or not he would say anything negative.” In fact, says the source, “Police Supt. Antonio Rivera’s instruction was that it would be better for him not to testify at all.”

Rivera was the spokesperson of the Southern Mindanao police command, and now the incumbent Davao City Deputy Director for Administration.

Retirement pay

A last but apparently most important reason for Lascañas’s testimony of denials in October 2016 was his official retirement from the police service on December 16, 2016. Says the source close to Lascañas: “He was retiring in two months. He was careful not to court the ire of the higher-ups. It would have been a pity if he were to be denied his benefits after 34 years of service.”

Lascañas had been on “non-duty status” or inactive service since March 2016, because of his kidney ailment. But at Christmas time last year, after 34 years and seven months in service, Lascañas received a cash payout equivalent to a third of his retirement benefits, or over a million pesos, according to PNP insiders.

A former official with the same rank and tenure as Lascañas said his total benefits should have amounted to P3.1 million, with a monthly pension of about P35,000 on the side. The PNP allows its retirees to get a full year’s advance on their pension benefits.

He would have gotten more if his application for promotion to SPO4 had been acted upon. Lascañas even told the Senate that he had followed it up — to no avail.

By contrast, one of the police officers he implicated last week in the murder of a religious group leader, Gaudencio ‘Jun’ Bersabal, now holds one of the highest positions in the PNP: Police Senior Supt. Rommil Mitra, who was also one of the 22 policemen ordered suspended for six months by the Ombudsman for failure to solve cases of summary killings in Davao City. The police chief of Sigabay at the time of Bersabal’s killing, Mitra is now the chief of the Directorial Staff of the PNP Region Office 3 (Central Luzon). — With research and reporting by Nancy C. Carvajal and Davinci Maru, PCIJ, February 2017
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Related Stories:

* RECAP: PCIJ REPORTS FROM 2003 TO PRESENT: Drugs, DDS, Jun Pala, and Duterte
* AGUIRRE DEFENDS LAUD VS. CIDG, CHR: SC rules on DDS case: PNP can search quarry for bodies
* Duterte Revisited: What he said in 2001 on drugs, vigilante killings
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SUPER QUICK or interminably slow action, a few or all documents, and clear or vague policies and lines of authority — a mix of good and bad practices marked the conduct of state agencies and personnel that recently received access to information requests from six civil society organizations (CSOs) of the Right to Know, Right Now! Coalition or R2RKN.

The FOI requests submitted between October 2016 and February 2017 formed part of the “FOI Practice” projects of the Coalition of 160 CSOs and CSO leaders that has led the 15-year advocacy for the enactment of an FOI law in the country.

The requests marked, too, the first three months before and after the full rollout of President Rodrigo R. Duterte’s Executive Order No. 2, “Operationalizing In The Executive Branch The People’s Constitutional Right To Information And The State Policies To Full Public Disclosure And Transparency In The Public Service And Providing Guidelines Therefor.”

Duterte signed EO No. 2 on July 23, 2016 but also gave executive agencies four months or until November 2016 to craft their respective “People’s FOI Manual.” During the period, the Office of the Executive Secretary also finalized the categories of information covered by “exceptions,” according to established laws and statutes.

The Coalition first launched its “FOI Practice” project in 2014 in its effort to promote evidence-based research on how open or opaque, how quick or slow, and the procedural or policy issues hinder the citizens’ exercise of their right to access information vested with public interest. The Coalition deems it important to shore up public demand and practice in accessing information, even ahead of the passage of an FOI law.

The FOI Practice project also seeks to support the need for unique information relevant to the respective advocacies and programs of the participating CSO teams, using the research tools and methods of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ).

For the second run of the R2RKN’s “FOI Practice” project, six CSOs participated, notably the Action for Economic Reforms (AER), Alternative Budget Initiative-Health (ABI-Health), Bantay Kita (BK), Center for Migrant Advocacy (CMA), Checkmyschool (CMS) of ANSA EAP, and Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC).

In separate but parallel FOI Practice projects, the CSOs sought documents from the Philippine Statistical Authority (PSA), Department of Health (DOH), Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR), Department of the Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB), Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (IACAT), Department of Education (DepED), Department of Agriculture (DA), and Bureau of Treasury (BTr).

In gist, the Coalition’s FOI Practice teams noted that mixed results or responses to the access to information requests from the CSOs:

On response time by the agencies:
• Very fast response (PSA, BTr 1st request, DA), or within 15 days (POEA, IACAT);
• Delays (POEA, BTr 2nd request, DepEd, DOH, BIR); and
• No response at all (BFAR)

On the quality of information provided by the agencies:
• Complete (PSA, DA, IACAT, BIR);
• Incomplete, missing data or information (BTr, POEA, DOH); and
• None at all (MGB, DepEd)

On reasons cited/observed for delayed action on the requests:
• Need for clearance from higher-ups before information can be released (DepEd);
• Request passed from one office to another (MGB, DOH, BIR);
• Unanswered phone/fax and emails (BFAR, IACAT); and
• Central office does not have complete data, no central repository of data that are supposed to be monitored (MGB).

On some very good outcomes of the FOI Practice projects:
• PSA gave data request (FIES and LFS survey data) without charge;
• PSA offered older series when series asked for was not yet available (April 2016 instead of October 2016 LFS);
• PSA entertained technical questions about data format, and even offered to give a briefing on a different schedule;
• DA hand-carried complete information to the office of requester; and
• BTr provided information, except for missing years (1986-1988, national government external debt service; pre-1986.

On what account for successful access-to-information requests:
• Clear, specific information/document requested;
• Knowledge of where to go or who to ask (agencies, officials); and
• Prior or existing engagement / relationship with target office

On what could be frustrating about access-to-information requests:

• Failure of government offices to acknowledge that they received the requests (which will trigger the 15-dqy count);
• Slow decision-making (if somebody else has to approve request);
• There has been no case of outright denial of request, but there’s non-response, release of incomplete information (missing data, no explanation);
• All the requestors are advocates and researchers and the delay or non-release of documents requested have adverse impact on their work and programs; and
• Much needs to be done to improve the request process and infrastructure to cater to those who might not have extensive understanding of the agencies or any contacts within the agencies.

The FOI Practice Teams filed these reports with the Right to Know Coalition:

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* The Action For Economic Reforms, which requested copies of the
Public-Utility Files (PUF) of the Family Income and Expenditure Survey or FIES 2015, and the Labor Force Survey or LFS as of October 2016, from the Philippine Statistical Authority (PSA).

AER filed the request via a single email addressed to the PSA head and by filling out a request form on the agency’s portal. The next day, without having to make any follow-up phone calls, or pay a single centavo of fees, AER received the files.

AER had asked for the basic, unprocessed survey data to be able to do its own analysis, beyond the tables that are officially generated by PSA. In a day, the request was granted. PSA and asked an AER staff went to retrieve the files from the PSA office in Quezon City.

However, because the LFS for October 2016 was not yet available, PSA gave AER the latest LFS for April 2016.

In a separate phone call, PSA also patiently explained to an AER staff the installation procedure so the codebooks can be accessed. The codebooks are important to understand the labels that PSA used in the files. PSA also offered to give a full in-person briefing to AER, which will be set at a later date.

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* The Alternative Budget Initiative-Health Cluster (ABI-Health), through the Action for Economic Reforms (AER) filed requests with the Department of Health and the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) for information related to its research mainly on the Comprehensive Tax Reform Agenda.

ABI-Health sought from the DOH the following:

• Raw data of Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) 2015
• Raw data of Social Weather Stations (SWS) Survey on Smoking conducted in 2015.

From the BIR, ABI-Health asked for the following information:
• Volume of removals for tobacco and alcohol (by tobacco tiers and type of pack, and by type of alcohol) from 2009 to 2016, or whatever is latest
• Total and disaggregated excise tax collected from the same, from 2009 to 2016

A researcher, meanwhile, also requested a third set of information on mental health from DOH:

• Detailed plans on the construction or accessibility of mental health facilities
• Data on budget proposal and allocation in relation to mental health

Both GATS (2015) and SWS Smoking Survey 2015 could provide links between the increased cigarette taxes across brands and the various aspects of smoking behavior. These data can also complement the data from the National Nutrition Survey (NNS) 2015, which has initially showed decline in consumption of the poor and the youth. Although some reports on GATS are published online, specific variables can only be provided in raw set of data.

The data on volume of removals (volume of cigarettes withdrawn from warehouses and monitored facilities) and on total value of excise tax collections from this volume are useful in matching the prevalence of smokers, with national trend in consumption and revenues. Both data from the DOH and the BIR are crucial to the completion of estimates of elasticity figures as well as revenue potentials of future proposed reform in tobacco and alcohol taxes.

Almost one month after the first request letter was sent, AER was able to get hold of the hard copy of the following files from the DOH the raw data of the Social Weather Stations (SWS) 2015 Smoking Survey and copies of Administration Order (AO) 2016 – 0039 and Department Memo (2016 – 0257) that shows plan on access to mental health facilities.

However, the DOH also denied the CSO’s request for the raw data of the Global Adult Tobacco Survey (GATS) 2015, even as its request for details on the budget and allocation to support mental health plan of government remains pending..

Meanwhile, the BIR was able to provide in printed form all two documents requested by ABI-Health.

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* The Bantay Kita (BK) requested from the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) copies of the Directory of CSOs that are members of the Multi-partite Monitoring Teams (MMTs) and accredited for mining oversight, and the requirements for CSO accreditation. In addition, Bantay Kita asked for information about whether was a centralized database and clear process for CSO selection in mining oversight committees exist.

Bantay Kita’s first request letter was sent to DENR in October 2016, but the agency took the first step to act on the request only in January 2017. The request was passed around from one office to another.

DENR’s failure to respond positively to the request has bolstered Bantay Kita’s position that there is a need for “a credible selection process and database of CSOs in mining oversight.” The extended delay in gathering information on CSO members of the MMT has hampered the efforts of environment CSOs to provide capacity-building activities that would enable them to perform their duties well.

Accessing information in state agencies is better enabled if CSOs and citizens know exactly which agencies or persons they must approach, and it would be “best if you already know someone from the office,” Bantay Kita said.

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• The number of Filipino fishers and seafarers processed and deployed by POEA annually;
• Their places of origin (town and province) in the Philippines;
• The countries/ territories of their deployment/ employment;
• Cases of distressed fishers and seafarers filed with POEA, BFAR, and IACAT, and the status of these cases; and
• The manning/crewing agencies for fishers and seafarers.
This is the second FOI Practice project of R2RKN that CMA has participated in. In its first project in 2014, CMA noted that the POEA was “accommodating and reliable,” and provided the information CMA had requested within 15 working days.

“What facilitates sufficient response is CMA’s active and positive work relations with POEA and its officers,” CMA reported. Still, it took CMA two sets of request letter for the missing cases — before and after the Christmas holidays.

“We believe that their failure to respond during the holidays is understandable within the bounds of Filipino Christmas culture when some tasks are overwhelmed by the Christmas season and activities, even in the NGO community,” CMA said. For this set of request letters, CMA did not cite Duterte’s FOI EO as basis; CMA did not also furnish the Office of the Ombudsman or the Civil Service Commission copies of these letters.

“What may be notable is that when they first responded to the information request, they did not explain why the (documents on the) cases were missing,” CMA said.

“We first followed up 26 workdays after the original request. We followed up again… after the Christmas holidays, 38 workdays from the first follow up letter,” CMA said. In the intervening period, POEA’s Office in Charge, Deputy Administrator Aristodes Ruaro, who received CMA’s original request, was replaced by Labor department Undersecretary Dominador R. Say of POEA OIC.

The staff of POEA Ramona Quijano called five days after CMA sent its second follow-up letter, and five more days later, provided copies of the case files of the fishers and seafarers. In all, CMA said POEA took 74 working days to act on the remaining request.

In contrast to POEA, “BFAR did not even formally acknowledge much less respond to our request.” CMA sees two reasons for the agency’s inaction: “they may not have the information that we were asking for although a leader of a national fishers network said we could ask them… (and) we have had not had any interaction with BFAR before.”

IACAT, for its part, responded to the request only 12 days after it received CMA’s original request, and in part because CMA had submitted by then a follow-up letter. “The Executive Director e-mailed on the 13th day that she does not open her yahoo (account) regularly and will instruct her staff to send the information.” CMA received the case files 14 days from date of original e-mail request, and two days from the follow up e-mail.

CMA notes that agency action on FOI requests seem to be hampered by the failure of officials to check their email accounts regularly, or telephone calls that are not being answered apparently because no staff personnel are assigned to the task.

CMA’s request has centered on data it needs to inform the conduct of its project for fishers and seafarers in pilot areas, to discern which manning agencies have been engaged in good and bad practices, and as part of its research for a situational analysis on what makes fishers and seafarers vulnerable to illegal recruitment and human trafficking.

“Unfortunately,” CMA said, “there is minimal information regarding fishers. We were hoping that BFAR could give additional information.”

From its second FOI practice project, CMA said it realized that “the request for data has to be clear so that the government agency can immediately comply with the request.” Too, it is best to combine all communication tools –requests sent by email or fax, periodic follow-up phone calls, especially before 15 working day deadline for agency action on requests lapses.

Just as important, CMA said, enrolling these data in log sheets provided by PCIJ as reference for the CSOs “is also a key requirement in FOI practice.”

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CMS filed its first request letter sent via email and fax to DepEd through its Budget Office on October 3, 2016. As of February 20, 2017, or four months later, later, CMS has not received the document it requested.

In a follow-up correspondence between October 6 and 13, 2016 with the staff of the Budget Office, CMS was “constantly reassured of the availability of the information requested.”

“However, as a matter of protocol, the file could not be transmitted to CMS due to the absence of the go-signal of Mr. Selwyn Briones, OIC of the Budget Office,” CMS reported.

On October 27, CMS made a third follow-up call to the Budget Office, but “Mr. Jesus de la Merced of the Budget Office informed us that the OIC has not yet given the go-signal to transmit the file to CMS.”

CMS deems it important for government agencies to “remove the go-signal requirement for documents not enlisted in the list of exceptions for easier access to information.” Even more important, CMS said, DepEd could “disseminate the MOOE utilization report of schools in the DepEd website for full public disclosure.”

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It filed its first request letter on Aug. 23, 2016 with the Department of Agriculture for project documents covering its Philippine Rural Development Project (PRDP), apart from those already accessible through the PRDP website (www.daprdp.net).

FDC asked, in particular, for the following documents:

• The complete and updated reports on the implementation of all components of the project;
• Coverage area;
• Target and actual beneficiaries;
• Financial statements specifying how the funds were spent;
• Programmed allocation and actual disbursements for each project component and area;
• List of people and/or institutions responsible in decision-making for project execution and financial management; and
• All other documents on the PRDP not mentioned above that would facilitate FDC’s study on the project and its impact.

FDC’s first letter was hand-carried to the DA office and sent through electronic mail.

Apart from writing to the DA, the FDC also sent two request letters to the Bureau of the Treasury’s Statistical Data Analysis Division (SDAD) to secure the National Government (NG) Selected Fiscal Statistics and Regular Foreign Liabilities.

The Bureau of Treasury received FDC’s first request letter on Aug. 26, 2016 for historical data on NG cash operations report, outstanding debt, debt service and list or schedule of regular and contingent liabilities from the time of the late President Ferdinand Marcos up to that of former President Gloria Arroyo.

On Oct. 28, 2016, FDC sent a second request to the Bureau for historical data on the National Government’s foreign debt service for its regular liabilities, by creditor, from 1986 up to the present, which would include the following details:

• Loan account;
• Loan ID;
• Project/Purpose;
• Implementing Agencies;
• Interest Rate/Type and other charges;
• Last repayment date;
• Principal payment;
• Interest payment/other charges; and
• Outstanding amount.

FDC received documents from the two agencies in less than a week except for the second set of statistics from the BTr-SDAD.

The DA-PRDP sent pertinent documents that fulfilled the information needs identified in FDC’s letter. The documents, with a cover letter dated Aug. 26, 2016, were hand-carried to FDC’s office by a staff of the DA a week after the agency received the request for information.

Five days after FDC’s letter, the BTr-SDAD emailed a spreadsheet of National Government Selected Fiscal Statistics from 1986 to 2015. No figures on the Marcos years were supplied. Upon inquiry, SDAD replied that it did not have statistics earlier than 1986.

However, the Bureau of Treasury’s response to FDC’s second request for statistics was slow. “BTr-SDAD took 38 working days before it emailed a spreadsheet on the National Government External Debt Service from 1989 to 2016,” FDC reported. “Again, there were missing data as concerned information needs identified by FDC—no statistics were given for years 1986 to 1988.”

FDC said: “The quick availability of documents from the DA-PRDP and BTr-SDAD (on the first set of statistics) was a significant factor in facilitating the work of FDC in monitoring the fiscal situation of the national government and its borrowing activities and loan repayments.”

“BTr-SDAD’s second spreadsheet on NG foreign debt, however, came late for FDC’s immediate use for it in 2016. But it would still be helpful in this year’s coming engagements on the audit of 20 cases of questionable foreign loans,” it added.

FDC lamented though that, “what was noticeable was the lack of a quick acknowledgment of receipt of requests.”

“There was also no advice on when and how FDC’s needs for information would be fulfilled and who would be responsible for handling them. These details should be immediately provided to the requesting party so as to establish expectations on the parameters of the government agency’s actions on demands for access to information,” FDC said.

In addition, “it is important, and should be a requirement, for agency staff members, who are tasked to respond to queries, to be knowledgeable of the scope of the agency’s work—operations, functions, responsibilities, among others—and what content it makes readily available on its websites. Had this been the case with the PRDP office, misinformation, which could be interpreted as a damper on any claim for access to information, could have been avoided.”

FDC said agencies “should present an explanation whenever they are unable to release information expected from them or of which they are supposed to be repositories.”

“The absence of an explanation could easily be an indication of inefficiency, lack of coordination within a department and/or among concerned agencies, and disregard for people’s right to know, or worse, a curt denial of access to information,” it said.

While the response to FDC’s requests was “generally commendable,” FDC said its practice of access to information “still points to the need for a legislated FOI that will cover all branches of the government, and that will put in place disciplinary actions or penalties for violations of the law.”

According to FDC, “the current Executive Order on FOI opens up spaces, but still sets limits to people’s enjoyment of their right to know.” — PCIJ-R2RKN, March 2017

MORE THAN three months after the Freedom of Information (FOI) Executive Order took effect on Nov. 25, 2016, requests for data from state agencies have been coming in, but not at the volume expected by government officials.

Yet the relative low number has not meant quick processing for several of the requests, leaving some requestors in a snit. Requestor Wilson Chua for instance says of the online portal eFOI: “The site is not very helpful. It feels more like window dressing.”

Chua’s four requests for information, which he filed with three different agencies, are among the 503 requests received by 64 agencies since late November last year to March 14, 2017. The eFOI’s home page actually indicates 640 requests were submitted during that period, but Michel Kristian R. Ablan, Assistant Secretary for Policy and Legislative Affairs at the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO), said that the disparity is due to test requests submitted during the portal’s initial roll last year.

“We can’t remove anymore those test requests during the initial roll out,” Ablan told PCIJ recently. “Those are already in the system.”

In any case, of the 503 requests, 166 were listed to have been “partially or fully successfully processed,” another 183 “denied,” and the balance of 154, “pending or for processing.”

These numbers indicate a volume far from the deluge anticipated by the government, especially after it put up the eFOI portal as an alternative way to file requests for information with select agencies. Observed Ablan: “Various groups had fought for the Freedom of Information for many years. So when it actually took effect last year, we were expecting a bulk of requests, but it didn’t happen.”

Then again, the low number shouldn’t have been a surprise. Ablan himself admitted, “According to the consultations we had made with various stakeholders, most of the information the public wants to know are not covered by the Executive Order. Most of the people need to get information from the Congress or their local government units (LGUs). These are not covered by the FOI.”

LGUs are not required but encouraged to join the FOI program by passing an ordinance, said Ablan. In the meantime, the number of national agencies currently part of the eFOI portal is just a meagre 32 percent of the total 200.

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Born in July

President Rodrigo Duterte signed Executive Order No. 2, the FOI-enabling order, on July 23, 2016. The order operationalizes the public’s Constitutional right to information and “provides the State policies to full public disclosure and transparency in the public service.”

With the EO, the public can now make requests before all government offices under the Executive Branch, including government-owned or -controlled corporations (GOCCs) and state universities and colleges (SUCs). Not allowed for public access, however, are certain information that could put into jeopardy the privacy of the agency concerned and matters of national security.

Ablan’s PCOO is tasked to implement and operationalize the FOI program as it serves as the coordinator of all participating government agencies. Or as Ablan put it, “The PCOO has been designated to orient about and supervise the implementation of the FOI program. We are also tasked to monitor compliance of all agencies with the instructions from the manual.”

The manual he is referring to is the People’s FOI Manual that government agencies are required to have to guide the public in making requests.

Goal: 200 nat’l agencies

According to Ablan, the PCOO aims to have all the 200 national attached agencies join the eFOI portal by end of November 2017, all GOCCs by next year, and SUCs by 2019. He notes, “Even it’s not indicated in the Executive Order, the PCOO also established the portal to allow the public submit their requests.”

“We are doing trainings and roadshows to raise awareness about the FOI,” Ablan also said. “It seems in the grassroots, even we already started the implementation on November last year, there is still little awareness about this. We still need to inform and empower the public.”

PCOO plans to collect inventories of requests from all the agencies per quarter, particularly from those that have yet to join the eFOI portal, he said.

There are two ways to file an FOI request. The first mode is by placing a request in writing by filling out a form and submitting to the concerned agency’s Receiving Officer (RO). After the request is validated – ideally on the same day it was filed — it is forwarded to the Decision Maker (DM) to check if the agency holds the information requested, as well as if it is accessible or if it is a repeat of any previous request. The request is then given to the concerned officials to find the information requested. If needed, the head of the agency would provide clearance prior to the release of information.

“For requestors who are illiterate and disabled, the agency’s RO can assist you by filling out the form and encoding the information in the portal,” said Ablan.

Deadline: 15 working days

The second mode of filing is through the eFOI platform, which requires the requestor to first create an account before submitting a request for information. After the needed fields are completed, the request is sent and forwarded to the RO of the concerned agency. The same process of validation, retrieval, and approval of release is done in this platform. If the request is approved, the reply will be posted in the user’s account.

The set maximum processing time for both platforms is 15 working days. In some cases, though, the agency may need an extension to study the request some more. In such instances, the agency is supposed to inform the requestor, while the extension should not be longer than 20 working days.

In the online portal eFOI, a request is tagged ‘accepted’ if it has been accepted by the RO and forwarded to the DM. If the RO has not yet opened the request, it is tagged ‘pending.’

The request is tagged ‘processing’ once the DM acknowledges receipt and starts working on the response. The requestor, though, can be required to submit additional details about the request, which would then be tagged ‘awaiting clarification.’

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Clarification sought

When PCIJ took a look at the portal recently, however, 12 requests dated November 2016 to January 2017 were still waiting for clarification as of March 14, 2017. Given the set time for processing requests, these queries should have already had responses.

“We are still addressing this concern,” said Ablan. “Most of the DMs respond to the requests directly and fail to update the status in the portal. We still need to remind the DMs to close the loop by tagging the request as successful.”

A requestor can actually write an appeal letter addressed to the person in authority should an agency fail to provide a response within the set processing time. Action on the appeal is supposed to take place within 30 working days of its submission.

The requestor can also file an appropriate case in a court if all administrative remedies have been exhausted and no resolution was made.

Ablan said that his office aims to have a seamless coordination and referral system among all the agencies, GOCCs, and SUCs in terms of processing the requests.

“This is still a learning curve for us,” Ablan said. “Hopefully, once all the agencies, GOCCs and SUCs are on board in the portal, we could easily trace if a request has been forwarded to another agency which can answer better the request.”

‘Processing’ means…

A request tagged as ‘processing’ could later be classified as either ‘successful’ or ‘denied.’ As of March 14, 2017, 35 requests were still labelled ‘processing.’ Since last November, 183 requests have been denied, while successful – either partially or fully — requests have reached 166.

Among those who have come away from the eFOI portal pleased and satisfied is an investment analyst for a multinational bank, who said, “I did receive a valid explanation with further instructions on how to secure the information I need. Generally, I am very satisfied with the portal.”

“One particular interesting experience I had was when requesting data on car registration from the Land Transportation Office (LTO),” recounted the analyst, who requested anonymity. “It took a while but I was surprised when someone from the LTO called my office informing me that the information I needed is ready for pick up at their office.”

Top-rank list, by denials

Some agencies, though, seem to be swatting down requests by the dozen. By the number of requests they have denied out of the total requests they have received via the eFOI portal as of March 14, 2017, the following agencies may be considered to be in top rank in terms of their refusal to grant access to information requests.

• Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), with 20 requests denied and five pending, out of 25 total requests received;
• National Archives of the Philippines, with 10 requests denied and eight pending, out of 19 total requests received;
• Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO), with 41 requests denied out of 52 total requests received;
• Department of Budget and Management (DBM), with 11 requests denied and 10 pending, out of 37 total requests received;
• Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), with 39 requests denied and nine pending out of 93 total requests received;
• Department of Transportation (DOTr), with 21 requests denied and five pending, out of 53 total requests received; and
• Department of Finance (DOF), with 10 requests denied out of 25 total requests received.

Three agencies are in a similarly unusual situation of apparent opaqueness.

The first two — Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) and Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) — had denied all the requests they had separately received during the period.

PCIJ called up PCGG to ask why it had turned down the FOI requests, but was told no one was on hand to answer such queries because of a commission-wide event. As for PPA, the body’s Public Information Officer, Christopher Paringit, explained, “One problem we have seen is that the public is not usually aware what the core business of PPA is. We receive questions on vessel safety, which is under MARINA, (and) shore safety, which is under the Coast Guard.”

Paringit also said that his office, the Corporate Communications Office, and the Office of the Corporate Board Secretary (OCBS), work hand in hand in responding to requests.

The third, the Philippine National Police (PNP), had 43 requests “pending” out of 43 total requests it had received. Sought for an explanation, PNP Spokesman Senior Superintendent Dionardo Carlos told PCIJ that one reason for this is that some of the information requested might be classified.

“We comply with the FOI,” he said. “However, if the request submitted requires more time to be reviewed and the data should be coming from various offices — we cannot respond right away.”

“I still need to see the requests sent in the portal,” Carlos also said. “However, as a practice, if a formal request is sent to us, we answer in less than 72 hours.”

Meanwhile, 26 of the 64 agencies featured in the eFOI portal have all received zero access to information requests as of March 14, 2017.

Interestingly, it is the PCOO which has emerged as having the most number of denied requests, with 41 out of 52 requests submitted. Said Ablan: “The people thought all requests should be sent to us. Taking a closer look at the requests, some of them should be responded by another agency. We received requests of which answers should come from the Department of Budget and Management for example.”

This is not happening only to PCOO apparently, according to Ablan. “Some requests are being denied because these have been submitted to the wrong agency,” he said. “In these instances, the agency sent a reply to the requestor and the request is forwarded to the appropriate agency.”

“Some requestors ask for multiple data or documents which the agencies could not release all the same time,” he added. “In these cases, the DM is required to send an explanation for the partial response to the request.”

The requests shown in the portal as of March 14, 2017 indicate that the top three nature/purpose of requests are: general research and information (43.74 percent), additional knowledge (such as for reporting, news research, information dissemination, class reporting and discussion, 27.43 percent), and academic and business research and development (14.51 percent).

Last Dec. 10, senior high school student Gabriel Fordan filed a request for the History of Kalumpang, Marikina from the National Archives of the Philippines. Fordan had intended to use the information for school work; he is still waiting for any kind of movement on his request.

“My request is still for processing the last time I checked,” he said. “Actually, it was just marked for processing last Jan. 27, more than a month after I requested. When the response took longer than I expected, I just used other sources for my school work. If ever my request gets to be approved, I think I can still use it in my current research or for future use.”

1 of 4 granted

As for requestor William Chua, only one of his four requests for information has been granted. Chua had submitted that request — on the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program — on December 13, 2016 to the Department of Budget and Management (DBM). More than three months later, the requested information was finally released by another agency, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).

Chua is a data analyst and journalist and was after specific data for stories he was doing for various publications. The Department of Health (DOH) denied his request for the number of doctors per barangay. But Chua seems particularly peeved with DICT, which denied his two separate requests for data on radio frequencies.

“(DICT) couldn’t produce the information I requested,” said Chua. “They even (turned me down) using boiler-plate response so I gave up using the FOI site.”

He also said that DICT “promised to give me the list of frequencies (NTC) by February. It is now March.”

PCOO’s Ablan, though, said that improvements in the system are coming. He told PCIJ that the DM and RO will soon be allowed to reply directly to the requestor through additional buttons in the eFOI portal.

“All in all, our goal is to have a simple portal, which could the public use to submit their queries and get answers easier,” Ablan said. “The buttons, dropdown menu, and even the charts will be improved soonest.” — PCIJ, March 2017

EIGHT YEARS before retired SPO3 Arturo Lascañas admitted to participating in killings done by the Davao Death Squad (DDS), supposedly on the orders of then Davao City Mayor Rodrigo R. Duterte, four other individuals had given sworn statements on the DDS and those who they said were behind it.

Three gave their sworn affidavits on separate dates in early 2009 to the Commission on Human Rights (CHR); CHR lawyer Jacqueline Ann C. de Guia, the current spokesperson of the agency, took their statements. The fourth gave a sworn deposition on July 10, 2009 before Judge William Simon Peralta of the Manila Regional Trial Court for a case filed by the Philippine National Police (PNP), which was then seeking entry to a suspected burial site of DDS victims.

Although they were made separately, the statements of all five, including Lascañas, have interlocking details such as the general composition of DDS and the involvement of the police. The affidavits submitted to the CHR and that of Lascañas, along with his second testimony at the Senate, have even more details in common as well as complementary with one another, including the hierarchy within the DDS, the manner in which the killings were carried out, and the amounts given to a team per hit, which usually ranged between P13,000 and P15,000.

Two of the affidavits with CHR even named Lascañas as among the policemen involved in DDS. Lascañas, though, had denied there was a DDS when he first testified at the Senate in October last year.

But then four months later, he appeared with lawyers in a surprise press conference, where he said the exact opposite and even recounted specific murders in which he said he took part. He would also execute an affidavit containing even more details about the DDS — details that he would repeat and elaborate on some more at another Senate hearing, as well as in an interview with PCIJ.

Of truth, conscience

Among other things, Lascañas has attributed his change of heart to “spiritual enlightenment” and attacks of conscience.

The other four individuals who issued sworn statements on the DDS were less dramatic in explaining why they decided to speak up about the group, saying only that they wanted to tell the truth, with three of them adding that they had been bothered by their conscience.

The DDS is believed by many, including local and international rights groups, to be behind the deaths of petty criminals, drug pushers, and addicts (among them minors) in Davao City when Duterte was mayor there. Between 1988 and 2016, Duterte had seven full terms as mayor of Davao City, and one term each as congressman and the city’s vice mayor.

Duterte, now President, has repeatedly denied having anything to do with the killings. There have been times, however, that he has declared that there is nothing wrong with bad elements of society ending up dead.

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How DU30 figures

Only two of the self-confessed assassins, however, linked Duterte by name with their bloody occupation in their respective affidavits: Lascañas and someone who went by the alias ‘Crispin Salazar.’

Lascañas in his affidavit dated Feb. 19, 2017, said in part, “I was present when then MAYOR RODRIGO ROA DUTERTE of Davao City ordered the killing of numerous men and women, and gave us reward money after we executed them. I was responsible for the killing of many men and women, and at least one child, upon the instructions of MAYOR DUTERTE.” (Capitalization in original)

Salazar, a rebel returnee and who was 46 years old at the time of his June 24, 2009 affidavit, for his part said that he had met Duterte in 1992 through a longtime acquaintance, a certain Councilor Ibuyan. He said Ibuyan had brought him to Duterte’s house in the city’s Matina District for possible employment.

Said Salazar in his affidavit: “Ipinakilala ako ni Councilor Ibuyan kay Mayor Duterte. Tinanong ako ni Mayor ‘kaya mo ba ang ganitong trabaho? Ang patayin ang salot sa lipunan tulad ng mga drug addict, pusher, at magnanakaw?’ Sabi ko, papatulan ko.’Sinabi niya na babayaran niya ako ng P15,000 at pinabalik niya ako ng Lunes at binigay niya personal sa akin ang isang baril. Isa yon na .357. (Councilor Ibuyan introduced me to Mayor Duterte. Mayor asked me, ‘can you handle this kind of work? To kill the dregs of society like drug addicts, pushers, and thieves?’ I said, ‘call.’ He said he would pay me P15,000 and told me to return Monday, during which he personally gave me a gun. That was a .357.)”

He began working that same day, Salazar said. He also recounted, “Makalipas ang isang linggo, binigyan na ako ng listahan ng mga wanted na tao na aking papatayin. Nakalagay doon ang pangalan at tirahan ng mga taong papatayin ko. Iniaabot at dini-distribute ang listahan sa akin at maging sa aking mga kasamahan ng aming pinaka-pinuno sa samahan. Minsan ay mismo si Mayor Duterte ang pumupunta sa safehouse at nag-aabot ng listahan matapos sambitin, ‘O, ito ang mga listahan ng mga tarantado. (After a week, I was given a list of ‘wanted’ people who I was going to kill. The list had the names and addresses of my targets. My colleagues and I would be given lists by our group’s leader. Sometimes it was Mayor Duterte himself who would go to the safehouse and hand out lists, saying, ‘Here, these are the lists of imbeciles’.)”

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Not real names

CHR’s de Guia said that Salazar and the two other self-confessed DDS members were allowed to have pseudonyms for security reasons. Instead of their signatures, their affidavits have their right thumbmarks. De Guia confirmed with PCIJ that the signatures that appear on the documents are hers and that it was she who conducted the interviews with Salazar, as well as with the two other men who took on the names ‘Jose Basilio’ and ‘Ramon Evangelista.’

“They were straightforward and had the demeanor of someone telling the truth,” de Guia told PCIJ when asked if she believed the three’s statements at the time.

But she begged off giving more details about the men because, she said, she needed to get additional details about the progress of the case and the whereabouts of the three.

CHR had embarked on an investigation on the DDS in 2009, when it was still headed by Leila de Lima. But the human-rights body would not get to finish its report on the DDS until 2012 under its then head Loretta Ann Rosales; it has since not done much on the matter.

Different roles

For sure, despite their having points of convergence, the affidavits submitted to the CHR, the court deposition, and Lascañas’s sworn statement vary in length and richness in detail. In large part, that may be because the five men played different roles within DDS, as indicated in the incidents they narrated in their respective sworn statements.

Lascañas, who among other things said that he “was responsible for the killing of many men and women, and at least one child,” was the lone police officer among the five. His affidavit is rivaled in detail, however, by that of Salazar, who was also a hitman, as well as that of Basilio, who described himself in his affidavit as an employee of the “Heinous Crimes Office,” an “extension office of the Investigation Division at Camp Leonor.” Basilio also said that he was part of the “civilian component” of that office.

Basilio mentioned Lascañas in his May 30, 2009 affidavit, along with other policemen whose names would appear as well in Lascañas’s 2017 affidavit: SPO4 Fulgencio ‘Boy’ Pavo, SPO1 Jim Tan, SPO2 Jun Naresma, and SPO4 Sanson ‘Sonny’ Buenaventura, then Duterte’s trusted driver and bodyguard.

Orders to kill, bury

In his affidavit, Basilio said that one of the foremost objectives of the Heinous Crimes Office (HCO) was to “carry out the ‘orders’ coming from Sonny Buenaventura.”

He added, “Nagmumula sa kanya ang ‘clearance’ para isagawa ang isang operasyon. Ang ‘order’ na ito ay ang pagpatay sa mga tao na sa kanilang tingin o pagsusuri ay may atraso sa lipunan o sa kanila (The ‘clearance’ to do an operation would come from him. This ‘order’ would be to kill people who in their view had done them or society wrong).”

Almost a decade later, Lascañas would recall in his own affidavit that Buenaventura had approached him to assassinate radio broadcaster Jun Pala, an avowed critic of Duterte.

“SONNY BUENAVENTURA told me that Mayor Duterte asked him (Sonny) to look for a hitman for a hit job against JUN PALA,” Lascañas said in his February 2017 affidavit. Sonny suggested my person to Mayor Duterte to do the hit job against JUN PALA. According to SONNY BUENAVENTURA, Mayor Duterte agreed and offered Three Million Pesos (PhP3,000,000) as pot money (reward).” (Capitalization in original)

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Both Lascañas and Basilio also brought up retired SPO4 Bienvenido ‘Ben/’Tatay’ Laud’s name in their respective affidavits, as did Ernesto Avasola, who used his real name in his July 10, 2009 deposition before then Manila RTC Judge Peralta. In fact, it was Avasola’s testimony that prompted Peralta to issue a search warrant on Laud’s property in Barangay Ma-a in Davao City. In his deposition, Avasola had said he was an “asset” of Laud and had witnessed at Laud’s compound the execution of six men by six members of the Anti-Crime Unit of the Davao City Police Office in December 2005. Avasola also said that he was among those made to bury the remains of the victims within the Laud property.

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Village informant

Avasola’s deposition, however, was rather short compared to that of Basilio, Lascañas, and Salazar. So too was the July 4, 2009 affidavit of Evangelista, who said his role in the DDS was that of an informant of a barangay-based DDS cell.

Nevertheless, Evangelista gave an interesting description of the set-up in the barangay level, which he said could be found “all over Davao”: “Ang bawat cell ay kinabibilangan ng mula apat hanggang anim na miyembro. Sa isang buwan, ang bawat cell ay may nakalaan na target o mga taong papaslangin. May mga kilala ako na ilang miyembro ng ibang cell sa pangalan o sa mukha at alam ko kung sino sa kanila ay ang driver sa mga operasyon at sino ang mga hitman (Each cell has four to six members. Every month, each cell has a set target or people to kill. I know some members of other cells by name or by face and I know who among them is the driver in the operation and who the hitmen are).”

He said most of the targets were “snatcher, durugista (addicts), at magnanakaw (thieves). According to Evangelista, he would pass on information on his cell’s targets via a Nokia 3310 cell phone, for which he would usually receive usually P500 each time. There was at least one operation that netted him P1,000, but he described the event as “malungkot (sad)” because the target was one of his friends, Marlon, who happened to be a notorious thief.

Evangelista, who was 25 years old at the time he executed his affidavit, recalled: “Matapos kong tukuyin kung asan siya, kami ay pumasok sa bahay niya. Mula sa hagdan nakita ko na hinabol nila si Marlon. Tumakbo si Marlon papunta sa bintana upang tumalon ngunit may nag-aabang sa kanya doon na isa naming kasamahan at binaril siya (After I determined where he was, we entered his home. From the stairs I saw them running after Marlon. He ran toward the window, intending to jump out, but one of our colleagues was waiting for him there and shot him).”

Poignant as it sounds, that recollection has weak shock factor compared with stories narrated by the likes of Lascañas and Salazar, who said that they not only witnessed killings but also did several themselves. Salazar, who referred to “clearance” from Buenaventura before every hit as well, even estimated that by the time he quit the group in 1998, he had killed about 40 people.

Angry mayor

One incident recounted by Salazar in his affidavit that is particularly chilling, however, did not have him pulling the trigger.

Sometime in 1993, Salazar said, “may isa kaming lakad na kasama si Mayor Duterte. Kami na kanyang mga kasamahan ang dapat tumira ngunit nagkamali kami. Hinabol niya mismo yung tao na isang hold-upper at saka niya ito pinagbababaril. Naubos niya ang isang magazine noon. Matapos iyon, natakot ang mga pulis at nakita kung paano magalit si Mayor (We had an operation in which we were with Mayor Duterte. We were the ones who were supposed to do the hit but we made a mistake. So it was he himself who went after the man who was a holdupper and he shot him repeatedly. He used an entire magazine on him. After that the police were all scared because they saw how angry the Mayor could get.)”— With research and reporting by Nancy C. Carvajal and Davinci Maru, PCIJ, March 2017

HE LOOKED calm and collected even as he lay one serious allegation after another against the highest official of the land, and even after saying that he expected to be killed because of all that he has been saying in public.

Indeed, retired SPO3 Arturo Lascañas seemed to know exactly what he wanted to say, although he made it clear he was not about to name any of the religious who have helped him and asked as well that members of his family not be identified.

Lascañas met with PCIJ a fortnight ago, and for about an hour and half on a sunny afternoon, the 56-year-old self-confessed assassin answered the queries thrown at him in a freewheeling interview conducted mostly in English, with a smattering of Tagalog and Bisaya.

PCIJ has prepared more than a dozen snippets from that interview, which touched on a range of topics, among them the President’s longtime friends and aides such as Presidential Management Staff Secretary Christopher Lawrence ‘Bong’ Go and businessman Samuel ‘Sammy’ Uy, his girlfriends, and the dead that kept turning up during his watch in Davao City.

The video clips show Lascañas refusing to go into details in matters in which he claims to have no personal knowledge, yet not flinching when the talk veered toward specific murders allegedly committed by the so-called Davao Death Squad or DDS.

He did not blink even as he said that then Davao City Mayor Rodrigo R. Duterte did not only order the killing of his critics, but also used public funds to finance the murders. There was no change in his tone of voice as well as he explained that “neutralize” in police parlance means to kill, and that in the past extrajudicial killings were known as “salvaging.”

Then again, this is the same man who at a Senate hearing this March admitted to killing around 300 people as if he was just recounting the usual events of the day.

In his interview with PCIJ, Lascañas said that his former boss Duterte had not only given him millions of pesos in return for his services, but had also helped him pay for his kidney transplant in October 2015.

Asked why he was now turning against his benefactor (who he said he last met with in 2014), Lascañas said that he felt remorse after “a tremendous recovery and second lease of life.” He also said he had to convince his own family that his turnaround was due to his newfound courage and that he had no other motive.

According to Lascañas, there are at least four other former DDS members who have expressed their intention to come clean because they are similarly being bothered by their conscience.

He said that he himself already has a “written confession”: his 70-page handwritten journal, which he said he began writing on March 24, 2016, a Maundy Thursday.

At the end of the interview, PCIJ asked Lascañas to write down in brief what he thinks of the President. He promptly obliged and wrote on a page of a notebook: “That I am Arturo Lascañas, My Personal description on the temper of Mayor Rody is that he has the momentum of Lethal Temper that he can summon me or any other person at his disposal to Kill someone as he Wishes.”

“Eternal Punishment is Real and is coming!”

He then scrawled “Arturo” on the page. — With reporting by Nancy C. Carvajal and Davinci Maru, PCIJ, March 2017

PCIJ’s MoneyPolitics Online

The Congreso Obrero de Filipinas (COF), also known as the Congress of the Philippine Labor, led the protest action. More than 10 years later, a new union called the Katipunan ng Anak Pawis (KAP) was born from its ranks. The government soon outlawed both congresses.

Back then, Filipino workers were made to work 12 hours a day, and paid with peanuts. They had had to mount strikes to demand better wages and reasonable working conditions.

But it was only on May 1, 1913 when the labor movement was recognized, after its leaders convened a labor congress, according to the National Historical Commission.

Monday (May 1, 2017) marks the 104th anniversary of Labor Day in the Philippines.

PH Overseas Workers, 1986-2015: ‘Modern-Day Heroes’

The past decades have seen the growth in numbers of Filipino workers but also their unfinished quest for a better life for their families, prompting their journey to worksites across land and sea, across the globe.

Hailed by a parade of presidents as the nation’s “modern-day heroes,” Overseas Filipino Workers in 2015 alone sent home about $26.92 billion or P1.2 trillion in remittances, accounting for 8.5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product that year. Remittances from land-based workers amounted to $18.7 billion, and seafarers, $5.6 billion.

PH Total Labor Force, 1956-2015

In honor of Filipino workers worldwide, we invite you to check out available data on labor and employment in PCIJ’s MoneyPolitics Online website.

The datasets offer time-series information on various indicators of the state of labor and employment in the Philippines, some sourced from documents dating as far back as 1956. These datasets form part of a treasure trove of data and documents that PCIJ continues to collect, curate, sort, analyze, and code.

PH Number of Employed, 1956-2015

PH Number of Unemployed, 1956-2015

The datasets in this series show, for instance, that:

• The total labor force in the Philippines in 2015 consisted of 41,342,000 Filipinos.

• The number of employed Filipinos in 2015 was estimated at 38,741,000 while the number of unemployed Filipinos for the same year was at 2,602,000.

• It was in 2004 when the unemployment rate fell to a record low of 11.8 percent or about 4,249,000 Filipinos.

• The number of deployed sea-based overseas Filipino workers in 2015 totaled 406,531, and deployed land-based overseas Filipino workers thrice more, or 1,437,875.

It must be noted, however, that the year 2005 recorded a decline in the unemployment rate to 7.8 percent, from 11.8 percent in 2004, on account of “the new definition of unemployment” that was prescribed by the National Statistical Coordination Board in a resolution dated Oct. 20, 2004.

PH Workers Covered by Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBA), 1996-2015

PCIJ’s MoneyPolitics Online website is a citizen’s resource, research, and analysis tool on elections, public funds, and governance in the Philippines. A data journalism project of PCIJ, it aims to promote transparency and accountability in government, and the citizen’s right to know and to participate in governance. MoneyPolitics features a steady harvest of new relational public documents and datasets.

PH Deployed Land-Based Workers, 1984-2015

PH Deployed Sea-Based Workers, 1984-2015

By Kenneth Cardenas*
Fellow, Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
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AVLB Asia Pacific Conglomerate, Inc.

AVLB Asia Pacific is primarily engaged in coir, peat, and upholstery padding. As of end-2014, it had yet to operate commercially. Its registered address is JGD Plaza, at the corner of Lizada Street and Monteverde Avenue, Davao City. The same address is associated with LDM Summit Exporter, a licensed exporter for fibers other than abaca. Four of its five incorporators and present management are members of the De Mesa family; the fifth incorporator is a Chinese national by the name of Wu Zhong Qing.

Cavitex Holdings

Originally registered in July 1999 as Coastal Road Corporation. As of 2016, its major asset was a 100-percent stake in Cavitex Infrastructure Corp, which built and presently operates the Manila-Cavite Expressway. Its registered address is the 2^nd floor of 151 Paseo de Roxas, a building where Global Ferronickel, Inc. also holds office. As per its latest General Information Sheet, Cavitex Holdings’ major stockholders are Metro Pacific Tollways Corporation (72.08 percent) and Luis J. L. Virata (27.92 percent), who is also a major stockholder in Nickel Asia; three of its five directors are members of the Virata family. MPTC bought into Cavitex in 2012 through a PhP6.77 billion convertible note agreement. News reports at the time indicated that Cavitex Holdings intended to use these proceeds to participate in the Aquino administration’s public-private partnership (PPP) offerings. Its 2016 Annual Report, however, does not appear to list any new significant investments in this area. The same annual report states that Cavitex Holdings is “committed to sell its investment in CIC in its entirety.”

Cavitex Holdings reported a loss of PhP 71.5 million in 2015, and PhP 7.8 million in 2014.

See also Global Ferronickel, Inc.

Columbus Capitana, Inc.

Formerly BNP Paribas Investments Philippines. Manuel V. Pangilinan was one of the original incorporators in 1986. Its license as an investment house was renewed in 2010, and its name changed to Columbus Capitana in 2011. Presently, Columbus Capitana is 99.9 percent owned by FPSP Holdings, which in turn is 95 percent owned by Ambassador Francis C. Chua. Chua is the president of the Filipino Chinese Chambers of Commerce (FCCI), and is extensively linked through executive positions to Global Ferronickel, 2GO, Basic Energy, Employers’ Confederation of the Philippines, National Grid Corporation of the Philippines, Basic Biofuels, and Basic Geothermal. He is also one of the top 20 stockholders in San Miguel Corporation. Chua had previously served as a Special Envoy for Trade and Investments to the People’s Republic of China during the Arroyo administration.

Columbus Capitana reported no income for 2014 and 2013.

See also Global Ferronickel, Inc.

DoubleDragon Properties

Registered with the SEC as Injap Land Corporation in December of 2009. Its registered address is 19^th Floor, Tower One, Makati Stock Exchange Plaza, Ayala Avenue, which it shares with Hotel of Asia, Inc. and Injap Investments. As of the end of 2015, 37 percent of its shares were owned by Injap Investments, Inc., a holding company fully owned by members of the Sia Family of Mang Inasal fame. Another 37 percent is owned by Honeystar Holdings Corp., which is fully owned by Tony Tan Caktiong and his brothers. The Sia and Tan families each have three seats on DoubleDragon’s eight-person board of directors.

As of the end of 2015, DoubleDragon had five operational malls, and had secured 41 sites across the Philippines through direct acquisitions and joint ventures. It plans to develop 100 malls through to 2020. It reported PhP622.8 million in income in 2015, up from PhP560.8 million in 2014.

See also Expedition Construction Corp., Hotel of Asia, Inc.

Expedition Construction Corp.

Registered under the name Expedition Services Corp. in September 2000. It reports its address as the JYY Building, 213 Banawe Street, Quezon City. A Mr. Simon Paz owns 97.44 percent of its shares. Paz has discernible interests in the hotels and hospitality industry: through a firm named Oceanville, he is associated with the winning bid for the Army-Navy Club, along with Carlos Chan of Oishi, and Edgar Sia II, and in partnership with Jin Jiang Hotels. Through a firm named Staniel Development Corp., Paz also has a stake in Hotel of Asia, Inc., again with Chan and Sia (through Injap Investments) as co-incorporators.

Expedition had previously won bids for smaller lots put up for auction by the BCDA, and was a bidder for the Integrated Transport System Southwest Terminal Project.

See also DoubleDragon Properties, Hotel of Asia, Inc.

Global Ferronickel, Inc.

Global Ferronickel was originally incorporated as Southeast Asia Cement Holdings, Inc. in May 1994 by Benito R. Araneta. It had been mostly dormant until September 2014, when the IHoldings Group, a group of three stockholders owned by a Mr. Luis Yu, sold its 89.82-percent share in Southeast Asia Cement to a consortium of 13 shareholders for PhP 2.59 billion, based on its SEC Form 17-A. It acquired its new name at around the same time.

Global Ferronickel’s 2016 General Information Sheet (GIS) shows that about 72.26 percent the company is presently owned by these 13 shareholders. Nine of these shareholders, holding a combined 45.91 percent of Global Ferronickel’s shares, are holding companies that are majority-owned and chaired by a Mr. Joseph C. Sy (see table 3). The other four shareholders are Huatai Investment Holding Pty. Ltd. of Australia (16.74 percent); Mr. Seng Gay Chan, Singaporean (.04 percent); Mr. Dante R. Bravo, Filipino (.18 percent); and Mr. Wei Ting, a Chinese national (.56 percent), according to the company’s SEC Form 17-A. These 13 shareholders are also the main stockholders of Platinum Group Metals Corporation, one of the 21 firms that were ordered to shut down by Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Gina Lopez at the beginning of February.

Global Ferronickel’s registered address is the 7^th floor of 151 Paseo de Roxas, a building where   Cavitex Holdings, Inc. also has its registered address. Messrs. Sy and Bravo sit on its nine-person board of directors, along with Mr. Chua. Two Chinese nationals also sit on its board of directors: Gu Zhi Fang, who according to the company’s 2015 SEC 17-A papers is married to Mr. Sy, and Yuquiang Xie.

Global Ferronickel is presently the second-largest exporter of nickel ore in the country. As with the Philippine nickel ore industry as a whole, most of its customers are in China.

See also Cavitex Holdings, Columbus Capitana.

Greenergy Development Corp.

Greenergy was registered with the SEC in March 2011. Its registered address is in Xavier Estate, a residential subdivision in Upper Balulang, Cagayan de Oro.

Its current owners and management are all members of the Donggay family. Its president, Engineer Cerael Donggay, is a former vice president of the National Power Corporation (Napocor), and as of 2015 was the president of the Cagayan De Oro Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Greenergy reported small losses for 2013 and 2014, and more than PhP467 million in development costs for the Pulangi V project over the same two years.

Hotel of Asia, Inc.

Hotel of Asia, Inc. was registered with the SEC in June 2011. As of end-2015, it had two primary properties: Hotel 101 Manila, located in the Manila Bay reclamation area, and Jinjiang Inn Ortigas. Its major stockholders are Injap Investments, Inc. (39.97 percent), Staniel Realty and Development Corporation, (29.98 percent), and Chan C. Bros. Holdings, Inc. (29.97 percent), which are in turn owned by the Sia family, Simon Paz, and Carlos Chan, respectively. Its registered address is 19^th Floor, Tower One, Makati Stock Exchange Plaza, Ayala Avenue, which it shares with DoubleDragon Properties and Injap Investments. It is presently co-chaired by Chan Kiong Ki See (a.k.a. Carlos Chan) of Oishi and Edgar J. Sia II, founder of Mang Inasal, both Filipino nationals.

Hotel of Asia reported PhP124.7 million in net income for 2015, up from PhP67.1 million in 2014.

See also DoubleDragon Properties, Expedition Construction Corp.

International Container Terminal Services, Inc.

ICTSI was registered with the SEC in December 1987, with a principal address at the Manila International Container Terminal. It operates ports in 20 countries. It remains tightly-controlled by its founder and majority shareholder, Enrique K. Razon Jr., who presently sits as its Chairman. Through Bloomberry Resorts Corp., Razon also has interests in the Philippines’ rapidly-growing casino industry, which is oriented primarily to the tourists from mainland China.

ICTSI reported US$68.9 million in net income for 2015, down from US$191.5 million in 2014.

Mannage Resources Trading Corp.

Mannage was registered with the SEC in February 2015, with a declared business as “buying/importing, selling/exporting, distributing, marketing at wholesale…all kinds of goods, mostly food delicacies, wares and merchandise,” according to its articles of incorporation. Its registered address is One Global Place, 5^th Avenue, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig. The same address is registered as the addresses of Acelead Shipping, Dunfeng Shipping, Minecore Resources Philippines, Zambales Oyon Port Corporation, and Dunfeng International Philippines. Dunfeng Holdings and Dunfeng International are domestic subsidiaries of Hong Kong-based, British Virgin Islands-registered Dunfeng Holdings, Inc., which is one of China’s largest nickel-ore importers. All the Philippine-nationality firms appear to be engaged in various aspects of nickel-ore export, including shipping, warehousing, mine development, and port operations. Dunfeng is also planning a 300-megawatt coal-fired power plant at Masinloc, Zambales.

All these firms also share a number of incorporators, directors, and shareholders, most notably a Mr. Dean Christopher Lee and a Mr. Eric Co, both Filipino citizens, and a Chinese national named Huang Yi.

The papers of Dunfeng Shipping, which is the primary leaseholder to the offices in Taguig, lists the following sub-lessees as additional affiliates: ZHSEI, ZOPC, MMPI, CMPI, Starsland, Galaxy, Elitist, Rid Hauler, and Greentech.

Dunfeng International Philippines, Dunfeng Shipping, and Zambales Oyon all reported losses in their latest filings with the SEC.

Mega Harbour Port and Development, Inc., and R-II Builders, Inc.

Mega Harbour was registered with the SEC in August 2013, and lists the R-II Building on 136 Malakas Street, Quezon City, as its address. The same address is associated with R-II Builders, Inc., a firm associated with Reghis Romero II.  Romero presently sits as the chairman of the board for R-II, and owns about 94 percent of its stock directly and through R-II Holdings, Inc. Media reports associate Romero with Mega Harbour, and describe him as its chairman, but this capacity is not indicated in its latest general information sheet; neither is he listed as a stockholder.

Mega Harbour reported a loss of PhP296,411 in 2015. R-II Builders, meanwhile, reported an income of PhP787.6 million in 2015, up from PhP647,687 in 2014.

MVP Global Infrastructure Ventures, Inc.

MVP Global was registered with the SEC on the 25th of January 2017, a little over three months after Duterte’s China trip. As it is a freshly-registered firm, it has yet to submit financial reports to the SEC. It lists the Bonifacio Technology Center building, on the corner of 31^st Street and 2^nd Avenue at Bonifacio Global City, as its address.

A story run by the Philippine Daily Inquirer in October 2016 reports its full name as “MVP Global Infrastructure Group Ltd.” The limited-partnership suffix is unusual for Philippine-nationality firms, which may indicate that a sister firm to MVP Global is registered in another country. The same news story reports that it is “composed of three entrepreneurs from Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines.”

A report run by ABS-CBN online in October 2016 quotes a Mr. Enrique Gonzalez as representing MVP Global. Gonzalez is associated with Intellectual Property Ventures Group, Corp. and IP E-Game Ventures, Inc., which are also headquartered at Bonifacio Technology Center.

North Negros Biopower

Registered with the SEC as Central Tarlac Biopower, Inc. in February 2006, and renamed September 2015. Its registered address is Emerald Arcade, F.C. Ledesma St., San Carlos City, Negros Occidental. The same address is associated with San Carlos Solar Energy. Three of its eight-member board of directors are members of the Zabaleta family, including its chairman emeritus, chairman, and treasurer.

Both North Negros Biopower and San Carlos Solar Energy are subsidiaries of Bronzeoak Philippines, Inc., which in turn have Zabaleta & Co., Inc. (85 percent) and Asia Pacific Energy Ventures Ltd. of Hong Kong (10 percent) as its major shareholders. Bronzeoak was incorporated in 2003 as a holding company for renewable energy ventures, with Zabaleta & Co., Inc. and a British national named Graham Stowell as its major subscribers. It owns several other renewable energy firms: San Carlos Clean Energy, Negros Island Solar Power, Monte Solar Energy, San Carlos North East Wind, Biomass Resources, San Carlos Biopower, NextGen Bioenergy, and South Negros Biopower.

North Negros reported losses of PhP87.2 million in 2015, and PhP1.2 million in 2014. Bronzeoak reported PhP136.3 million and PhP20.4 million in profits for 2015 and 2014, respectively, while Zabaleta & Co. reported PhP43.2 million and PhP1 million in profits for the same years.

One White Beach Land Development, Corp.

One White Beach was registered with the SEC in October 2003, and its papers describe its business as “resorts, hotel inns, all adjuncts, and accessories thereto.” Its registration papers report a Jose Ciceron Lorenzo A. Haresco and an Anna Margarita A. Haresco as its two primary stockholders. Jose is the son of Aklan representative Teodorico Haresco Jr., and ran in 2013 as the third nominee of Ang Kasangga Partylist.

According to a website for one of his companies, Teodorico Haresco Jr. had served (at least until 2006) as the director for Asia Pacific Business Development for Mabey & Johnson, a British firm that supplied the modular structures for these bridges. A 2008 PCIJ series on ODA also quoted an investigative report by the Guardian on Mabey & Johnson as saying, “Analysis of the company’s accounts shows that the dramatic leap in fortunes has come largely from its Philippine contracts, worth £429 million and all funded by UK-backed loans.”

Mabey & Johnson had since been embroiled in improprieties elsewhere, and was convicted by a British court in 2009 for bribing politicians in several countries. Teodorico Haresco Jr., meanwhile, was the subject as well of an Aquino-era investigation by the Department of Justice into faked special allotment release orders (SAROs).  In 2014, the National Bureau of Investigation recommended that charges be filed against him and four other people.

According to his website, Haresco, through Winace Holdings, Inc., is also associated with Boracay I-Land Group, Inc., Chaikofi, Inc., Eco-Coral & Technostrat Corp., Winace Land Development Co., and Winsource Solutions, Inc.

In 2013, the last year for which an annual report is available for the company, One Whitebeach reported a mere PhP1.3 million in assets and PhP19,640 in losses.

Philippine State Group of Companies

The name “Philippine State” does not exist on the SEC’s i-Report database. Searches for derivative names and alternative spellings did not return any entries of interest. Upon PCIJ’s request, the SEC issued on February 8, 2017 a “certification of non-registration of company” for the name “Philippine State Group of Companies”.

Servequest, Inc.

Servequest is primarily engaged in real-estate development, and does not appear to have a track record in renewable energy. Its registered address is 186 Elizalde corner Rafael Corpuz Streets, BF Homes, Paranaque, which it shares with Krismar Realty. Its majority stockholder and president is a Roberto A. Alvarez, Jr. With members of the Chiong and Yang families, Mr. Alvarez is also a director and shareholder of Philippine GP Technology, Inc.

Servequest reported PhP292,123 in net income for 2015, and PhP554,247 for 2014.

See also Trademaster Resources Corp.

SL Agritech Group

SL Agritech was registered with the SEC in August 2000. Its registered address is 2302 Pasong Tamo Extension, Makati, which it shares with Sterling Paper Products. Its incorporators and major stockholders are members of the Lim family, namely Henry Lim Bon Liong (40 percent), Joseph Lim Bon Huan (36.5 percent), and Gerry Lim Bon Hiong (16 percent). Five of its eight-person board of directors are members of the Lim family, including Henry as the president and CEO, and Gerry Lim Bon Hiong as the EVP and CFO.

SL Agritech reported PhP254.4 million in net income for 2015, up from PhP200.1 million in 2014.

Trademaster Resources Corp.

Trademaster Resources was registered with the SEC in October 1998. Its stated primary business activity is “distribution of electronic appliances,” and does not appear to have a track record in renewable energy. Its registered address is the Impex Compound, Zapote Road, Las Piñas, which it shares with a company named Philippine GP Technology, Inc., which also trades under the name Green Power Inc. Trademaster’s incorporators and major stockholders are members of the Chiong and Yang families, who are Filipino and Chinese citizens, respectively. Its management is also drawn from the two families. These two families, along with Roberto A. Alvarez of Servequest, Inc., are also directors and major shareholders of Philippine GP Technology, both through Trademaster Resources (45 percent) and through direct shareholdings.

Trademaster reported PhP11.8 million in income for 2015, down from PhP17.6 million in 2014.

See also Servequest, Inc.

Zonar Systems and Zonarconstruct

Zonarsystems Solutions, Inc. was registered with the SEC in November 2016. In its registration papers, it reported its primary business activity as “construction and management of projects and activities related to infrastructure.” Its registered address is a unit at the Ritz Towers, a luxury residential condominium along Ayala Avenue. A Mr. Antonio L. Montorio owns 96.8 percent of its shares.

Mr. Montorio appears on Malacañang memoranda orders no. 90 and 116, series of 2000, which both deal with the Estrada-era iteration of the President’s Bridge Program. These memoranda specify his roles as member of the special inspectorate team of the program’s oversight committee, and as the plans/communications officer of its technical working group secretariat. Rep. Haresco of One Whitebeach is also named on MO 116 as a member of the technical working group.

The name “Zonarconstruct” does not exist on either the SEC’s i-Report database, or in the DTI’s registry of business names. Upon PCIJ’s request, the SEC issued on February 8, 2017 a “certification of non-registration of company” for the name “Zonar Construct”.

See also One White Beach Land Development Corp.

Last of Two Parts

THEY CALL it “Dutertenomics.” Its tagline: “Build, build, build.” Its boast: “The golden age of Philippine infrastructure.” Its estimated bill: PhP8.4 trillion, to be sourced from taxes, foreign and local loans, and Official Development Assistance (ODA) from bilateral partners.

By 2022, senior officials of the Duterte administration promise that roads, bridges, skyways, and rapid mass transport systems will rise and connect the 7,000-plus islands of the Philippines. The full bundle consists of 57 mostly infrastructure projects that the current government plans to implement, courtesy of money pledged by minted friends like China and Japan.

It has become a peculiar habit of President Rodrigo R. Duterte and his men to brag about the bacon they say they bring home from state and official visits overseas. Going by their press statements alone, they have already raised tens of billions of dollars — in pledges at least.

From his trip to the Middle East last month, Duterte has reportedly secured $925 million in potential investments from Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Qatar.

There has also been China’s assurance of $9 billion (about PhP452 billion) in loan and grants for government-to-government projects, and the possibility of $15.3 billion (PhP753.5 billion) more in joint ventures and investments by private companies (still on the drawing boards), across a six-year period.

Then there is Japan’s offer of a trillion yen or another $9 billion in ODA and investments in the next five years.

Soon, on May 14-15, Duterte will fly again to Beijing to attend the conference on the “One Belt, One Road” flagship project of China’s President Xi Jinping. It envisions, like “Dutertenomics” the launch of major and massive China-funded infrastructure projects, across Asia, Europe, and Africa.

Duterte, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, Indonesian President Joko Widodo, Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang, and Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi are among the 28 world leaders who have reportedly confirmed their attendance at the summit.

Duterte’s bacon: $34B?

Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III himself says that Duterte has raised $33 billion in combined aid and investments from China and Japan alone. The claimed windfall from the recent Middle East trip brings the total to $34 billion. The operative word, Dominguez agrees, is “pledges.”

In just nine months in office, the peripatetic President has already visited 16 countries, albeit mostly quick trips. Apart from China, Japan, and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Qatar, Duterte has also visited the nine other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN that the Philippines chairs this year: Brunei, Laos, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Singapore, and Myanmar. He has also been to Peru and New Zealand.

Excluding the President’s latest journey to the Middle East, the government has so far incurred total expenses of $5.5 million or about PhP270 million for his travels overseas, news reports have quoted Dominguez as saying. That is supposedly a small investment with big return value.

But do the aid pledges that Duterte has sought and secured make for a truly seamless story of goodwill between nations, yielding good results for all their citizens? The checkered past of China-funded projects in particular has had observers worried and raising questions regarding ODA-supported ones in general, and especially those marked for funding from Beijing.

Among the questions are: Will these pledges of aid and loans translate to good projects contracted with integrity, and how, where, and when in fact would they be started and finished?

What additional taxes, debt-service burden, or other relocation or dislocation costs must the citizens bear to pay for the loans that Dutertenomics would acquire, even after Duterte’s term ends in 2022?

And does China now deserve the full trust of an old friend like the Philippines; will the new projects be spared of the corruption and scandal that marred past projects?

A senior official queried by PCIJ had this comment: “The question only is, who is the screwer, who is the screwed? The relationship should be mutually beneficial.”

‘Plan big, achieve big’

But Dominguez told PCIJ recently, “Look, we are just beginning to date again. There was a six-year hiatus. This is confidence-building time.”

“Basically, the President has decided that one item of dispute should not decide our relations (with China),” Dominguez said, referring to the territorial squabbles Manila has with Beijing. He added that there would always be economic, commercial, political, and security issues that unite or divide nations. Said Dominguez: “It’s okay to have disputes, but we must not focus the relationship on that.”

“Every relationship is like that, you have to work at it,” he also said. “It’s not going to stay sweet if you don’t work at it.”

Dominguez said that he has offered the President this counsel: “I told him, look, China is not doing this solely because they love us. They have an overcapacity of their steel mills industry.”

Rather than have China close its factories, Dominguez said, the Philippines could get steel from China. He pointed out, “We’re helping each other. It’s an opportunity for them, it’s an opportunity for us. He (President) understands.”

The aid bonanza is not about “oversell” or press release, said Dominguez. Rather, he said, it is about setting higher goals. “If you don’t plan big, you will not achieve big,” he said.

This has prompted the government to use its own money to roll out the first three “priority projects” on its list of 57 projects. “The big ones,” Dominguez said, “we have decided to start projects on our own.”

The three projects are the south line of the North-South Railway, the New Centennial Water Source-Kaliwa Dam in Quezon province, and the Chico River pump irrigation project in Cagayan and Kalinga provinces. They have been allotted a P10-billion starting budget altogether, and their groundbreaking will supposedly take place between June and October this year.

“We will do these on our own budget and start project groundbreaking,” Dominguez told PCIJ. “We’re borrowing at low cost, 80 percent pesos, 20 percent foreign (loans).”

The rest of the projects could take some time later to launch, however. Dominguez acknowledged that the completion of project feasibility studies to the award of supply contracts may take 18 months in all. That would come in October 2018 — at which time the political pot could start boiling on account of the scheduled midterm elections in May 2019 or, should legislation for the proposed shift to federalism pass, the conduct of a national plebiscite.

Dominguez noted, though, that 18 months is a much shorter period than the 30 months it reportedly took the administration of President Benigno S. Aquino III to launch projects under its Private-Public Partnership Program or PPP.

Avoid ‘abject lessons’

But Dominguez admits to one thing. He worries about what might, but should not, happen again: two failed and foiled China-funded projects approved by then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, a close ally of both Duterte and China. These projects, which Dominguez calls “abject lessons that must be avoided,” are:

• The $330-million NBN-ZTE national broadband project that was aborted in 2006 amid allegations of kickbacks sought and received by certain senior officials close to Arroyo; and

• The $400-million loan from China Export-Import Bank for the 32-kilometer first section of the North Luzon Railways Corp. (Northrail) project that the Arroyo administration awarded in 2003 to a subsidiary of a China state-owned enterprise or SOE. Hailed then as China’s biggest loan ever extended to the Philippines, the second section of the Northrail project was to have been funded by another $500 million loan from the Export-Import Bank of China (China EXIM).

In 2012, because of supposed project revisions and delays, the Aquino administration cancelled the supply contract for the Northrail project. In a decision dated Feb. 7, 2012, the Philippine Supreme Court en banc declared the contract invalid because it had been awarded without public bidding. The total loan value for Northrail’s Section 1 component came up to $503 million in combined principal and interest payments.

But Beijing said that what happened was not a “justified cancellation” and threatened to declare the Philippines in default of its loan. Beijing then submitted the case for arbitration proceedings in Hong Kong, which have yet to be finished.

In the meantime, to avoid being declared in default, Manila in 2012 agreed to pay Beijing installment amounts on more than half the total loan that had already been disbursed, or $180.8 million plus annual interest of three percent.

By September 2013, a Philippine treasury official was telling reporters that instead of one lump-sum payment, Manila had opted to pay equal tranches starting 2012 to 2014. By then, Manila had already paid China about $46.1 million.

Millions for nothing

Manila is still paying for the botched Northrail project, according to Dominguez. “My hand bleeds every time I sign checks for that loan because we got nothing, nothing at all,” he told PCIJ. “It’s okay to pay if we got something, but we got nothing.”

It was on Sept. 14, 2002 when China National Machinery & Equipment Corp. (Group) or CNMEG, represented by its chairperson Ren Hongbin, entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the North Luzon Railways Corporation (Northrail), represented by its then president Jose L. Cortes Jr., for the conduct of a feasibility study on a possible railway line from Manila to San Fernando, La Union.

CNMEG itself did the project’s feasibility study for the NEDA, for free.

Eleven months later, on Aug. 30, 2003, the state-owned China EXIM and the Philippines’ Department of Finance (DOF) entered into a Memorandum of Understanding wherein China agreed to extend “Preferential Buyers Credit” to the Philippine government to finance the project.

Under this MOU, China EXIM agreed to extend a $400-million loan to the DOF as borrower payable in 20 years, with a five-year grace period and an annual interest rate of three percent. (In contrast, ODA loans from Japan typically carry a 0.5-percent interest rate per year.)

On Oct. 1, 2003, then Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Wang Chungui informed Arroyo’s finance secretary, Jose Isidro Camacho, in a letter that Beijing had designated CNMEG as the Prime Contractor of the Northrail Project. No bidding for the supply contract was conducted.

On Dec. 30, 2003, Northrail and CNMEG executed a Contract Agreement for the construction of Section I, Phase I of the North Luzon Railway System from Caloocan to Malolos on a turnkey basis, at a contract price pegged at $421.05 million. The project was envisioned to ferry over 150,000 passengers daily to and from Manila.

Northrail’s second section costing about $673 million would have extended the line by another 48 kilometers and connect Manila to the former U.S. air force base in Clark, Pampanga that is now an international airport and a special economic zone. Another $500-million loan from China EXIM was to have funded the second section, bringing total Chinese funding for the venture to $900 million and making the entire Northrail project one of the biggest Chinese-funded projects in Southeast Asia.

Dominguez knows full well that the loan burden for the scuttled Northrail project and the kickbacks-ridden NBN-ZTE project continue to spook the recently rekindled China-Philippines relations.

‘Reputations at risk’

By all means possible, Dominguez said, the Duterte administration wants to prevent a repeat of the NBN-ZTE and Northrail projects. “We must protect everyone’s reputation here,” he said. “Everybody’s reputation is at risk here.”

As a key step, Philippine officials have reportedly served notice that only the principal companies with good track record and which China has designated would be considered for the supply contracts for the new projects.

For another, Philippine officials remain on guard about the now multiple brokers who have started to negotiate for their supposed Chinese principals.

“The Chinese usually have three or four brokers,” said one official who requested anonymity. “We said, we don’t like that. We told the Chinese government that’s why and how we ended up with Northrail and ZTE. We know about your projects in Africa.”

Personal and cultural conflicts had also marred relations between the Filipino-led North Rail Corporation and the management of the Chinese contractor CNMEG, which by 2010 had changed its name to Sinomach.

According to Aquino’s public-works secretary Rogelio ‘Babes’ Singson, the Arroyo government had realized too late that the state-owned CNMEG had at least four subsidiaries, and that Sinomach was just one of them. In truth, Singson told PCIJ in a recent interview, Arroyo’s officials had entered into contract with “just a subsidiary” of CNMEG.

Without a doubt, Singson said, China has a lot of competent contractors and “they do have capacity for these projects as they have built the longest railway network than any other country in the world had.”

The greed of brokers

But, he said, “the key is to tap into the expertise of contractors with track record, and talk to principals, not their representatives or subsidiaries.”

He also said that the government must parry the influence of brokers who claim to represent, truthfully or not, project proponents and potential contractors. “Brokers?” said Singson. “Talagang ganoon, you will have to accept that, even for some other donor countries, not just China, so long as the amount is not too far from the estimated (project) cost.”

Contractors unaware or unsure of how project contracting unfolds in the Philippines tend to hire consultants or representatives or brokers, Singson explained. As for the brokers, “they’re after the commission, of course,” he said. “And that would depend on how greedy they are.”

Dominguez said that Manila intends to keep the new projects clean; hence it has sent new, clear messages to Beijing. “We have spoken with the Chinese government,” he said. “We told them we don’t know your SOEs, the subsidiaries of your SOEs, the subsidiaries of their subsidiaries. We told them we would much prefer that the Chinese decide to nominate three bidders for a particular project.”

China for its part has been amenable to conducting limited competitive bidding among Chinese firms for projects to be funded by China money. It used to insist on unilaterally nominating contractors for all Chinese-funded projects. For the Northrail project, for instance, Beijing designated a single contractor, CNMEG. To this day, it remains the nightmare that would not go away.

Six years after the China signed and sealed its loan for the Philippines, Sinomach had accomplished only 15 percent of the Northrail project, PCIJ reported in its 2010 story “Chinese foreign aid goes offtrack in the Philippines.”

A tragic tale

PCIJ had exposed how nearly nothing came of the project, noting in the story: “There are neither trains, stations, nor even a single kilometer of track. Many segments of the line are still occupied by illegal structures, including multi-story office buildings and factories. But even on most segments cleared of illegal dwellers, there is no construction activity. Only in a handful of sites can one see heavy equipment and laborers working to drive or bore huge concrete piles to lay the foundation of the giant posts for the elevated segments of the railway.”

How or why did China’s loans turn off-track at the time? PCIJ’s story presents a portent what might happen again under Duterte: “At heart, the Northrail project is a tragic tale of what happens when cheap Chinese aid money hooks up with weak governance in a borrowing country. From talks with current and former Philippine planning and Northrail officials, it is clear that a major driver for the project was the extreme concessionality of Chinese financing: an unprecedented three-percent annual interest rate, five-year grace period, and 20-year maturity.”

As it was under Arroyo, under Duterte, the same terms may apply for the new China loans. According to Dominguez: “About three percent interest rate, roughly the same 20-year payment period.”

He then said that the Philippine proposal for the terms of the loans from China is ready and that PCIJ should just get this from his staff. As of this writing, however, multiple PCIJ requests for the information have yielded no response from Dominguez and his staff.

Grid gridlock

Aside from the Northrail and NBN-ZTE projects, though, there was a third, equally big, bone that the Aquino administration had picked with China: the transfer to Manila of full control over the operations of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) in which China’s State Grid Corporation has 40-percent equity control. This happened on account of a 25-year concession agreement that SGCC obtained from the Arroyo government in 2007 and which the Philippine Senate ratified in 2008.

The SGCC concession agreement expires in 2033 yet, or beyond the terms of two more Philippine presidents after Duterte.

Technical management of the operations of the grid — a high-voltage power transmission network that supplies electricity to millions of households, — came under full control of Filipinos only in July 2016. Manila had started negotiations with Beijing for the grid’s turnover as early as 2013 but it was only in 2014 when Manila decided against renewing the visas of 18 Chinese technical experts working at NGCP.

Apart from China’s SGCC, two Filipino firms — the Monte Oro Grid Corp. and Calaca High Power Corp. — own 30 percent equity each in NGCP.

In September 2013, Aquino sent to Beijing then Transportation and Communication Secretary Manuel ‘Mar’ Roxas II to discuss “some of the conflicts that exist” over the Northrail and NGCP contracts.

In both cases, Roxas said that Manila had wanted to disengage from Beijing.

Press reports had quoted Roxas as saying that the Philippine government wanted China to transfer the NGCP’s operations and technology, and train Filipinos on how to control “our national electric grid.”

“It’s not comfortable that foreigners are the ones handling the (electric grid),” Roxas had said.

The loan & the sea row

When Aquino visited China in 2012, Roxas said that Manila had proposed to “reconfigure” or rebid or continue the Northrail project loan, and even allow China to still participate in it, according to Philippine procurement rules.

“In short, both sides were trying to push through with the anomalous project by reconfiguring some of the elements so it would pass our Procurement Law,” media reports quoted Roxas as saying in September 2013. “But since then and until now, there was really no progress that transpired.”

It was amid the testy words exchanged over the Scarborough (Panatag) Shoal that Roxas said China decided to “call” the loan it had extended for the Northrail project.

“It was ‘called’ – meaning it became due and demandable,” Roxas said. “So it was discussed how we would pay for it and since we got the money, we would settle it… in installments over the next two years.”

According to the Public Investment Staff of the National Economic and Development Authority or NEDA, only four projects had been assisted by grants from China from 2012 to 2017: the Philippine-Sino Center for Agricultural Technology (PhilSCAT) Technical Cooperation Phase II; Bilateral Seminar on Disaster Mitigation and Management; Rice Donation for Haiyan Victims; and 540 Units of Prefabricated Houses for Haiyan Victims.

In addition, NEDA said at least eight Philippine projects had been funded by loans from China from 2001 to 2014. These are the:

• Non-Intrusive Container Inspection System Project;
• Non-Intrusive Container Inspection Project II;
• Angat Water Utilization and Aqueduct Improvement Project Phase II;
• Northrail Project Phase I, Section I;
• Banaoang Pump Irrigation Project;
• General Santos Fishing Port Complex Expansion/Improvement Project;
• Northrail Project Phase I, Section II (cancelled); and
• Agno River Integrated Irrigation Project.

The NBN-ZTE National Broadband Deal was supposed to be on that list, but in the end it didn’t push through. There was also the Cyber-Education Project or CEP, but that failed to even start as well.

Described as “a satellite-based distance-education program that provides real-time interactivity to public schools” and supposedly separate from the NBN-ZTE project, the CEP would have been funded by a $466-million or PhP22-billion loan from China. Plans also called for the Philippine Treasury to contribute PhP4 billion more to implement it.

Scuttled, too

CEP was designed to be a partnership between the Department of Education (DepEd) and the Tsinghua University, China’s top technology university, which manages the China Education and Research Network that covers 320 million beneficiaries.

It planned to link all DepEd administrative units, including the central office, 17 regional offices, 187 division offices, and 37,792 public schools, as well as provide 12 video channels, wireless wide-area networking, local-area networking, and wireless Internet to even the most remote parts of the country.

But in their review of the NBN and the CEP projects, University of the Philippines professors Raul Fabella and Emmanuel de Dios noted that the CEP “was scaled up to entail a government-operated backbone which consequently amplified its cost to P26.48 billion from its original no-separate backbone project estimate of P5.2 billion.”

The academics suggested that the P26.48 billion that would go to CEP could be put to better use. For example, they said, the amount could build 48,145 classrooms at P550,000 per classroom. Fabella and de Dios noted that the estimated classroom shortage for 2008 was 11,862 but had a budgetary requirement of only P6.52 billion.

NEDA approved the CEP in March 2007, or just two months after officials of the two nations signed a Framework Agreement on Bilateral Economic and Trade Cooperation.

In August 2007, then opposition congressman Teofisto ‘TG’ Guingona III of Bukidnon asked NEDA for copies of the contracts on the CEP, NBN-ZTE, and other projects that Arroyo and her officials had signed during their brief visit to China in April that year.

China’s ZTE Corp. on criticisms of National Broadband Network project of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

Told by NEDA’s staff that the documents had gone missing, Guingona remarked, “It is bad enough that many citizens do not trust their government in matters of state like elections, foreign affairs, the dispensation of justice, human rights, and all that is important to us Filipinos. It is dismaying when our government can’t even be trusted with safeguarding public documents.”

In October 2007, amid the public outcry and congressional inquiry into the kickbacks-laden NBN-ZTE project, Arroyo finally suspended the CEP project.

Trojan-horse trap?

These days, the Duterte administration is willing to bet that China can turn around its dismal record of projects in the Philippines. But some Filipino scholars on China say the Philippines should be more cautious when dealing with its giant neighbor.

“These are people, companies that felt that just because they have political connections, they can bribe, they can bring all their hanky-panky in our country,” commented U.P. political science assistant professor Jaime Naval. “Huwag naman tayo pagisa sa sarili nating bansa (We shouldn’t let ourselves be taken advantage of in our own country).”

China is “also very astute like the West and we have to be as astute as them,” said Naval, a China and ASEAN specialist. “They’re not giving because they love us, they’re giving because they take something back.”

He recalled reading a study that asserted that “for every one renminbi that China gives as ODA, it gets back six renminbi.” Said Naval: “It’s a political tool. It’s a given. I accept that. But we should not be naive that China is benevolent, that it hasn’t wrung us dry.”

“There’s a big difference between ODA coming from China and ODA coming from Europe, and U.S., and Japan,” Naval continued. He said that while “ODA from these developed countries are normally on health and education and certain advocacies that have something to do with the politics of the land and democracy…when it’s an ODA from China, it is extractive. There will be digging for minerals, they will get lumber, they will be harvesting natural resources.”

Dr. Renato de Castro, who holds the Charles Lui Chi Keung Professorial Chair in China Studies at De la Salle University, for his part observed, “With Chinese deals,‘yung binigay ng mga Greeks, sabi nga…’beware of the Greeks giving gifts, it’s a trap.’ You become dependent on Chinese aid. You become dependent on Chinese market. That’s why we become strategically and politically vulnerable to Chinese agenda.”

In de Castro’s view, “you don’t allow someone whom you have a territorial dispute (with) to dominate… this is very dangerous kasi we still have territorial disputes with China so that will give China a leverage in resolving those disputes. That would favor China (and) solve those disputes on Chinese terms, because China has economic leverage.” — With research and reporting by Karol Ilagan, PCIJ, May 2017