What is your reaction in each of the situation described below? (Choose one that approximates your attitude. Post your answers at the comments.)

1. Fr. Ed Panlilio accepts the P500,000 given out after a meeting with GMA by mayors and governors at Malacanang. He said the money did not come from jueteng or from any illegal source, so he decided to accept it. He intends to use it for projects that will benefit his constituents. How do you feel about this?

a. It was naïve of him to accept it. Understandable. He is, after all, a rookie politician. But now that he knows more about the circumstances of the payoff, he should just return the money.
b. I agree with Fr. Ed. Nothing wrong with using “clean” money to help the poor folks of Pampanga.
c. Father Ed, welcome to the world of politics. You should get used to this kind of wheeling and dealing.
d. He should not have received it in the first place. But since he did, then he should shut up. He’s only giving the opposition fodder for their destabilization efforts.

2. Rep. Cuenco admits in a radio interview that he received a P200T “Christmas gift” after the Malacanang meeting. Other congressmen present in the meeting denied there were “gifts” given out. Cuenco later recants and says it was just a joke. How could he receive a “Christmas gift” when it’s not yet Christmas, he argues. Cong. Defensor says, even if it were true, there’s nothing wrong with it. And Sec. Lito Atienza says, that it’s really standard practice for the President to give her allies gifts of up to P200K after such meetings. It was so in the 9 years that he was mayor. How do you feel about this?

a. I am outraged not only by the brazenness of the payoff and how our elected officials are trivializing it, but also by the blatant lying. The mere fact that this happened in Malacanang should compel the President to resign.
b. This should be investigated by the proper agencies (PAGC or Ombudsman or even the Senate) to determine culpability, punish the guilty, and clear the names of Congressmen who did not receive any amount.
c. What else is new? As Atienza says, this has been going on for the longest time. No matter who the president is, this practice will continue.
d. Elected and appointed officials should be more circumspect in their public pronouncements. Reckless statements like these are tainting our image and might scare investors away.

3. Joey de Venecia vividly describes how the First Gentleman points a menacing finger to his face asking him to “Back Off!” The First Gentleman vehemently denies it and says he could not possibly have done it since he didn’t know Joey personally. But he did advice Joey that he could be violating the law which prohibits relatives of the Speaker from entering into a transaction with government. Obviously, one or both of them are lying. What’s your take?

a. I believe Joey. I can’t imagine him having the audacity to invent such a fantastic story. The Senate should compel, if necessary, the First Gentleman to explain his side.
b. It’s really Joey’s word against the First Gentleman’s. Let the investigation take its full course and let the people decide for themselves.
c. It doesn’t really matter who’s lying. They probably both are. As some senators have said, it’s just a quarrel for kickbacks.
d. It’s probably part of a PR demolition job against FG to discredit and embarrass the GMA government.

4. Palace officials and pro-admin senators are saying that the Senate ZTE hearings should now be terminated, having been rendered moot by the resignation of Comelec Chairman Abalos. The Senate should instead focus on legislating priority bills to alleviate the condition of our people. Besides, they argue, Sec. Neri has already said everything he is willing to reveal and will only invoke executive privilege if pressed by the Senators. What do you think?

a. The hearings should continue to ferret out the truth and determine culpability of all officials involved, possibly including GMA. The Senate should challenge executive privilege at the Supreme Court if Neri invokes it. As for Abalos, a criminal case should be filed against him.
b. The Senate should continue the hearings. However, if there are no new witnesses or information, then they should stop and instead legislate laws as they were mandated to do.
c. Nothing good ever comes out of Senate investigations. Senators, especially those with presidential ambitions, are just showboating.
d. The hearings should stop. People are not interested in scandals. They’re more interested in improving the economy. This will give them jobs and food on the table. Senators should instead work double time to pass bills that will improve the economy.

5. PERC – a risk consultancy firm, released its report on corruption among Asian countries. The Philippines garnered the highest index (8.6 on a scale of 10) making it the most corrupt country in Asia. Opposition groups cited this in their information campaign. Malacanang countered with a media blitz saying that PERC never said the Philippines is the most corrupt, and that this was merely the perception of company executives surveyed. It accused the opposition groups of distorting the survey for their own political ends, and that this has set back the economic gains that the administration has worked so hard to achieve. What’s your take?

a. The fact remains that the Philippines is now the most corrupt Asian country. All corruption reports, including those prepared by Transparency International, are based on perceptions. Rather than worry about tainting our image, we should instead work on reducing the incidents and magnitude of corruption. And it should start from the very top.
b. Even if it’s true that we have become the most corrupt, harping on it does not help much. We should instead work together to improve the situation.
c. What’s all the fuzz? We don’t need a foreign agency to tell us what we already know.
d. Let’s not nitpick on the issue of corruption. Other countries as corrupt, if not more, than us are prosperous. Let’s focus on improving our economy.

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How to score: add 20 points for every (a) answer, 15 points for every (b) answer, 10 points for every (c) answer and 5 points for every (d) answer.

Interpreting your total score:

THE IDEALIST. If you scored a perfect 100, you’re a hopeless idealist. To a lot of people, you’re a self-righteous moralist, out of touch with realpolitik, and uncompromising. While it seems you’re on the extreme, you may just be the right person to countervail what the CBCP now sees as the moral bankruptcy of our leaders. You must be fuming mad by now with the unraveling of one scandal after the other.

THE CONSCIENTIOUS. If you scored between 90 to 95, you have a fairly decent sense of right and wrong, perhaps tempered only by a healthy fear of instability. With the brazenness and impunity you see today, you are probably ready to act on the dictates of your conscience.

THE PRAGMATIC. If you scored between 65 to 85, you consider yourself a well-balanced person, looking at the big picture rather than just the moral dimension of an issue. When scandals first hounded GMA, you’re probably one of those who kept asking, “But who will replace her?” With the magnitude of bribery you now see, you’re probably close to saying, “I don’t care who replaces her. Just get her out!”

THE CYNIC. If you scored between 30 to 60, you are probably snickering and saying, “I told you so.” You are unfazed by current events, and are determined to continue doing what you do best – nothing. Well… you deserve the country we have today.

THE RUTHLESS If you scored between 20 to 25, you have a single-minded tunnel vision towards economic prosperity. Your philosophy in life could be – “Screw morality. You can’t eat morality. It’s the economy, stupid!” To you, the end justifies the means. I can only say one thing. God unleashed His wrath when His people sacrificed at the altar of Baal. I believe God has unleashed His wrath upon our nation because people like you have likewise been idolatrous – worshipping at the altar of economic progress.

I think it is too late for the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (and the entire Roman Catholic Church hierarchy in the Philippines). They should accept the fact that they were casualties of the scorched earth policy of the Arroyo regime.

Acting on the disclosure by Pampanga Governor Fr. Ed Panlilio, the CBCP is calling on others to follow Panlilio’s example. Not only that, they assail what they call the moral bankruptcy of national leaders. (Not coincidentally, Environment Secretary Lito Atienza says cash giving in the Fortress is normal; he had received money since at least 2001.) Poor bishops, they had not seen this problem when it has been staring at their faces since 2005.

This is what I wrote back in July, 2006, The Church as Another Casualty of War:

This year, which is fast becoming a repeat of last year, the Fortress has utilized a two-prong approach on how to neutralize the Church’s influence on the public. Basically, the Fortress’ aim is to further reduce the public’s trust on the Church as an institution. The attacks are either subtle or brazen, or both.

First, it courted the support of the bishops by doling out cash and other help in the runup to the CBCP plenary this month. Many bishops came out in the open, decried the obvious bribery ploy, and condemned such a foul attempt. Many bishops also saw nothing wrong with the doleouts. Thus, the plenary was divided on how to come up with a pastoral statement. The idea of a consensus, to me, is more of a compromise than a true consensus. And we will probably never know the effect of the doleouts in the voting at the CBCP plenary. You know what happened next.

The Church has been confronted with the sins of the Arroyo administration since 2004, and for the past several years it has chosen to ignore these sins. Now, faced with the brazenness that it has allowed, the Church seriously has a problem with regards to credibility. Its call is too late; the brazen corruption is so entrenched, that I always wonder if major excision is necessary. Whether it will be a civil war or another EDSA moment, I do not know. But I am hoping that I will see such brazenness stopped within my lifetime. (And since I believe my lifetime will be short, I hope that change will happen within 10 years.)

Despite the long weekend, the political scene remains to be hot and controversial. To be honest, all these controversies seem to begin with the NBN-ZTE deal. It must be a huge can of worms that the Fortress had barraged us with mini-controversies so that we can forget about it. Too bad I can’t.

After the almost-scary episode with the wimp called Romy Neri, there’s the impeach-me complaint, and the rainmaker meeting at the Fortress (with around Php 200,000 allegedly distributed to congressmen to expedite the disposal of the impeach-me complaint, which they did the same day), the weekend saw Pampanga Governor Fr. Ed Panlilio confessing that he received Php 500,000 from someone in the Fortress.

On all counts, some people confirmed and denied the monies (two governors confirmed that they were also given monies, while the in-Heaven-right-now ULAP denies such monies; this scene is the same with the congressmen). Is the yes/no part of psychological warfare, to confuse everyone? Or is it just a symptom of the Fortress’ organized chaos?

One of the Cinderella finishers in this year’s elections, Panlilio is a controversial figure, a priest who managed to defeat a strong political machine to gain the seat at the City of San Fernando. He won by a slim margin, without a ticket, without political machine. Now, he managed to turn quarrying into a profitable business, from around Php 1 million a year during the time of the Lapids to Php 1 million a month.

But now, he admitted that he got Php 500,000, handed over by someone (revealed to be Bulacan Governor Jonjon Mendoza, who also admitted that he, too got some monies) to his chief of staff.

Ellen Tordesillas asked her blog readers: What would you do if you were in Fr. Ed’s shoes?

There is a group of press people assigned at the Fortress. If I were Panlilio, I would have asked my chief of staff to seek these reporters, and there and then show them the money. I would not take the money, but would not give it back, either. There’s one sensible comment at Mam Ellen’s blog that I would have done if I were Panlilio and were told to do so: stamp each bill with REJECTED so that every bill can’t be used.

Panlilio must realize that Cardinal Sin was wrong. Sin’s justification of receiving donations from crooks is technically money-laundering. Even if the money is used for the public good, the fact remains that the money came from illegal means. Besides, he can never erase the impression that he was bribed; his reputation remains clean, but for how long? As they say, all it takes is one mistake to ruin your reputation. I will not blame anyone if they think that Panlilio has been eaten by the system. While I won’t think that way (yet), I think he was a victim of his own naivete and wrong values.

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And now that the Fortress is pushing for Charter change (again), on what context should we put the Php 500,000 money? The Fortress is not making it hard for us to connect the dots. I will not be surprised if people’s initiative and Sigaw ng Bayan lookalike emerge out of nowhere. It is 2006 all over again.

Choose the phrase/statement that logically follows the given events:
1. Impeach-me filed. Fortress summons 200 congressmen. Congressmen given Php 200,000. Congressmen saw complaint transmitted to House Justice committee on the same day.
a. Gloria Arroyo becomes impeachment-proof for one year.
b. House transmits impeachment complaint to Senate.
c. House elects new Speaker.

2. Fortress summons local leaders. Governors given Php 500,000. Fortress announces new Charter change bid.
a. Gloria Arroyo is impeached.
b. People’s initiative launches.
c. Neri bares all.

In any rigged game, millions of money is always involved. But unlike in any rigged game, in this game, the riggers are not ashamed to admit that they have earned money from such rigging. That’s how low our congressmen have gone. That’s how low WE have gone. Our dignity has a price.

One congressman from Cebu admits getting Php 200,000 in cash in a meeting between 190 congressmen and the Fortress Thursday morning; in the evening, the ball called impeachment complaint was passed from one hand to the other, faster than you can say “Foul!”. The congressman called it an “advance Christmas gift”. I now wonder where did the Fortress get the money.

Unfortunately for these now-200K-rich congressmen, they cannot blame and prevent us poor people from thinking that they were paid to act on the impeachment complaint. The dots are so easy to connect; they could have made it harder for us to make conclusions. But no, they were so overtaken by the cash and pork barrel promises.

A Filipino word comes to mind. It starts with the letter G, and ends with the letter L, total of seven letters. For those who don’t get it yet: G*r*p*l.

And there’s no one to be blamed but us. We keep on voting for them, even if they continuously screw us up. We let them rape us. We let them rape our kid’s future. We are willing victims. We are the fools.

Are you still willing to be raped?

—

When Sir MLQ3 quoted the first in this series of blog posts about this year’s impeachment game, some people left comments at HIS blog, which I find funny. Anyway, two comments need to be addressed.

The first one, in essence, said that at least, the game allowed us to glean the chaff from the grain. While this assertion remains debatable (ehem, Cayetano and Escudero), that is not the point. The fact that the process has been turned into a money-making game is troubling. The Constitution is raped and mutilated in the process.

Also, the gleaning process defeats the purpose of impeachment – to remove an erring official from office. At the rate the gleaning process is going, the official that should be impeached would have been gone from office, and evidence of wrongdoing already cleaned up.

The second one argues that the impeachment is a political process, and such, is always a numbers game. The argument has its merit, but I always argue that it is the case because we allow it to be. I think I have already argued that the current process is flawed and needs changing. The current process ultimately defeats the purpose of the process.

The impeachment process follows certain rules, and it is based on the Constitution, giving it some semblance of legality. That the framers of the document believed that the congressmen will weigh in on the evidence presented before making a vote shows that the impeachment is also a legal process. At that point, the belief is pure naivete at hindsight.

Before the 2007 elections, I had argued that the true battle that will win the war was the House, but some people followed Sun Tzu and chose their own battle – the Senate. The Black and White Movement took the harder battle by issuing the Black List and the White List. While the Senate is a battle won (and some will argue that it is not a complete victory), guess who gets the last laugh? We shirked on hard work, and we lost.

The question now is this – will we ever learn?

This is a rejoinder to the post about the MRT. In that post, I had discussed the possibility of a stampede during the morning rush hour at the North Ave. MRT station. Based on the comments, two possible solutions were raised: getting more trains, and instituting a queue system. The problem with the second solution is that it will not work. If you take the MRT daily, you will agree that there is a queue. The problem is that the system cannot handle the volume of people during rush hour. The first solution is unpalatable because the MRT is on a build-lease-transfer (BLT) scheme. And getting new trains means loans, and loans pushed the government and the MRT Consortium to revise the original build-operate-transfer (BOT) agreement to BLT.

For now, let me discuss what I think can be done temporarily to make the system more efficient, until we all agree that taking out loans to get more trains is a good solution.

I think that for the MRT to efficiently service the morning rush hour volume, trains should arrive and leave a terminal every minute, 2 minutes maximum. This is possible, but there are a lot of factors that affect the turnaround time. For this discussion, turnaround time refers to the time it takes for a train to switch from north bound to southbound at the North Ave. terminal (and Taft Ave. terminal). To better visualize, here are some pictures.

In this picture (courtesy of Wikimapia), the top view of the North Ave. MRT station is shown. The tracks at the left is the south bound lane, and the right one, the north bound lane. Turnaround time refers to the time it takes for the train at the north bound lane to transfer to the south bound lane and enter the station. The turnaround is represented by an line crossing from north bound to south bound. I believe the turnaround should be max of one minute. The worst that I had experienced was 15 minutes; that time, the train broke down.

There is actually a design flaw in this case. Because of the said flaw, only one train can ‘turn around’ at a time, so a bottleneck is possible. This happens when three trains are at a station – on the northbound platform, on the switch (the track where the northbound train transfers to the south bound), and on the southbound platform. So what if the train on the switch breaks down? Woe to the passengers who are waiting on the south bound platform. The design should have allowed for two trains to switch. Referring again to the picture, the train moves straight north and switch to south bound lane. It would have been more efficient if the designers had allowed for the train to move straight north, then move straight south to switch. Draw an imaginary line from the north bound lane going to the south bound lane. This should be able to address the problem of trains breaking down, but that’s wishful thinking now. This design was implemented at LRT 1, so I am puzzled why this was not done for the MRT3. One plausible explanation is that the Consortium was anticipating the extension up to Monumento; however, BLT killed the idea, so the LRT 1 is instead going to be extended from Monumento to SM North EDSA.

What contributes to the turnaround problem is expounded below. See this image first.

This picture shows the North Ave. station platform. I took this shot while standing on the south bound platform. At the right is the north bound platform, and at the background (where the train is) is the switch. When a train arrives from the south, it should not take more than 2 minutes for all the passengers to unload. However, that is not the case. A lot of things contribute to the delay.

The MRT management allows the elderly, the disabled, and pregnant women to take the train at the north bound platform during rush hours. However, knowing Pinoys, some unscrupulous people take advantage of the situation, so it is normal to see able-bodied, obviously-young, definitely-not-pregnant people waiting at the north bound platform. So when a train unloads passengers, these people get in. A lone guard will have to check all three coaches and order people to get out. (Of course, it is futile). That would take around a minute or two of useless checking.

Then, there’s the matter of the train operator for the south bound leg. When a train arrives, the next train operator should be at the empty cockpit at the end immediately after the passengers have unloaded. Look at the second picture again. At the end of the north bound platform is the dispatcher’s area, the bullpen for train operators. From there, it is a minute of slow walk to the other end, where the train operator has to get inside the train. Sometimes, a train operator is slow in walking. Sometimes, a train operator is lazy, so instead of walking, he’d just wait in the dispatcher’s area, and the train would approach the switch, and stop exactly so that the lazy operator can get in at the south bound cockpit.

Another problem is that each train has three coaches. Each station can actually accomodate 4-coach trains, so I wonder why the Consortium settled for 3-coach trains. Must be an oversight or what. Anyway, I can’t fault them; the LRTA took 20 years to introduce 4-coach trains at LRT 1. LRT 2 was designed with the mistakes of LRT 1 and MRT 3 in mind. The coaches are longer, wider. The waiting time is another story, but it is no big deal.

This year’s impeachment game is finished even before it really began.

About several minutes ago, Speaker Jose de Venecia has inhibited himself from today’s plenary session. Instead, Congressman Raul del Mar started the jump ball. He then passed the ball called The Pulido-San Luis-KAMPI impeachment complaint to the Committee on Rules, which in turn will pass it to the Committee on Justice. And you don’t have to read the complaint nor watch the game to know the ending.

The end of the game remains the same with how the 2005 and 2006 impeachment games ended.

The session is ongoing at the moment, but the outcome is already known. This is like a rigged basketball game, only more garapal than ever.