President Aquino: Ups and Downs

I've written in the past that President Aquino has the opportunity to be recorded in the history books as a superb president, a perfect combination of his mother's good will and his father's courage and determination. As a statistician, but not a gambler, I would put the odds at about 60 to 40 that his legacy will be the most memorable since Marcos. . . and maybe even before.

How long has the Philippines been corrupt?

You read of corruption in Rizal's works. That was one of his main complaints, along with classism reflected in the overbearing power of the Catholic Church and the land barons. History also records that the last half of Spanish rule was characterized by rotating governors who had no real interest in the well-being of the Philippines and a great deal of interest in self-enrichment. So add to the 150 years of corrupt Spanish rule to 115 years of Filipino-sanctioned corruption begun when Aguinaldo grabbed onto a huge pile of borrowed Mexican pesos for his nation and his personal estate, and you have at least 265 years of corruption.

Corruption has been rampant from the Palace to Jose's pig sty where the tin roof was extracted from some rich guy's construction project by a contractor who swapped it to Jose for a small piglet. Theft in the Philippines is not really a crime. It is business as usual. How many ways do Filipinos cheat the system? I was a math major and I can't count that high. Johnny Lin's abacus would probably sizzle and catch fire from the heat of the calculations. We have old math, new math and Filipino math, which is base 10 plus a markup of 35% for all the "gratuities" along the supply channel.

It will take 20 years to root corruption out of the Philippines IF we can find future presidents willing to dig it out all the way from the Palace to the pig sty. President Aquino has only gotten to the first circle of corruption. It is an important circle because it curtails much of the big ticket thieving. The first circle includes his cabinet officials, top generals, and maybe a governor or two.  He might get to the second during his term, the junior lieutenants in each of the executive departments.

The legislature is supposed to be policing its own but seems rather to take pride in a kind of corruption of values, avoiding good ethical behavior like the plague, sitting on SALN's, jamming up the FOI Bill, plagiarizing away and threatening the very foundation of democracy, the freedom to speak, with a bizarre and harsh internet libel clause in the Cybercrime Bill.  When the Legislature operates with hidden agendas, sits on laws aimed at transparency and women's rights, passes laws aimed at intimidating expression, and coddles its own ethically challenged members, it burden's the President's legacy with non-action and bad deeds.

Face it, the Legislature is not leading the charge for freedom and transparency and high ethical standards. It does not have the same sense of righteousness and purpose as the Executive Branch.

And what about the third co-equal branch of our government, the Judiciary? Sorry to report that the courts have not even gotten to the first circle because Chief Justice Sereno's bench is still being fumigated. We should check back with the Supreme Court in a year to see if anything has improved.

But I digress. I'm talking about President Aquino here.

To get past the first circle of corruption, President Aquino has to take three big steps and he appears reluctant to take two of them.

1. Work the de-corruption effort through the cabinet posts into the top management layers across the nation. Then broader and deeper.

2. Prosecute extra-judicial murders.

3. Aggressively pursue transparency in government acts.

He is doing number 1, having given Corona the boot, jailed Arroyo, and being actively in the hunt for generals and governors who have been riding high on the taxpayer hog. Work is likely to become slow and hard because the corruption "out there" is smaller and sneakier and not always easy to spot. Take the matter of vote buying. Think we will see any in 2013?  Ahahahahaha ROFLMAO. Decentralized corruption is business as usual, as we saw regarding the roof of Jose's pig sty. Customs officials dipping, DENR dipping, LTO dipping, PNP dipping, judges dipping. I certainly have no statistics because it is a sumbitch to count, but I bet thousands of officials are dipping a hand in some poor slob's wallet. And that slob's wallet was probably obtained in a tax free swap or five-finger discount.

The two biggest achievements of the Aquino government are financial stability and the hammer brought to bear on corruption. And his cabinet secretaries are actively engaged in building better processes and results. But the President has to deal more explicitly with extrajudicial murders and freedom of information.

There are also some clear "downs" that the President might choose to learn from. We had a little flare-up about Under-Secretary Puno a few weeks ago. That buried the Sotto plagiarism and it was in turn buried by the Enrile-Trillanes mud-wrestling match on the floor of the Senate.

The media hereabouts certainly are single-minded, eh? They mosey from one scandal to the next, forgetting to cure, tie off or otherwise wrap up the previous one.

Some people were critical of the President on Puno, but I don't see what the big deal is. Robredo died, things were up in the air, and follow-through got a little disjointed, much akin to the chaos of the battlefield. It will all work out fine. Puno will be dealt with by proper investigation, not blogger investigations, and, if the President is wise and able to separate personal friendships from job performance, Puno will be invited to leave government. He's what is known as a "stigma" now.

The Trillanes back channel eruption revealed another stigma. It displays the President's main weakness, a tendency to adhere to friendships even when they go counter to the grain of his own success. Just as he supported Puno, the President backs Senator Trillanes even though it is fairly evident Trillanes is a hot-head with a non-diplomatic mouth. The incident seems simple enough: Trillanes has a contact of some clout in China and asked if he could work it. President Aquino said "yes". Indeed, the contact was instrumental in getting ships to stand down from the face off over Scarborough Shoals, but it did not get all Chinese boats to leave. The President's mistake was not saying "yes" to Trillanes. The mistake was not putting him under the direction of Foreign Affairs Secretary Del Rosario. It is never wise to go around one of your trusted executives. Plus it is a mistake to keep coddling Trillanes when he is clearly a loose cannon.

But these are minor incidents. They don't reflect the progress of the nation or the steam the economy is gathering.

The President often walks into the slapdash of media sensationalism when he speaks off the cuff, before all the facts are known and pieced together. The press then digs up its own facts and puts the pieces together in generally unkind picture that suggests the President is not trustworthy. The President would benefit by adopting a discipline of holding off on public comment regarding flare-ups until the facts can be put together and delivered to the press more comprehensively.

The President is not responsible for the incomprehensible ineffectual Legislature. He could get a lot more done if they worked harder on the RH Bill, FOI and other acts aimed at building a progressive Philippines. He should definitely work his contacts there, and jawbone them in public.

I rather see the President's "downs" as transactional, minor in the big-picture flow of history. Of concern, sure. Worth panic? For sure, not.

His ups are substantial. The Philippines is growing and stable and modernizing. Corruption is on the way out as a mainstream value.That's what I think will emerge as his legacy. To solidify that legacy, he needs to do more to:

• Push both openly and privately for Legislative action on key bills.

• Track down murderers and definitively end the era of extra-judicial killings.

• Actively back FOI and RH bills as essential steps toward a progressive Philippines. There is no reasonable reason for them to be held back.

• Develop two new personal disciplines: (1) be less reliant on friendships, and (2) refrain from speaking off the cuff to the press during flare-ups until all the facts are known.

The main point of this article is to suggest it is best to keep things in perspective, and not let a sensationalist press paint the picture we view as reality. The secondary point is to muse about what the President could do to build a striking legacy for himself and the Aquino family.

On Probation: Chief Justice Maria Lourdes A. Sereno

JoeAm has been running a series of articles focused on "A First Class Philippines", working his way past the sensationalist media which tend to focus on flaws and the anti-thugs who relentlessly tear down the Philippines and anybody who objects to their obnoxious line.

It is too early to rate newly appointed Chief Justice Maria Lourdes A. Sereno. The appointment itself is first class, continuing President Aquino's penchant for finding good, sincere, honest, bright, capable people to put into key offices. But the proof is in the judicial pudding and that will take a couple of years to bake.

I laugh when the antis condemn the President for picking a judge who has ruled sympathetically to his own thinking, for instance, on the attempted midnight escape of ex-President Arroyo. As if the President would be smart to pick someone sure to UNDERMINE his efforts to build a responsible, honest, capable Philippine government. Like that would be smart!  Hoo ha.

There is no doubt that CJ Sereno has the POTENTIAL to be rated First Class as a Chief Justice. She has the knowledge of law, the independence of thinking, the intelligence and the experience to be successful. But she must do some very important things to prove her mettle:

Wean herself from the Executive Branch.

Okay, good joke. Now get to work!

Okay, smiles and cheers, we are all on the same page here, happy with the appointment, as we can see in the enclosed photo grabbed from the PCIJ blog. But the Judiciary must stand independent so that it can responsibly and independently rule on cases that involve the Executive Branch.

CJ Sereno must show, without question, that she is not a lackey of the President. She does not have to rule against him to do that. She has to rule intelligently and forthrightly with a keen eye on the law. History suggests she can do this.

Assure Transparency and Honorableness

Judges in the Philippines do not reveal their personal wealth. You know the reason as well as I do: enrichment derived from determinations "in law" that go to the litigating party that pays the most. This must change or the courts will remain suspect. SALN's must be the rule, not the exception. And the transparency has to be in enough detail to track the money year-to-year.

The excuses for continuing to operate in secret are infantile. "People will harass them. Their families will be open to kidnapping if their wealth is evident." So on the infinitesimal chance harm might come to a judge, the whole judicial system is opened to bribes and secretive behavior.

• You know, my scale of pros and cons broke when I loaded those arguments on. Snapped.

The notion that judges are on the take is disgusting. The place where the law is rendered simply must be impeccable to be respectable.

CJ Sereno must clean up the corruption and get judges focused on law, not favoritism. Transparency of financial records is an important first step.

Build Efficiency

The Judiciary has in place some of the basic disciplines to drive toward better efficiency. For example, the number of rulings issued by court are tracked. This kind of statistical accountability is important. Not only number of cases, but cases by type, and number or percentage of cases appealed, and the record on appeal: judgments endorsed or reversed.

But the compilation of statistics is not enough.

The question needs to be asked, substantively, "What are we doing in our courts? How can we focus energies where they will do the most to build respect for law in the Philippines?"

Here is an example. Annulment hearings take a tremendous amount of judicial time. In the Philippines, marriage is a contract with no termination provision. When husband and wife both want out of the contract, the State insists that they remain in it, and holds numerous hearings to disprove assertions contrary to the State's authority. How ridiculous on two counts: (1) that so much judicial energy is spent on minor family matters where there is no serious offense, and (2) that the State sets out with the intent to prove both litigating parties wrong, for wanting an end to the marriage.

Why not simply stipulate that both parties want the marriage to end, and end it?

If this cannot be done within the Judiciary, than appeal to the Legislature for a Divorce Bill to take the hefty burden of mediating domestic issues off the courtrooms and judges.

Change the fundamental rationale of what the courts SHOULD be doing, which is to focus on the greatest harm, and get rid of the nuisance cases that take up so much time and energy.

Speed of resolution is ESSENTIAL for justice to be fair. If a case cannot be ruled on expediently, dismiss it. Stop punishing people without cause. The presumption of innocence should prevail. It scares you to release people like ex-President Arroyo? Then get the damn case to trial!!

Build Law Discipline

Philippine case law is a mess because too many rulings are based on favors and favorites rather than law. Appeals galore, reversals from this administration to the next, cases in the courts for 25 years knocking about without resolution (the Hacienda). A mess.

CJ Sereno must begin to build quality into legal renditions. Excellent, law-based judges need to be promoted. Poor judges need to be pushed down or out. Attorneys must meet rigorous ethical standards. Perhaps a scoring system is needed to evaluate attorneys on capability and performance. Not to mention judges.

Build the quality, where administrative efficiency and legal precision are fundamental requirements. Pay well for judges who demonstrate that quality. Prune the rotten fruit.

CJ Sereno's advantage is fundamentally that the Judiciary is on bottom now and the only direction is up.

Our Verdict

Two year's of probation. Report to the people regularly.

______________________________________

Profile of Chief Justice Sereno (Source: abs-cbnnews.com):

Associate Justice Maria Lourdes A. Sereno is the first appointee to the Supreme Court (SC) by Pres. Noynoy Aquino and the youngest among the nominees for Chief Justice coming from the high tribunal.

She was born on July 2, 1960; she is 52 years old.

She completed her law degree at the University of the Philippines (UP) in 1984 as Class Valedictorian and cum laude.

As pre-law, she took up AB Economics at the Ateneo De Manila University (ADMU) where she graduated in 1980.

She completed her secondary education in 1976 at the Quezon City High School, with Honors; her elementary education was completed in 1972 when she graduated Class Salutatorian from the Kamuning Elementary School.

She had her post-graduate degree at the UP School of Economics with the Master of Arts in Economics Program which she finished in 1992. In 1993, she completed another masteral degree, this time, Master of Laws, at the University of Michigan, Michigan, USA.

Justice Sereno was appointed to the Supreme Court on Aug. 13, 2010.

Professional background

She started her career in private practice as a junior associate of the Sycip Salazar Feliciano and Hernandez law firm in 1986.

Starting in1994 up to 2008, she served as legal counsel of various government offices such as the Office of the President (OP), Office of the Solicitor General (OSG), Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA), Dept. of Trade and Industry (DTI), and WTO-AFTA. Sometime between 1995 to 1996, she headed the Information and Public Division office of the UP Law Complex.

Also, in 1995, she served as consultant for Judicial Reform of the UNDP, WB, and USAID; she served in this capacity up to 2002.

From 1996 to 1999, she was Director of the UP Institute of Legal Studies.

In 1998, she was a counsellor of the WTO Appellate Body.

In 1999, she served as Commissioner and Chairperson of the Steering Committee of the Preparatory Commission on Constitutional Reform.

Sereno was a lecturer at the Dept. of Foreign Affairs (DFA) Foreign Service Institute from 1996 to 2007.

She served as a lecturer in Electronic Commerce Law at the AIM in 2000, at the same time, at the Murdoch University lecturing on International Business Law from 2001 t0 2002. She also lectured on International Business Law at the University of Western Australia from 2003 up to 2007.

In 2004, she was a lecturer on International Trade Law at the Hague Academy of International Law.

She was a longtime professor at the UP, teaching for 20 years, from 1986 to 2002.

She became the Executive Director of the AIM in 2009, a post she held on to for a year.

Sereno became president of ACCESSLAW, Inc. in 2000, a post she continues to enjoy up to the present.

Awards, other credentials

In her 25 years as a lawyer and educator, Sereno received the following awards:

- 1998 Outstanding Women in the Nation's Service

- 2000 Most Outstanding Alumna Award, Quezon City High School

- 2003 Most Oustanding Alumna Award, Kamuning Elementary School

- 1991 Provincial Citation, Camarines Sur

She was also able to edit the book, Thirty Years and Beyond (UP Law, 1997).

Sereno was the key writer on Law and Economics and the Constitution and Judicial Review of Economic Decisions.

She also drafted the legal framework for the operations of the first paperless trading of securities in the country for the Bureau of Treasury (BT).

Endorsements for Chief Justice, oppositions

Sereno was not automatically nominated for the top judicial post for being one of the most junior magistrates of the Supreme Court, rather, she was nominated by the following:

- Felma Roel Singco (June 13, 2012)

- Reagan De Guzman (June 13, 2012)

- Atty. Fidel Thaddeus Borja (June 14, 2012)

- Attys. Jordan Pizarras, et al. (June 15, 2012)

- Christian Legal Society through Atty. Salvador Fabregas (June 14, 2012)

- Bishop Efraim Tendero (June 18, 2012)

- UP Women's Circle (June 13, 2012)

Hit and Run Dads and Other Scurrilous Dogs

You know, much of Philippine culture differs from Western norms.  I can deal with it fine. I may crab or write blogs, after all, I have to write about something. But I deal with it because it is my choice to be here. Smoke, rudeness,  slanderous neighbors, killer chickens, tuba drunks, cheating, religious hypocrisy, pollution, loud karaoke. Trading favors. I did that to get my house built and permitted. Hey, it's your land, it's my land.

So, too, are the great exchange rate, the gorgeous scenery, the friendly and warm people, the active and exotic Spanish-Asia lifestyle, and the OPPORTUNITIES that abound.

But one of the cultural "nuances" I just can't stand is "hit and run dads."

These are the macho guys who get a girl pregnant and then deny it or flee, abandoning the mother and the child. Or married men who shack up with an mistress and beat the wife if she complains.

Yes, yes, the girl is at fault too, never having been taught that sexual heat is different than everlasting love. And having no way, no "tools", to succumb to the heat without getting pregnant.

The Catholic Church has these high-minded ideals that are simply humanly impractical. I'd say perverted, but that may be too strong. The idea that priests and nuns can live a lifetime without acting on sexual urges. The idea that contraceptives will encourage prostitution and abortion, as if what goes on now is virtuous, the babies conceived in dark alleys that priests deny, the dangerous abortions that take place in hidden places that priests deny. The miserably poor lives that people live, that priests deny responsibility for.

But back to the point. It is this peculiar idea of macho that drives me angry, that being sexual is something to brag about, that having a kid and getting away with it free of obligation, is something to be proud of. That being cruel is a virtue.

CAUSE

NBA basketball star Dennis Rodman's father lives in the Philippines. Dad Rodman is an American who moved to the Philippines where he found the fields ripe for the kind of picking he likes to do. He has taken on the name "Philander" as if his behavior is just a joke, haha. The father brags that he has sired 29 children with 16 different women. Dennis was just one of them who did well in America playing with a big rubber ball. Emotionally and personality-wise, Dennis is a tad, ummm, unusual. Let's just say he puts the eek in freak. I liked watching him play.

Dad Rodman is a caricature of the real Philippines, a larger-than-life being who exudes macho and lives a lifestyle that holds women and kids up as throwaway beings. He is an extreme form of malignancy who found the perfect playground in the Philippines. A place where people in need look for ways out.

I have often wondered why Filipino men don't get more upset at the old white guys who come to their country and make off with a lot of the beautiful young women. I understand pretty well  the perspective of both the old white guys and the beautiful young women because I am the former and married the latter.

The "playing field" that Dad Rodman romps in is the same one that attracts the ancient whities to the Philippines. Filipina women of little financial means look around and see nothing but desert on the home front. The men of their class are native philanderers, adhering to standards of macho behavior that are a major put-down to a woman of who holds herself in reasonable respect.

Then a white guy comes up and politely holds the door open. And behind the door is a life. One with real food on the table and even plates and silverware, and a home to put them in. Possibly a family, small and manageable. A housekeeper to take care of the drudge. Malls and trips and, yes, the power to say to family members, yes, you can have P500, or no you can't. A life.

If Filipino men were to complain, which they do not, I suspect women would respond back, rather sharply, "then give us a decent choice, not one where we are second class to your chickens and tuba and overbearing need to strut your manhood all around the neighborhood".

EFFECT

As in all things Filipino, the solution comes from looking inward, not outward. It is a skill set largely gone missing.

But back to the point.

I don't like that the Philippine laws and court system give women little way to hold a man to account for the responsibilities that are his. Rather, the laws hold married women in bondage to abusive macho men who beat them and brag to their buddies, or proudly tout to their friends the mistress or two tucked away around the corner. In the courts, the women are treated as criminals for wanting annulment. Grilled as if it were THEY who had committed a crime of wanting out of a dysfunctional marriage.

"Hit and run dads."

Is that manly in your value book?

It's not in mine.

• Manly to me is accepting responsibility for one's decision.

• And it is going back before that decision to THINK about outcomes, and risks, and what might happen.

So this is one of those cases where I think Philippine culture is shitty.

It's your culture, not mine, and it is shitty. I refuse to buy into THIS one.

You want ME to tell you what to do about it?

No, no. This is your deal entirely. You either accept it or do something about it. Or do nothing, which is the same as accepting it.

So to all those hundreds of thousands of piss-ant, dead-beat, flee-in-the-night Filipino guys I say:

•  "You are not a man in my book of values. You are a thief, stealing lives of innocent children and the honor of women; you are a jerk, a scurrilous dog."

One Nation, Under God, Absurd and Infinitely Divisible

Author's Note: You may have read some of this before. What I'd ask that you keep in mind is how straightforward it can be to do what is good for the Philippines if the goal is simple yet profound.
________

Philippine society has a split personality, one wholesome, fun-loving and family oriented, the other a pyramid of dysfunctions built on a base of personal insecurity and greed.

The good one is most of the people on most days.

The bad one SEEMS to be most of the government on most days. I know there are a lot of good people doing a lot of good work in government, but the ineffective seems to bubble to the top where we can see them.

Quick digression. Kudos to the Aquino government for holding 31 DENR officials to account for the killer flash floods that ripped through Cagayan de Oro last year. The 31 lost their jobs and some are likely to be prosecuted. It is good that the President got angry that his Executive Order on illegal logging was ignored. A law without enforcement is not a law.

For the good Philippines, the main currency is the peso, and there are far too few to go around. For the bad one, the main currency is power which lubricates the trade of favors from which so many pesos derive.

Let's deal mainly with the bad one since our aspiration is to emulate the sensationalist Philippine media. Joltin' Joe Muckraker at his best, offering up unproved deductions in the guise of knowledge.

The horribly broken down Philippine institutions are: the courts and the legal structure that feeds them, the education system, the framework for taxation, Manila's infrastructure, local zoning departments, justice and NBI, Customs, and DENR. The health system exists (hospitals exist), but nobody can afford care, so the infrastructure is dilapidated and weak, especially in the provinces.

Tourism and business work pretty well. They are getting better, deeper, more competitive. Agribusiness does its thing, a tad under-mechanized, but not wholly broken down. The military is stable and improving. The police do what they do, sometimes half-assed, sometimes well. Utilities need a lot of work but they aren't the cause of the State's dilapidated state. Transportation is a hodgepodge but generally moves better than Los Angeles Freeways, and a lot more cheaply; the variety fits the economy where only a few people own cars.

Moral values are frozen leftovers imported by the Catholic Church from centuries ago when the earth was huge and the population was but a fraction of what it is today. Now the seas are rising, the storms are raging and the resources are shrinking. Babies and kids swarm everywhere; where are their jobs? Overseas?

This is the last nation on the planet with no divorce outlet for a failed marriage. Scroll the title . . ."Of women's bondage . . ."

It seems like the nation simply cannot get unstuck from its massive absurdities.

• Manila is 10 separate cities, each with its own agenda. You can drive from Makati to Kaloocan and see the patchwork of good and bad, mostly bad, and rich and poor, mostly poor. This is Europe on a minor scale, each civic entity arguing for its own right to run things, thus consigning the whole to divisive spats and herky-jerky progress. No one can muster the consensus to change this, to make Manila once again the pride of Asia. It rots, sewers plugged, traffic jammed, broken pavement and buildings everywhere, and those slums, the worst of the worst, here and there. It is the pit of Asia, no longer the pearl, and no one has a master plan. That's absurd.

• The Catholic Doctrine is driving the nation to out-of-control over-birthing and poverty-stricken ruination but accepts no responsibility for this. The Church evidently cannot multiply 8 (sets of parents) times 8 (kids) and come up with 64 young, hungry mouths with nowhere to go and little to eat. They see birthing as addition, 2 + 1 = 3. Nothing scary about that, eh? Women are considered subordinate to men. And the nation's leaders continue to bow before priests. That's absurd.

• Education should teach creativity and achievement, but the Department of Education can't DO creativity and achievement. They do autocratic, and they do whining for budget. That's absurd.

• Never has so much intelligence gone to waste as in the Judiciary and the inept lawyering that is the legal foundation of the Philippines. Inefficient, illogical, political. Wasting effort on annulment hearings whilst murderers go free. No sense that speed is important for justice to be just. It is the biggest mess in the world. They are paper-pushers, that's all. "Stalling for cash". It oughta be a TV game show hosted by Kris Aquino. Lawyers pass the bar and then seem to go zero on us, demonstrating no passion for RIGHT over WRONG. That's absurd.

• No one sees that the difference between American productivity and Philippine ineptitude has to do with motivating individual workers to perform, to grow, to gain rewards of wallet and esteem, to climb careers built on opportunity. The U.S. is a firestorm of well motivated, hard driving workers. Here? Hire Uncle Manualo for that plum supervisory job and watch him flop about. Appoint the wife there and watch her arrive late and leave early. Bring Junior up the ladder and watch him party with the stars. Ignore the lower class workers. Never mind that all this squashes the ambition and opportunity for Jose Genius and chases his brain and talent overseas. It isn't a brain DRAIN, actually. It is a CATTLE DRIVE, a stampede, a social system that assures talent must go elsewhere to succeed. That's absurd.

Kafka would love it.

He wouldn't have to write books about absurdity, like "The Castle". He'd just invite people to the Philippines.

And the root of the power pushing is self interest, too often founded on insecurity. That is not a healthy mix. It assures lots of angry power struggles. It seems like there are win/lose tussles at every turn. Enemies at every corner. Saving face. Punishing those who offend face. Biting and bitter, the mood of most moments.

Few people seem to have the tools to generate harmony under pressure; to debate; to problem solve. They tear others down.

Harmony is built on trust. It requires that people accept responsibility for the good and the bad that flow from their decisions, not dump on innocents. It requires the graciousness to concede arguments and authority to others who may do things just a little differently.

People are trying so hard to be winners here that they trample on others. And we all lose

Maybe the solution is to help people understand that winning is not the goal. Because you are only defeating other Filipinos, thereby defeating the Philippines. Building is what is important.

I hope the huge mass of good Filipinos can master the techniques of power pushing, maybe under the direction of social-media opinion leaders, to claim back the nation that is rightfully theirs. I do hope so.

The good people could do this . . . take RESPONSIBILITY for doing this . . . by voting well in 2013 and 2016. Toss out the old, ineffectual barriers to progressive thinking. Bring in new, fresh thinking that is not automatic for re-election. Make 'em EARN re-election!

Here's to the rise of the responsible Filipino! The good Filipino!

Definitive Answer: Why Doesn't the Philippines Change?

This enlightenment struck me right between the eyeballs the other day as I was busy on my school bus run driving my kid to his nursery school where he is learning to speak English and sing Bible songs and ignore his teachers. Like he ignores everyone hereabouts, except his American father who attaches discipline to misbehavior. No one else seems to get the connection. It's also why the dog obeys me and no one else. Kids and dogs are not all that different, you know.

But I digress.

The little lady and I had just finished up another minor inter-cultural spat as I groused about her half-hour shower when we were running a half-hour late to get the kid to the school bus on time. I suggested that she could have gotten clean in 15 minutes. She suggested that I could have fed the kid myself.

Well, both are right, of course, but our agreed upon work is that she feeds the kid because I have to . . . um, work . . . on the computer. We also have agreed that the American standard of time management is to be followed to prevent hubby (that's me) from going apoplectic in a high blood seizure, and dropping dead.

So if we agree on the standards, my wife missed the mark this morning by running casually late in the Philippine tradition. Then she used the tried and true method of shifting blame to me for the screw-up.

My argument in the car somehow moved away from time management and into a thing called "responsibility", the thing my wife was trying to deny by blaming me for not feeding the kid.

That's when the enlightenment came. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir raised its lusty sopranos to the rafters of their fancy temple somewhere near here, the gongs from the Chinese symbols bonged loudly from the Spratleys, and the bells of Adano rang across the seas from Italy singing praises to the Lord for this rapturous moment.

Unless my wife accepts responsibility for meeting our American clock, we are bound to do this over and over again. Unless she says "I goofed on that one" and "I must change", she will not change.

That, my friends, is why not much changes in the Philippines. Because everyone is so damned skilled at blaming and making excuses rather than manning up, owning up, and figuring out a better way to do things. Rather than making the commitment, the effort, the uncomfortable work, the demanding work of finding new patterns that SUCCEED rather than fail. Over and over again, fail.

No one looks inward and says "I must do better. I must change." Rather, responsibility is cast upon others."

It would help this nation immensely to move forward if its leaders would discover the joys of responsibility achieved rather than try so hard to avoid the shame of responsibility unfulfilled.

• When the Department of Education says "DepEd is responsible for the lousy condition of our schools", instead of blaming the budgeting people, education will improve.

• When the Catholic Church says, we, as moral custodians of the Philippines, are responsible for the poverty and crime here, rather than blaming government for poor economic management, then over-birthing will slow and poverty and crime will abate.

• When the top managers of Customs says "we must end our corruption ourselves", it will stop.

• When the President says we will modernize, then the RH Bill will stop languishing and a divorce bill will be on the front burner. And nepotistic hiring practices will be banned in favor of COMPETENCE.

• When the Chief Justice says "we, the judges, are responsible for the integrity and independence of the courts", rather than blaming the President or those upset with how things are going, then the courts will gain work discipline, respect, and independence.

To change, people far and wide must get disgusted with excuse-making and blames. They need to recognize these destructive traits and condemn them. They must become a hateful practice, these weasely attempts to avoid responsibility.

They are an addiction, and the Philippines is a nation of addicts.

Any time someone inserts a reason that is not directly connected to their own acts, it is most likely an excuse, an irrelevancy, an insistence on not doing the hard work of changing. It is a distraction. It is avoidance. It is shameful.

When Filipinos become skilled at accepting responsibility, the nation will thrive. Wealth will increase, happiness will climb, corruption will drop and things will get done to foster a cleaner, healthier, safer, saner place to live.

Oh yeahhhh!

_____________

p.s., my good wife put a clock in the bathroom this morning.

Social Drains on Economic Gains

Why does the Philippine economy persist in failing to generate enough wealth to cut into the nation's deep poverty? It is not a monetary issue, this persistently laggard struggle. It has little to do with numbers.  It is social. It is the people infrastructure that relentlessly sucks the life from wealth-building.

"Hey, Joe! Whatchu drivin' at?"

Well, corruption is a social drain. It is one of the more tangible. But it is not so damaging. Consider when a government contract is let for an amount greater than the true value of the project. The excess covers kickbacks, padding, and "expenses" like travel first class in luxury resorts. The illegal money that stays in the Philippines works to support the Philippine economy. It is not lost. What is lost are the projects that don't get done because the budget is eaten away by the bloated, overbid projects. So the infrastructure that could be built is only partially built. Year after year, lagging, lagging, lagging . . .

Small corruption, the P100 under the table to the LTO lady to get on the top of her stack of paper, is generally spent in the Philippines. It is not lost. It is just "value creation" that is not taxed.

Everyone understands that corruption is bad. But it is not the main reason for the weak Philippine  economy. Indeed, fighting corruption represents a distraction. Leaders get complacent and happy with their showboat achievements on corruption and don't do anything about the more fundamental problems.

Here are the three barriers to wealth-generation that are bigger than corruption:

• Weak employment practices. Gigantic damage.  Much bigger than corruption. It's just that you can't see the tangible shortfall so clearly. Hiring favorites, friends and family instead of hiring for competence. Blocking top performers by giving someone's uncle a job. Not nurturing productivity. No performance reviews. No promotions. No merit increases. No innovation. No fast-tracking of top producers. These good disciplines don't happen enough here. Managers are autocratic straw bosses, not motivators. This simply sucks the good thinking and productive work out of the drive for profit, for wealth. The Philippines flat out lacks the dynamic drive for productivity and success that you can see in the United States. And everyone just shrugs . . . "it's the way we do it, Joe . . ."

Yes it is.

• Catholic values keep the nation forever poor as the over-birthing masses eat away the jobs the economy is trying to generate. This is easy to fix, but no one has the nerve to go against the Great Protector of dark age Philippine morality. Its is not about abortion; that is a flame-thrower the Church uses to blast away well-intended opponents. It is about telling the people it is important that they have small families, for the good of the nation. So simple to fix. So impossible to do, given what appears to be a lack of commitment in the Executive Office to get the birth rate down.

• Education that does not inspire kids to look forward (plan, organize and make good decisions), look outward (ingenuity), or look inward (healthy self esteem). Kids are subjects for authoritarians to rule over. Memorize this. Upchuck that. Sit down, shut up. That capitalistic fire in the belly, the competitive zeal and commitment to achieve, is dead out. Snuffed, grades 1-12. Filipinos create little, invent little, innovate few new processes that are productive. They don't learn how.

"It's the way we do it, Joe."

Yep. You do.

Those are the big three. The big dawgs of economic impotence.

Oh, there are other social flaws as well, but they are not as pronounced in dragging the economy down.

Women are held in check by a warped puritanical morality that says education about birth control is bad because it may encourage sex outside of marriage. As if coat hanger abortions were irrelevant, or as if it were okay that 12 women die daily because of unhealthy pregnancies. Women are held in check by marriage contracts that have no termination clause. So husbands can beat them, have relationships with other women, abandon the wife and kids, and any woman who wants out will found herself attacked in the courts like she is some fiendish criminal. What a waste of judicial resources, what a misguided morality.

Backward is as backward is. Sorry, ladies.

But that's the way it is . . .

The courts are horrible at handing out quick, precise justice. So the wrongs that damage society are never corrected, fostering a slow bleeding of vibrancy from the economy. Case law is so tainted by favoritism that it has the legal weight of a stack of comic books.

Too bad the bar is stocked with drinks instead of attorneys with a fine sense of right and wrong and the honorableness to pursue right with a vengeance.

Some day we will have a Rizal kind of president. A guy with depth of vision who can see what is really going on around here. Not a continuation of the line of presidents who are locked into the very culture that holds the Philippines back. Who are blind to the ways their culture is assured of being mediocre, or even backward.

A president who can see that the Philippines would flourish with employment practices that energize  productivity, with social values that free Filipinos instead of hold them in dark age limbo, and with education that brings fresh, bright thinking to the nation.

Some day . . . it won't be the way it is . . .