Zest Air seems to have a lot of trouble dealing with the airport at Caticlan.

Last week, a Zest Airways Xian MA-60 (RP-C8892) with 54 passengers overshot the runway, in a repeat of a similar, more damaging overshoot earlier this year. Unlike the previous incident where 3 of the 25 passengers were injured, no one was hurt . The incident, however, raises serious questions on the safety of the plane Zest Air uses, the airport in question, and the pilots involved in the crash.

The Xian MA-60s used by Zest Airways, a Chinese manufactured copy of the Russian Antonov An-26, a military light transport. Five of these aircraft were delivered in October 2008, and Zest Air placed an additional order of 6 planes last May. With the planes practically brand new (2 and 6 months old, respectively), and with neither Cebu Pacific nor PAL Express suffering similar problems with their comparable aircraft (using the ATR-72 and Bombardier Dash 8, respectively), questions are raised about the safety record of the plane itself.

A check with AviationSafety.Net reveals only 2 incidents with the Xian MA-60, excluding the latest incident but including the incident at Caticlan last January (the page lists 9 incidents including those for the older Xian Y-7, upon which the MA-60 was based). The first incident was with an Air Zimbabwe domestic flight in January 2008, caused by pilot error.

It is then difficult to determine whether the plane’s build quality could be questioned, but having had ridden one in a flight to Busuanga earlier this year, the Xian MA-60 has a peculiarity that I hadn’t noticed when I rode the ATR-72: it brakes really hard. This becomes important when considering that Godofredo P. Ramos Airport at Caticlan has a runway length of only 810 meters.

The length of the runway makes for very harrowing landings, as illustrated by various photos of approaches at the Caticlan airport. On one end of the runway, about 30 meters from its edge is a road (as seen in the crash photo above) frequented by tricycles and jeepneys. On the other end of the runway is a hill. There have been efforts to try and lengthen this runway, unfortunately, thwarted by “political wrangling at the local level”:

Local air carriers have long requested the [Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines] that the runway be lengthened either by extending Runway 06 to the sea or removing a hill at the end of Runway 24.

However the CAAP was not able to carry out the runway improvements because of political wrangling at the local level. [BusinessMirror]

A third angle is, of course, pilot error. In the January incident, the pilot of RP-C8893 undershot the runway and hit the perimeter fence of the runway (clearly visible in the photos shown). In this latest incident, the pilot overshot the runway, after requesting to land despite having a tail wind:

Initial investigation showed that when he asked for landing instructions, the pilot, Capt. Bernard Hervoso, was directed to Runway 06, the “active” runway at the time. However, it was reported that Hervoso requested to use Runway 24 instead.

The request was granted, although it would mean that the airplane would be landing with a tailwind.

Investigators are now verifying eyewitnesses reports that the plane landed almost at the middle of [the] runway. [BusinessMirror]

Only after a full investigation will we be able to get all the facts straight, and determine whether the crash was caused by human error or by safety deficiencies in the aircraft. Considering that there are more than 30 flights in and out of the Godofredo Ramos Airport everyday — being the gateway of Boracay (it is, in fact, the third busiest airport in Western Visayas) — the best long term solution would be to lengthen the runway once and for all. Only then will margins of error for the pilots be large enough to cancel out problems with braking, late touchdowns, or clearing perimeter fences.

We only hope that the government of the Municipality of Malay would care.

Photo of engine nacelle and propeller copyright the author, all rights reserved. Photo of Zest Airways RP-C8892 and Cebu Pacific RP-C7250 before touchdown at Godofredo P. Ramos Airport by Ryan Hemmings via Airliners.Net. Photo of RP-C8892 crashed in ditch by user MapLand of 101today.com/travel.

Maybe it’s just road rage from all the traffic that I’ve been going through lately, whether driving my (borrowed) car, riding a cab, or being a bus passenger myself, but I have always wondered: why the hell do we wonder why there’s so much traffic in EDSA, when an average of 40% of the road cannot be used by 80% of the vehicles?

You know what I’m talking about; it’s the dreaded yellow lanes in EDSA, wherein buses and jeepneys are free to ply in and out of, but once private vehicles and, more recently, taxi cabs, enter the MMDA boys come swooping down on you like pet vultures of The Great Pink BF.

Of course, nobody really questions the law because, hell, private vehicle owners? They’re rich! If they can afford a car, they should be able to afford a ticket from the MMDA! Unlike those poor bus drivers who can swerve in and out of them yellow lanes because — hey, it’s their job — and they have every right to cut into your lane because they’re "less fortunate" than you with your spanking brand new Chery QQ.

So, let’s review the kinds of laws Filipinos have written against the "more fortunate" because it’s just "rightful" for them and they give just advantage to the "less fortunate":

Yellow Lanes

Seriously, it’s impossible to find what the whole point of this godforsaken law, and the way the MMDA boys have twisted it the other way around — theoretically private vehicles should be allowed in the yellow lanes because, heaven forbid, the sidewalks and establishments are deep inside them! Why private vehicles are treated like UN forces crossing the 38th parallel towards Pyongyang, I still don’t understand.

Never mind if almost half of EDSA is unusable — creating enormous traffic jams on an already overloaded highway — for which the apparent remedy is U-turn slots and pink urinals. It ensures that those who cannot afford their own cars and the "less fortunate" bus and jeepney drivers ferrying them have a free hand in doing whatever they want as long as they’re in these beautiful golden stretches.

Taxes on books and electronics

Why is everyone making a hoot against this "great book blockade" thing? It’s meant to keep you rich kids from getting your unnecessarily expensive copies of Twilight! Save that for the beggar outside your campus gate instead!

And if you think this is the first time the government did it… na ah ah. Seriously, did you ever wonder why those laptops, digital cameras, cellphones, and other uber-gadgets are just oh so cheap in places like Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan? It’s because the Philippines places high taxes on these dreaded devices! Dreaded, because everyone knows that only the uber rich can buy uber gadgets and henceforth they must be taxed! Never mind if everyone needs a cellphone these days, never mind if laptop computers actually empower the downtrodden by allowing access to the internet and therefore free flowing information, and never mind if digital cameras allow people to get rid of film cameras which, with the hazardous chemical content of both the manufacture of film and processing and development, leads to various forms of pollution. Never mind, never mind.

The Lina Law

The mother of all "social justice" laws, the Urban Development and Housing Act of 1992 (RA 7279) [PDF] colloquially called the Lina Law "lays down the groundwork for a comprehensive and continuing urban development and housing program" and "addresses the right to housing of the homeless and underprivileged Filipino people." Quite a noble law, seeking to allow the "less fortunate" a level playing field at finding homes.

Of course, a lot of unscrupulous-though-less-fortunate people also use it to steal land; while the dramatized cinematic representation is of some cruel Doña riding a Mercedes ordering goons to beat the crap out of poor laborers arms linked with wives and kids tearfully crying while the bulldozer comes in, many times hardworking OFWs, scrimping on meals to save for their dream house, come home with the lots they bought in the last seafaring-tour-of-duty occupied by gin-drinking merry men. These "less fortunate" persons then brandish the Lina Law being on their side, drawing the "rich" OFW’s savings into attorney’s fees in a court battle to get the land he actually really owns.

Who should benefit from our laws?

While there are laws that benefit the downtrodden that are commendable and praiseworthy, the cliche must once again be evoked: the road to hell is paved, gold plated, and vacuum sealed fresh with good intentions. Any law that tips the balance from one sector of society to the other must have easy-to-invoke stop gaps that disallow the law to be abused by the benefiting sector, or render them moot when the needs addressed by the law have become irrelevant.

Only when the law benefits everyone, not just the downtrodden, can a society be really called just and equal.

With Barack Obama’s impending ascent to being the 44th President of the Unites States of America, a dark cloud looms and threatens to blot out the “sunshine” industry the Philippines has been exploiting over the past decade.

In his website launched as a primer on his policies as President-elect, aptly named Change.Gov, Obama has outlined his views with regards to sending jobs overseas, outside American shores:

End Tax Breaks for Companies that Send Jobs Overseas: Barack Obama and Joe Biden believe that companies should not get billions of dollars in tax deductions for moving their operations overseas. Obama and Biden will also fight to ensure that public contracts are awarded to companies that are committed to American workers.

Reward Companies that Support American Workers: Barack Obama introduced the Patriot Employer Act of 2007 with Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) to reward companies that create good jobs with good benefits for American workers. The legislation would provide a tax credit to companies that maintain or increase the number of full-time workers in America relative to those outside the US; maintain their corporate headquarters in America if it has ever been in America; pay decent wages; prepare workers for retirement; provide health insurance; and support employees who serve in the military. [Change.Gov]

The implications are therefore daunting. The Philippines may lose big given that the US is most likely its the biggest customer for business process outsourcing.

Business Process Outsourcing is, of course, not limited to call centers. While call centers were the primary “spark” that started the industry’s wild-fire spread (and remains to be its largest sector), other services are offered by Filipino outsourcing, including animation, software development, finance, logistics, accounting, and even legal services.

The positive effects of the growth of this sector is likewise far-reaching. When talent was brought to near-exhaustion in Manila, the industry was able to expand to other urban centers like Cebu and Davao, but services soon also rose in areas like Clark, Baguio, Bacolod, Iloilo, and Cagayan de Oro. Its expansion has allowed the Philippines to capture 20% of the English-speaking market ([PDF] as of 2004). It has allowed the Philippines to be third behind India and China, respectively, in terms of contact service outsourcing at least.

However, with this market now threatened by a major shift in US economic policy, it is of utmost importance that the local industry learn to adapt to these threats that may kill off the industry. Needless to say, the threats imminent to us would be similarly threatening to India and China, and it is inevitable that they themselves would respond to these policies once they are enacted into law perhaps in the second or third quarter of 2009, at the earliest.

So how do we respond? Personally I believe that the local BPO industry will benefit from the following:

• Seek new markets — While the US may be its largest customer, the Philippines will benefit from focusing on other similar English speaking markets, including but not limited to Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. The Philippines may be able to benefit as well from learning new language markets (e.g., Japan or Chinese speaking countries), but this would probably be an uphill battle considering the learning curves involved.
• Competitive pricing — India leads the Philippines when it comes to outsourcing, but they are constantly plagued by increasing salary levels and high attrition rates that are making their services more expensive. It may be difficult to compete with our Chinese competitors, but Filipino companies can take advantage of the skilled-labor problems of India to their advantage.
• Focus on skills, not just language — The Philippines boasts of its fluent English speaking workforce, but its advantage should not be limited there. Local skills, talent, and innovation should be developed further to create a labor pool that is not only adept at slang and twang, but is likewise genuinely competent at their work. This will open opportunities which would not limit it to th English-speaking or US market.
• Move the focus away from outsourcing and towards creating products with value — This is particularly true for the software development and animation industries. The dependence on outsourcing revenue limits software developers, for instance, to making software as designed and specified by their foreign clients and counterparts. Instead of following the Indian outsourcing model, Filipinos should instead explore the Israeli software product model, wherein they create web-based or shrink-wrapped products (similar to, say, Google and Microsoft, but not similar in scale) that can earn them revenue. If Filipinos manage to create software products that are truly innovative, the profit margins for this type of development would prove to be much, much higher than that of the corresponding outsourcing model (admittedly, the risks involved would likewise be higher).

I’m sure the Philippine BPO industry can think of more creative ways to be able to adapt and respond to the ever changing global economic climate. Unfortunately, Obama’s policy shift once more underscores just how dependent the Philippines is on the United States. Successfully responding to this challenge will hopefully lead to less dependence on one big customer, and perhaps even develop internal markets so that we won’t be at the mercy of foreign investment and trade.

While the racetrack-like Elliptical Road in Quezon City rumbles with noise, fumes, and traffic, a few silent automobiles make their own rounds in the Quezon Memorial Circle that the road borders. Humbly seating four persons max, the curious rides called G Cars (in a pun-loaded attribution to their inventor, Gerry Caroro) can be hired for PHP30 per lap. Caroro laments, however, that he never intended his invention as an amusement park curiosity. He intended it to be the solution to the country’s dependence on imported oil, as well as reduce pollution in the metropolis.

Unfortunately Caroro has difficulty finding an investor for his invention, a plight shared with most of the country’s inventors. As any dutiful citizen of the Philippines tends to do, Ronald Talion of the Filipino Inventors Society blames the government for this:

“It’s already mandated under Republic Act Act 7459 (Inventors and Invention Incentives Act) and yet, for some strange reason, our inventors have to fend for themselves,” Talion noted.

“The only support we get is the P178,000 that is given to us every November to celebrate National Inventors Week (NIW). Obviously this is not enough, which is why a lot of my colleagues were forced to seek support from abroad,” he lamented. [Inquirer.Net]

An automotive industry that never was

The plight of Caroro’s fledgling effort to produce a viable automotive technology is but an addition to the tragic history of the country’s automotive industry, shared with its ubiquitous mode of transport and cultural icon: the jeepney. Originally coming from surplus and left-behind military jeeps, roofs were installed and lavish decorations applied to convert former war-wagons into colorful passenger vehicles able to seat six to ten people at a time. From the 60s until the 80s, a vibrant backyard industry emerged, where jeepneys and “owner-type” jeeps were manufactured as low-cost alternatives to lavish, large-engined American cars or their cheaper Japanese counterparts.

The jeepney manufacturing sector was never able to make it beyond “backyard” status to become a genuine car-manufacture industry, though. Beyond metal pressing and stamping, and fabrication of various “mods” to adorn and embellish each jeepney, they never went to the stage of standardization, efficient mass production, and assembly line automation. Over fifty years of jeepney manufacture remained in the realm of hand-pressed, hand-crafted, hand-painted methods. Moreover, it is peculiarly unclear if any two jeepneys are exactly alike, and it is even dubious if any of them had followed a clear cut blue print of any sort.

The last straw, however, is the country’s dependence on Japanese-made surplus engines. Despite whatever expertise local mechanics could boast about in the knowledge of assembling, maintaining and repairing car engines, not a single company has attempted to create its own internal combustion engine with the intent of mass production. The country was relegated to using surplus engines for jeepneys, as well as assembling completely knocked-down (CKD) body kits for various Japanese and American car manufacturers (and even one type of Armored Personnel Carrier for the Philippine Army). Never was the country able to completely manufacture of any mass-produced automobile from top to bottom.

Due to higher-quality offerings of truck-cabbed alternatives with passenger modules in the rear, the jeepney is now dying a slow death. While they are still “King of the Road” in Manila, low sales and profitability has killed all but the most persistent jeepney assemblers of Cavite. Their demise, however, is more pronounced in Cebu, where Chinese manufactured “multicabs” and truck-cabbed jeepneys with Isuzu Elf and Toyota Hi-Ace engines, chassis and driver modules now rule.

An industrial pariah

This situation isn’t even isolated to the automotive industry: while the Philippines has been home to several multinational companies, none of these had resulted in the creation of large local counterpart enterprises. The Philippines hosted Intel since the 1970s, but has yet to have any local company that manufactures PC components (S3 Graphics, while founded by Filipinos Dado Banatao and Robert Yara, was established in Silicon Valley). This is in stark contrast with Taiwan, which is home to computing giants Acer and Asus, among others. Texas Instruments has long had its electronics plant in Baguio, yet no local electronics company has become prominent. American Power Supplies and International Business Machines has been in the country longer than Intel has. The list goes on and on.

It is obvious that, despite the brain drain brought about by the labor export industry, the country does not lack, or at least at several points in its history, has never lacked the means to produce technical expertise that industrialization requires. Neither is there a lack in investment and funding, as evidenced by the continued presence of big-name corporations in the country, notwithstanding moves to shift factories to China. Further evidence of the above is the continued establishment of business process outsourcing firms in the country, which implies both investment and skill.

The government is not entirely remiss in its support to local industry either. Just last month the Department of Science and Technology launched the One-Stop Information Shop of Technologies (OSIST) website (http://www.osist.dost.gov.ph) to assist technology experts and inventors in finding venture capitalists and buyers. While several online pundits question the PHP20 million funding of what essentially is a turtle-paced-loading website, the project will hopefully take off and become a useful tool in aiding inventors like Mr. Caroro in fielding tech innovations like his G-Car. It has to be noted, however that this is not the first time the DOST attempted to set up a program that it hoped would help local industries take off.

Asia’s uncommon manufacturing industry roots

Asia has, arguably, three main manufacturing powerhouses: Japan, China and South Korea, but they each have unique histories in terms of the growth of their manufacturing sectors.

Japan embarked on a sizable Meiji Emperor-sanctioned industrialization effort during the late 19^th century, and while for most of mid-20^th century they had the reputation of producing cheap imitations, relentless improvements in process and technology eventually allowed them to come up with advances above and beyond their Western counterparts.

China, meanwhile, isolated for much of the half-century after the Second World War, had to rely on reverse-engineering much of Western technology, as well as technology-sharing with the USSR, and thus almost forcefully expanded its local manufacturing capability, even before its shift to the capitalist market model.

South Korea, on the other hand, was a little bit more orchestrated, with the regime of Park Chung-hee implementing continuous 5-year development periods during the 1960s that nursed and encouraged industrialization, in a rapid expansion that was eventually termed as the “Miracle on the Han River”.

During the 1950s and 60s the Philippines enjoyed a vibrant economy and an apparently advanced manufacturing sector. The sense of security this brought, however, was false: the industries that the Philippines relied on were primarily American and non-indigenous; and whatever prosperity Filipinos enjoyed rested on the mistaken belief that these foreign investments will remain on the country indefinitely. By the time the problems brought about by the Marcos dictatorship manifested itself in economic collapse, the happy-go-lucky era of American-funded industrialization was already on the way out.

An unwanted local manufacturing industry

The local market was, itself, a challenge. While the Chinese had no choice but to use whatever products are allowed by the Communist government, and the Japanese and Korean markets are fiercely nationalistic in patronizing their own products, moneyed Filipinos were obsessing themselves with everything “state-side”. Everything imported from the US was a godsend; anything local was cheap and “bakya” (out-of-fashion).

Whatever local manufacturing industry offering there was on its own, save for those that were American-branded (e.g., Concepcion Industries’ locally manufactured Carrier air conditioners). Probably the only thriving local manufacturing industry was involved in textiles, clothing, or jeepney manufacture: the latter was even threatened to be usurped by the introduction of Asian Utility Vehicles like Ford’s Fierra and Toyota’s Tamaraw.

What eventually killed the jeep industry, however, were steady albeit imperfect improvements in the local transport systems, as well as increased spending power that weaned private vehicle owners to vans and cars and away from locally crafted jeepneys and owner-type jeeps. It did not help that the local market did not have a genuine automobile product to respond to the demand.

Questions in catching up with a global economy

It is not difficult to surmise that it is now nearly impossible to catch up to the manufacturing behemoth called China. It’s hard to compete with the business viability of going Chinese: cheap labor, power, and highly developed infrastructure trumps any sort of nationalist lament; it simply dictates against the principles of profitability and sustainability. It would be rather ironic to even note that Caroro and his G-Car might turn out to be better cheaply manufactured abroad than made in the country. It should be noted that the e-jeepneys in Makati, Bacolod and Cebu are all made in China.

However, the ill-effects of the Philippine labor-export industry tend to undermine whatever benefits, both real and unrealized, that the said industry has. Large populations of disunited families will be more damaging in the long-run, and skilled overseas labor has brought neither expertise nor industry that the country could positively exploit. The questions now arise: should the Philippines try, daunting as it may seem, to catch up with the Asian manufacturing giants? Should it refocus on other sectors, particularly in services (perhaps, business process outsourcing), which might have been effective for some economies (Hong Kong comes into mind)?

Will Filipino industrialization remain as an electric dream?

Reciprocity

My wife, a travel agent, got fuming mad at a “friend” last weekend. Her “friend” inquired regarding passport renewal application with a caveat: “friend’s” birth certificate has some problems, preventing her from obtaining one from the NSO. My wife asked if she had consulted her local civil registrar or a lawyer to fix whatever her problems are. The reply (this was going on in SMS, if I recall correctly) made my wife hurl:

Nagpagawa na ako ng birth certificate sa Recto. Nakaprint naman sa NSO paper.

The “friend’s” excuse for taking desperate measures is the fact that she wants to become an OFW — our latest breed of national hero. And doubtless, nothing will stop her — if she has resorted to Recto to rectify (pun intended) her birth certificate issues and the DFA refuses to issue her a legit passport, she would doubtless return to those run-down shanties alongside the LRT Line 2 terminal at that avenue to obtain a fake one.

Read more…

Filipinos and Entrepreneurship: What’s the real score?

The result of the GEM Philippines 2006-2007 National Report, as cited by CVJ, is baffling, to say the least. In the study, GEM Philippines states that the distribution of entrepreneurs by socio-economic status is as follows: Class ABC+ 7%, Class C- 19%, Class D 54%, Class E 20%.

Results show that four out of 10 Filipinos (39.2%) aged 18 to 64 have businesses (see Figure 3) and the Philippines ranks second among the 42 countries surveyed by GEMfor 2006. The country is only second to Peru among middleand low income countries and ranks first among benchmarked countries in Asia.

This appears to state that Filipinos are, in fact, business-oriented. This is in stark-contrast to the often maligned notion of the Filipino as culturally biased against entrepreneurship, and having a seek-employment mentality as opposed to a business-oriented culture.

Read more…

Hope you check out Filipinovoices.com

His pastoral letter for Palm Sunday, Towards a Morally Rebuilt Nation [PDF] , strikes that balance so well, with a perfect Biblical analogy for the situation Filipinos face today.

In this letter, he likens the EDSA I to the liberation of the Israelites from the clutches of the Pharaoh:

The history of salvation teaches us that the long road to freedom inevitably passes through the desert of purification and conversion. Having escaped from Pharaoh, via the miraculous crossing through the Sea of Reeds, the Israelites considered themselves liberated. But they were not yet free, because they wanted to go back to their old ways in Egypt. “Should we not do better to go back to Egypt?” (Numbers 14:2-3).

[...]

Looking back at EDSA I, euphoric and heroic as it was, it appeared that the event became the Filipinos’ day of crossing to freedom; but that was only the first step that hardly anyone knew. The “desert” awaited the people who would be purified and converted, before they become fully liberated. But people preferred the convenient streets as the easier route to an imagined freedom, and feared that the “desert experience” that awaited conversion and new beginnings. [Embargo, 03/14/2008 (pdf)]

Excellent analogy, as it puts into words something that we’ve known for a long time but could not explain; the essence by which why, even if we have ousted a dictator and a plunderer, the country keeps on coming back to its old problems.

The pastoral letter continues into a justified accusation — that our country’s prime industry is not agriculture, not even cheap labor, but simply politics:

We cannot add more to the wrath of God for lies, untruth, injustice and evil. Conscience, as the voice of God within, already tells us what good there is to pursue and what evil to avoid. Our people are known to be God-fearing and God-loving; sadly, they fight, deceive and kill for money.

Shamefully, we have been known to be a nation whose prime industry has been identified as politics simply because politics is the main route to power, which in turn, is the main route to wealth [Embargo, 03/14/2008 (pdf)]

More importantly it underscores a point that I’ve been trying to emphasize for a long time: that beyond expecting our government to clean itself up, everything starts by cleaning ourselves up (emphasis mine):

The Seventh Commandment covers not only the present corruption deals that have been recently exposed, but also all deals, at all levels of government service, of all administrations and governance, no matter what came out of the past or will come out of the present or future inquiries. “Thou shalt not steal” covers also all trading of even ordinary citizens.

We suddenly noticed that the widespread corruption we see in others is also the corruption we detect in ourselves.

Corrupt practices and fraud prevailed in the cities, towns and even in small Barangays. [Embargo, 03/14/2008 (pdf)]

Of course this is not to say that leadership is not required — the point, however, is that everyone from top to bottom must be part of that change:

We need the leaders from the highest to the lowest and their families not only to leads us, but also to give us examples of repentance and true humble conversion. We also need people with other ideas but with positive emotions in nation building. Given the example and encouragement, the citizens will be inspired to follow where in the past they hesitated to proceed — to their “desert” transformation. [Embargo, 03/14/2008]

It also warns against the anger and rage that way too many opposition leaders and leftist propagandists use to stir emotion in the false pretext that such fury translates to action:

We need God’s grace, if we are to encourage one another, forgive each other, pay our debts to the justice that we all violated, and start again, not at the banks of “our Sea of Reeds”, but beyond the streets of EDSA. Believers and lovers of God, like true Christians do not have to hate, destroy each other even if they want to correct the mistakes of the past or the present and of each other. Many are critical of the present governance particularly in the areas of truth and justice. But we can restore truth and justice without restoring to violence and hatred. A nation built on contempt is completely unimaginable. [Embargo, 03/14/2008 (pdf)]

The analogy of the desert transformation is apt not only in form, but in chronology. The Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years. Such a fundamental change in our system will take a lot of time, and I do not even expect that change to come within the next ten years. But eventually the Israelites did get to the promised land — and eventually they were able to rebuild their kingdom.

We must be patient. We must be unrelenting. The time has come for us to stop waiting for manna from heaven or God to part the Sea of Reeds for us: the time has come for us to stop demanding instantaneous change and start subscribing to our institutional processes. It is only when we let the system work — when we allow our institutions to carry out their duties — will we be able to stop running in circles in the desert and find the promised land of a better Philippines that everyone wants to have, become, and be proud of.

I recommend that every Filipino who cares about the nation read it in its entirety.

I was sure we weren’t loyalist back then. The house was full of those flyers with the words “Tama na! Sobra na! Palitan na!” stamped on them. I was just beginning to read and that’s what I found in the drawers along with the pens. I fold the flyers into paper airplanes.

Now we are yet again faced with the task of evicting a tyrant from Malacañang, but drawing lines have become a lot more difficult. I’m not sure if there are people who so believe in GMA that they want her to stay on forever and ever, but there are a lot of people who want her to go as in right now and there are those who think that leting her finish her term in 2010 makes a lot more sense.

Being products of the post-Marcos dictatorship era however, it is clear that all of these people mistrust Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in one way or another, and want to see her go.

Unfortunately, because of the meager representation of those who genuinely love GMA, the “she should leave, now na!” camp have gone on to discredit the “it’s better if she leaves when she’s due” camp. They chose to draw their line between black and white at the willingness to oust GMA immediately. They throw invectives at the other camp, brandishing a “you’re either with us or against us” attitude, calling them apathetic, and openly blaming the failure to oust GMA on those who do not participate on their protest activities.

But I would like to pose a challenge to them: What will you do if GMA resigns today? As in right now, the way they want it?

• Have they built a case against her?
• Have they collected enough evidence to pin her down in court?
• Can they do anything to, say, prevent her from leaving the country so she would face accountability?
• Have they planned contingencies to prevent the need for any flavor of People Power from being used again?

Point is, we cannot assume that, once Gloria steps down, she can immediately be prosecuted. I have serious fears that, if GMA is let go before anybody building a genuinely prosecutable case against her, it is tantamount to letting her go scott free. While in the case of Joseph Estrada, he was pardoned and let go the same way, at least he had to face an impeachment process, criminal prosecution and 6 years of limited-movement cottage accommodations.

And that failure to prosecute will become what this hedonistic, simplistic brand of politics will lead us to. We’ll just go much, much deeper into the pile of shit we already are in. We must instead put our act together so that GMA could be made accountable for all her wrongdoings, whether real or imagined, in a court of law.

Real life isn’t like in the movies where, when the protagonist or an ally of the protagonist comes out with “the truth”, the police will come down swooping down and the antagonist will be arrested and brought to justice. No. Our systems are built precisely to prevent that kind of heroics from ever being effective.

It is unfortunate that many of our countrymen still believe in that kind of happily-ever-after scenario. It is more unfortunate that they choose to blame those who don’t subscribe to their brand of hedonistic politics, and treat them as adversaries even if they are not.

However, again, they are thwarted by the poor showing of support — the absence of the middle class base by which they successfully removed from office the presidency of (now convicted-but-pardoned plunderer) Joseph Estrada. It exasperates many of them on how people could stand to have a president like GMA, and why they are not stirred into action to ask for her resignation. It boggles their minds as to why things like “political fatigue” would occur despite the mounting controversies the country faces.

It leads many figures — wanting to stir the pot with provocation and argument — to invoke quotes like how the 7th level of hell is reserved for those who chose to not do anything or how the greatest crime a person can commit is to do nothing in the middle of a crisis.

While I have deep respect for the opinion that the oppositionists hold, it insults me when they invoke all the “inaction” brouhaha and equivocate such as apathy. It is not apathy — I am aware of all the issues that need to be addressed. However, I disagree on the topic of not just how to address them, but the more important question of when.

GMA’s political guile (not much but, she’s not facing tough competition anyway) and clout, the 1 year moratorium for each impeachment complaint, the lack of substantiative evidence to pin her down in court, her immunity from criminal prosecution as enshrined by the constitution and the incompetence of the current political opposition movement are all working against any conceivable possibility that ousting her would solve the country’s political crisis. It’s simply too daunting to be doing it now. It doesn’t matter if we ask her to resign — I doubt if her small man complex combined with her pride and her thick skin will ever allow her to do that.

I am obliged, I feel, to find some profound Art of War quote, but my point is that, when you attack your enemy, you should be patient, precise and do it at the most opportune time. It should be no different from, say, how snipers would work. If one had watched the movie Enemy at the Gates, one would learn that the protagonist, Vasily Saytsev, would wait for hours, or even days, unmoving, just to be able to kill his intended target. He would choose his targets wisely; first on priority is other snipers, second on priority is commissioned officers, the death of which effectively cripples the enemy by depriving it of experienced personnel as well as their leadership and skill. The best snipers during WWII racked up kill rates of between 300 and 400 kills per sniper for the duration of the war. That’s how much their patience pays off.

We have, I believe, windows of opportunity ahead of us for when our best shots should be reserved for. 2010 is but two years away, soon enough neither impeachment nor resignation will become relevant or pragmatic. Those two years, however, should be enough time for the opposition — or if their incompetence proves yet again too crippling, civil society — to get its act together, find factual and substantiative corroborative evidence, build a case, and file one against her when her time to bid the palace and her criminal immunity goodbye come June 2010. That is when the decisive “sniper shot” (see disclaimer below)  should be taken. One should also take into account that she knows that; all the more that we should prepare for that day.

It should even be enough to plan for contingencies for scenarios such as, “what if she doesn’t step down”? I’ll tell you right now, if GMA refuses to step down on 2010, I’ll not only join protests, I will even gladly take up arms if the need (heaven forbid) and opportunity arises.

Disclaimer: Just so no idiot from the AFP, PNP, or even the opposition would misinterpret anything here, let it be known that I am NOT talking about assassinating Mrs. Arroyo or her cohorts. Their death will not accomplish anything. I want her convicted and thrown to jail, alive, if only for 6 years, and even if her accommodations entail some rest house in Tanay, Rizal.

We can get on the DLSU bus, which comes and goes every hour and a half, bringing students and teachers to La Salle Greenhills, from where we walked short of a kilometer to the EDSA Shrine. It was 11 AM; the sun was scorching hot, and only a few hundred people, in groups of 10 or so, where hiding in the shade provided by the imposing EDSA-Ortigas flyover. Many of the other participants were having lunch; we have had ours at the “flying kaldero”-shaped canteen of LSGH.  Before leaving the campus we had a glimpse of the President speaking of snap elections. We practically ignored it and went to the shrine.

The feeling was electrifying: two nights before I had come from the protest march at Mendiola. We assembled at Liwasang Bonifacio prior to that, where Teofisto Guingona gave his speech calling on the President to resign. I was confident nothing bad would happen, and nothing bad did: the daughter of no less than the PNP chief Edgardo Aglipay was an officer of the DLSU Student Council and was part of the protest crowd.

He knew — and he wouldn’t let anything go out of hand.

All of this had started earlier that week: everyone was spending too much time at the library where a TV was set up tuned to the impeachment proceedings. For many, it was just another telenovela until, without warning, Tessie did her dance number. It all went downhill after that.

So there we were, under the curve of the causeway that turns left from EDSA into Ortigas Ave., just waiting things out. I was greeting familiar faces from other universities — usually high school batch mates who went to ADMU or UP. Someone called my attention and pointed towards the north: just beyond the MRT rails the horizon was filled with banners and placards, in red, white, black, and blue. “Erap Resign”. That was the fever.  People were up on the flyover now, hanging house-sized banners from the railings.

I regret I didn’t bring my Canon SLR then. The way the wind sways them, the light the slowly setting sun casts on the banners, the photographs would have been fantastic.

A few hours more and the area surrounding the shrine was overflowing with people, an unlikely combination of students, yuppies, and militants. A Cessna was flying by at around 250 ft. pulling an “Erap Resign” banner, people gave more notice and cheered to the chopper that took off from the nearby Ortigas Center helipad, sporting a neon orange mask-taped-on “Erap Resign” message at its side.

People were euphoric: even the flyovers were filled to the brim by 4 pm. Then the news came: AFP Chief Angelo Reyes has withdrawn support from Estrada. That was the reason for the snap elections message we saw earlier. The crowd cheered in unison when Reyes came on stage.

It was getting dark by the time Reyes finished his speech. Text messages filled my phone; my parents asking me where I was, and wondering if they should even try going to Ortigas. I told them it might already be too late in the day, and I was headed back. A friend accompanied me on the way back to MRT Ortigas station. But even as we were boarding the train, people were alighting in droves in either side of the station. “Erap resign! Erap resign!” they started chanting as they exited the trains.

I stayed home the day after, watched everything else in TV. I wonder if I would’ve been seen on TV with ABS-CBN’s swinging boom cam.

In the years that followed, especially when EDSA Tres came about and Gloria lost her popularity — what could have happened? What would have happened if Estrada finished his term? What would have happened if he was properly impeached? What would have happened if we had stuck with the institutions?

I still wonder to this day.

And I still regret not being able to bring the Canon.

Using a thin nylon rope, 12-year-old Mariannet Amper hanged herself in the afternoon of November 2. She was a sixth grader at the Maa Central Elementary School.

…

Along with her diary, the Ampers also discovered a letter Mariannet wrote for the GMA 7 television program “Wish Ko Lang [I just Wish].”

“Gusto ko po sana magkaroon ng bagong sapatos at bag at hanapbuhay para sa nanay at tatay ko. Wala kasing hanapbuhay ang tatay at nagpa-extra extra lamang ang aking nanay sa paglalaba,” she said in her “Wish Ko Lang” letter. [I wish for new shoes, a bag and jobs for my mother and father. My dad does not have a job and my mom just gets laundry jobs.]

“Gusto ko na makatapos ako sa pag-aaral at gustong-gusto ko na makabili ng bagong bike,” she added. [I would like to finish my schooling and I would like very much to buy a new bike.] [Inquirer.net]

What is more unfortunate, however, is that a lot of sectors have taken the death as an opportunity to engage in a blame game, and preach the Gospel of Hopelessness once more.

On my way to work the other day, I took a cab that was tuned to an AM radio station (I failed to figure out which) who had two commentators (who I also failed to get the names of, my bad) who were reading text messages from listeners and making comments themselves. Almost everyone was blaming Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for the child’s death, even insinuating that it is yet another evidence for her failure and yet another reason for her to step down. All the while, the commentators continue gloating in agreement, one of them even professing her desire to leave this “hopeless” country because it would be sheer “stupidity” to decide to stay.

In her blog entry about Mariannet’s suicide, Salve Duplito points out Archbishop Oscar Cruz’s comment that “we are all to blame” for Mariannet’s death. Her entry also points out the Senate probe on cash gifts, and an article that mulls over the current state of the middle class in the Philippines, as a “primer” of sorts regarding the nation’s poverty situation.

While I am shocked and aghast with what had happened, I am just as irritated with how people try to use the incident as yet another fault of the GMA administration, nay, the government. As preventable as the incident was, it makes no sense to blame anybody in the suicide. Mariannet was a minor, and one can argue that she does not know what she’s doing, sure, but I do think what she did was the result of misguided thinking.

In the end, it was her and her decision alone to take her own life.

What is more disturbing, I think, is this Gospel of Hopelessness being preached by the media to our people recently. I do not know if this “gospel” reached Mariannet, but I am pretty sure that Mariannet’s death is being treated as a holy sacrifice at its altar. This gospel, has four main edicts, which I will discuss here:

Buti pa sila

First is the phrase buti pa sila; they’re fortunate or they’re better off than us, as embodied by the phrase “the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer”.

I understand deeply the difficulty and frustration the poor face when, with their meager, unchanging income, inflation eats more and more into their salaries while their salaries fail to catch up. What I do not understand is why “the rich are getting richer” is supposed to be a bad thing, when it is based on a very simple principle. When a person earns money, they could invest it in a business or a financial instrument that will earn money, reinvest it again in either to earn even more money, and it reaches a point that the growth of their money is not linear, but exponential. It is very, very clear that there is nothing evil about this, but people always tend to treat it as though it were black magic.

Of course there are “evil” ways of getting rich; illegal activities like drug peddling is one, another would be employee abuse and exploitation: long hours, delayed salaries, workload inappropriate to job descriptions or disproportionate to pay etc. But not every business does this, and I hope I am correct in assuming that majority of businesses do not employ such acts to be able to raise profits. However, to lump rich people who earned their wealth through hard work and perseverance with rich people who committed crimes and exploited others is simply myopic and utterly unfair.

The phrase “the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer” clearly assumes that the rich get rich because they exploit the poor, and thus becomes the root, or foundation, for more negative beliefs about the rich, about being rich, and about how to attain those riches.

Hindi nila kami tinutulungan

Second is the widespread belief that the rich are purposefully doing nothing to leave the poor as poor. Hindi nila kami tinutulunga“; they are not helping us.

When there were reported gains in the country’s GDP, the reduced public deficit, and the strengthening peso versus the dollar, journalists couldn’t help but ask the question “are the economic gains trickling down to the masses?” This infuriated Gloria so much that she lashed back at the reporters, in a press release a few months back.

I do not approve of GMA’s temperament, sure, but neither do I see the question as a valid one. Trickling down to the masses, on the first month of an improved economy? Give me an electric fan in a large, humid warehouse, put it at one end and turn it on, and stay at the far end. Will the improvement in the ambient temperature of the warehouse be different there? Of course not. You have to go near the fan.

The “economic gains failing to trickle down to the masses” mantra has a better analogy, one that comes from Filipino folklore. It is the story of a boy who would sleep in a hammock under a guava tree, mouth wide open, waiting for the fruit to fall. The fruit fell alright, but he wouldn’t be able to catch it while sleeping, of course. We all know who Juan Tamad is, don’t we? And we all know why the guava won’t “trickle” into his mouth.

Too many people seem to think that by griping and complaining, some magical force will elevate them up that tree, in the way that they think rich people got their wealth through evil, magical means, but in reality many of them started at the bottom of the tree, and just started climbing.

If you want to get your share of those economic gains, you have to go and reach out to it. You still have to open doors when opportunity knocks. You still have to climb a tree to get its fruit.

Inaapi nila ako, kawawa naman ako

The roots of the Gospel of Hopelessness has the victim mentality, with this mantra in mind:

Inaapi nila ako, kawawa naman ako! I am being stepped on, I am being put down, woe and pity me!

As emo and drama this mantra sounds, I hear it all the time, even from seven year olds. Whenever we would attend mass in the Our Lady of Manaoag Shrine in Pangasinan, there would always be kids selling stampitas — cards that have the image of a saint or the Blessed Virgin on one side and a prayer on the other — constantly egging you to buy them.

There’s nothing wrong with their persistence in selling, of course. Their dialog, however, goes like “bilin niyo na po Sir, para may pangkain kami mamaya” (“please buy this so we may have something to eat later”). Between those lines you could almost hear them say “if we go starving later today, it’s your fault for not buying our wares”. What kind of sales tactic is that?

I could just imagine Mariannet saying the same thing about herself while she’s pondering to take her life.

Kasalanan nila ang lahat

Unfortunately this kind of thinking is widespread among the poor and those who think that they are poor, who say that every day, in the streets, on TV, on the way to work while you’re taking public transport, in the eateries where you take your lunch. Everyone is saying “I’m so poor, I’m so pitiful, but nobody’s helping me.” Worse, after all their rambling, they then turn to how bad the government is, how corrupt politicians are, and how much better their lives would be if only the government were different.

As if that would really change anything in their lives.

Archbishop Cruz’s elegy that “we are all to blame for Mariannet’s death” is no different. I don’t think we could keep anyone from killing themselves if they really really believed that their lives are worth for naught. Let’s just thank God it’s not anything like in supposedly prosperous Western countries where the suicidal take up arms and go on a shooting spree before they take their own lives.

In the end, however, the deaths, the suicides, the shootings, is the sole decision of the person. The students that took up arms to shoot other students were usually victims of rejection and bullying, sure, but there are a lot of other people who are bullied who do not kill other people over it. Mariannet may have had a depressing situation, sure, but how many people have been in her situation only to become successful and prosperous later in their lives?

How many people have decided that they are sick and tired of being poor, and they will do everything legal and righteous to become rich?

Too few, I think. Too few.

It is time to shed this depressing gospel, especially if we believe it

There are things that can be done to give hope and genuine help to the Mariannets around us; unfortunately too few people realize that that hope and help are not only the responsibility of the government. Yes it may be a responsibility we have towards others, but it is likewise, a responsibility we have towards ourselves. Unless we accept that responsibility, even if we have all the tools to get up and climb the tree of prosperity to pick and enjoy its fruits, we won’t get it until we start climbing.

However, for those who already know this responsibility, or who have prospered to the point where they have the ability to help others, they’ll need to remember where they came from, and educate those who are not aware of the ways to attain financial success.

Salve Duplito’s parting shot on her blog entry is spot on:

It makes sense for everyone’s financial future to wipe out poverty — even the ruling elite’s financial future. Even politicians’ financial future. As you prepare this day to make more money, save more and invest more, please do two things: look around you for someone like Mariannet and do something about it. Then continue to make your dreams for financial independence come true so you can help more like her. [Money Smarts]

It’s time for us to get up and help ourselves. It’s time to change our negative attitudes towards the rich and being rich. It’s time to shed the cultural beliefs that keep us poor. It’s time for us to stop complaining, and start doing. It’s time for us to rise up and help others find ways to help themselves, so that they will not feel Mariannet Amper’s desperation.

It is time for us to stop preaching the Gospel of Hopelessness, and perhaps, replace it with a Gospel of Prosperity.

OT: Do you want to hear the Gospel of Prosperity instead?

If you want to learn some ways on how to obtain economic prosperity without selling your souls to the devil, you might want to look at the Think Rich Pinoy Seminar, conducted by Larry Gamboa, which discusses about the psychology of money, and ways to earn money in real estate.

You can also come to the How to Become Truly Rich Seminar conducted by Bo Sanchez, a seminar for Christians (Catholics, especially) who want to shed their dangerous religious beliefs about money.

I have attended both seminars and learned an immense deal of knowledge and wisdom, which I am slowly trying to apply to my life.

Just for the record, neither have paid me to promote these seminars in this blog.