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Lower capital requirements for foreign retailers approved by Senate

A SENATE committee on Thursday approved in principle measures that reduce the minimum paid-up capital for foreign companies seeking to enter the retail sector.

Senate Bill No. 14 filed by Senator Franklin M. Drilon and Senate Bill no. 921 under Sen. Sherwin T. Gatchalian proposed to amend Republic Act No. 8762, or the Retail Trade Liberalization Act of 2000, seeking to increase foreign direct investments in the sector via reduced capital requirements.

“There is really a need to liberalize. Even friends in the retail business… agree (on the need) to liberalize,” Mr. Drilon, the Minority Leader, said at a hearing conducted by the chamber’s Committee on Trade.

Philippine Retailers Association (PRA) Vice Chairman Roberto S. Claudio said however, that the PRA does not want amendments to be “anti-Filipino,” saying that RA 8762 was initially meant to protect small Filipino entrepreneurs.

He also said that the PRA was one of the drafters of RA 8762.

“The premise then was not to protect the retail industry. It was to protect the small Filipino entrepreneur. Retailing is in fact the easiest entry point for any entrepreneur to get into. And we are speaking on their behalf,” Mr. Claudio added.

The committee will further discuss measures to protect micro and small Filipino entrepreneurs from foreign retailers entering the industry.

In the House of Representatives, House Bill 9057 was approved at the committee level and is set for plenary approval.

The measure also passed the final reading in the House during the 17th Congress but failed to pass in the Senate.

The Cabinet economic cluster priority bills for the first regular session of the 18th Congress included the measure.

A total of 14 domestic and foreign business groups cited the need for such legislation in a list of measures sent to Malacañang and Congress. — Marc Wyxzel C. dela Paz

Senate approves P32-billion DICT budget

THE Senate Finance Committee approved Thursday the P32.63-billion 2020 budget of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), a marked increase from the department’s 2019 funding of P4.3 billion.

The bulk of the 2020 budget will fund the agency’s three-year national broadband plan, which requires P23 billion in investment.

Senator Panfilo M. Lacson, who chairs the finance committee, asked DICT to identify the initial funds for implementation of the national broadband plan in 2020.

DICT Secretary Gregorio B. Honasan II asked the chairman for time prior to the submission of the sub-committee report to submit this financial analysis.

“We will release it as soon as possible. We know that we’re asking for the moon, but we have a catch-up plan. In fact, we project it in three years,” he said in English and Filipino during the hearing.

“Give us this chance to show that we can make it. In short, you give us this we will deliver,” he added.

The nationwide digital infrastructure plan includes the maintenance of international cable landing stations and building domestic counterparts. The department plans to build cooperative towers and use managed satellite services to reach more than 9,000 unserved areas.

“We really have to invest in digital infrastructure. The national broadband program is the key driver for us to bring about all of these services. It aims to improve the internet speed and broadband, accelerate fiber optics and other technologies across the country,” DICT Assistant Secretary Felino O. Castro V said.

DICT also plans to connect all provinces and government networks using fiber optic communications and expand free wifi for state colleges and universities and public spaces by up to 100,000 sites in the next three years.

The overall budget also includes spending items like the DICT’s digital literacy program, cybersecurity, internal institutional reforms, and the improvement of national government portals to reduce red tape.

Mr. Lacson in the meantime expects the additional financial reports on the national broadband plan in the next few weeks.

“Between now and the submission of the sub-committee report, provide it to us because we will incorporate all of this in our committee report and hopefully the main committee under Senator Angara will be receptive,” Mr. Lacson said. — Jenina P. Ibañez

POGO shutdown seen having limited impact on funds flows

THE shutdown of overseas gaming operations will have a minimal impact in terms of financial flows, according to an initial analysis performed by the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC).

AMLC Executive Director Mel Georgie B. Racela said that the financial analysis, conducted at the request of the central bank chief, only considered the “inward and outward remittances,” and not the impact of foregone taxes should the industry, known by its Philippine acronym POGO, leave the Philippines or shutdown.

POGOs, whose main clients are Chinese, are a current source of tension between China and the Philippines because Beijing believes the industry undermines its controls on hard-currency flows and its ban on gambling.

The registration of POGOs has led to a boom in office space while also creating an influx of Chinese workers, which the Department of Finance is eager to tax.

“Maliit lang yung impact nung kanilang transactions (The impact of their transactions is small ), at least from the AMLC’s perspective. It’s very minimal compared to GDP (gross domestic product),” Mr. Racela told reporters following the agency’s Senate budget hearing on Thursday.

“Ang aming analysis kasi is financial flow analysis so ‘yung inward remittances and outward remittances, ‘yun lang ang aming na-capture (Our analysis only captured financial flows — inward and outward remittances,)” Mr. Racela said.

The limited nature of cross-border remittances suggests that the industry settles accounts internally with its Chinese clients, who are limited by Chinese foreign exchange regulations from bringing money out of the Mainland.

He said further details of the study are not ready for release pending further analysis, with the central bank currently in possession of the raw data.

The study was ordered by Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Benjamin E. Diokno.

Late last month, Mr. Diokno said he ordered the AMLC team and officials overseeing financial stability to assess the impact of operations by Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs) on the economy should they pull out.

“What if, all of a sudden, they pack up and leave? What will be the impact of that on the property sector plus also the food industry, the restaurants? So this is part of my job as BSP governor,” Mr. Diokno said in an economic forum in Manila late last month.

On Wednesday, the Bureau of Internal Revenue padlocked Great Empire Gaming and Amusement Corp. (GEGAC) in Quezon City after finding out that it was not registered for value-added tax.

The POGO service provider had more than 8,000 foreign employees in its Quezon City branch and a few hundred more in its offices in Parañaque and Subic.

AMLC’s proposed 2020 budget was approved at committee level and will be sent to the plenary.

The P145.201 million proposed budget is 128.75% higher than its current budget of P63.475 million.

Mr. Racela said the increased budget was due to a reorganization, adoption of encryption technology and enhancement of enterprise security, as well as international and domestic commitments. — Beatrice M. Laforga

Heinous prisons

Philippine prisons are as abhorrent as the crimes — rape, kidnapping and murder, among others — some Filipinos have committed or have been accused of.

In 2018 there were 933 prisons in the Philippines with a total population of some 188,000. That number may not look unusual — until one learns that more than 75 percent of those in prison have not been convicted or even tried, and are still awaiting trial. Some 50 percent of the detainees in this category have been in jail for over 250 days, or for nine excruciating, seemingly endless months.

These are among the findings of a study (“Understanding Factors Related to Prolonged Trial of Detained Defendants in the Philippines”) by Raymund Narag, an assistant professor of criminology at the Southern Illinois University.

But most Filipinos are already familiar with the hellish conditions in Philippine prisons, among them their being crammed to the rafters with inmates. Some of the country’s jails hold a number of prisoners four, five, many times their capacities. The congestion makes the spread of communicable diseases almost certain.

Some jails are flooded during the rainy season and stiflingly hot during the dry. Prisoners have no place to sleep in many municipal jails except the floor, the stairs or whatever space is available. Some have died of various illnesses or of the afflictions of old age after having been in prison for decades.

The overwhelming majority in the country’s prisons are poor folk who can’t afford bail and/or the pricey lawyers who sell their skills mostly to the rich, and hence can’t secure their temporary liberty while they’re on trial or waiting for their day in court. Some have spent years in prison for stealing food or for snatching cellphones. Still others have been convicted by incompetent judges, or are in jail because they confessed under torture to crimes they did not commit, or on the mistaken assumption that they would be released once they do so.

Like the entrance to Dante’s Inferno, the gates of Philippine prisons might as well warn all who enter them to abandon all hope. But as in many other areas of life in these isles of despair, this warning applies only to the poor and powerless.

Even if they do somehow get convicted of rape or murder, the wealthy and well-connected need not despair. Philippine prisons are not only the subject of shocked accounts in the foreign press. They are also microcosms of the rigid stratification of Philippine society. They are enclaves in which rich and powerful inmates can come and go as they please no matter what the crime they have been convicted of. They can construct and air condition mini-condos, indulge their worst vices, and even bribe their way out. Some of those accused and even convicted of such crimes as graft and plunder are spared their horrors and detained, if at all, in special prisons or in the comfort of “hospital arrest.”

Convicted of several counts of graft, Ferdinand Marcos’ widow Imelda is yet to spend a single hour in any of the prisons to which her late husband sent thousands from 1972 to 1986. Ramon Revilla, Jr., now a senator of the Republic, has been acquitted of plunder, but has nevertheless been asked to return the amounts involved in the pork barrel scam he was accused of benefiting from. Former Senator Juan Ponce Enrile, who survived the physical rigors of the 2016 campaign, is similarly accused of plunder — but is even weighing in on the GCTA scandal while on temporary liberty supposedly because he’s in poor health.

The rotten state of the country’s prisons and justice system is the context in which the Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) scandal over the implementation of the law on Good Conduct Time Allowance (GCTA — Republic Act 10592) broke some two weeks ago. Like the many other issues that haunt the Duterte regime — the sheer incompetence and corruption of many of its accomplices, the human rights violations, the extrajudicial killings, the attacks on the independent press, the surrender of Philippine sovereignty to Chinese interests, etc. — that scandal refuses to go away, despite the attempt of regime allies, agents and collaborators to evade responsibility for the corruption in the agency dismissed Director General Nicanor Faeldon and company at least tolerated if they did not benefit from it. The regime and its cronies instead want the public to blame detained Senator Leila de Lima and the Liberal Party’s Manuel “Mar” Roxas II, who put together the Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) of RA 10592.

Congressional hearings are supposed to be in aid of legislation. But the Senate hearings on the subject chaired by Duterte ally Richard Gordon were obviously not held for that purpose. Rather were they one more attempt at whitewashing the culpability of the regime’s appointees and the regime itself that is once more demonstrating how far incompetence and corruption has metastasized throughout government during the Duterte watch. They could have addressed, but did not, both the corruption and other issues in BuCor and the New Bilibid Prison, as well as the putrid state of the country’s prisons, which Narag points out, has worsened because of the Duterte regime’s failed, failing, and fake “war on drugs.”

That “war,” says Narag, has not only contributed to the jam-packing of Philippine prisons through the arrest and surrender of tens of thousands of suspected drug users and pushers. It has also made Filipinos buy into the regime narrative that rather than imprisonment, much less rehabilitation, such brutal means as the extrajudicial killings that have been the regime’s preferred “solution” to the drug problem are more likely to work.

In 2014, Narag had already identified what factors are responsible for the abomination known as the Philippine prison system. Among them, he told the online news site Rappler, are the deficiencies in their facilities and the government focus on finding someone to blame for its problems rather than addressing them. Instead, there are frequent changes in who heads BuCor. Former Duterte Special Assistant, now Senator Christopher “Bong” Go’s response to the BuCor scandal was typical. He suggested that “a killer “ was needed to replace Faeldon. Not only did that suggestion — which Mr. Duterte apparently took seriously — imply that what’s needed in BuCor is another Duterte assassin, it also evaded addressing the corruption and other issues that not only Narag but other analysts of the penal system have long noted, among them that the system further hardens criminality rather than reforms those who still have some humanity left.

Every inmate’s humanity is in fact the first casualty of prison life in the Philippines. Here is a description, from a New York Times report, of what it’s like to be poor, powerless and in a jail in the Philippines that might as well be another circle in Dante’s hell:

“On one recent night at (the Manila City Jail), the air was thick and putrid with the sweat of 518 men crowded into a space meant for 170. The inmates were cupped into each other, limbs draped over a neighbor’s waist or knee, feet tucked against someone else’s head, too tightly packed to toss and turn in the sweltering heat.”

In a 2018 report, the Commission on Audit (COA) pointed out that “congestion in jails leads not only to health and sanitation problems but also to increased gang affiliation of inmates. To survive, inmates hold on to gangs (in which) they find protection, a network of social support, and access to material benefits.”

Among many other abominations, this is what the rule of the most corrupt and most incompetent political class in Asia has wrought — and be warned: there’s more to come.

 

Luis V. Teodoro is on Facebook and Twitter (@luisteodoro).

www.luisteodoro.com

Democracy and the Philippines: a defense

Filipinos must be wary of those who proclaim that democracy is bad for the country and of those who insist that we adopt the authoritarianism or totalitarianism of other countries.

Were they honest, these individuals would say that power should only be in their hands, their foreign-minded friends, or only those that agree with them because they believe most of their fellow Filipinos are banal.

Well, yes, there are cheap and banal people — but it’s not the Filipino.

Those against democratic rule equate problems of governance with democracy itself. But to say that democracy is bad and must be gotten rid of because of problems is as inane as saying families must be discarded because of problems.

Democracy is not perfect. Nobody ever said it is. But it’s still the best form of governance when compared to the alternatives.

A word regarding meaning: The Philippines, of course, is not a democracy. At least, not in the pure sense. We are a republic. Or as the Constitution says, “a democratic and republican State.”

The US, the country that we patterned our political system after, is a republic. But let’s set aside the technical differences and focus on this, at least for this article: a democracy is where people, directly or through their elected representatives, choose their political leaders. Any government where the people cannot choose, criticize, and replace their leaders is not a democracy.

Necessarily, to be a democracy, people must be free to exercise their beliefs, to speak, and to organize. They must also be free to decide on their own their objectives, to decide how to achieve them, and to choose the government officials that can help achieve such objectives.

DEMOCRACY AND ECONOMIC PROGRESS
The cheap hit against democracy is that it is messy and that it does not lead to economic prosperity, especially for poor developing countries. Which is a lie.

MIT economist Daron Acemoğlu, along with his co-authors (“Democracy Does Cause Growth,” NBER Working Paper No. 20004, 2014), found from a study of several countries between the years 1960 and 2010 that democracy has a robust and sizable effect on economic growth: “Central estimates suggest that a country that switches from non-democracy to democracy achieves about 20 percent higher GDP per capita in the long run (over roughly the next 30 years). These are large but not implausible effects, and suggest that the global rise in democracy over the past 50 years (of over 30 percentage points) has yielded roughly 6 percent higher world GDP.”

What about the myth that dictatorships or authoritarianism is best for developing countries?

Acemoğlu replies: “Is there any evidence that democracy is only good for already developed economies? The answer is no. Though we do find that democratizations are associated with larger increases in GDP per capita in countries with higher levels of secondary schooling, there is no evidence that democracy is bad for economic growth in low income economies or even in economies with low levels of schooling.” (See also “Democracy and Economic Growth: New Evidence,” 2018 by Acemoğlu, Naidu, Robinson, and Restrepo.)

MIT’s Peter Dizikes, analyzing the report, pointed out the reason democracy has been mistakenly perceived as related to low economic progress: Acemoğlu and his team “found that countries that have democratized within the last 60 years have generally done so not at random moments, but at times of economic distress. That sheds light on the growth trajectories of democracies: They start off slowly while trying to rebound from economic misery.”

Thus, “dictatorships collapse when they’re having economic problems,” Acemoğlu says. “But now think about what that implies. It implies that you have a deep recession just before democratization, and you’re still going to have low GDP per capita for several years thereafter, because you’re trying to recover from this deep dive. So you’re going to see several years of low GDP during democracy.”

Thus, “when that larger history is accounted for,” Acemoğlu says, “What we find is that [economies of democracies] slowly start picking up. So, in five or six years’ time they’re not appreciably richer than nondemocracies, but in a 10-to-15-year time horizon they become a little bit richer, and then by the end of 25 years, they are about 20 percent richer.”

One, however, need only look at current events to see this: politically messy and chaotic US under President Donald Trump is seeing unprecedented successes: from an unemployment rate at a 50-year low, six million new jobs in a 2½-year period, increased employee compensation and savings, and a high 71% consumer confidence.

Contrast that with China’s faltering economy, “the slowest pace in 27 years,” “6.2% in the second quarter of 2019, a drop from 6.4% in the first quarter, according to data released by the Chinese government,” representing the “slowest since 1992.” (See “China’s Economy Falters; Slowest Growth In Nearly 3 Decades,” Sasha Ingber, 2019).

VALUING THE HUMAN BEING
But not everything is about money. More important is the idea of human rights, human dignity, and freedom.

As Ben Shapiro notes, the political system we adopted from the West has positives unique to it. Thus, “religious tolerance, abolition of slavery, universal human rights, the development of the scientific method: these are accomplishments of a scope and scale that only the West can claim.

“These aren’t the only achievements that make the West special and uniquely successful. As Western thought evolved, it secured the rights of women and minorities, lifted billions of people out of poverty, and invented most of the modern world.

“Progress hasn’t been a straight line, of course. But the arc of history is clear. The obvious proof is that the world is overwhelmingly Western. And, with few exceptions, those parts of the world that aren’t aspire to be.”

And that much is true.

In a 2018 Gallup World Poll survey, the top five most favored migrant destinations remain to be all democratic countries: Canada, Germany, France, Australia, the United Kingdom, with the US consistently at number one.

In a 2012 Pew Global Attitudes Project report, Filipinos have an 85% favorable view of the US. A 2019 Pulse Asia survey found that 89% of Filipinos trust the US, while only 26% of Filipinos trust China.

Even more interestingly, the Chinese themselves are beginning to welcome American democratic ideals, with the aforementioned 2018 Gallup World Poll survey showing an increase of “52%, from 48% in 2007” and the decrease of Chinese rejecting American democratic thought even “more dramatic, down to 29% from 36% in 2007” (see also “Survey: Half of Chinese like U.S. ideas on democracy,” USA Today, 2012).

The Philippines, humble it may be, nevertheless is a society that utterly values the individual human being, of fundamental rights like freedom of religion, of expression and media; and recognizes the intrinsic value of marriage, family, and children.

Compare that with a China whose citizens are getting married less and divorced more (at rates of increase worryingly higher than other countries; see “Marriage rate down, divorce rate up as more,” Viola Zhou, Sept. 2017; also “The Rising Chinese Divorce Rate,” 2019, ThoughtCo.), a plummeting birth rate (with 2018 producing the fewest babies since 1961; see “China’s birth rate falls again,” Sidney Leng, 2019), a suicide rate that “accounts for over one-quarter of suicides worldwide” (see World Population Review 2019), and an abortion rate of 9 million annually (or 24,648 babies aborted per day).

Consider as well Singapore, another country touted as one the Philippines should look up to: a city-state of stifling expression, assembly, and association laws, ruled basically by a single party. And their citizens gave up their freedoms for what?

Admittedly, Singapore is one of the most economically developed countries around but at what human cost? An income inequality higher than South Korea and Japan, with one out of four marriages ending in divorce, average marriages ending after 10 years, with over 50,000 children coming from a broken marriage, with suicide the leading cause of death for those between 10 and 29 years old.

NOT PERFECT BUT STILL BETTER THAN OTHERS
Indeed, there are many different forms of democracies and the US system we inherited is but one of them. But for all its flaws, it also happens to be the longest continually operating constitutional system in existence today presiding over the world’s largest economy.

Our democracy has been criticized for being a “sham,” a “shell.” That may be and there may be some truth in it but — as we have seen — ours still is a better society and better because of it.

We live in a county where individual dignity and self-respect is realized by us governing and ruling ourselves. Not by a few technocrats or foreigners. And — more importantly — when we say ourselves, we mean to include our elderly and those that went before them and the babies that have just been conceived and those still yet to come.

People complain about Philippine democracy (and our adherence to the rule of law) because it’s messy and slow. Here’s a shocker: it’s supposed to be messy and slow! The system is designed to protect us not only from the dictates of a few but also from our passing passions and the temptation of quick fixes.

It encourages people to study, debate, and ponder, and eventually come up with a deliberate solution for the common good because of the (wise) assumption that the government does not and cannot know and solve everything.

We have in us a great constitutional system. We just need to trust it so we can actually start implementing it.

Winston Churchill once said: “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried.”

And from anonymous: democracy may give every fool an equal vote as to who governs but in other political systems it’s the fool that governs.

Because that other way leads to genocide, inhumanity, soulless commercialism, loss of rights.

People should stop talking about getting rid of democracy. It does the country no good. The alternative many are suggesting is rule by a cabal and by foreigners.

Instead, lets value, cherish, and protect our democratic system built on human rights and the rule of law. And work together to make it even better.

H. L. Mencken is right: The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy. n a

 

Jemy Gatdula is a Senior Fellow of the Philippine Council for Foreign Relations and a Philippine Judicial Academy law lecturer for constitutional philosophy and jurisprudence.

https://www.facebook.com/jigatdula/

Twitter @jemygatdula

Insights on depression

Depression is a mental illness that is difficult to detect, recognize, accept, and treat. Psychologists, psychiatrists, and counselors note that it happens across a wide spectrum. In some cases, it hits generations in families.

Studies show that the Philippines has the highest number of depressed people among the ASEAN nations. Suicide is among the leading causes of death among teenagers. According to the World Health Organization, more than half of the suicides that occur globally every year come from Southeast Asia.

At a recent gathering, psychologist Father Dennis Paez, S.D.B., shared insights on depression, the meaning of suicide, and our youth.

“The big malice of suicide is that it’s contagious. You are supposed to talk about it because it has to be processed, not sensationalized. It becomes contagious.”

He revealed, “Mass media tends to mythologize the person.” It is not only sad but extremely unfair to the survivors. “In every age group, across all demographics, especially among people who seem very successful, suicide has become pandemic.”

He quoted a line from Scott Peck’s book Road Less Traveled: “Life is difficult because pain is part of life.”

To say that depression is just a mental disease like any other does not explain it. Thus one is unable to find the cause and the cure.

“Medications are taken to make the previous medication work and so it goes on. Depression is despair. Despair is the absence of hope and joy. If joy’s absence is a medical phenomenon, then joy itself must be just a medical phenomenon.”

Fr. Dennis gave an example of grandparents who will take a photo that simulates the joy of holding a grandchild.

He posed a question, “Is it mental illness or inner emptiness?”

“Souls and brains work together. The physical world affects us but we are also spiritual beings.

Ignoring the spiritual roots of this affliction is like giving a person morphine for the burn without taking out his hand from the fire.

“People need more than the knowledge that other people love them.”

There are two important points. There should be no confidentiality when a person:

Wants to commit suicide;

Is being sexually harassed.

“They need meaning, a point to all this. They need a reason.

“Pain is pain. Misery is optional. Pain is a part of life. Misery is a choice. It is not part of life. Pain is not punishment. To be miserable is optional.”

Father Dennis enumerated positive coping skills:

“To find one’s inner strength. By coping, we make an impact.”

“Anyone with a ‘why’ to live could endure almost any ‘how.’”

“Purpose + Power = Vocation = Meaning”

Vocation is:

The consciousness of being able to do something better than others.

Being able to love this thing more than anything else.

The ardent and exclusive passion for something in which there is no prospect of money.

“Depression is about inner emptiness. When you discover your personal vocation, everything that happened in your past suddenly has meaning.”

Fr. Dennis showed ways to discover one’s personal vocation:

Space and silence – The free silence of space gives us purpose.

Freedom of speech is replaced by freedom of feelings that creates a generation of weaklings around which everybody walks on eggshells.

Every person must be tested. We must face crisis and difficulties. “You are making him weaker because of misplaced compassion.”

The idea of not wanting people to suffer is wrong. We have a tendency to stifle their power by over-protectiveness — by blocking insults and difficulties.

“Let them suffer. When they cry for help — I don’t want you to save me, I want you to be by my side as I save myself.”

It is difficult to stop bullying. However, we should give them (the youth) the power to stop the bullying. “The result: Inner power independent of false back ups.

Have responsibility rather than rights.

What is our responsibility? Kindness and mercy, compassion or malasakit. Result: Because their love for life is never weakened when they choose responsibility over rights.

“Have a vocation yourself. Know it, love it and serve it passionately. We have to have boundaries. I love you but I cannot love like I need you. Love of life begets love of life,” he exclaimed. Father Dennis explained the spiritual dimension that is beyond the medical, psychological and physical levels.

“Have a God — a supreme being in your life. A power greater than your own. This gives power. Result: their faith in humanity would be restored so that people are not the norm. There are good people.”

“A life without god, no matter how successful, will leave hearts unfulfilled. We are always grappling with God because that is what love does. It’s a healthy thing among people who love each other.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph were the only ones chosen to be broken. All of us were broken then chosen. That is our destiny.

“Result: when we have a vocation, we become equal to any privation because the one hunger and thirst within will be our own passion.”

 

Maria Victoria Rufino is an artist, writer and businesswoman. She is president and executive producer of Maverick Productions.

mavrufino@gmail.com

You haven’t changed

By Tony Samson

IT is customary to compliment someone not seen for many years and almost forgotten (don’t tell me you don’t know who I am) with the ready greeting: “Hey, you haven’t changed.” Is this a flattering remark? Maybe the greeter has used the aging app to approximate how a former classmate is supposed to look now? The present apparition is not at all gaunt and withered, with caved-in cheeks — yes, a bit plumper.

It is inappropriate to use this greeting in the following situations: a) when the one being addressed is a teenager whose last sighting was just after birth; b) she has lost sixty pounds from having been devastated by some dreaded disease of which the flatterer is unaware; and c) she has had a gender change or an extreme facelift that has given her a snake-like head — where’s the toilet?

Predictably, the one addressed as unchanged, and presumably as youthful-looking as ever, returns the compliment with the same line — you haven’t changed either. (You still look like the “before” poster for a fitness center.)

The observation of unchanging appearance hints of a still recognizable mien, free of the ravages of age. A more realistic encounter for two acquaintances meeting by chance after decades is the scene from a short story by Alice Munro, a Nobel Laureate. Two former classmates from high school, now quite advanced in age meet up as dentist and patient. The woman, sitting on the chair and being administered to, suddenly recognizes her dentist as a long-ago crush in high school. She is shocked at how ancient her former classmate now looks, with a much-wrinkled face showing little of the hunk-like attributes that attracted her as a teener. She wants to make sure it is him, and queries the dentist on his high school and the year he graduated. Sure enough, he is indeed the person she remembers and reveals to him that they were in the same class. He asks innocently — what subject did you teach us?

Aging people are unaware of how they look to others, especially those who have not seen them in a long time. Looking in the mirror they are oblivious of the multiplying liver spots, wattles, warts, facial tics, and drooping cheeks that make them look like their already deceased parents. The changes are gradual and creep unobtrusively as they accumulate.

It’s only when they have passport photos taken or find themselves in a group photo do the elderly wonder who the old face belongs to. They bestow on others the agelessness of memory even as they expect others to reciprocate with complementary recollections.

The effort to turn back the ravages of age is a bustling business, with encouraging slogans “70 is the new 50.” The promise of youthful looks is promoted by fitness centers, cosmetics, health foods, and the purveyors of surgical enhancements. (Your eyebags need to be checked in.) Billboards showing “before” and “after” treatments can be dramatic. Still, even with work done, it is the wrinkly neck and hands that trigger the age alert.

Perhaps it is best to do away with the casual greeting of not having changed over the years. It’s best to skip this courtesy and just jump into small talk about other acquaintances that have been lost track of. Physical appearances, especially for those enjoying good health allowing for occasional aches and pains, are best left unremarked.

It is happiness and the banishing of hatreds and anxieties rather than the mark of the years past that should invite good wishes. Few will deserve the encomium bestowed by Shakespeare on Cleopatra through the character Domitius (in Antony and Cleopatra). Of her, he intones “age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety”. Note here that it is variety and not resistance to change that provides the allure. Anyway, Cleopatra died young at 39 from the sting of an asp she herself put on her bosom. (Yes, you also saw the movie.) So, the physical effect of long years was not really tested.

For someone who has been missed for so many years, a straightforward and neutral greeting will serve: hey, you’re still alive. And a riposte in the same vein can be offered — you only look dead, but you’re still breathing. This is a good opener for talking about those who didn’t grow old gracefully… or didn’t have a chance to.

 

Tony Samson is Chairman and CEO, TOUCH xda.

ar.samson@yahoo.com

Peso strengthens on rate cut expectations

THE peso firmed against the US dollar on Thursday, amid market expectations of a policy rate cut.

The local unit ended at P52.11 against the greenback on Thursday, appreciating by 10 centavos from its P52.211-to-a-dollar close on Wednesday.

The peso opened at P52.22 versus the dollar. It traded in a tight range, with its weakest point recorded at P52.24, while its intraday best was at P52.07 against the greenback.

Dollars traded on Thursday stretched to $1.147 billion compared to the $1.041 billion tracked on Wednesday.

“The peso strengthened from market optimism after US President [Donald J.] Trump commented that a trade deal with China is more likely to come sooner than market expectations,” a trader said.

“Market sentiment also improved after [Mr.] Trump cited progress on trade talks with Japan, which eased access for the purchase of more US agricultural products,” Michael L. Ricafort, chief economist at Rizal Commercial Banking Corp., said.

For today, the trader sees the peso to trade between P52.05-P52.25.

Meanwhile, most Asian currencies inched higher on Thursday, with investors cautiously optimistic after US President Donald Trump hinted the United States and China could resolve their trade differences soon.

Mr. Trump said that a trade deal with China could happen sooner than people think saying the two biggest economies are having “good conversations.” The president’s recent remarks come after he delivered a stinging rebuke to China’s trade practices and said he would not accept a “bad deal.”

While Mr. Trump’s comments helped sentiment, Asian currencies traded in a thin range as investors remained apprehensive.

“Considering the fact that a rapid deterioration in US-China relations is not without precedence, investors will continue scouring the horizon for any signals that can push risk sentiment either way,” Han Tan, market analyst at FXTM, said in a note.

Meanwhile, the Thai baht slipped 0.3% to 30.590. The Bank of Thailand left benchmark interest rates unchanged on Wednesday but cut its 2019 economic growth forecast to 2.8% from 3.3% seen in June, and forecast exports will shrink this year.

The economy has been plagued by below-target inflation, risks to financial stability and sagging growth alongside a strengthening baht, which has led policy makers to roll out stimulus measures to shore up growth.

In Malaysia, the focus is on the FTSE Russell’s decision later in the day on whether it will keep Malaysian government bonds on its global bond index. The ringgit slipped 0.1% against the dollar ahead of the announcement.

The review was initiated due to concerns about market liquidity.

“Hopes are pinned on the liquidity boosting measures by the BNM to satisfy the index provider,” Prakash Sakpal an economist, at ING wrote in a note.

Southeast Asia’s third-largest economy loosened currency hedging rules in August to help boost liquidity.

In April, a Morgan Stanley research note said that the country would see outflows of $8 billion if its bonds are downgraded after the review.

Malaysia’s current weight in the index is 0.39%. — Reuters with report from LWTN

Market sits out BSP rate move on the sidelines

SHARES ended flat on Thursday as investors stayed on the sidelines ahead of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’ (BSP) sixth monetary policy review for the year that resulted in 2019’s third cut in policy interest rates, as widely expected.

The benchmark Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) barely moved at closing on Thursday, crawling up 0.003% or 0.24 point to close at 7,896.48. The broader all-shares index slipped 0.01% or 0.75 point to 4,769.34.

“Despite the foreign selling amounting to P472 million today, the PSEi ended flat as investors hunted for blue-chip stocks that have been lagging for the past few days. Investors were also expecting the highly anticipated rate cut that the BSP announced 30 minutes after market close,” Timson Securities, Inc. Equity Trader Jervin S. de Celis said in a mobile phone message.

The BSP, in a meeting after the market’s close, decided to cut interest rates by 25 basis points (bps) as “price pressures have eased further,” BSP Governor Benjamin E. Diokno said in a briefing.

Yesterday’s monetary policy decision brought year-to-date cuts in benchmark interest rates to 75 bps, partially dialing back last year’s cumulative 175-bp hike.

“The rate cut may somehow boost market sentiment tomorrow and next week unless we see another negative news coming from the western markets that might hinder PSEi’s ascent above 8,000 level,” Mr. De Celis added.

Philstocks Financial, Inc in a market note said that the PSEi moved above the 200-day exponential moving average.

“The local bourse ended buoying above the 7,880 level… amid BSP policy rate meeting, month-end window dressing and offshore developments coming from the US and China trade talks,” the company said.

Four sectoral indices moved to positive territory, led by financials that went up 0.85% or 15.34 points to 1,807.54, followed by mining and oil which gained 0.71% or 65.56 points to 9,210.14, services which rose 0.29% or 4.62 points to 1,559.51 and property which added 0.17% or 7.01 points to 4,115.83. In contrast, holding firms slumped 0.42% or 32.99 points to 7,812.69 and industrials dropped 0.31% or 32.98 points to 10,622.45.

Some 773.24 million issues worth P5.69 billion changed hands, compared to Thursday’s 617.20 million issues worth P5.79 billion.

Stocks that gained edged out those that declined, 107 to 80, while 57 others were unchanged.

Foreign investors remained net sellers for the second straight day at P472.88 million, 52.75% more than the previous session’s P309.58 million.

Major Wall Street indices rode hopes for a US-China trade deal, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite indices gaining 0.61%, 0.62% and 1.05%, respectively.

Major Asian bourses followed suit, with Japan’s Nikkei 225 and Topix indices increasing by 0.13% and 0.20%, respectively; as well as Hong Kong’s Hang Seng and South Korea’s Kospi indices gaining 0.37% and 0.05%, respectively. — Arra B. Francia

Duterte tells Chinese investors to behave or die

PRESIDENT Rodrigo R. Duterte on Wednesday promised Chinese businessmen a hard stance against corruption to ease business transactions, but told them to behave “or I will kill you.”

“We are trying to do away with this culture of corruption and abuses of government,” the president said in a speech at the launch of property company Golden Topper Group, Inc. in Parañaque City late Wednesday.

Mr. Duterte also asked real estate companies not to allow themselves to be a haven for illegal foreign workers.

“Your buildings should never serve as a haven for undocumented foreign workers nor for the manufacture of illegal drugs,” he said.

Mr. Duterte told executives to call him up even in the middle of the night to complain about corruption.

He also said foreign businessmen should slap government officials or personnel who try to bribe them.

“The only reason why there is a lot of corruption in the Philippines is because we are not assertive,” Mr. Duterte said.

Filipinos, he added, easily give in to extortion because “they are afraid of being denied or delayed.” The president warned foreign investors against involving themselves in criminal activities in the country, especially drug trafficking.

“You know, we’re good friends with everybody,” Mr. Duterte said, adding that he wouldn’t hesitate to tell the Chinese ambassador in the Philippines that “I killed your idiot citizen” because of illegal activities.

“To me you are just also another carcass. There is no other order to the police. It’s to capture you dead or alive. Preferably dead so that you cannot go back to your country to do crime again and be back again in my country to do another,” he added.

Mr. Duterte thanked Golden Topper officials for investing in the country’s property industry.

“Indeed, the success of this endeavor will surely cement your status as the government’s reliable partner in propelling the Philippine economy forward,” he said.

“It will also highlight your role as an important partner in spurring infrastructure development, generating more jobs, and sustaining the steady growth of our economy,” he added.

ABOUT 600 allegedly illegal Chinese workers have been arrested in the Philippines in less than a week after Beijing’s call for a crackdown on online gambling.

Philippine authorities last week arrested about 324 undocumented Chinese nationals in the western Palawan province for alleged cybercrimes. The workers will be deported, the Immigration bureau said earlier.

The agency earlier said it arrested 277 Chinese nationals on Wednesday for allegedly conducting illegal online operations in Pasig City.

Those arrested were wanted for fraud and investment scams in China, the Immigration bureau said, citing information from Chinese authorities.

Last month, China urged the Philippines to crack down on online casino operations catering mostly to Chinese nationals.

President Duterte has said he would not ban the billion-peso industry despite Beijing’s opposition because it benefits the Southeast Asian nation. — Arjay L. Balinbin

Gov’t lawyer says it backs free press despite Rappler ban

THE government’s top lawyer supports the ban of online news website Rappler from presidential events, saying it failed to present a “genuine issue on the alleged” abridgment of free press.”

Rappler failed to comply with accreditation requirements and attempted to portray the coverage ban against it as an “alarming threat to press freedom,” the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) said in a statement yesterday.

“The government recognizes the role of free press in our democracy,” it said. “But our people deserve news reports from legitimate media organizations that comply with rules on accreditation, respect the decisions of tribunals and obey the Constitution and our laws,” it added.

Rappler and its reporters in April asked the Supreme Court to stop the illegal coverage ban, saying it violated press freedom.

Rappler also argued the ban violates the right of a free press to self-regulate, the right to due process and the equal protection clause because it had been singled out.

Rappler palace reporter Patricia Marie I. Ranada was first barred from entering Malacañang on Feb. 20, 2018. The ban was later expanded to all events of the president. The ban was then extended to all Rappler reporters including correspondents in the provinces.

Mr. Duterte in March last year ordered the ban against Rappler at any of his events, accusing it of misreporting.

“The mere act of the government enforcing its accreditation rules does not, in any way, affect or trample upon the petitioners’ constitutional freedom of the press,” the Solicitor General said.

“This constitutional right certainly does not include the right to demand a special press pass, special accreditation, or special spot at any news conference or press briefing.”

The high court in July ordered the Office of the President, Office of the Executive Secretary, Presidential Communications Operations Office, Media Accreditation Registration Office and Presidential Security Group to comment on Rappler’s petition.

The court also allowed 41 reporters and columnists from various media to intervene in the case. The ban stays in the absence of a court injunction. — Vann Marlo M. Villegas

Palace debunks talks on Scarborough Shoal

THE presidential palace yesterday dismissed a Supreme Court magistrate’s claim that China will have reclaimed the Scarborough Shoal by the time President Rodrigo R. Duterte finishes his term.

Presidential spokesman Salvador S. Panelo told a press briefing, said Supreme Court Justice Antonio T. Carpio was “very fond of engaging in speculations.”

Mr. Carpio earlier said Beijing would attempt to reclaim the disputed shoal before the signing of the Code of Conduct on the South China Sea before Mr. Duterte’s term expires in 2020.

“As the president said, he will not allow during his incumbency any assault on our sovereignty,” Mr. Panelo said.

He said the 2016 United Nations arbitration ruling that voided China’s claims to more than 80% of the South China Sea “is final, binding and not subject to appeal.”

“Anything that will go against the arbitral ruling would be of course objectionable for us,” he said. “We are against any intrusion into the sovereign affairs of the land.”

Mr. Panelo said the Philippines “can always try” to stop China if it attempts to reclaim the shoal. “We will have to file a diplomatic protest.”

The Supreme Court has rejected a plea from fishermen and a lawyer’s group to force Mr. Duterte’s government to protect three disputed shoals in the South China Sea, including the Scarborough Shoal.

The Integrated Bar of the Philippines and the fishermen in April asked the court to compel the government to protect the Scarborough Shoal, Second Thomas Shoal and Mischief Reef. — Arjay L. Balinbin

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