INCREMENTAL progress toward a reunion between Ben Simmons and the Philadelphia 76ers continued on Tuesday with a meeting between the All-Star and the franchise’s decision-makers, ESPN reported.
Simmons passed his entry physical, per reports, but his immediate future and long-term status with the 76ers remain cloudy due to his demand for a trade and “surprise” decision to report to the team on Monday.
ESPN reported Simmons met with team president Daryl Morey and general manager Elton Brand in what was described as a “brief” meeting on Tuesday night. Simmons is in the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) health and safety protocol and took his initial coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) test on Monday, when he arrived at the arena before the Brooklyn Nets played the 76ers in a preseason game.
Head coach Doc Rivers reportedly met twice with Simmons on Tuesday and is not against the idea of him playing immediately.
Simmons, 25, could return by Friday, when the 76ers play the Detroit Pistons. Whether the team will permit Rivers to play him without measuring his fitness in practices is uncertain.
Per multiple reports, Simmons’ trade demand still stands.
Rivers, who recalled his own holdout as a player, said he expects Simmons to be welcomed back when he’s ready to play.
“Players don’t get involved with people’s business,” Rivers said. “… I’ve been a player and this has happened before, and I was a player that has done it before. Other than those first 10 minutes of welcoming back and taking the crap from your teammates about missing camp and stuff, guys want to win. They do. I’m telling you, especially if you’re on that type of team where you have a chance to win… they look at Ben as a guy that can help them do that.”
Fellow All-Star Joel Embiid has been transparent with his emotions during Simmons’ time away. Embiid last week said the holdout was “borderline disrespectful” to the players who reported to training camp and preseason.
Embiid also helped spark the drama with comments last spring immediately after the 76ers were eliminated from the playoffs when he said, “Man, I will be honest. I thought the turning point was, you know, when we, I don’t know how to say it, but I thought the turning point was just we had an open shot and we made one free throw and we missed the other and they came down and scored.”
The open shot reference was to Simmons passing up what appeared to be a sure dunk at the rim, finding a cutting Matisse Thybulle instead. Thybulle was fouled and made one of two free throws. The Atlanta Hawks scored the next five points to close out the series.
The thorny commentary from Embiid and Rivers, who indicated after the same game he couldn’t answer whether Simmons was capable of leading the team to the title, prompted Simmons reportedly to tell the team he’d never play for the 76ers again.
Then came Monday’s unexpected appearance as no-show fines for Simmons hit $1 million.
“I think there’s going to be some adjustments, but it doesn’t need to be awkward,” Embiid said of Simmons rejoining the roster and ending a contentious holdout. “We’re all professionals. We want to win. He gives me the best chance to win… We’re going to be fine.”
Simmons has four years remaining on a five-year, $177-million deal signed last year.
The Sixers reportedly worked feverishly to find a trade partner, but Morey is said to be seeking an All-Star player in return. — Reuters
It’s easy to contend that the Nets tried their best to convince starting guard Kyrie Irving to get inoculated against the novel coronavirus. Given their championship aspirations, his presence on the court is integral to their competitiveness. In addition, there’s no pleasure in absorbing the full cost of his $33.33-million salary when he’s not able to show up half the time.Forget the fact that he won’t be receiving any pay for missed starts; the more telling repercussion of his status as a part-time All-Star involves the inability of the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts.
Given the all-too-real internal threats to stability, the Nets had no choice, but to totally decommission Irving. Needless to say, they would have wanted the other extreme. And, barring that, staying in the middle would have been the worst of the remaining alternatives. Initially, they were confident of convincing him to take the vaccine. When he kept on actively rebuffing their efforts, they then studied the possibility of having him join them for road games, in which health protocols allowed visiting players to suit up. It didn’t take them long to realize that the latter option was untenable.
Indeed, the Nets would have suffered from an identity crisis had they insisted on tapping Irving as much as possible. Imagine needing two sets of strategies for two different starting lineups. And in the face of his high usage rate, the adjustments would have been significant. Which was why even Kevin Durant and James Harden, the other members of the Big Three, knew insisting on a Big Two the right thing to do; inasmuch as they preferred that he be around, he needed to be all in. Else, he would be hurting their cause.
All signs point to Irving digging in his heels. He is, after all, known for espousing conspiracy theories and unscientific beliefs, all the evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. Then again, there’s sense in never saying never. Stranger things have happened in the National Basketball Association; league annals are replete with examples of virtual impossibilities occurring due to an unforeseen twist in circumstance. It’s certainly what the Nets are hoping against hope would happen, but they know enough not to hold their breath while in waiting.
Anthony L. Cuaycong has been writing Courtside since BusinessWorld introduced a Sports section in 1994. He is a consultant on strategic planning, operations and Human Resources management, corporate communications, and business development.
A magnifying glass is held in front of a computer screen in this picture illustration taken in Berlin May 21, 2013. — REUTERS/PAWEL KOPCZYNSKI/FILE PHOTO
LONDON — It was an email offering a discount on an electric toothbrush that began the sequence of events that ruined Anna’s life.
Within minutes of entering her card details, she got a call from her bank telling her fraudulent transactions were being made. The next day Robert Clayton from Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority called to say they were pursuing the criminals responsible but that her savings were at risk.
There was no toothbrush, though. No fraud department, no Robert Clayton. They were all part of a scam to gradually siphon off Anna’s life savings, and within a few weeks the plot had succeeded, to the tune of about 200,000 pounds ($270,000).
“I am still in shock, the guilt and shame are impossible to convey,” said the 78-year-old widow from central England, who did not want her full name to be used in this story.
She is one of thousands of people who have seen savings swept away this year by an unprecedented wave of online bank fraud hitting Britain, where you’re more likely to be a victim of online fraud than any other crime.
The country is the global epicenter for such attacks, according to five of the biggest British banks and more than a dozen security experts who said scammers were buying up batches of consumers’ personal details on the dark net to target the record numbers shopping and banking online since the pandemic.
The country’s super-fast payments infrastructure, relatively light policing of fraud-related crime, plus its use of the world’s most widely used language English, also made it an ideal global test bed for scams, the banks and specialists added.
A British record of 754 million pounds ($1 billion) was stolen in the first six months of this year, up 30% from the same period in 2020, according to data from banking industry body UK Finance, and up more than 60% from 2017, when it began compiling the figures.
That represents a per capita fraud rate roughly triple that seen in the United States in 2020, according to a Reuters calculation from UK Finance and the latest available Federal Trade Commission data.
“The most sophisticated fraud tends to start in the UK, and then move two years later to the US and then around the world,” said Ayelet Biger-Levin, vice president of product strategy at US-based cybersecurity firm BioCatch, which provides anti-fraud technology to banks.
“In the last 12 months we have seen more fraud attacks than we had seen in any other year in history. Data breaches have also accelerated, so there’s a lot more personal information out there that criminals can take advantage of.”
Unlike simple email-based scams of the past purporting to be from princes or oil barons seeking your help to shift their millions, the modern bank scam can be sophisticated, multi-phased and extremely convincing.
“We’ve seen some cases where the fraudster has been talking to somebody for three or four years as someone else before they actually scam them out of a large amount of money,” said Brian Dilley, group director for economic crime prevention at Britain’s biggest bank Lloyds.
FAST PAYMENTS, FAST FRAUD? The government’s National Economic Crime Centre (NECC) agrees with the banking sector’s assessment that fraud represents a threat to British security.
“It is growing from an already enormous scale,” said Chris Reed, fraud threat lead at NECC, which he said was meeting at least every month with bank bosses, technology executives and telecoms companies to assess and respond to threats.
Britain’s Faster Payments’ network, which allows transfers between bank accounts to settle instantly rather than in hours or days as in the United States and other developed banking markets, means criminals can rapidly spirit away funds.
“The faster payment system has facilitated faster fraud,” said Richard Emery, a fraud expert who is advising Anna and 63 other scam victims whose average loss is 102,000 pounds.
Pay.UK, which runs the network, said the system supported the British economy, consumers and businesses. It added that criminals were getting better at exploiting digitization and that it was working with the industry and regulator to fight fraud.
While security experts and senior bankers said many fraud attacks could be traced overseas — including from India and West Africa — Britain is also increasingly exporting attacks.
Crimes such as authorized push payments (APP) — where people are tricked into authorizing a payment by a criminal posing as their bank or other trusted company — are proliferating globally after having started off as a largely UK phenomenon.
The country ranks second in the world behind the United States as a source of automated bot attacks, the fastest-growing type of fraud attack in the world, according to data from LexisNexis Risk Solutions, a financial crime analysis firm.
Bot attacks see criminals use a high volume of stolen identity credentials to overrun a website, allowing them to set up new accounts or access existing ones.
“It’s popular to say the fraud threat is imported into the UK, and I don’t think that bears analysis,” said NECC’s Reed. “There is a significant UK nexus to a lot of fraud, our operational experience is showing that.”
HSBC: UK IS HOTBED OF FRAUD Britain’s banks — which often pick up the compensation bill when people are scammed — are trying to respond.
HSBC, which has operations in the Americas and Asia, has hired more than 300 staff in a year to support its anti-fraud operations in its home market and increased annual spending by 40% to deal with an “exponential” number of customers affected, the bank told Reuters.
“The UK is the hotbed of activity for fraudsters. Currently the UK accounts for about 80% of our global personal fraud losses,” it said.
Lloyds said it had invested 100 million pounds in its defenses over the past two years, while rival NatWest has 10% of its workforce — amounting to 6,000 people — dedicated to combating financial crime. TSB has hired 100 extra staff to support fraud victims in the last year.
But lenders are also pressing the government to make social media platforms, where they say some attacks originate, share the burden. British lawmakers told bosses at Facebook, Google, Amazon and eBay last month that they needed to do more combat fraud.
The NECC’s Reed said another problem was that just 1% of policing resources were dedicated to fighting fraud, despite it making up over a third of all crime in England and Wales.
“I won’t hide away from the fact that resourcing of the response is completely out of step with the scale and seriousness of the threat. We’ve got a mountain to climb.”
This means that criminals are emboldened to target people like Anna, who has little hope of recovering her savings.
The fraudsters had told her to shift her “at risk” cash to an account on a cryptocurrency platform that they emptied — while isolating her from family by stressing secrecy and coaching her on how to respond to skeptical bank officials.
“They knew the name of my financial adviser, they were utterly convincing as FCA staff,” she said. “And they told me I could not tell anyone about the investigation as it would damage their efforts to catch the crooks.” — Reuters
A PASSENGER walks at Ngurah Rai International Airport, Bali, Indonesia, Oct. 5. — REUTERS
DENPASAR — Indonesia’s holiday island of Bali reopened to foreign tourists after 18 months of pandemic hiatus on Thursday, but the island is lacking one crucial ingredient: international flights.
Tourism-reliant Bali is scheduled to reopen on Thursday and though its Ngurah Rai international airport has carried out simulations preparing for tourists to return, it is not expecting much to happen soon.
“So far there is no schedule,” said Taufan Yudhistira, a spokesman for the airport.
Indonesia’s tight immigration measures during the pandemic have devastated the island, with widespread closures of hotels, shops and businesses.
The government is eager to revive Bali’s beleaguered tourism industry in response to a sharp fall in new coronavirus cases since July, when Indonesia was Asia’s COVID-19 epicenter.
But details about the reopening, such as visa requirements and which countries they apply to, have so far been patchy.
Indonesia only confirmed the 19 eligible countries in a statement late on Wednesday, which include China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand, and several countries from Western Europe and the Arabian Gulf.
The move follows Thailand’s calibrated reopening that began in July with much fanfare, with the islands of Samui and Phuket welcoming vaccinated tourists from multiple countries, with hundreds on the opening days.
Vietnam plans to welcome foreigners to its Phu Quoc island next month.
But some Indonesian tourism industry representatives say Bali’s reopening plan not matched by demand.
Putu Astawa from the Bali tourism agency said hotel reservations were few.
“Not yet because the timing is so sudden,” he said, when asked about a spike in bookings. “They need time to take care of visas and flights.”
As well as requiring Bali visitors to be vaccinated against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), Indonesia has stipulated they must spend their first five days in quarantine, a measure rival tourism markets are phasing out.
“We are ready to accept tourists who visit Bali, but certainly it does not mean all the guests suddenly visit Bali,” said Ida Bagus Purwa Sidemen, executive director of the island’s hotel and restaurant association. “At the earliest, by the end of the year we can evaluate whether the situation has improved.”
In a video released on the president secretariat’s YouTube channel to mark the reopening on Thursday, Bali Governor Wayan Koster said reviving tourism was essential for the island.
“It is very much in our interest for tourism to recover because 54% of Bali’s economy relies on tourism sector,” he said. — Reuters
THE US FOOD and Drug Administration (FDA) on Wednesday is pushing to cut salt levels by an average of 12% in food ranging from packaged meats to cheese, trying to clamp down on a growing epidemic of preventable health issues that has plagued the country.
In far-reaching guidelines, the FDA is seeking voluntary short-term lower sodium targets for food manufacturers, chain restaurants and food service operators — focusing largely on processed and take-out food.
The agency wants to cut sodium intake to an average of 3,000 milligrams (mg) per day, compared with 3,400 mg over the next two and half years. But the average intake would still be above the Dietary Guidelines for Americans’ recommended limit of 2,300 mg per day for anyone over 14 years of age.
The decision is likely to affect the consumer-packaged foods industry and major players PepsiCo Inc, Kraft Heinz Co. and Campbell Soup. Fast-food chains that Americans love like McDonald’s Corp. will also be on the radar.
Health experts, however, said the regulator needs to take a stronger stance.
“The FDA’s targets represent an important step forward, but lowering sodium intake to 3,000 mg per day is not enough,” the American Heart Association said in a statement.
“We urge the FDA to follow today’s action with additional targets to further lower the amount of sodium in the food supply and help people in America attain an appropriate sodium intake.”
High salt consumption has been linked to high blood pressure, which is a leading cause of heart attacks and strokes.
More than 4 in 10 American adults suffer from high blood pressure and reducing sodium intake has the potential to prevent hundreds of thousands of premature deaths and illnesses in the coming years, according to the agency.
Salt is an ubiquitous ingredient in almost every food. The agency focused on 163 categories of processed, packaged and prepared foods, including different types of cheese, pickles, nuts, sauces, deli meats, crackers and poultry products — all the things Americans like to eat. Even more so during the pandemic.
The FDA said the modest reductions made slowly over the next few years will substantially decrease diet-related diseases and said it plans to issue revised, subsequent targets to further lower the sodium content incrementally.
“We are going to monitor this as we go along … Watch who’s doing well, what food groups are getting there and when,” Janet Woodcock, the acting commissioner of FDA said in a media call.
“Hopefully before we get to the end of the two-and-a-half-year period, we will have a good idea of what our plan should be for the next iteration.”
The majority of sodium consumed comes from processed, packaged and prepared foods, and not from table salt added to food when cooking or eating, making it difficult to control the amount of sodium consumed, the FDA said.
The Food Marketing Institute, a trade group representing the food industry, said it supported the FDA’s decision to extend the recommended amount of time for businesses to achieve voluntary sodium targets and that it was reviewing the guidelines and seeking feedback from its members.
The agency said the public health benefit of limiting salt intake is estimated by researchers to result in tens of thousands fewer cases of heart disease and strokes each year, as well as billions of dollars in healthcare savings over time. — Reuters
Corruption is like dinosaurs. Dinosaurs varied in size — they could be incredibly huge, the biggest seemed to be the Argentinosaurus which was placed at about 40 meters in length, weighing 100 metric tons, or relatively small like the Microraptor, approximating the size of a crow.
Corruption could likewise be so pervasively large it goes from the top to the bottom of bureaucracy, a syndicated enterprise that enables a small, undercapitalized company like Starpay, for instance, to handle the distribution of P50 billion in cash assistance to impoverished families. We should be familiar with another dinosaur of big corruption that is Pharmally, another small company that supplied billions of pesos worth of personal protective gear to the government found to be defective and expired. Like dinosaurs, corruption has to feed on an enormous amount of vegetation or meat to survive.
Microraptor corruption involves overpricing of office supplies and other commonly consumed items. Fixers and their “connect” in car registration or building permits in city hall are like crows, but adult crows.
Today, civil societies are now pushing back at corruption regardless of its scale. It should be extinct in due time.
There is no other way to deal with corruption but to stop it. Its social cost has been impossibly enormous. The IMF’s Finance and Development of March 2018 cited a figure of as much as $2 trillion a year, estimated to be as large as Italy’s gross output and many times over the $142 billion in international development aid. The Conversation updated it to $2.6 trillion in May 2021.
The literature also posits that corruption discourages private investment which restricts economic growth. An earlier IMF study, for instance, “Corruption: Costs and Mitigating Strategies” argued that “Corrupt officials channel public funds to wasteful projects that generate bribes, depleting funds that could be spent on health, education, and other services that benefit the poor…”
Susan Rose-Ackerman of Yale University also established the link between corruption and growth: “Countries that are less corrupt have higher growth rates, have higher levels of GDP, and have higher levels on the Human Development Index of the United Nations.”
Just like the obsolete dinosaurs, corruption should disappear because in the new economy of greater transparency, accountability, and strong institutions — corrupt practices and betrayal of public trust are not exactly in synch with the liberating impact of modern technology.
Both the IMF and the World Bank institutionalize their concerns about corruption in their country reports and consultations. It is imperative that principles of transparency and accountability characterize governance across the whole range of membership of these global bodies.
Now driving the momentum to bring the fight against corrupt practices in the public sector to a higher pitch are innovations in new technology that have become widely accessible. They are extremely promising.
For example, private technology company Bitfury Group is ministering to the needs of the Republic of Georgia for a system of land registration using blockchain technology. Blockchain technology offers a database system that automatically records transactions as well as an exchange system for both money and information. This is anti-corruption because records are encrypted and warehoused in computers in different locations so they cannot be altered or stolen. Records are permanently available. There are no folders to squirrel away, or disks to copy and erase.
The Fund also noted the contribution of Dublin-based AID:Tech that developed a platform for both charitable institutions that solicit and distribute charitable contributions, and government departments that receive taxpayers’ money and dispense it for social welfare. This could be very useful to our own Department of Social Welfare Development for their periodic disbursement of cash transfers. The idea is to ensure the integrity of both receipt and disbursement of donated funds and public money.
Another possible use for blockchain is securing digital storage of documents. Signatura, a blockchain-based platform for signing and notarizing documents among multiple people, turned out extremely useful in validating financial disclosures of public officials. Forms are made visible to the public and cannot be altered. A procurement platform has also been devised called Teneris that can be used by both firms and governments to solicit bids from potential suppliers, and which could discourage bribery and bid rigging.
With all these public goods of innovative technology, the Fund launched the Anti-Corruption Challenge during the 2019 World Bank-IMF Annual Meetings. This initiative aims to support the development of new and innovative approaches to effect behavioral change and increase transparency against poor governance and corruption. The Fund’s initiative received sponsorship from the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs with MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab as technical partner. Seed funding was extended to the qualifying entries.
After two years and 100 proposals from 30 countries, during this year’s Annual Meetings, the outcome was very impressive. Four winners were announced in the second segment of the “New Economy Forum: Fighting Corruption with Technology.”
The winning proposals demonstrate that technology has truly come of age in fighting corruption and improving governance. Today’s pandemic challenge has made it even clearer that technology could be pandemic-proof, and very potent against bad governance. Big data, data mining, blockchain, and other digital innovations could help achieve greater transparency and accountability, and avoid corruption.
Which were the winning proposals?
Team 1: “Joining the Dots with Public Officials: Cross-Matching Beneficial Ownership and Financial Disclosure Data to Identify Red Flags.”
Team 2: “Public Procurement Corruption Risks: Harnessing Big Data for Better Fiscal Governance and Growth.”
Team 3: “Optimizing the Detection of Beneficial Ownership of High-Risk Firms in Brazil”
Team 4: “Enhancing Transparency in Wage Bill Practices: Leveraging Blockchain”
Team 1’s output could be very useful in piercing through corporate veils to establish beneficial ownership with the red flags from public officials’ financial disclosures. In the Philippines, through open data source, data analytics, and machine learning technology, it might be possible to see whether the declared Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALN) of public officials are consistent with their corporate exposure through beneficial ownership.
Team 2 recognized that government data are fragmented and available only in silos. Through big data technology, data granularization might be possible by government entity, by specific contract, and by individual contractor. Real-time tracking of a corruption index will help establish the identity of possible favored cronies and pricing in procurement. This is expected to lead to better policy scenarios and reduction of the cost of corruption. With something like this in various government departments involved in infra projects, we should be seeing less roads that lead to nowhere, and more durable avenues and bridges serving municipalities and barangays regardless of political parties.
Team 3 was contextualized in Brazil and aimed at creating a solid and actionable tool for automating and optimizing the identification of potential beneficial owners of high-risk firms in Brazil. We have many of these in the Philippines. With great amount of open data source, the Team suggested the use of data science and operational research tools to integrate large data sets, developing algorithms and creating decision support systems.
Team 4 presented the project aimed at assisting public administration and finance in small economies to reduce corrupt wage bill practices by deploying blockchain solutions. Key product capabilities could be identified, user stories could be developed. Blockchain technology creates a permanent trail of transactions to establish the complete traceability of every transaction by verifying identity, registering assets, and tracking transactions, functionalities that are critical in combatting illicit trades and money laundering.
Technology can therefore be empowering and a possible safeguard against impunity. Without any safeguard, as Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchu Tum correctly pointed out, “impunity becomes the very foundation upon which systems of corruption are built.” To achieve the ultimate end of defeating corruption, people should be assured that there are ways of changing such a withering system.
Using technology is definitely one of them.
Diwa C. Guinigundo is the former deputy governor for the Monetary and Economics Sector, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP). He served the BSP for 41 years. In 2001-2003, he was alternate executive director at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC. He is the senior pastor of the Fullness of Christ International Ministries in Mandaluyong.
The commedia dell’arte (comedy of art) was a dramatic form that developed in 16th century Italy that eventually spread throughout Europe. It had stock characters and a predictable plot line.
The closest Philippine equivalent was the moro-moro, which, like the commedia, is no longer staged anywhere. Occasionally, however, the term is used as a metaphor to describe something meant to deceive the public into thinking that a real drama is taking place, with a cast of characters engaged in a conflict, contest or contention the outcome of which seems nearly impossible to predict.
A moro-moro, however, has a predetermined ending. Devised by the friar orders during the Spanish colonial period to convince the Indios that Christianity saves not only the soul but also the flesh, it stereotyped Muslims by depicting them as the violence-prone but inevitable losers in confrontations with conquistadores and Christian converts.
In the same category of manipulation and deceit are the tactics this country’s politicians, their public relations operators, and their so-called “parties” have raised to the level of bad art. They devise all sorts of shadow plays to depict themselves as the champions and saviors of the masses, as the harbingers of change to erase perceptions that what they are in politics for is self-aggrandizement, and, in total opposition to their commitment to keeping things the way they have always been, as exponents of modernization and national development.
It’s an unending process that goes on before, during, and after the every-three-year campaigns for public office this country is cursed with. With the complicity of much of print, broadcast, and online media, those who value only their own lives and private interests paint themselves as fathers of the country. Those who have never in their entire self-serving lives cared about the sufferings of the Filipino poor re-invent themselves as the epitomes of solicitous concern for the powerless and dispossessed.
All that has been going on since the Commonwealth era. But as the May 2022 elections near, the country is witnessing the re-staging of the 2015-2016 playbook of deception that was so successful in enabling a provincial despotism that would have otherwise passed into contempt to gain national power.
It begins with the supposed multiplicity of “oppositionist” individuals and groups whose own statements and actions are fast exposing them as likely regime distractions and misleaders fielded to confuse the electorate and divide the votes of the pro-democracy and reform-minded sectors of the population.
Together with this ploy of chaos and confusion is the game that the Duterte camp has again launched. It is to keep the electorate and those truly opposed to the current tyranny of incompetence and corruption guessing as to who exactly it is going to field for President and Vice-President in 2022.
As if to mock its own processes and to trivialize the elections as no more than a mindless charade, the Duterte wing of the PDP-Laban suddenly certified the candidacy for president of former Philippine National Police (PNP) chief and lead implementor of the regime’s deadly “war on drugs” Senator Ronald “Bato” de la Rosa who filed his Certificate of Candidacy (COC) during the final hours of the Oct. 8 deadline.
PDP-Laban had earlier announced its choices for the country’s first two elective posts as Duterte gofer Christopher “Bong” Go and Rodrigo Duterte himself. Go later said he refused the nomination and would not run for president, as did Mr. Duterte’s daughter Sara. After weeks of declaring his intention to run for vice-president, Mr. Duterte again announced his supposed intention to retire from politics as he has a number of times said in the past.
Into this hodgepodge of uncertainty has also been added the candidacy for president of Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. who has similarly filed a COC for that post.
But because the Omnibus Election Code and Commission on Elections (Comelec) rules allow anyone to substitute for those who have filed COCs either because they’ve died or have decided to withdraw their candidacies, only after Nov. 15 — by December, according to the Comelec — will the citizenry finally know who exactly is running for which post.
Sara Duterte could substitute for De la Rosa — who in fact told the media that it would be “a good thing” — despite her filing a COC for the post of mayor of Davao City that she currently occupies. But there is also the possibility that she could end up as Marcos Junior’s VP running mate, given the majority of the electorate’s supposed preference for either as Presidential candidate.
At the root of this political and governance mess is the total absence of any distinction between the alleged political parties in the Philippines. The various groups behind this or that candidate, with the exception of the 1Sambayan coalition, could support, and have done so in the past, any aspirant for public office whatever his or her views, ideology, or programs — or lack of all three — may be. So interchangeably the same are they that they have even adopted each other’s candidates as “guests” in their slates.
There is nothing surprising about those who seem to be oppositionists and reformists’ turning out to be neither, and who are apparently in the game solely for power for power’s sake, or to support the goal of staying in power indefinitely of the regime they pretend to be critical of. But they’re nevertheless thought to be alternatives to the rule of the Duterte clique.
The old PDP-Laban was an exception to the surfeit of political groups that are different only in name rather than principle. Initially separate parties, both PDP (Partido Demokratiko Pilipino) and Laban (Lakas ng Bayan) were founded on, and were committed to, the need to combat the Marcos dictatorship and restore democratic rule. They merged in 1983 on the basis of those principles. But the merger has since become the very antithesis of its tradition of opposition to tyranny and commitment to democratization.
One would have hoped that as in the Marcos martial law years there would arise a number of groups contesting and challenging the current dispensation on the basis of principle and national interest, or that some existing “political parties” would change enough to do the same.
But only the 1Sambayan coalition has emerged to do precisely that during the present crisis. It is quite appropriately supporting the candidacy for president of Vice-President Maria Leonor “Leni” Robredo who is running on a clear platform of competently containing the COVID-19 pandemic, reviving the economy, restoring the democratization process, and putting an end to, and preventing the rise of, another Marcos-type tyranny.
Equally committed to the same principles is her vice-presidential running mate, Francisco “Kiko” Pangilinan, whose record as congressman and senator attests to his adherence to the rule of law and respect for human rights.
This is the one bright development in these evil times. It could enable the electorate to navigate its way through the turbulent waters of confusion and deceit that the oligarchy, its clones, cronies, and surrogates have let loose in furtherance of their self-serving ends that have brought this country to near-irreparable ruin.
What is going on in these isles is far from being a comedy. It is a tragedy in which nearly everyone suffers and dies at the end. Hopefully the clear alternative to this chamber of horrors can convince the majority or more of the electorate enough for it to prevail in 2022.
Luis V. Teodoro is on Facebook and Twitter (@luisteodoro).
Controversies whirl about like wild hurricanes. We are bombarded incessantly with nerve wracking news (real and fake) on social media — the health crisis with the rising numbers, the lockdown levels, the lists of confusing pros and antis. We listen to and watch the chaotic blunders in the political scene. There are scandals and exposés.
Due to the bad economic situation, people have lost their jobs. Students cannot enroll because they do not have funds for tuition fees. Those who manage to study online have difficulties adjusting.
There are natural disasters — earthquakes, typhoons, eruptions, floods, and environmental pollution.
People are anxious, depressed, desperate, paranoid, grieving. There are so many serious cases of mental and psychological disorders across the generations and suicides among the youth. The constant threat of child abuse is real.
We are caught in a nightmare of a perfect storm.
In the confusing, stressful frenzy, one is pulled apart by opposing forces. Amidst the spinning and the churning, one could become catatonic — a zombie walking through a surreal dark tunnel, searching for the light.
One needs quiet time — to calm the restless spirit — to discern, to pray and make big changes.
Sir Winston Churchill once wrote, “Change is the master key. A man can wear out a particular part of his mind by continually using it and tiring it… It is enough to merely to switch off the lights which play upon the main and ordinary field of interest; a new field of interest must be illuminated. It is no use to tell the mental muscles ‘I will lie down and think of nothing.’ The mind keeps busy just the same.”
An American psychologist warned, “Worry is a spasm of emotion; the mind catches hold of something and will not let it go.”
Human beings are classified into three groups. Those who are toiled to death, those who are worried to death, and those who are bored to death. Rational and useful people belong to two classes: “Those whose work is work and pleasure is pleasure… and those whose work and pleasure are one.”
Every human being needs an outlet — physical and spiritual — to express himself. Combining diverse activities — sports, hobbies, and cultural activities can effect a restorative change in rhythm. The shift in focus and effort provides an interesting depth and contrasting texture in one’s life.
Because of all the restrictions, we have very few options in isolation. A positive attitude plus the basics for healthy living — sunlight, exercise, meditation, a good diet, vitamins, and sleep. The virtual and/or physical connection with family and caring friends.
We should revitalize and nurture ourselves by turning off the noise. Switch from rational left brain and turn on the imaginative right brain. Expand the mind and enhance the spiritual aspect of one’s life. We need to wander away for a while… to forget worrying.
Here are some inspiring thoughts on life. May they provide insights to touch the heart and uplift the spirit.
“Our lives are like a candle in the wind.” — Carl Sandburg
“Where there is love, there is life.” — Mohandas K. Gandhi
“Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.” — Marie Curie
“The great art of life is sensation. To feel that we exist, even in pain.” — Lord Byron
“To love is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist. That is all.” — Oscar Wilde
“The truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it.” — Pearl S. Buck
“Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create that fact.” — Henry James
“Our life is what our thoughts make it.” — Marcus Aurelius
“The great goal of life is living in agreement with nature.” — Zeno
“You make a living by what we get. But we make a life by what we give.” — Winston Churchill
“Live your life and forget your age.” — Norman Vincent Peal
“A useless life is an early death.” — Goethe
“In three words I have summed up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.” — Robert Frost
Maria Victoria Rufino is an artist, writer and businesswoman. She is president and executive producer of Maverick Productions.
CHRISTOPHER LEE and Roger Moore in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
You’ve probably heard by now that the Bar exams was moved to next year. After it was canceled last year. And with the longer time for study came the many inspiring statements from everywhere, of going for “greatness,” to study with “purpose” yet with “compassion.” Essentially, it exhorts students to be “confidently beautiful but with a heart.” Or something like it.
This made me think of the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun. In the routine briefing scene, M informed Bond that the villain Scaramanga was out to kill him. It was at this point that something piqued my interest: rather than be sympathetic or solicitous towards Bond, M actually told him to either resign or take a sabbatical because, as he put it, he just can’t afford to jeopardize any mission.
When Bond suggests going after Scaramanga instead, M does not praise or give encouragement to Bond. M just dismisses him gruffly. Later in the movie, when something goes wrong, rather than tell Bond everything is OK, to forget it and move on, M cold-bloodedly (and quite famously) tells Bond: “l almost wish that Scaramanga had a contract on you.”
Now, all this is rather interesting because if M had done that to a present-day Bond, who’d likely be a tattooed 20- or 30-something, Bond would run to Instagram (or tweet about “the darkness”), post a selfie of his abs and his unappreciated-by-the-boss look, complain how empty life is, and then — after getting hundreds of FB “likes” — go out and buy a soy latte.
Which reminds me of another marvelous M quote: “Christ, I miss the Cold War!”
Michael Jordan says it best: “A lot of kids today need reinforcement. They need a pat on the back. Back in those days, if you didn’t get the pat, you better pat yourself and keep moving.”
I remember a young lawyer years ago whom I assigned to prepare a brief. The next day saw his work to be completely unsatisfactory and was told so. He replied defensively to “give him a break” as he “worked all night on it and hasn’t slept yet.” It was at that point that I went ballistic. After all, it was still sloppy work!
A lawyer friend working in the HR department of a multinational company: “Just tell any 20-something nowadays, no matter how gentle, of how he or she needs to improve, and you get an HR complaint like clockwork.”
The words of a famous fictional curmudgeon come to mind — Gregory House, MD: “I’m sure this goes against everything you’ve been taught but right and wrong do exist. Just because you don’t know what the right answer is, maybe there’s even no way you could know what the right answer is, doesn’t make your answer right or even okay. It’s much simpler than that. It’s just plain wrong.”
A lot think that students nowadays need to be treated with kid gloves. A little push, a little pressure, and you either get a defensive, sulking student (or a crying wreck) or somebody who’ll organize a petition for a change in lecturers. This should be resisted.
Things have become so soft that law school recitations can’t even simulate legal practice back and forths. As if trial work will be any different. While I’m not advocating a return to the old days when law or medical school recitations got to the point of actual harassment, nevertheless, there is merit in exerting as much pressure on students, all students.
Why? Again Gregory House. When he was asked to lecture and a student started complaining that “You know, it’s kind of hard to think when you’re in our face like this…,” House derisively cuts him off: “Yeah? You think it’s going to be easier when you’ve got a real patient really dying?”
To be honest: I’d rather have a business, medical, or law student have his feelings badly hurt than have a person in the real world lose his livelihood, his freedom, or his life just because a kid couldn’t grow up knowing how to handle pressure or failures.
In the superb “Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy” (by Tim Urban, Wait But Why and Huffington Post, September 2013), which pinpointed to the logical conclusion of Baby Boomer narcissism transmutating itself to their progeny (“the generation born between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s”) that “they’re special.” Unfortunately, one should only feel special after having done something to deserve it. Actual merit is a good thing.
This rubs against many of today’s youth’s feelings when their expectations are crushed against reality: “the funny thing about the world is that it turns out to not be that easy of a place, and the weird thing about careers is that they’re actually quite hard. Great careers take years of blood, sweat and tears to build.”
Or, as Valmont would say, rather presciently really, kids today “don’t need help, they need hindrances.”
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
The Philippines has the highest proportion of female investors worldwide, with Filipinas also accounting for half of the total stock market accounts in the local bourse.
Other countries cited by BrokerChooser as having high levels of female investors included the Caribbean islands Barbados (39%) and Trinidad and Tobago (38%), as well as the Pacific Island state Papua New Guinea (38%).
The 2021 findings reflect earlier data from eToro, a multi-asset investment platform, that showed the Philippines had the highest percentage of female traders in the said platform’s global list.
BusinessWorld reported in March 2020 that over 26% of eToro’s Asian investors were Filipinas, as compared to 18.09% of female investors in Taiwan, and 17.15% in Hong Kong.
Asian women were also better represented than their European counterparts, who made up 11.18% of eToro’s registered users.
Meanwhile, in the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE), the percentage of female investors inched up to49.20% in 2020from 48.40% in 2018. The percentage of online female investors has likewise hovered at the 50.60% mark for the same time period.
“All the financial literacy programs we do in PSE is our contribution to help make financial inclusion a reality,” he said. “We want more Filipinos to reap the rewards of their hard work through investing.”
Oct 14 (Reuters) – Southeast Asian foreign ministers will discuss excluding Myanmar junta chief Min Aung Hlaing from a coming regional summit at a meeting on Friday, according to sources with knowledge of the matter.
Several members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have strongly criticised the military government’s inaction on a five-point plan that it agreed to with the bloc in April, centring on dialogue among all parties, humanitarian access and an end of hostilities.
Friday’s previously unscheduled, virtual meeting will be hosted by current ASEAN chair, Brunei, said the sources based in ASEAN member countries, who included a diplomat and another government official.
Myanmar‘s military spokesman Zaw Min Tun did not respond to calls seeking comment on the meeting. Brunei’s foreign ministry did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Erywan Yusof, the bloc’s special envoy to Myanmar, last week confirmed some members had been “deep in discussions” about not inviting the coup leader to the Oct. 26-28 virtual summit.
He said the junta’s lack of commitment to the process was “tantamount to backtracking”. Erywan’s office declined to comment on Friday’s meeting.
Myanmar, with a long history of military dictatorship and international allegations of systematic human rights abuses, has been ASEAN‘s trickiest issue since the group was formed in 1967, testing the limits of its unity and its policy of non-interference.
The United Nations, United States and China, among others, have backed ASEAN‘s efforts to find a diplomatic solution, but pressure on the group has mounted in recent months, with some critics calling for tougher measures to respond to Myanmar‘s recalcitrance.
More than 1,100 people have been killed since the coup, according to the United Nations, many during a crackdown by security forces on strikes and protests allied with Aung San Suu Kyi’s ousted government.
Erywan said this week he was in consultations with parties in Myanmar, does not take sides or political positions and looks forward to a visit.
Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tin, in written remarks dated Wednesday, said the envoy would not be allowed to meet Suu Kyi because she is charged with crimes. – Reuters
BEIJING – China’s September factory gate inflation rose to a record on soaring commodity prices, but weak demand capped consumer inflation, forcing policymakers to walk a tight rope between supporting the economy and further stoking producer prices.
The producer price index (PPI) rose 10.7% from a year earlier in September, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Thursday, the biggest rise since the bureau started compiling the data in 1996. Economists in a Reuters poll had expected a 10.5% rise, after a 9.5% increase in August.
Producer prices have risen due to output curbs caused by a power crunch at a home and a months-long global commodity price rally. But Chinese businesses have been reluctant to pass on the higher costs to local customers due to already soft orders.
Data on Thursday showed consumer inflation eased last month, weighed by weak demand for goods from clothing to household appliances, as well as a decline in volatile food prices.
Tang Jianwei, chief macroeconomics analyst at BOCOM, said China’s mixed inflation picture posed a dilemma for the country’s monetary authorities.
“On one side, the relatively weak domestic demand requires a certain degree of easing to support a recovery in demand and on the other side, record high PPI restricts the room of easing,” said Tang Jianwei, chief macroeconomics analyst at BOCOM.
Underpinning producer prices, global commodity prices surged in recent months driven by increased demand for coal and metals as economies around the world reopened after being shut due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Labour shortages and transportation bottlenecks have also lifted prices globally.
Adding to the price pressures in China, widespread power cuts in September disrupted output across the cement, steel，and aluminum industries, and even halted production at numerous factories including many supplying big global brands such as Apple. China’s power crunch has stemmed from a coal shortage amid efforts to meet decarbonisation goals and record prices of the fuel.
Prices rose in 36 out of 40 industrial sectors last month, up from 32 sectors in August, the data showed. Prices in mining and coal jumped 74.9%, up sharply from August’s 57.1% rise.
But the consumer price index rose 0.7% year-on-year in September, slowing from a 0.8% increase in August and below a forecast for a 0.9% rise in the Reuters poll.
“Bottlenecks in the supply side continue to exist and the demand was weak so producers cannot pass through the costs. This is a painful process the Chinese economy has to go through,” said Zhou Hao, senior EM economist at Commerzbank.
China’s economic growth is expected to slow to 5.2% year-on-year in the third quarter from 7.9% in April-June, a recent Reuters poll showed.
MEASURES
Rising price pressures come even as Beijing has taken a raft of measures to curb record-high coal prices and ease the country’s power crunch, including urging coal miners to boost output and manage electricity demand at industrial plants.
The government said last week that it will allow coal-fired power prices to fluctuate by up to 20% from base levels, a loosening of previous limits.
ANZ expect the move to boost the headline PPI by 2 percentage points in the near term, while the impact on CPI will be a mere 0.5 percentage point.
Tang said the chances of an interest rate cut or a reduction in banks’ reserve requirements this year were low, adding authorities would likely keep interbank liquidity reasonably ample through structural adjustments instead.
The People’s Bank of China has kept its benchmark rate for corporate and household loans unchanged for 17 months, while it last lowered the reserve requirements in mid-July.
Core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, reached 1.2% in September, unchanged from August.
However, in a sign that consumer inflation is not indefinitely immune to broader price pressures, Foshan Haitian, China’ largest manufacturer of soy sauce, said this week it plans to raise prices by as much as 7% from Oct. 25 due to rising costs for raw materials, transportation and energy. – Reuters
