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House OK’s six of 15 priority bills before holiday break

THE HOUSE of Representatives approved six out of 15 priority bills that President Rodrigo R. Duterte had outlined in his 2019 state of the nation address before Congress goes on a Christmas break.

These are the measures that will postpone the May 2020 village and youth elections, create a Department of Overseas Filipinos, simplify taxation for passive income earners, lower corporate income tax, standardize government salaries and set up a Department of Disaster Resilience.

Still unapproved are bills that will reinstate the death penalty for henious crimes, create a magna carta for villages, trim the government bureaucracy, establish a Water department and modernize fire protection.

Also pending are measures that will rationalize land use, allot coconut levy funds to farmers, boost national defense and require students to undergo military training.

Both chambers of Congress also ratified the P4.1-trillion national budget for 2020, which House Majority Leader and Leyte Rep. Ferdinand Martin G. Romualdez said was “one of the highlights” of both chambers.

“We were able to steer the approval of the 2020 national budget in record time through creative initiatives never before experienced in the House of Representatives,” he said.

Mr. Romualdez also cited the swift passage of tax reform measures that seek to promote the country as a “viable investment destination.”

The House of Representatives also passed on third and final reading a bill lowering the retirement age of government workers to 56 from 60 years. — Genshen L. Espedido

Davao City Health Office gets DoH funding support for own building, health centers

THE DAVAO City Health Office (CHO) will be having its own building with 75% of the construction cost to be covered by the Department of Health (DoH). The city council gave authority last week to Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio to sign a memorandum of agreement with the national agency for several key projects, including the P60-million CHO building. CHO is currently renting space at a building across the city hall. The other projects include purchase of 16 ambulances, each costing about P2.5 million, and the repair of three health centers with a total budget of P3 million. — Carmelito Q. Francisco

Pototan: Town of rice and lights

EVERY CHRISTMAS season for over two decades now, the town of Pototan, considered as the rice granary of Panay island, puts on a grand lights display that has also earned it the title as the region’s Christmas capital. Mayor Rafael Enrique P. Lazaro narrates that the tradition was actually started back in the 1960s by then Mayor Manuel “Quedo” Parcon. “During that time, he installed colored bulbs all over the town to spread the joyous spirit among the residents of Pototan,” Mr. Lazaro said in a phone interview. But an energy crisis during the Martial Law years under Marcos in the 1970s forced the local government to give up the annual adornment. It was revived in the 1980s and in 1997, the tradition was institutionalized through the establishment of the festival called Iwag, a multi-layered Hiligaynon word that means “to light.” “For the festival to be sustained and institutionalized, the local government and the private sector worked together and came up with Iwag Festival. Since 1997 up to now, the festival has been going on for 22 years already,” Mr. Lazaro said. Aside from the lights display, the two-week festival, on this year from Dec. 15 to Jan. 2, features nightly shows, a food fair, and a carnival. “The festival is really one of our major economic activities because it provides livelihood to the vendors, tricycle drivers and the residents of Pototan. Through the bazaars and agri-fairs, we can also promote our products,” he said. Pototan, located about 30 kilometers north of Iloilo City, is classified as a first-class municipality with agriculture as its main industry. About 65% of its over 9,700-hectare land area is used as rice farms. — Emme Rose S. Santiagudo

Tropical storm Ursula intensifies as it nears Visayas, Mindanao

TROPICAL STORM Phanfone, which will have the local name Ursula when it enters the Philippine area possibly on Monday morning, has intensified with maximum sustained winds of 65 kilometers per hour (km/h) and gustiness of up to 80 km/h, weather agency PAGASA reported on Sunday. Meanwhile, the low pressure area in Mindanao has dissipated as of Sunday morning. Ursula is seen to make landfall between the Eastern Visayas and Caraga areas on Tuesday, Christmas eve. It is expected to traverse the Visayas islands and affect the central to northern parts of Mindanao as well as southern Luzon, including Metro Manila during the week. The tropical storm’s center was located 1,365 km east of Mindanao as of 10 a.m. Sunday.

Water woes

Second of two parts

This continues the discussion started on Dec. 16 on aspects of the Concession Agreements (CA), which have been tagged as “onerous” and “grossly disadvantageous” by the administration.

2. On the supposed illegal extension of the contract to 2037

The extension of the original contract is allowed under the CA and by law. This had been the subject of analysis and review in government for over a year in 2008/09: at the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) all the way to the Board; by the Department of Finance under Secretary Gary Teves, assisted by Undersecretary Jeremiah Paul and Director Soledad Cruz; by the Department of Justice under Secretary Raul Gonzales and Government Corporate Counsel Al Agra. It was also presented to the full cabinet and went through public consultations before final approval by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

The rationale for the extension is compelling:

a.) New waste water requirements set by the Clean Water Act and later by Supreme Court mandamus requiring 100% or full sewerage coverage for the concessions, and thus more investments for these;

b.) Tariff rate impacts had to be mitigated. By extending the contract through 2037, there is a longer period of recovery of these long life investments, and thus lower annual tariff adjustments.

3. On the recoverability of the corporate income taxes from tariffs:

Much ink and paper have been spent on this subject in the course of the arbitrations.

Let me strip it down to the basics.

a.) All firms in any business, be it burgers or water service, look at after-tax returns when they decide to invest.

b.) Considering this, the framers of the Concession Agreement allowed the investors to explicitly recover business taxes, as well as capital maintenance and investment expenditures efficiently and prudently incurred, and payments corresponding to debt service on the MWSS loans and concessionaire loans as part of its expenditures.

And for these to earn a rate of return after tax that is comparable to those of operators of long-term infrastructure concession arrangements in other countries having a credit standing similar to that of the Philippines. This rate of return, called “Appropriate Discount Rate” or ADR under the concession agreement, is a weighted average of the cost of borrowing and the return to equity, is REVIEWED AND RESET EVERY FIVE YEARS (emphasis mine) and arrived at using internationally accepted methodologies.

c.) If now the MWSS/ government changes its mind, as it did after 16 years of the concession agreement, or as a result of actions of courts past or prospective, and would not allow for corporate income taxes to be recovered via tariffs, then government is obligated to restore it in some other way to be faithful to (b). This was the verdict of the last arbitration panel that heard the Manila Water case.

Item (b) was how it was presented to the bidders in 1996, how it was implemented over the years until 2013, and how it was represented to the bidders again in 2007 when the west zone concession was rebid.

This was thus the basis upon which they gave their low water tariff bids. As the CEO of MWSS during the Ramos administration explained recently in his testimony at a hearing chaired by Senator Grace Poe: “income tax as part of the expenditures that the Concessionaires may recover from MWSS led to bids at lower water rates.” In the case of Manila Water, the bid in 1996 was around P2.32 per cubic meter vs the then prevailing MWSS rate of P8.78 per cubic meter.

Indeed, until the last administration (Aquino 2) came in, it was very clear to those appointed to the MWSS and the Regulatory Office that the ADR was an after-tax rate of return. It was also very clear to regulators and government authorities before the Aquino 2 administration that during the rate-rebasing process, there are only two ways to give the concessionaires an agreed upon after-tax rate of return. One is to use what is stipulated in the concession agreement, i.e., an after-tax rate of return and include the corporate income tax in recoverable expenditures. The other is to use a before-tax (and therefore higher) rate of return and exclude corporate income taxes from the set of recoverable expenditures.

The second methodology was not given as an option in the concession agreement but is equivalent to the first, i.e., it can be shown numerically that the two methodologies will result in the same tariff. Hence, if government now wants to remove corporate income taxes from allowable recoverable expenditures, the simple solution is to adopt the second methodology from hereon. This is similar to how other regulatory regimes do it.

4. On termination

This leads me to a final point, the consequences of a unilateral termination of the contract. Not being a lawyer, and based only on my recall of PPP (Public-Private Partnership) contracts in general, MAGA, or material adverse government action, obliges government to indemnify the private parties for actions it takes that harm, prejudice, or impair the rights and reduce the benefits of investors, i.e. shareholders and creditors. In this respect, the Performance Undertaking of the Republic is key — it guarantees performance of MWSS in accordance with the CA. The CA is truly the only real asset of the two concessionaires and upon which creditors rely; their loans do not enjoy concessionaires’ parent company guarantees.

Thus, if Government disregards its obligations under the CA, banks need to protect deposits by suspending disbursements of loans to the concessionaires. This will inevitably disrupt construction of projects meant to address looming water shortages.

Down the road, it will compound the burden on the tax paying public of future snowballing arbitration awards. And much worse, it will devalue the worth of government’s contractual commitments.

This cannot but prejudice government’s Build, Build, Build program at a time when it has been gaining momentum. Besides infrastructure PPP, all other local and foreign investments that depend on the stability of government’s commitments will be hurt. Already we have seen values of shares drop sharply in the stock market, not just of concessionaires, but all firms that are highly exposed to political and regulatory risks, thus dampening investment appetite.

This is most ill timed. Now that opportunities are being opened up by the regional dispersion of foreign direct investments (FDI) due to the US-China trade wars, and in light of notable achievements of the Duterte administration in nurturing a more investment-friendly environment to create more jobs and improve our people’s lives. These wins include the robust macroeconomic conditions, 30 places rank improvement in the IFC World Bank ease of doing business index, wide ranging reforms in the tax system, the passage of the Bangsa Moro Act, the Rice Tariffication Act, the Ease of Doing Business Act, and many more. We might as well also say goodbye to the aspired for A credit rating by 2022 of Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III and Central Bank Governor Benjamin Diokno.

Beyond these, I shudder to think about the future of the water system in Manila should the government continue on this termination course. Heaven deliver us from a repeat of the pre-1997 water service quality courtesy of MWSS. Their continuing decades-long failure to develop any new raw water source, even to start on a new one, hardly inspires renewed confidence. (Those of us old enough can already hear echoes of the plaintive cries of the ’90s — “Tubig!”)

Let me conclude with a quote from a letter of President Fidel Ramos to President Rodrigo Duterte counselling prudence, as reported in the newspapers:

“To achieve all this, the private sector mobilized funding from both foreign and local sources depending on the word of the Philippine government that the essential conditions of adherence to the sanctity of contracts and rule of law must be observed, These are the pillars that hold together any agreement, be it between governments and/or the government and the private sector. Our word must be our bond.”

 

Romeo L. Bernardo was finance undersecretary during the Cory Aquino and Fidel Ramos administrations. He serves as a director in several listed company boards, including BPI and Globe Telecom, sister companies of Manila Water.

romeo.lopez.bernardo@gmail.com

Christmas 2019

Christmas is about love and peace. And hope.

Pulse Asia has a nationwide survey about the holiday season. For the past two years, the survey outcome has shown that Filipinos are overwhelmingly filled with hope. In December 2018, 91% of Filipinos said they were hopeful for the new year. In the survey conducted in December 2019, 93% of Filipinos responded that they face 2020 with hope. What is striking this year is that among the poorest of the poor (Class E), the number of those who have expressed hope increased significantly by 15 percentage points — from 76% in 2018 to 91% in 2019.

A less impressive but still encouraging outcome is that 48% of Filipinos said that this Christmas will be more prosperous for their family, while 11% of Filipinos said that they will be poorer, compared to last year.

An older survey from Social Weather Stations (SWS) — for the third quarter of 2019 — had a similar outcome. Those whose lives improved for the year made up 36% of adult Filipinos, but 25% said their lives worsened. Related to this, 46% of Filipinos expected their lives to improve in the next 12 months, while five percent expected their quality of life to worsen.

The Pulse Asia and SWS surveys yield similar results although one may note that perception during the Christmas season is brighter.

The self-rating or perception is consistent with the latest poverty estimates derived from the 2018 Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES). The FIES shows a significant drop in the number of poor. The number of poor people as a percentage of the total population fell from 23.3% in 2015 to 16.6% in 2018. The sharp decline is equivalent to 6.7 percentage points, which happened in a short period of three years.

This was different from previous episodes of growth, a pattern of growth that was accompanied by a slow decrease in poverty incidence or worse, a rise in poverty incidence. The sustained growth since 2012 (marked by a growth rate of 6% and above) has made an impact on poverty. But it is not growth per se, but the quality of growth — featuring an increasing number of wage workers in the formal economy — that explains rising incomes and spending and hence faster poverty reduction.

From the FIES, one can also obtain the income factors that explain poverty reduction. It turns out that the domestic remittances of workers employed in urban areas to their families in rural areas principally account for reducing poverty. Government cash transfers and overseas remittances also alleviate poverty, but not as big as the impact of domestic remittances.

This suggests that further strengthening industry, specifically manufacturing, is the key to faster poverty reduction. What seems ironic though is that rural economic activities even worsen poverty. Agriculture has been stagnant for so long.

But there is hope for agriculture. It may seem counter-intuitive that the recent rice tariffication policy will help agriculture, particularly our rice farmers. To be sure, the consumers (which include many farmers who are net consumers of rice) are benefitting from the lower rice prices. On the other hand, the rice farmers have lost incomes in the face of the entry of imported rice, which is more efficiently produced. The challenge thus is how to achieve much higher productivity.

The previous regime of quantitative restrictions only made everyone complacent. However, the commitment to compensate farmers for losses and to pour additional resources to improve rice productivity in the Philippines will translate into benefits. The tariffication program compels the government and the rice producers to enable bigger reforms that will redound to the farmers.

The economy now has momentum. Successive reforms, particularly the comprehensive tax reform that has given government much space to address binding constraints like infrastructure and human development, will sustain the performance.

Still, we face serious problems along the way. Rule of law is undermined as shown by the President’s arbitrariness and disrespect for contract enforcement. (The threat to disregard the international arbitration award that Manila Water obtained and to scrap the agreements with the private water concessionaries is most chilling for investors.) This has an adverse consequence on poverty reduction since investor confidence is a necessary condition for quality growth.

Economic performance ultimately has to serve the poor. The Christmas season makes this message all the more relevant and pronounced.

Christmas is about hope, especially hope for our poor. That Jesus, son of God, was born in wretched conditions — being homeless and settling in a cold manger — is symbolic of his being one with the poor.

Let’s realize the hope of the people for a much better future. Ahon Laylayan, the call of Vice-President Leni Robredo, captures the call of the times.

This is the message of Christmas, exemplified in the life of Jesus — He who gave hope; he who became one with the masses, he whose incarnation symbolized salvation from spiritual and temporal poverty.

 

Filomeno S. Sta. Ana III coordinates the Action for Economic Reforms.

www.aer.ph

Whispering Hope for justice and peace

It is not likely that US President Donald Trump will have a Merry Christmas. On Dec. 18, the House of Representatives voted along party lines (232–196) to impeach Trump for criminal bribery and wire fraud charges as part of the abuse of power charge of an alleged quid pro quo deal with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, The New York Times reported the next day. Trump’s troubles started in September, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi initiated an impeachment inquiry presenting a whistleblower and alleging that Trump may have abused the power of the presidency by withholding military aid as a means of pressuring newly elected Zelensky to pursue investigations on Trump’s likely re-election rival Joe Biden and his son Hunter on their business dealings in Ukraine, and to investigate a conspiracy theory that Ukraine (not Trump’s friend Russia), was behind interference in the 2016 presidential election (NPR.org, Sept. 26, 2019). The US Senate, which is Republican-dominated, will make their decision on Trump’s impeachment in early 2020.

“Democracy requires that no one be above the law — a principle that’s most crucially applied to the holder of the most powerful office in the US government. Extreme abuse of power from the top of the government must be seen and treated as intolerable,” Norman Solomon of the Huffington Post wrote on Feb. 11, 2018, persistently reminded all of what all democratic citizens must hold foremost in mind and heart.

To affirm the collective and universal values of right and wrong, a special court of the Islamic government of Pakistan on Dec. 19 sentenced self-exiled former dictator (1999-2008) Pervez Musharraf to death in absentia for subverting the Constitution in 2007 by imposing emergency rule and sacking Supreme Court judges who refused to accept it (ABS-CBN, Dec. 20, 2019). The 169-page detailed judgement called on law enforcement agencies to bring Musharraf back to Pakistan and enforce the punishment, directing that if he dies before then, “his corpse be dragged to the D-Chowk (a square in front of the parliament building)… and hanged for three days,” the same news report said. The court also said all those who facilitated Musharraf’s escape from Pakistan in March 2016 should also be brought to justice.

Here in our country, conspirators, accomplices, even on-lookers who did not report the Maguindanao mass murder were included in the charges, together with the principals accused, mostly of the powerful Ampatuan clan. CNN Philippines, as with the other networks, said, “It is considered the worst election-related violence and the most gruesome attack against journalists in recent history — on Nov. 23, 2009, 58 lives perished, 32 of them were journalists.” As a consequence of the massacre, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) declared the Philippines as the most dangerous country in Southeast Asia for journalists, and sixth globally on the list of most murderous countries (ipsnews.net/2018/01).

Good that a “Merry Christmas” came to salve the wounded Filipino psyche on Thursday, Dec. 19, when Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 221 Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes found 43 accused in the massacre, including the three Ampatuan brothers Zaldy, Datu Andal, Jr, Anwar, Sr., and several members of the Ampatuan clan, guilty of 57 counts of murder. It was a happy relief for the relatives and loved ones of the victims, and for the Filipino people who have been desperately famished for assurances of justice prevailing in many high-profile, seemingly-obvious high crimes.

But the jubilation has not been complete. The ruling did not cover the 58th victim, Reynaldo Momay, whose body is missing to this day, and denied the Momay family’s claim for civil damages. The court also acquitted 56 accused, mostly police officers, who were released a day after the promulgation of judgment. Among the acquitted in absentia was Sajid Ampatuan, now an incumbent mayor of Shariff Saydona Mustapha town, whose guilt could not be proven “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

“Beyond reasonable doubt” is the same tidy legal metric that has decided lack of basis for yet another civil case filed by the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) on the Estate of Ferdinand Marcos, Imelda R. Marcos, Imelda R. Marcos Manotoc, Irene R. Marcos Araneta, Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr., and Constante Rubio… to recover at least P200 billion allegedly purloined from public coffers during their Marcos Sr.’s over two-decade rule. In its 58-page decision, the anti-graft court Sandiganbayan’s Fourth Division dismissed the forfeiture case due to the inability of the prosecution to prove the allegations against the Marcoses, the Inquirer of Dec. 16 reported. “This is the fifth civil case that was decided in 2019, with the Marcoses and their cronies winning in four and losing in one case,” the Inquirer noted. The anti-graft court had earlier dismissed Civil Case Nos. 0007, 0008, and 0034 which sought to recover from the former first family ill-gotten wealth amounting to P267.371 million, P1.052 billion, and P102 billion, respectively,” The Philippine Star of Dec. 17 added.

And then there is the shameful, unshakeable perception of the seeming unreliability of the justice system. The Philippine Star of March 15 reported that the Philippines submitted a formal notification of withdrawal from the ICC’s Rome Statute in March 2018, which had taken effect March 2019. What now of the reported “extrajudicial killings (EJK) that have been the chief human rights concern in the Philippines for many years and, after a sharp rise with the onset of the anti-drug campaign in 2016, continuing in 2018 with an average of six persons killed daily in operations against illegal drugs, according to the latest annual United States Department of State Country Reports on Human Rights Practices,” cited the Star.

In September, the United States Senate approved to prohibit the entry of Philippine government officials involved in the “politically motivated” detention of Sen. Leila De Lima. Malacañang called the panel’s approval of the amendment a “brazen attempt” to meddle in the country’s domestic affairs as it maintained that De Lima is “no prisoner of conscience,” the Star of Sept. 27 reported, quoting the reaction of Presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo: “It seeks to place pressure upon our independent institutions thereby effectively interfering with our nation’s sovereignty. It is an insult to the competence and capacity of our duly constituted authorities as such act makes it appear that this US Senate panel has the monopoly of what is right and just.”

Are we to be happy about the state of affairs in our country this Christmas, 2019? It will be the end of the decade in 2020. What 2018 leaves us is a “Whispering Hope” for justice and peace.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year (despite)!

 

Amelia H. C. Ylagan is a Doctor of Business Administration from the University of the Philippines.

ahcylagan@yahoo.com

Thank you Maynilad, Manila Water

After President Rodrigo Duterte lashed out at the two water companies that hold concession agreements (CA) with the government via the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) Regulatory Office (MWSS-RO) on Dec. 3, the stock prices of Manila Water (owned by Ayala) and companies that own Maynilad Water (MPIC, DMCI, a Japanese firm) suffered significant declines starting Dec. 4 (see Table 1).

Supporters and fanatics of the President echoed his tirade that both companies are abusive and engage in “economic sabotage.” Fake news, lousy and dishonest accusations. The public, the residents of Metro Manila and neighboring areas, have greatly benefitted from water privatization with higher, cleaner water connection direct to their houses. Let the numbers speak (see Table 2).

Two myths stand out in the heavily politicized water issue.

One, government interference in rate setting is “not allowed” in the CA. A flat out lie. In every step of rate setting, MWSS-RO and other agencies are involved: approval of tariff rates and schedules after public hearing, approval of auditing which expenditures are prudent and efficient, approval of cost of capital that the concessionaires will receive, and so on. Thanks Romy Bernardo for pointing these out in your article.

Two, the water rates are “onerous.” Say that again, purveyors of fake news and lies? In our latest water bill for November 2019 with 11 cubic meters consumption, the basic charge was P124.83, something like P11.35/cu.m. One cu.m. is 1,000 liters, or nearly five drums because one drum is 208 liters. My family take a bath daily, wash dishes, clothes, the floor, etc. and the water company charges us only P125 in one month — the price of one cup of coffee in Starbucks, etc. — and people call it “onerous,” “abusive”? Big lie.

This Christmas season, aside from celebrating the birth of Christ, we also express gratitude to friends, families and partners, and companies that make our life more modern, more comfortable. In this case, I say thank you, Maynilad Water and Manila Water. But no thanks to the President and his fanatics.

 

Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr. is the president of Minimal Government Thinkers

minimalgovernment@gmail.com

Celebrities and products

By Tony Samson

CELEBRITIES OFFER a simple marketing appeal in their billboard appearances. They are idolized by many and represent the aspirations of a targeted segment of consumers — I can also use the bank of this famous beauty queen and get the same treatment (without her talent fees).

Celebrity marketing has often been used with little regard to its effectiveness, using the same celebrities to peddle different products. Okay, maybe a skin whitener being endorsed by an actress still in her prime can convince a dark unknown to buy her product. If the capsule whitened her skin, it should do the same for everybody else, presuming that she uses the product she is recommending.

The celebrity shares her popularity and instant recognition to an unknown product. The brand then is supposed to acquire the same appeal she offers. There are attributes of her personality like youth, vivacity, commercial appeal, and chic that are deemed properties of the endorsed product. In advertising, this is called “brand affinity.”

The popularity of celebrity endorsements is clear with how they dominate billboards in major thoroughfares and store fronts. There could be a billboard index to measure both the talent fee and the awareness levels of a featured celebrity. The boxer, in his heyday of knockout wins, could endorse shampoos, muscle pain relievers, and energy drinks. It was the association with a “winner” that kept advertising offers coming. Still, when the winning stopped (in a dramatic fashion when kissing the mat without meaning to) so also did the billboard offers.

Curiously, other sports figures had not attracted the same big bucks for product endorsements. (Would any of the gold medalists in the recent SEA Games now merit billboard space?)

Another kind of endorser is the expert, or someone acting in this role. Is the one checking tartar deposit in your teeth as you come out of the mall a real dentist or an actor playing one? The ad does not specify so the company cannot be accused of misrepresentation. It is enough to make him look professional and possessed of white teeth himself.

Real experts can be endorsers too, even if not well known. These professionals, whose name and affiliation appear in small print below, are employed for products not intended for mass marketing like artificial limbs or in-vitro procedures. Some real practitioners are loath to recommend products that can have possible harmful effects.

Professional endorsements are only attractive for the specialist who has a stake in the company promoting the product like surgical enhancements. Cosmetic surgery celebrity endorsers may waive their talent fees in exchange for the treatment, except in gender change. They usually agree to a “before” and “after” type of format.

What about political endorsements by celebrities? Will dancing with a famous singer in a campaign TV ad boost awareness levels? Instead, before the allowed campaign period, it is the candidates themselves who pose as endorsers for products (ketchup) and advocacies. Here, it is not the ketchup or safe sex that gains marketing advantage but the endorser himself. The product may not even be available. The goal is to raise the profile of the endorser and allow him to skirt the restriction on the campaign period.

Also, there is a risk in celebrity marketing. The brands/images of both celebrity endorser and product become Siamese twins that sink or swim together, at least for a year. A reputational risk for the brand arises with an embarrassing sex video of the celebrity or some fraud attached to the product a hot celebrity has endorsed. The reputational risk affects both the product and its endorser.

It is instructive to realize that when we look for endorsers (or referrals) to guide us in a crisis, it is we who seek them out. When we need guidance in a health predicament to find the best approach or identify a practitioner, we seek find endorsements and guidance valuable.

Still, for everyday products and services, do celebrities really nudge our purchasing decision? Whether it is candidates or products being sold (and these two categories seem to employ the same marketing techniques) the talent fees driving the process make the endorsement dubious. Anyway, it is in the world of fake news and the trumpeting of success for an exorbitantly costly event that celebrities and products blend in… and thrive.

 

Tony Samson is Chairman and CEO, TOUCH xda.

ar.samson@yahoo.com

Christmas Wars 2019: Protests, Lawsuits and a Cup of Cheer

By Stephen L. Carter

WITH THE holiday season in full swing, it’s time for my own annual tradition — dispatches from the Christmas wars:

Over the years, this roundup has often featured battles over Nativity scenes on public property, and those skirmishes are still being bitterly fought. But this season has seen many of the fights move out of the courts and into church congregations, which have found themselves divided over what many perceive as a political — some might even say left-leaning — tilt in the way the scenes are crafted. (Think Baby Jesus floating in plastic-clogged water while the Three Wise Men drown; or Mary, Joseph and Jesus separated and kept in wire cages.) Useful fodder for theological disputes, to be sure, but, fortunately, not the subject of litigation.

Christmas displays are also making unhappy international news. In Hong Kong, the shopping malls have decided to avoid expensive and ostentatious Christmas decorations this year, for fear that pro-Democracy protestors will tear them down or even burn them. Elsewhere, the mayor of Strand, a municipality in Norway, has asked a local Pentecostal church to remove the Star of David from its public Christmas display, and replace it with a “traditional Christmas star,” on the ground that the former is “a national symbol both for the Jews and for the State of Israel.”

Plainly, both these battles are really over other issues. The Hong Kong story is simply sad; the Norway story is deeply troubling.

That’s not to say that there’s no been litigation in the US this year about Christmas displays on public property. In an Indiana case, the court went so far as to scrutinize the distance between the figurines representing Santa and the baby Jesus, as well as their relative size and arrangement in the display. That a judge might go into such detail is the predictable fruit of the strange hybrid strains the Supreme Court, in a series of impenetrably complex decisions, has sought to engineer into a single constitutional plant. (Sorry: Still wishing the New Yorker would bring back its old “block that metaphor” inserts.)

While we’re on the subject of Nativity scenes, in Parker County, Texas, an unknown woman was caught on video, stealing the figurine of the baby Jesus from a pricey lawn display. The owners of the house were sanguine: “Maybe somebody needs Jesus more than we do.”

Let’s go now to the true spirit of Christmas — the secular variety, anyway — to wit, the holiday boon enjoyed by retailers. The National Retail Federation estimates that the average consumer will spend over $1,000 during this season. Total consumer spending in the US during the holidays is expected to exceed $1 trillion.

A tiny corner of this shopping spree caused a ruckus in St. Charles, Missouri, where local store owners sued after the city erected barriers that narrowed a downtown street and eliminated some 100 parking spaces. The mayor justified the barriers as a safety measure, noting that Christmas crowds were spilling from the sidewalk into the street. The merchants complained that if people couldn’t park, they wouldn’t shop, and pointed to a precipitous drop in sales when the barriers went up on Black Friday weekend.

Early this month, a local judge ruled in favor of the retailers. The barriers will stay down. Still, the mayor had the last word. “I hope the merchants prosper,” he said. “I hope they do well, but I don’t want anyone hurt.”

The holiday season is also the season of streaming, and for the third year in a row, the Hallmark Channel, home of crowd-pleasing holiday fare about finding romance while trapped in an unexpected blizzard, earns a place in the column — this time due to its own bizarre misjudgment. Within the space of three days, the good people at Hallmark decided to drop a commercial featuring a same-sex wedding after complaints from traditional-values groups, then decided to reinstate the commercial after an online uproar. Hallmark executives might feel whipsawed, but the only real question is how in the name of Peace on Earth they failed to predict that cancelling the ad would provoke a fury on social media. Even if they reasoned that Hallmark viewers trend conservative, anybody who’s been paying attention should have foreseen this particular tsunami.

On the lighter side of streaming, this year I perused a number of lists of the best Christmas movies of all time. Most — including, for instance, Esquire, Vulture, and Rotten Tomatoes — correctly ranked It’s a Wonderful Life as number one. (No, no, this is science, not opinion.) We should demand a recount, however, from the Today Show, which mysteriously placed the Frank Capra classic at number three, and also managed somehow to drop the original Miracle on 34th Street to … wait for it … ninth?! Still, I will admit that Today’s champion, Elf, is among my absolute favorites.

Meanwhile, in a case that ordinarily would never make the news, an appellate court in Missouri used the holiday crush at the post office to give a woman convicted of drug and child endangerment charges an unexpected Christmas present. Julie Mae Kirk had filed what is known as a motion for post-conviction relief, arguing that her conviction should be set aside. The lower court refused to consider Kirk’s petition, on the ground that it was filed too late. The court received the motion on Dec. 21, 2017, but as a matter of law it had to be filed within 180 days of her conviction, which would have meant Dec. 19.

This month the Missouri Court of Appeals ruled for Kirk, largely because of the time of year when the case arose: “Given the Postal Service’s own estimates of delivery times, and the fact that Kirk’s motion was mailed during the height of the Christmas season, the more likely scenario is that Kirk’s motion was mailed on or before Dec.19.”

All of which is to say that the difficulty of getting everything delivered on time during the holidays can sometimes work in a litigant’s favor.

Finally, WalletHub has just released its rankings of the best cities for Christmas celebrations. Let’s put aside any discussion of the methodology. (Okay, let’s not put it aside. Among the many metrics the site used were churches per capita, bakeries per capita, and bars per capita.) Atlanta and Orlando took the top two spots, but don’t worry, New Yorkers: your city finished first in the category of “Traditions & Fun.” And the west coast wasn’t forgotten: Seattle ranked first and San Francisco eighth in residents’ generosity.

And if the true spirit of Christmas is found in giving, that’s the list that matters most.

 

BLOOMBERG OPINION

Meralco, TNT in do-or-die match for last finals berth

By Michael Angelo S. Murillo
Senior Reporter

THE best-of-five Philippine Basketball Association Governors’ Cup semifinal series between the Meralco Bolts and TNT KaTropa is down one last game with Game Five today at the Ynares Center in Antipolo City.

Set for 7 p.m., the Bolts and KaTropa make one last go at a finals berth that would have them face off with early qualifiers Barangay Ginebra San Miguel Kings in the championship series.

Meralco forced the rubber match after taking Game Four, 95-83, on Saturday, boosted by the play of import Allen Durham and guard Baser Amer.

Mr. Durham was once again in his steady form with Mr. Amer raising his game in the fourth period to tow their team to the series-levelling win and keep their finals hope in the season-ending PBA tournament alive.

The Bolts import led the way for his team with 36 points, 13 rebounds and five assists while Mr. Amer had 12 points, 10 coming in the fourth quarter, to go along with seven assists in the victory.

TNT had a strong start to the contest, taking the opening quarter, 24-18.

But Meralco picked it up in the second frame, outscoring TNT, 33-21, to seize a 51-45 advantage at the break.

In the second half, the team continued to battle it out but the Bolts just had more to give in the end to outlast the KaTropa to set up the do-or-die clash.

Chris Newsome had 10 points and nine boards for Meralco with Raymond Almazan and Allein Maliksi adding eight points apiece.

For TNT it was import KJ McDaniels who showed the way with 26 points, followed by Troy Rosario with 15, and Jayson Castro, Ray Parks, Jr. and Roger Pogoy adding 14, 11 and 11 points, respectively.

“I’m proud of the way the players responded tonight under pressure. We were in a do-or-die situation where if we lost, we are going home,” said Meralco coach Norman Black after their Game Four victory, adding that their defense also made a difference in the contest.

The Bolts are trying to make it to a third Governors’ Cup finals appearance in the last four years while the KaTropa are seeking back-to-back trips to the PBA finals this season.

Esports Center opens in Eastwood Mall to aid gaming community

Esports Center logo

AFTER helping the country secure the overall championship in the 2019 Southeast Asian (SEA) Games for the first time in the last 14 years, esports gets another boost it truly deserves with the opening of the Esports Center (ESC) in Eastwood Mall in Quezon City.

Powered by Globe in partnership with Mineski, Megaworld, and Logitech, the new facility promises to bring the whole esports community to the next level by offering a wide array of experiential activities ranging from immersion programs, community leagues, mentorships and special appearances and engagements with influencers such as Team Liyab athletes who competed in the biggest sporting event in Southeast Asia.

“As the leader in the development of the Filipino digital lifestyle, we continue to invest in the future of esports in the country. By doing this, we continue to push the boundaries of digital entertainment for our customers, particularly the games and esports they are so passionate about. With the Esports Center we are giving the community, the esports athletes and the fans a physical home to enjoy, share, improve and elevate their experience. The ESC is for everyone with a passion for games and esports,” Nikko Acosta, Globe SVP and Head of Content Business Group, said in a press release.

The first ESC was put up at UP Town Center early March this year and was very successful in rallying together the country’s foremost gamers and esports enthusiasts. This gathering eventually formed the core of the esports community that went all out in supporting esports as part of the official events in the biennial games.

The ESC also aims to build on recent triumphs of Philippine esports as it continues to gain more supporters and acceptance following its inclusion in the 2019 SEA games, and the success of the Philippine national contingent in finishing on the top of the medal tally for esports.

Team Liyab’s Caviar “Enderr” Acampado took home the gold medal for the Philippines in StarCraft ll at the expense of his Singapore rival. The Mobile Legends and Dota 2 squads likewise contributed one gold medal each to complete the stellar performance of the national esports team in the 30th edition of the SEA Games.

“The ESC is one of our key initiatives in continuing our mission to help the local esports industry to grow further. Building from the successful inclusion of Team Liyab’s Arena of Valor and StarCraft II esports athletes, and how they proudly represented our country, we believe esports will be even bigger in the next few years. With the ESC, along with all of the programs we have in store, we aim to further fuel the development of Philippine esports,” Gerry Soler, Head of Globe Games and Esports, said.

The ESC will be open to all esports enthusiasts regardless of the level of their skills. Collegiate and corporate teams will likewise have the chance to test their abilities against other teams by simply participating in the different leagues scheduled to be held in the next three months. Newbies and newcomers are also welcome as clinics and programs mentored by known esports personalities and influencers will also be available.

Visit the ESC at Eastwood Mall in Libis for more information or details. The ESC will be open until March 18, 2020.

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