Tag: Amelia H. C. Ylagan

“I get to punch a senator in the face,” Keith Thurman said of Manny Pacquiao days before their welterweight championship boxing match on Saturday in Las Vegas. It was a TKO, even before the undefeated 30-year-old American WBA (Super) Welterweight World Champion climbed into the ring to exchange fisticuffs with Filipino boxing icon and reigning WBA (Regular) Welterweight World Champion, boxing’s only eight-division world champion, 40-year-old Senator Emmanuel “Manny/Pacman” Pacquiao.

“It was not a collision, but an ‘allision’,” Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin told Karen Davila on her morning talk show, Headstart, on July 3. And to his TV audience, he challenged, “I bet nobody knows that word but me.”

“Marriage is the death penalty.” This is a statement that might be heard at a bachelor’s party. Perverted comic relief, of course, because here in the Philippines, marriage is “till death do us part” -- there is no divorce. But things will change; macho guys are in charge in government now, and the Divorce Law will probably be finally passed in this 18^th Congress. Ironically, the Death Penalty Bill will also probably be filed on the opening day of Congress.

In the sustained anxiety of society from three years of relentless fault-finding and finger pointing on the past mistakes and sins of previous political administrations (plural), fate has taunted all with still more alleged anomalies, scams, even possible crimes -- recidivist, it would seem, to “past” wrong doing. Alas, Philippine politics is like that.

A REIT -- or Real Estate Investment Trust -- is a 33%-publicly owned listed company which uses pooled funds of investors to purchase, lease, re-sell, and manage income-generating real estate assets such as malls, offices, condominiums, warehouses, and other infrastructure. The REIT Law of 2009 that formally established the REITs is meant to help develop and democratize the capital markets, with prospects for even the small investors to earn regular income and long-term capital appreciation, much like participating in mutual funds.

Hong Kong might be called the unwanted love child of the British and the Chinese, from an ill-fated port romance, when Western merchant sailors crossed vast oceans for half a year to see what could be had from the beautiful East.

“Republic Act 10351, or the Sin Tax Reform Law, is one of the landmark legislations under the Aquino Administration. It is primarily a health measure with revenue implications, but more fundamentally, it is a good governance measure. The Sin Tax Law helps finance the Universal Health Care program of the government, simplified the current excise tax system on alcohol and tobacco products and fixed long standing structural weaknesses, and addresses public health issues relating to alcohol and tobacco consumption” (www.dof.gov.ph/index.php/advocacies/sin-tax-reform).

At the BusinessWorld Economic Forum 2019 last week, keynote speaker Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, “JAZA”, chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Ayala Corporation made it clear: “Businesses should realize that what brought us success in the past will not be the same issues or factors that will bring us success in the future” (BusinessWorld May 31, 2019). He shared how the Ayala group has consistently embraced innovation, enabling it to remain in business for the last 185 years.

Amatz/amats = “tama” which in Filipino is the root of “tinamaan,” meaning “it hit me straight away” like the “kick” from drinking lambanog (Filipino “coconut vodka” which 80 to 90 proof, or as high as 166 proof after second distillation, they say).

Egypt is an old soul in an old body that would not die. The idea of mummification is 3,100 years old, Egyptologist-archeologist Mohammed Abdel Aziz (not Arabian, not African, but proudly Egyptian) says, as he points up to the heavens to emphasize Eternity. In Saqqara, north of Memphis, there are 118 pyramids to house the sarcophagi of mummified pharaohs and noblemen. The Djoser pyramid capped with luminescent limestone to mimic the rays of the morning sun towers 62 meters (203 feet) but still the Khufu pyramid of Giza, the largest Egyptian pyramid and one of the seven Wonders of the Ancient World, reaches up an awesome 146.7 meters (481 feet). A narrow shaft that comes from the pinnacle to the burial chamber directs the sunlight to the deceased pharaoh’s mummified body and lifts his soul to the heavens and to the gods. It is the story of Resurrection and Eternal Life.

Big banks posted another banner year in 2018, with profits growing by a tenth at a time of higher borrowing costs and a weaker peso. Total operating income grew by 14.9% to P564.202 billion from P491.227 billion the past year, central bank data showed (BusinessWorld Feb. 11, 2019).

“Many areas in the metro have experienced weak to no water supply, with some areas having people line up for hours to get water from tankers,” BusinessWorld reported, as all other media did, in the anxiety of worse to come. The people are angry.

Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Secretary Benjamin Diokno is the new Governor of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) effective March 4, 2019.

“Here’s your credit card, Ma’am, no need to sign the charge slip for payments below P2,000,” the waiter at her favorite Italian restaurant says to the lady-lawyer, a regular diner. “But I want to sign the charge slip,” she insists. “See here, there is a blank space for the tip to be given, if the customer wanted the tip to be included in the credit card charge -- how would I know if an outrageous tip amount was added by someone without my knowledge? How can I prove, should I question my credit card statement, that I did not write in a tip on the charge slip?”

Today is the 33^rd anniversary of the EDSA People Power Revolution (EDSA I). “It commemorates the peaceful demonstrations that occurred in 1986 and led to the overthrow of the corrupt rule of President Ferdinand Marcos....In previous years, 25 February was a work holiday, but today, the Monday nearest that date is a holiday only for school,” a travel service website informs interested tourists (https://publicholidays.ph).

Let’s not talk about Maria Ressa. What if she was arrested for “cyber libel” at the Rappler office by the National Bureau of Investigation day before Valentine’s Day, just before 5 p.m., the cutoff time for courts to process bail payments? Harassment? What’s “cyber libel,” anyway? We are becoming inured to all sorts of fake news and bad language on social media, as we are numbed to virulent cursing and swearing, public shaming and outright accusations on national mass media.

Primogeniture: the state of being firstborn of the same parents. In common practice since time immemorial in most cultures, the eldest child, most often specified to be the oldest male offspring, inherits real property and the family business. Is that still so in our culture?

O, ano, let me see if you know, the priest says in his homily at Mass. What is 2019 the Year of? His audience triumphantly chorused: “The Year of the Pig!” Shame on you, the good father admonished. It is always “The Year of the Lord.” And all laughed heartily at themselves.

The House of Representatives has reconsidered. Instead of lowering the age of criminality for children down to nine years old as originally proposed by then-Speaker of the House Pantaleon Alvarez in November 2016, the lawmakers approved on second reading last week the substitute bill lowering the minimum age of social responsibility of child offenders to 12 years old from the current 15 years old under Republic Act 9344 as amended by RA 10630 (CNN Philippines, Jan. 24, 2019).

In January last year, Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction Philippines (HHIC) delivered to the French Maritime Freighting Company, CMA CGM S.A., fourth-largest container company in the world, its flagship Antoine de Saint Exupery, its largest container ship (with a deck of three football fields combined) and the largest Europe-based ship in the world (World Maritime News, Jan. 5, 2018). Made in the Philippines, at the 326-hectare HHIC shipyard in Redondo peninsula, north of Subic Bay, Zambales.

Shut out Mexico, US President Donald Trump insists. It had been his campaign promise from back in 2016 to “Build that wall” along the 1,954 miles (3,145 km) US border with Mexico to keep out illegal entrants into the US. We’ll make Mexico pay for it, Trump boasted then (BBC, Jan. 26, 2016). How could he have ever expected Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to happily say “Si!” to a wall pre-paid by Mexico to shut out Mexico from the US? “Mexico doesn’t believe in walls,” Nieto expectedly said on national television, and of course he would not spend up to $25 billion to shut Mexico out (BBC, Jan. 26, 2017).

Happy New Year, Manay! May 2019 be a good year. What’s a good year, she says?

When after 117 years, the three Balangiga bells taken as war booty by the US Army in 1901 were returned to Samar Island, there was victorious jubilation on the Philippine side. In the crack of the Balangiga clash in the midst of the Philippine American War, bolo-wielding Filipino insurgents won over the superiorly equipped American infantry. It is said that in rabid retaliation for the 48 of 74 men of Company C who were ambushed and killed while at breakfast, the US reportedly massacred more than 2,500 of the village people. Historians cannot agree on the numbers. But of course history is written by the victors and rewritten by the losers if given a chance.

The bicameral conference committee in Congress has approved the reconciled version amending the 38-year-old Corporation Code of the Philippines to improve the country’s business climate for large and small businesses and to make it easier for investors to set up businesses (The Philippine Star, Nov. 28, 2018).

When the no-frills, no-nonsense British Prime Minister Theresa May crossed to center-stage dancing, raised hands swaying to the languid swing of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” it all said something was terribly amiss. It was in October, at the Conservative Party’s conference. Despite the standing ovation (the only polite and “veddy-British” response expected) to the somewhat awkward dancing, the matter to be discussed by May at the conference was not as forgivably acceptable. She was standing for approval of her planned UK transition deal with the European Union (EU) through to the end of 2020, after the March 29, 2019 effectivity of the British withdrawal (Brexit) from the EU, as signified by the UK in June 2016.

“At the end of the rainbow, you’ll find a pot of gold,” the old song goes. The rainbow points to where, in folklore, the leprechauns buried their riches.

A larger-than-life concrete statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary stands on the rotunda just beyond the Thành pho? Ho Chí Minh, the City Hall, more formally called the People’s Committee Building. It is as if the Holy Mother had stepped out of the Basilique-Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Saigon behind her, the twin-belfry cathedral built by the French colonizers between 1863 and 1880. Noisy vehicles and pedestrians swirled around her to the main artery road Nguyen Thi Minh Kai and its tree-lined tributary roads. But there are only about six million Catholics in communist Vietnam, representing just 7% of the total population.

“We demand that the World Bank (WB) review the Philippines’ rating, and make a correction immediately given our country’s increases in the Ease of Doing Business (EODB) scores, which was, unfortunately, offset by the grossly inaccurate and understated findings in the Getting Credit indicator of the Report.

At the Libingan on All Saints Day, a widow and her daughter prayed before the plain white cross that marked the grave of a young officer, who more than four decades ago was killed in action in Jolo, at the height of the Mindanao war over the dictator Marcos’s inconsistent strategies for peace. There are few officers like him, the widow’s best friend, a general’s wife, once told her. Surely without malice, she added: it might as well be that your husband died early; who knows what he might have become, had he lived some years more?

There was already a third telecommunications company “telco” to the Globe Telecom and Smart Telecom “duopoly.” In August 2010, San Miguel Corp. (SMC) bought Bell Telecommunications Philippines, Inc. (BellTel) and set up Vega Telecoms, to challenge the emerging duopoly of Globe and Smart (philstar.com, Aug. 17, 2010).

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity...some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.” -- A Tale of Two Cities (1859) by Charles Dickens

Changes by man to survive and improve himself and his environment are recorded in history as Civilization. In the 4.54 ± 0.05 billion years of the earth’s estimated existence, spontaneous changes in nature and intervening changes by the biblical “all creatures big and small” developed interdependencies that bonded groups and communities with similar ways and common concerns. In their “ecosystems” or close environment, all co-evolve in competition and collaboration on available resources, and the joint adaptation to external disruptions.

Never Again! It has been branded in the hearts of those who experienced martial law that never again should Filipinos have to bear the killings, torture, plunder and other transgressions of human rights by a dictator and his politicized military. And the younger generations must know about these, and know all in truth -- not in the revisionist telling of inveterate liars, who have benefitted from martial law, changed loyalties to succeeding democratic leaders, and are now changing coats again, back to dictator-type governance.

At last Wednesday’s forum at the University of the Philippines BGC, “Understanding Federalism and its Implications (Part Two), two of the most knowledgeable speakers on Federalism, Dr. Ronald U. Mendoza, Dean, Ateneo School of Government, and Atty. Florin T. Hilbay, Associate Professor, University of the Philippines (UP) College of Law, lectured to members and guests of the sponsors: the Institute of Corporate Directors (ICD), with the Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines (FINEX) and Judicial Reform Initiative (JRI).

“Name me one person that was arrested because of political or religious belief during that period. None. Name me one person that was arrested simply because he criticized President Marcos. None,” former Senate President Juan “Johnny” Ponce Enrile told former Senator Bongbong Marcos, the only son of ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos (philstar.com Sept. 21, 2018)

When the inflation rate of 6.4% for August was finally announced by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) last week, there was a storm of fears that lashed stronger than the most powerful typhoon of the season (Signal No. 4), “Ompong” that trashed northern Philippines and rained heavily the whole weekend on the rest of Luzon.

IN martial law, the dictator Ferdinand Marcos could do anything. And he focused on the military to help him do anything.

SYNTAX and grammar insinuate that “move on” is a verb in the imperative mood (a command), which is why there is a frightening ocean of meaning that separates the speaker from the spoken-to, by the very utterance of this. “Move on” is best just a resolution to be whispered to oneself as one would acknowledge one’s own wrong choices or actions, and plan what to do next. But it is an arrogant breach of personal boundaries when someone else tells another to “Move on,” especially if that other has been the victim of that someone who has caused pain and loss. It is the brutal last kick in the dust. It reeks too much of the despotic commands of oppressive martial law.

“What’s the play?” In Filipino-speak, “Ano ang laro?” It means there’s a lot of double-speak, so to try to understand, one will have to analyze actions versus words and ask the question heavily laden with negative connotations -- what’s the hidden game plan?

Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III met with some members of the Consultative Commission (ConCom) on the government’s proposed change to federalism. He asked, “Who is going to pay for the national debt? Who is going to pay for the military? Who is going to pay for the [Department of Foreign Affairs] and the central bank? I mean if it needs additional capital, who is going to put it up?” (philstar.com Aug. 7, 2018). And the ConCom’s response was, “the sharing with the local governments or the states will be after those expenses” (Ibid.).

President Rodrigo Duterte at his third State of the Nation Address (SONA) on July 23 urged lawmakers to pass Package 2 of the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) law, while firmly saying no to proposals to reverse TRAIN Package 1 amid the high inflation rate recorded for the country this year (philstar.com July 26, 2018).

President Rodrigo Duterte’s third State of the Nation Address (SONA) was so boringly bereft of his usual colorful language and blitzkrieg declarations, but not at all uneventful. In the hour-and-a-half waiting for the SONA, Filipinos were watching live, the daring coup on the House floor that ousted House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez and instantly installed Gloria Arroyo as the new House Speaker by 184 votes and 12 abstentions (philstar.com July 23, 2018).

It was the first-ever formal one-on-one summit between a US President, Donald Trump, and the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, held July 16 in Helsinki. At the joint news conference afterward, the final question from the US went to Jonathan Lemire from the AP (www.washingtonpost.com, July 16, 2018, transcript courtesy of Bloomberg Government):

How can President Rodrigo Duterte announce to his country and his people (and to world investors and creditors) that, “Now. The economy is in the doldrums. Actually -- now.” (Philippine Daily Inquirer [PDI] June 24, 2018) He then rants on his version of economic dynamics: “Interest rates are picking up, are getting high so it destroys the present (economic gains)...you raise your (interest rate), our (peso value) goes down, theoretically...” Mr. Duterte said at a speech at the SMX Center Communications Summit 2018 (Ibid.).

“There is one thing that is common to every individual, relationship, team, family, organization, nation, economy, and civilization throughout the world -- one thing which, if removed, will destroy the most powerful government, the most successful business, the most thriving economy, the most influential leadership, the greatest friendship, the strongest character, the deepest love. On the other hand, if developed and leveraged, that one thing has the potential to create unparalleled success and prosperity in every dimension of life. Yet, it is the least understood, most neglected, and most underestimated possibility of our time. That one thing is trust.” -- Stephen M.R. Covey The Speed of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything (2008).