MANY are saying that Monday's ouster of Rep. Jose de Venecia as House Speaker was a result of the falling out between him and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. This was after his businessman son and namesake, Jose 'Joey' de Venecia III, testified in the Senate about the First Gentleman's links to the anomalous national broadband network contract awarded to a Chinese firm, Zhong Xing Telecommunications Equipment (ZTE) Corporation.

In the initial hearing of the Senate blue ribbon committee last year, the former Speaker's son divulged how Jose Miguel 'Mike' Arroyo had told him to "back off" from the broadband deal in favor of then elections chairman Benjamin Abalos Sr., who was said to be lobbying for ZTE. The younger de Venecia also alleged that the $329-million ZTE project was overpriced owing to bribes given to, among others, Abalos, who supposedly pocketed P200 million.

Taking up the cudgels for their father, the Arroyo siblings in the Lower House — Juan Miguel 'Mikey' (Pampanga) and Diosdado Jr. 'Dato' (Camarines Sur) — are credited for leading the successful move to depose the Speaker by the administration coalition parties, including the party of their mother, the Kabalikat ng Malayang Pilipino (Kampi).

While the serious attempts to unseat de Venecia did start only late last year, the ZTE scandal served only as a trigger, the proverbial last straw. For in truth, the ouster plot dates back to the inaugural of the 13th Congress back in 2004 when, for the first time in his long years as Speaker and chief architect of "rainbow coalitions" built to cobble support for the executive's legislative agenda, de Venecia found himself faced with a serious challenge to his leadership. It was a scramble for power, money, and prestige, as the PCIJ reported then, that was "more vicious than any de Venecia had experienced since he first became Speaker of the House in 1992."

Read the PCIJ report in 2004 that tackled the first serious challenge to de Venecia's House leadership.

Though de Venecia clinched the speakership race a fourth time, the 13th House ushered in a new bloc of legislators who were well connected to Malacañang, especially to the First Gentleman. They belonged to a faction of Kampi, the party that was hastily put together in 1997 to spur Arroyo's aborted presidential bid.

EXCEPT for outranking Ferdinand Marcos, it should hardly come as a surprise that Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was named the country's "most corrupt" president in the Pulse Asia's October 2007 Ulat ng Bayan survey. After all, notwithstanding valid questions being raised regarding its limited scope historically, it merely confirms what previous corruption surveys and reports done by independent groups have been finding out about her scandal-plagued government.

Of course, Malacañang's reaction to such a survey is also no longer surprising, with Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye shrugging this one off yet again as having "too few" respondents and the results possibly "skewed and not balanced." Never mind that his remarks betray an ignorance of surveys as scientific opinion polling. What is evident though is an attempt to render people's opinions on a public issue like corruption inconsequential in the whole discourse on governance.

The survey results do find credence for them to be dismissed outright, magnified particularly in the context of recent events, including Arroyo's state visit to Spain and the United Kingdom last week, tagging along what the Inquirer editorial the other day called an "indecently big" presidential entourage of close to 200 people -- family members (complete with household helps), Cabinet officials, legislators and other hangers-on.

And before that, there was the junking of the impeachment complaint against Arroyo, albeit deemed weak, the third in as many years. The congressional hatchet job was preceded by the handing out of "cash gifts" to congressmen and provincial governors right in Malacañang, generating an orgy of denials and finger-pointing only to be followed by dubious admissions as to who the source of the money bags actually was. Even the filing of the impeachment complaint was tainted with attempts to bribe congressmen into endorsing it, allegedly perpetrated by an official of Arroyo's political party, the Kabalikat ng Mamamayang Pilipino (Kampi).

IN the aftermath of the July 2003 Oakwood mutiny of junior officers he led, Senator Antonio Fuentes Trillanes IV, then a Navy senior-grade lieutenant, wrote an analysis about the problem of military interventions, how these affect our country’s economic and political stability, and international image, and how government policies are faring in preventing them from recurring.

Military interventions, wrote Trillanes in 2004, have debilitating effects on our economic and political stability. "More than this, lives are often caught in the crossfire," he said. "Simply put, we cannot afford another one."

Read Trillanes's paper, "Preventing Military Interventions."

Last Thursday though, Trillanes apparently disregarded his very own counsel. Along with Brigadier General Danilo Lim and his co-accused Magdalo soldiers, he embarked on another failed exercise in military intervention. They walked out of the Makati regional trial court hearing their coup d'etat case and occupied the Manila Peninsula hotel for almost six hours, declaring the Arroyo government "illegitimate" and calling on "patriotic" members of the armed forces and the police, and the public, to join them in ousting her and in forming an alternative government.

Last year, the government also thwarted a supposed plot to withdraw support from the Arroyo administration led by Gen. Lim during a protest march commemorating the 20th anniversary of the first people power revolt that toppled the Marcos dictatorship.

What could have driven Trillanes to resort to another military intervention that he himself said should be prevented from occurring in the future? Some have speculated more on his desperation and frustration with the justice system, which has continued to try him and the other Magdalo soldiers unjustly, as they perceive, as well as prevented him from serving his term as incumbent senator despite a mandate of more than 11 million votes.

Whatever their intentions, the fact that another attempt occurred to summon the military to intervene can only point to the continuing failure to address the underlying causes of military restiveness. Yes, despite the findings and recommendations of two fact-finding commissions, the first chaired by former Supreme Court Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. that looked into the bloody December 1989 coup attempt, and the second headed by former SC Justice Florentino Feliciano that probed the Oakwood mutiny.

THE recent grant of pardon to former President Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada, as emphasized by the order read by Press Secretary and Acting Executive Secretary Ignacio Bunye, was in keeping with the Arroyo government’s policy of releasing convicted prisoners once they reach the age of 70. It was also noted that the convicted former leader’s close to seven years in detention was already punishment enough (never mind if he spent a lot of that time in an air-conditioned hospital suite and the last three years in his sprawling Tanay resthouse).

Moreover, despite the restoration of his civil and political rights, Estrada has committed not to seek any elective post or office. Besides, what could be a more humanitarian gesture than freeing Estrada to allow him to be by his ailing mother’s bedside?

Still, the pardon came just six weeks after the Sandiganbayan found Estrada guilty on two counts of plunder and sentenced him to reclusion perpetua, or a maximum prison term of 40 years.

There is, of course, no disputing the presidential prerogative to bestow executive clemency to deserving convicts. But it is a sad testament to the kind of justice that reigns in this country that the government will move heaven and earth — including bringing the release order by helicopter — to pardon a convicted former highest official of the land who swore to defend and preserve our laws, but would not extend the same to similarly situated, albeit ordinary, offenders.

Teresita Carabeo, for example, is serving a life term for large-scale illegal recruitment. Like him, she is now 70 years old. But unlike the disgraced president, Lola Teresita has already served her sentence longer than Estrada did: 13 years and five months at the Correctional Institution for Women (CIW).

Lola Teresita is not the only septuagenarian inmate at the Correctional. There are four others, some of whom are much older than she is:

- Anita Goriona, 79, serving a life sentence for violation of Republic Act 9165, the Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002
- Pilar Ruiz, 76, serving 40 years also for drug offenses
- Adang Adjsani, 70, meted life imprisonment also for drug offenses
- Rosita Barba, 77, meted life imprisonment for illegal recruitment and estafa

Most of these elderly women are suffering from hypertension. The oldest, Lola Anita, who hails from Iloilo, is even blind in one eye.

Back in 2000, I wrote about how harsh jail terms were being meted out to low-level, first-time drug offenders, most of them women. By then, the number of females incarcerated for drug offenses had grown by 37 percent since 1997, and included seven women 60 years old and above, the CIW’s category of old age.

This figure included a 74-year-old laundrywoman suffering from cataract, diabetes, and arthritis who was convicted to life imprisonment for selling some 360 grams of marijuana. There was also a 73-year-old who had been sentenced to reclusion perpetua for marijuana possession. At the time, she had already served 14 and a half years — and was suffering from gout and had undergone cataract extraction.

In 1999, two months after she was transferred to the Correctional, 78-year-old Marcelina Biswek died of cancer while serving double life terms for selling 88 kilos of marijuana.

Unfortunately for them, a directive issued by then President Fidel Ramos suspended the processing for commutation of sentences of all cases involving convictions for violations of laws on prohibited drugs. Back then, there was also no Memorandum Circular No. 155, which would be issued by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in 2004.

The CIW says it has released some 20 septuagenarian inmates out of compassion and for humanitarian grounds, as the Arroyo-issued memo stipulates. Yet there are still women who are already in the twilight of their years at the CIW today. A CIW official explains that most of them still have pending cases, which make them ineligible for pardon, according to a penitentiary policy. “Even if they have to die tomorrow, that’s the policy,” says the official.

Then again, there is no explanation why Lola Adang, who has no pending case, has yet to be recommended for pardon. A native of Jolo, Sulu, Lola Adang has spent the last year and four months in jail.

And in spite of the 2004 memo circular, some elderly inmates have also died while in incarceration at the women’s penitentiary.

Interestingly, there are fewer male convicts over the age of 70 at the minimum-security facility of the National Bilibid Prison. They are:

- Antonio Amigo, 74, serving a sentence of 12 to 16 years for two counts of rape and sexual assault
- Fermin Abalos, 73, sentenced to six to 14 years for homicide
- Isidro Casin, 73, sentenced to 14 to 17 years for acts of lasciviousness

According to an NBP staff, convicted maximum- and medium-security prisoners who reach the age of 65 are automatically transferred to the minimum-security facility. Both Abalos and Casin have been with the minimum-security facility for over a year now, while Amigo has logged some three years already.

Had Arroyo not granted Estrada executive clemency last Thursday, October 25, Estrada may have gotten to know Abalos, Casin, and Amigo quite well. But he has been spared that experience; instead of their company in prison, Estrada is now enjoying that of his family and friends, in the comfort of his Polk Street mansion in Greenhills.

THE military crackdown in Burma (renamed Myanmar by the ruling military junta in 1989) was bound to happen.

	Tens of thousands ok Buddhist monks protesting against the 54-year-old military junta [photo courtesy of Myo Khin/Mizzima]

For almost six weeks, the Burmese people have been staging marches against the debilitating effects of a five-fold fuel price hike in August. The marches slowly grew as the weeks progressed, and by Wednesday, had turned into a massive protest action reminiscent of the pro-democracy uprising of August 1988. Inspired by the participation of Burma's revered Buddhist monks, more than a hundred thousand protesters spilled out into the streets to join the peaceful demonstrations, demanding an end to 45 years of military rule.

That same day, the ruling junta finally unleashed its patented response. In three days of violence, the crackdown has left several Burmese dead, including at least five monks. Soldiers have also sealed off monasteries in the two main cities of Rangoon and Mandalay, locking up the monks to prevent them from joining the demonstrations. Hundreds more were beaten up and arrested as the soldiers have momentarily retaken control of the streets. (View more images at Mizimma.com)

This is the first time in close to two decades that the Buddhist monks have come out of their monasteries to publicly denounce the military regime headed by Senior General Than Shwe. Until the past couple of months, the monks had been content with showing their disapproval of the junta by performing the patam nikkujjana kamma, literally "overturning the bowl" to boycott alms given by the regime.
This act of defiance started in 1990 in response to a military crackdown that same year in Mandalay where monks were among those killed and arrested as thousands of them marched to commemorate the second anniversary of the 1988 uprising.

In his report as a 2006 fellow of the Southeat Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA),
Indonesian freelance journalist Wahyuana described how the alms ritual is one of the most important in Theravada Buddhism. "A monk's refusal to accept," he wrote, "signifies the moral degeneration of the alms-giver."

(I am begging readers' indulgence for this rather personal post, a deviation from what I normally publish here. This essay is part of the PCIJ's i Report series on Filipino women.)

“Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.” — Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century, 1845

	THE writer with two of the "pushy" females in his life.

I HAVE three things in common with former president and certified macho man Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada: the same birthday, facial hair, and the constant presence of women. But while he may believe being constantly around women is a good thing and could be a much needed boost to one's masculinity, it’s a situation I have ambivalent feelings about.

Well, I probably won’t have that dilemma if we were talking in terms of a harem, where all the world is made to revolve around one truly lucky guy, the center of attention of sensual ladies (wives and servants) whose job it is to always ensure his personal satisfaction. But a harem — at least, as far as Western writings imagined it to be — is so archaic an arrangement, and chauvinistic at that. Besides I'm no royal, blue-blooded heir of a sultan. My only dubious link to royalty is the name I was christened with, one I share with my dearly departed father and two younger brothers: that of a Macedonian hunk of a conqueror and emperor who was also said to have loved males more passionately than his wives. Hmmm ...

But I digress. As I was saying, I’m surrounded by females round the clock, every single day of my chaotic life, and most times I feel like I’m in an unenviable position. Over at our humble Tandang Sora abode, members of the female species outnumber me three to one: my wife Mira and our two daughters, Marlee, 10, and Kaya, five. At work, I am the only male employee in an office that has always suffered from gender imbalance since it was set up almost two decades ago. In fact, it was only when I joined the PCIJ back in 1994 that the center's male staff population swelled to a high of three. But the number would soon dwindle back to two when Howie Severino left in 1997 to join GMA-7 to venture into broadcast journalism, and to just my solitary self late last year when we had to let go of our driver-messenger.

DAYS before the 14th Congress opened, Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya Jr. had humored the neophyte members of the House of Representatives about the enviable perks enjoyed by lawmakers. The former representative of Camarines Sur who once chaired the powerful House appropriations committee was invited to orient the first-term legislators on the budgeting process. During his talk, he remarked how wonderful it is to be a congressman: "You have flexible time. Pwede kang pumasok, pwedeng hindi (You may or may not go to work) yet still get your salary.”

Then, he warned them not to make the mistake of paying for meals and drinks at the Batasan Pambansa's South Lounge as it is their privilege to be served free food.

Andaya may have meant everything as a joke, only that speaking of the privileges that legislators enjoy in such manner was hardly amusing, especially given a quorum-challenged legislature that has been passing fewer and fewer laws each year despite the ever increasing budgetary allocation to lawmaking. When the 13th Congress formally closed last June 30, it managed to pass only 148 laws, setting a new record-low in the history of the Philippine legislature. That is no laughing matter.

Yet apparently, the mention of perks was the very cue Jose de Venecia Jr. had also waited for. When came his turn to give the freshman legislators a briefing, the just elected House Speaker announced even more entitlements for members of the Lower House, in particular, an annual P1-million foreign travel allotment, and allocations for additional staff and maintenance of their respective district offices. There's even a new building in the works to house new offices for the congressmen.

AS expected, the economy was among the focus of this year's State of the Nation Address, as Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo basked in its growth as a major accomplishment of her administration, highlighted by a strong peso which appreciated to P44.80 to the U.S. dollar last Friday, buoyed largely by foreign fund inflows into a rejuvenated stock market.

And now that the country's economy is supposedly back on track, Arroyo's seventh SONA has mapped out the government's agenda in the last three years of her term anchored on the "social payback" mantra she has kept intoning in many of her speeches. As already intimated by Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye, this will be in the form of investments in education, social safety nets, vital infrastructure, and peace and order to ensure that "more and more of our people will not just see, but more importantly experience, the tangible benefits of our growing economy."

But are the economic gains for real and are they sustainable?

Former budget secretary and University of the Philippines economics professor Benjamin Diokno does not think so. During the last six years, the economy, he says, has not performed well enough to make a difference in the lives of most Filipinos, especially the poor.

THERE is actually nothing new about the revelations made last week by Finance Secretary Margarito Teves that some members of the House of Representatives in the powerful Commission on Appointments (CA) have been demanding either money or favors in exchange for his and other Cabinet members' confirmation.

Sec. Teves spoke of "requests in kind" relayed to him by unnamed CA members from the House for appointments in the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) and Bureau of Customs (BOC) for their relatives and friends. Outgoing Negros Oriental Rep. Herminio Teves confirmed his son's disclosure, saying that at least P5 million was being asked to win confirmation. Later, former agriculture secretary Domingo Panganiban also accused eight congressmen-members of the CA for demanding P80 million worth of projects from his department for his confirmation.

House members are demanding that Rep. Teves name names, claiming that the accusations have tarnished the reputation of all 12 congressmen who sit in the CA. But it's not as if the Commission on Appointments enjoys an unsullied reputation. A body composed of legislators — 13 senators and 12 representatives — that has the final say on appointments in the Cabinet, constitutional bodies, presidential commissions, the military and the diplomatic service, the CA has been known more for the rampant favor-swapping, undue pressure, patronage and even corruption that attend the confirmation of government officials.

In a 1999 report by the PCIJ, Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago described the commission as "basically a horse-trading agency, a completely political agency."

Read the PCIJ report on the Commission on Appointments.

THE concluding session of the outgoing 13th House of Representatives last Thursday ended in typical fashion — none of the pending bills were passed because there was a lack of quorum.

To make up for such a lackluster valedictory to another three-year chapter in Philippine lawmaking, House Speaker Jose de Venecia instead used the occasion to launch the year-long celebration marking the centenary of Congress. But even that was not without hitches as it was pointed out that the reference date was "historically inaccurate."

Critics claim that the 100th year of the Philippine legislature should be reckoned from the day the Malolos Congress was convened in 1898 to draft a a constitution and to make laws for the newly born Philippine Republic, and not the inauguration of the Philippine Assembly in 1907 under the auspices of the Americans.

Bayan Muna Rep. Teodoro Casiño was thus led to remark how tracing Congress's roots to the American-inspired Philippine Assembly can only attest to "the colonial mindset that has characterized the institution for the past century."

"From 1907 till this day, Congress's role has been to protect narrow foreign and elite interests. It is a House of big landlords, warlords, political dynasties, and politicians under the payroll of big business interests," the party-list representative said.

The elitist tag on Congress is, of course, hardly new. In 2004, the PCIJ book, The Rulemakers, a study on the post-Marcos Congress, reaffirmed this tired yet troubling fact: our legislators constitute a select and exclusive segment of Philippine society. They are richer, older, better educated, and better connected than the rest of us. A great majority of them also belong to families whose members have been in public office for two or more generations. Such that they are hardly representative of the constituents they are supposed to represent.

AS the May 14 elections have again demonstrated, Filipinos continue to suffer from the iniquity of an antiquated electoral system, one that is irredeemably prone to cheating and violence, and worse, run by a weak, inept, and tainted poll body.

And while the country agonizingly awaits the final senatorial and party-list tallies three weeks after the elections amid reports of wholesale manipulation of voting results, Thailand's own electoral politics is being shaken, rightly or wrongly, by a major tremor caused by a much anticipated landmark ruling issued yesterday by its constitutional tribunal.

The verdict, which amounts to a political capital punishment, orders the disbandment of Thai Rak Thai, Thailand's erstwhile ruling political party, on charges of electoral fraud. It has also meted on 111 of Thai Rak Thai's executive committee members, among them ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra on exile in London, a five-year ban from engaging in the electoral process.

The decision was handed down by the Constitution Tribunal following almost four months of hearings on the electoral fraud cases faced by five political parties, including Pattana Chart Thai, Thai Ground, Democrat, and Progressive Democratic, in connection with the 2006 snap parliamentary election. (For an extensive background on the case, see The Nation's special site, The Aftershock.)

Thai Rak Thai was found guilty of bankrolling the candidacies of members of two minor political parties — Pattana Chart Thai and Thai Ground — in the April 2, 2006 election to circumvent the legal requirement that it obtain at least 20 percent of votes cast, given that many of the party's candidates were running unopposed. It was also found to have helped Pattana Chart Thai rig its membership records.

AFTER what many believe to be questionable results of the elections in Maguindanao that showed a "clean sweep" of the the senatorial race by administration candidates, the focus of attention should shift to another province in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao — Lanao del Sur.

There is fear of yet another possible manipulation of election results with the Commission on Elections declaring a failure of elections in 13 of the province's 39 municipalities last May 14. Special elections have been scheduled on May 26.

The public apprehension is not without basis as the situation bears an uncanny resemblance to that of 2004, when special elections were also held on May 22, 2004 in 200 precincts in Lanao del Sur.

Read PCIJ reports on the Lanao del Sur elections in 2004:

• The Lanao del Sur vote


• Lanao's dirty secret


• Did Mike Arroyo fund postelection 'special operations in Lanao del Sur?


• Dagdag-bawas, Lanao style


• More 'telling' evidence of 2004 electoral fraud in Lanao

Votes were still being counted in Lanao's seven municipalities, as well as in five barangays of Lanao del Norte, when Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was caught making calls to former Comelec commissioner Virgilio Garcillano in the "Hello, Garci" recordings from May 26 to June 10, 2004 in an alleged conspiracy to influence the outcome of the elections.

Arroyo later on apologized to the nation for making such calls, which she acknowledged as a "lapse in judgment." But she denied the phone conversations were meant to influence the results of the 2004 polls since "the election results were already in and the votes had been counted."

Yet on May 29, 2004, Arroyo made the now infamous question: "So will I still lead by more than one million (votes)?" And to which Garcillano replied: "Mataas ho siya (Poe) pero mag-compensate po sa Lanao 'yan (His count is high, but that will be compensated in Lanao)."

MALACAÑANG strategists are trumpeting the news of a 12-0 sweep by Team Unity senatorial candidates of the Maguindanao elections as the vaunted power of the administration's political machinery at work through bloc voting.

With TU bets trailing in early tallies by both the National Citizens' Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) and the Commission on Elections (Comelec), Malacañang has claimed that "command votes" from its bailiwicks would eventually put them in the senatorial winning circle.

As of the morning of May 16, with 73 percent of the votes in the province's 27 towns counted, Mindanews reported that the administration ticket was lording it over the opposition in the Maguindanao tally, with Ilocos Sur Governor Luis "Chavit" Singson emerging as the surprise top vote-getter with 136,044 votes out of a total of 336,774 registered voters. Singson was followed by Bukidnon Representative Juan Miguel Zubiri (133,321 votes), and former Senator Tito Sotto (132,103 votes).

But a bewildered Commissioner Rene Sarmiento, the poll commissioner-in-charge assigned to ARMM during the May 14 elections, remarked that this is the first time he has heard of such a result, and said that the Commission on Elections will have to look into the matter.

They should, especially with how the elections turned out last Monday in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Foreign observers were witness to how the polls in the region's six provinces were marred by widespread violence, blatant vote-buying and election irregularities.

Moreover, the Maguindanao tally brings to mind the suspicious results of the 2004 elections that came from the region, whose votes helped ensure Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's victory by a 1.1 million-vote lead over Fernando Poe Jr.

In 2004, Muslim Mindanao votes were indeed crucial to Arroyo's winning margin as the region accounted for close to 300,000 of the lead. In fact, 17 percent of Arroyo's total votes obtained in Mindanao came from ARMM. In seven towns ruled by the pro-Arroyo Ampatuan clan, Arroyo won over Poe by an incredible vote ratio of 82,411 to 142 (or 99.83 percent to 0.17 percent). In two towns, Arroyo garnered all the votes, with Poe getting zero.

More significantly, Maguindanao, along with Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi and Lanao del Sur, figured prominently in the "Hello, Garci" recordings — phone conversations between Arroyo and former Comelec commissioner Virgilio Garcillano caught on tape allegedly detailing efforts to manipulate the outcome of the 2004 polls in Arroyo's favor.

One of the calls made by Arroyo on June 6, 2004 sought Garcillano's assurance about the consistency of election forms in Maguindanao. Garcillano's reply: "Hindi naman ho masyadong problema sa Maguindanao (Maguindanao isn't much of a problem)."

Based on official results, Arroyo won handily in Maguindanao, obtaining 199,431 (69 percent) of the votes compared to Poe's 63,313 (22 percent). This was, however, disputed by Guimid Matalam, a losing gubernatorial bet, citing alleged cheating in 25 of 27 towns. Matalam charged that election returns were prepared even before the voting started on May 10, 2004, and that ballot boxes were never brought to the precincts.

One town in Maguindanao, Talitay, was mentioned in a call also made on June 6, 2004 by Comelec lawyer Wynne Asdala to Garcillano discussing efforts to garner more votes for K-4 senatorial candidate Robert Barbers. "Itong Talitay tsaka Columbio (a town in Sultan Kudarat), gusto nilang mag-submit ng bagong COC at saka SOV para mahabol yung si Barbers (They want to submit new COCs and SOVs in Talitay and Columbio so Barbers can catch up)," Asdala told Garcillano.

When asked for his side by the PCIJ in 2005, Asdala admitted talking with the former poll commissioner about the votes in Talitay, Maguindanao but denied the conversation was about attempts to pad Barbers's votes.

What should also be a cause of concern is that Maguindanao's provincial election supervisor is lawyer Lintang Bedol. In 2004, Bedol was reassigned to Sultan Kudarat shortly before the May elections. Sitting also as chairman of the Cotabato City board of canvassers, he presided over "highly problematic" counts in the two areas.

Bedol's name was heard several times in the "Hello, Garci" tapes. Apparently, he was entrusted with "interesting" tasks during the 2004 elections, aside from reporting the results to Garcillano, as can be gleaned from these excerpts from our June 16, 2005 post, "Vidol who?":

In the conversation that supposedly took place between Garcillano and the President at 9:47 a.m. on May 29, 2004, Arroyo wanted to know the extent of her defeat in Cotabato City. The elections commissioner replied, “Hindi ho siguro sosobra ng (It probably wouldn’t exceed) forty, Ma’am. Nag-usap na kami ni Atty. Bedol….Kami ni Atty. Bedol, nag-usap ho ngayon (Atty. Bedol and I talked just now). But I’ll give you the exact figure ma’am in a little while, para ma-ano ninyo.” The final outcome: Arroyo: 8,510; Poe, 29,417.

Meanwhile, a certain Danny, apparently worried about the Cotabato count, asked Garcillano in a phone conversation on May 25, 2004: “Sir, ano kaya, nagawan kaya ng paraan ni Bedol (Did Bedol manage to do something about this)?”

Former senator Robert Barbers, who purportedly called up Garcillano on May 29 to inquire about the Comelec en banc’s resolution transferring the canvassing venue from Cotabato City to Manila, was told, “…Bine-verify ko, pero si Atty. Bedol, yung ating tao dun, hindi makontak (I’m verifying it, but I can’t contact Atty. Bedol, our man there).

Bedol, who sources from the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) describe as very close to Garcillano (the commissioner spent most of his 43 years in Mindanao), obviously wielded some power. The sources identified the voice of a woman complaining about Bedol to Garcillano as that of Comelec Region 12 Clarita Callar. She is heard saying, “Ba’t inaaway ako ni Bedol (Why is Bedol picking a fight)…”

In the tapes, Bedol was also caught talking to Garcillano at least twice. (see "Conversations with and about Bedol")

Maguindanao's "very high" voter turnout, with no town registering lower than 90 percent, according to Bedol, likewise lends to the improbability of the election results. It will be recalled that in the 2004 elections, the total votes cast for the party-list candidates in the province was 283,012 out of a total of 334,331 registered voters, corresponding to an unusually high 84.65 turnout.

SABAS "Abang" Mabulo did acknowledge it himself when he formally announced his candidacy for the congressional seat of the first district of Camarines Sur last month. He was running "against all odds," he wrote, in vying for the position also being eyed by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's youngest son, Diosdado, more known as "Dato." The young Arroyo enjoys no less the backing of a formidable alliance recently forged among the political kingpins of the province — Rep. Luis Villafuerte, Rep. Felix Alfelor Jr., and Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya Jr.

"Any decision to battle them," Mabulo added, "was like banging one’s head against a brick wall -- in short, committing a political suicide."

The Villafuerte-Alfelor-Andaya alliance already means that nine of the 10 mayors of Camarines Sur's first district are arrayed against Mabulo in his congressional bid. The outgoing mayor of the municipality of San Fernando cannot also rely on the opposition as it has virtually no network of political leaders at the municipal and district level.

Sans the blessings of Bicol's big political patrons and an extensive political machinery, the political equation is clearly not in Mabulo's favor. Still, he remains unfazed, banking on the support of allies of the nontraditional kind — nongovernment organizations, people's organizations, the academe, Church-based organizations (not just Catholics), and business groups.

Mabulo is also motivated by what he views of Dato's candidacy, which he claims is "pagmamaliit sa Bicolano" (a low regard for Bicolanos). "How can a non-Bicolano truly represent the interests of Bicolanos?" he asks.

It's the same question asked by not a few residents of the province's first district who see Dato's intention to run for congressman in their district as serving more the interests of his family than the constituents of Camarines Sur. The Arroyos, after all hail from Pampanga, with Dato only establishing residence in Naga City in 2004 and building his own house in Barangay Potot, Libmanan in 2005.

And while the political kingpins may think of Dato as the "hope" of the district because his being the president's son will ensure the unimpeded flow of resources to his constituency, Mabulo believes Bicolanos don't think only in those terms. And by entrusting him with the role of representing them in Congress, Mabulo is both elated and humbled, raring to face the challenge of proving that having the advantage of a political machinery does not always assure victory in elections.

Since he made public his decision to run for Congress, Mabulo says he is heartened by the outpouring of support from people to help in his campaign ranging from volunteers to donors spending for his campaign materials.

Mabulo is likewise confident that his qualifications as a public official would bear him out, having served for three consecutive terms as mayor, and previously as a municipal kagawad (councilor) for three years.

Many in Camarines Sur, in fact, look up to Mabulo as a local chief executive in the mold of Naga City's Jesse Robredo as he has also championed a participatory approach to local governance — an achievement though not as celebrated as Robredo's in the media. Mabulo's administration has institutionalized people participation by making it a policy to involve citizens in the planning and implementation of the municipal government's programs and projects.

This has been demonstrated in projects like the People's Road, which has extended San Fernando's road network by 50 kilometers in all the barangays through the help of citizens. With meager local government resources, the labor of residents was tapped — for free — to gather stones and pound them to gravel for use in the road construction.

Under Mabulo's watch, San Fernando has also been able to set up a potable water system that is now servicing seven barangays. Remarkably, the local government relied only on its own resources and did not have to secure loans to fund the P40-million water project.

Mabulo's term has also done much to provide livelihood to San Fernando residents. His administration's focus is on agricultural productivity for which the local government unit has purchased farm equipment that are made available to farmers and distributed seedlings for high-value crops (citrus fruits, coffee, cacao, pepper and pili nuts) and fast-growing crops (root crops, mongo, peanuts, mushroom, and yellow corn).

Mabulo says these programs have given the people of San Fernando hope, allowing them to believe that things can be done if the government and the people work hand in hand.

If elected congressman, Mabulo has made known his legislative agenda focused on the following:

Poverty alleviation through enterprise development

Mabulo says people should not be made dependent on dole-outs and that the government should instead create an enabling environment for them to become self-reliant. An economist by profession, he is batting for the development of indigenous enterprise by providing people with infrastructure and greater access to capital.

Education

Mabulo believes that vocational and technical schools should be given national priority and proposes that laws be enacted to promote partnership between these schools and industries to gear education towards employability.

Agriculture development

Given the slow pace of agrarian reform, Mabulo proposes greater institutional support for vulnerable sectors in agriculture, particularly farmer-tenants. He also advocates for policies that support sustainable agriculture.

Health and nutrition

Mabulo will push for legislation providing greater access to health services and medicines, allow importation of cheaper medicines from other countries, and provide greater incentives for health care professionals to stay in their localities.

On top of his legislative agenda, Mabulo is committed to support moves to impeach Arroyo, saying that the country is moving towards a "dangerous scenario" in terms of public accountability that needs to be checked.

He is also for abolishing the pork barrel, whose allocations, he believes, have generally not reflected the needs of the people but the whims of those in power. "While (it) is a mechanism for the equitable distribution of public funds, in practice it's been used more for corruption and to ensure that officials stay in power," he says.

Acknowledging the need for political and electoral reforms, Mabulo says he supports moves to have the 1987 Constitution amended but only via the mode of a constitutional convention. The Senate, he adds, remains important as an institution in providing check and balance to the Executive, which has displayed dictatorial tendencies under Arroyo.

THE recent Social Weather Stations survey showing a record-high 19-percent hunger incidence among Filipinos has elicited yet another callous response from Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who said that she too had experienced going hungry once.

"Even I have missed one meal in the last three months," quipped Arroyo in an obvious dig at the question used by the SWS to solicit responses from survey respondents about going hungry or missing a meal in the last three months.

The polling firm's use of the phrase "nakaranas ng gutom at walang makain" (experienced hunger and did not have anything to eat) in its survey question specifically refers to hunger that is involuntarily suffered by households.

But Arroyo would rather take it literally. And in doing so, she has only succeeded in trivializing the serious problem of hunger, if not making a mockery of the ordeal of an estimated 3.4 million hungry Filipino families nationwide.

Because missing a meal in the last three months is a matter of choice for Arroyo while the same cannot be said of the nearly one in five households that continue to endure hunger simply because they don't have any choice at all — or much more enjoy privileged access to the presidential banquet.

Arroyo would later grant that insufficient income could be contributing to Filipinos' hungry stomachs. Well, it should given that the combined rate of unemployment (7.8 percent) and underemployment (21.5 percent) at 29.3 percent has hardly eased since 2004, when it was at 29.4 percent, which as Elmer Ordoñez wrote in i Report in 2005 was "the worst in the last four years."

Said the former undersecretary of agriculture and trade and industry: "With less income from employment, people would obviously have less money to buy food. Let’s not even go to where they are getting the money they are spending."

And to think that inflation has eased at 3.2 percent to date — the lowest since December 2002 at 2.5 percent — from an average of 6.2 percent last year.

What is making matters worse, Ordoñez argued is the inequitable growth in the country where about half of the national income goes to only 20 percent of our population. In contrast, he said, citing an Asian Development Bank study, that the poorest 20 percent of the population improved their income by only 0.5 percent for every one-percent growth in average income. This over the period from 1985 to 1997 when the poverty incidence dropped from 44 percent to 33 percent.

Still, Arroyo would rather place the blame elsewhere, repeating her earlier refrain in reaction to the SWS hunger survey that the people should also be partly faulted for their poor spending habits that prioritize luxuries (including vices) over basic necessities.

Arroyo's assertions, however, do not have the backing of government's very own data. The latest Family Income and Expenditure Statistics (FIES) survey, which was conducted by the National Statistics Office in 2003, found that Filipinos spent only an average of 1.1 percent for cigarettes and 0.7 percent for alcohol, compared to 43 percent for food out of their total income. These figures, in fact, have not changed since the last survey that was done in 2000. (see table)

True, there is a continuing slide in the share of family expenditure on food items, which the FIES survey noted as an indication that the spending pattern of Filipino families may be tending towards less spending on food. The slight decline (0.8 percent) in family spending on food items also showed an increase in expenses on food consumed outside the home compared to food consumed at home.

On the other hand, increased spending were monitored on transportation and communication as well as in fuel, light and water, personal care and effects, clothing, footwear and other wear, medical care, durable furniture and equipment and miscellaneous expenditures such as those for special family occasions and gifts and contributions.

But these expenditure items are not commonly what the poor will spend their income on. That is why groups like the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) Philippines rush to defend them, saying that what Arroyo calls as luxuries are in fact "small dignities, the poor's mechanism to escape the harsh realities of poverty."