Press Statement 9 July 2005
By: Prof. Jose Maria Sison
Chief Political Consultant
National Democratic Front of the Philippines
The Arroyo regime is visibly cracking up and disintegrating under the pressure of the broad united front of opposition political parties, mass organizations, professional organizations, church people, business groups, retired military and police officers and other forces demanding the resignation or ouster of Gloria M. Arroyo from her usurped position as president of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP).
After consultation with Archbishop Gaudencio Rosales, former GRP president Corazon Aquino has categorically called for the resignation of Arroyo and her replacement by the vice-president, Noli de Castro. In turn, the latter has promptly begun to drum up his claims to competence as her successor. Through his most trusted agents, he has proceeded discreetly to contact military and police officers for support.
The ruling coalition is breaking up. The Liberal Party has taken the lead in calling for the resignation of Arroyo. Ten cabinet members and high officials of the Arroyo regime have resigned and in turn have demanded that Arroyo resign, instead of requiring all cabinet members to resign. They seem to be acting in coordination with church and business groups which have demanded the resignation of Arroyo.
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has declared that units of the New People's Army (NPA) are keeping away from urban population centers in order to encourage the broad masses of the people to march and rally against the regime. The NPA is concentrating on waging tactical offensives in the countryside.
At least four significant groups of military officers have welcomed the CPP declaration and have pledged to uphold civilian supremacy, respect the democratic rights of the people and withdraw support from Arroyo upon sight of at least 500,000 people in the national capital region.
The chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines has declared that the military would respect the democratic rights of the people to assemble and speak. But the chief of the Philippine National Police is expressing extreme loyalty to Arroyo and hostility towards the people who are exercising their rights in opposition to the regime.
US officials at various levels have announced that any change of government in the Philippine must follow the "constitutional path" and "rule of law" and have continued to express support for the Arroyo regime. Thus, the regime boasts that it will stay in power so long as it keeps US support. At the same time, some pro-US elements in the conservative opposition parties claim that Arroyo has lost that support.
While the regime is definitely disintegrating, Arroyo can still play a few tricks in ways more serious than apologizing for a "lapse injudgment" and "sending away" her husband and her son. She continues to proclaim that she will not resign. The forces of the broad united front are therefore forewarned not to become complacent but to be more resolute and militant than ever in arousing and mobilizing the people in their millions and in adopting a wide range of tactics to demonstrate the regime's inability to govern.
Plans are afoot for Arroyo to stage mass rallies in her favor, especially in some provinces where governors and mayors remain as her allies, and to use the Philippine National Police to suppress mass rallies that are not granted permits by pro-Arroyo local authorities. By these plans Arroyo is taking a gamble that is likely to inflame civil strife. The very crowds she tries to rally can also turn against her as in the Ceaucescu example in Romania.
As the public clamor for resignation or ouster continues to grow and her regime becomes untenable, Arroyo is supposed to have two possible courses of action. One is to take a leave of absence and have the vice-president Noli de Castro perform the functions of the presidency. Another is for her to become the "caretaker president", who will follow a script prepared by former president Fidel V. Ramos, Speaker Jose de Venecia and some smart guys of Lakas-NUCD.
The script entrusts the "caretaker president" with the task of letting a "high commission" to go through the motion of investigating some corruption scandals, the two houses of Congress to become a constituent assembly that will make constitutional amendments for satisfying the US and the local exploiting classes and for adopting a federal and parliamentary system and the parliamentary elections to take place in 2006.
However, the most that Arroyo can do is to gain a little more time on her political death bed. She has politically and morally suffered a fatal wound by being caught in the act of electoral fraud and stealing the GRP presidency. The tapes are the incontrovertible proof of her grave crime before the court of public opinion.
They expose the immorality and illegitimacy of Arroyo's usurpation of power. They have already kindled the fire that is fuelled by the wide and deep going social discontent of the people due to the crisis of the ruling system and that has the potential of burning down not only the political house of Arroyo but the entire ruling system of big compradors and landlords.
Since after the overthrow of Estrada in 2001, the institutions and stalwarts of the ruling system have considered the phenomena of mass uprisings repeatedly overthrowing a president as being very risky for the entire ruling system. They have been frightened by the expressed CPP view that the revolutionary forces and people strengthen themselves by overthrowing one ruling clique after another until they gain enough strength to overthrow the entire ruling system. In reaction, the apologists of the ruling system have invented the myth that the people are tired of mass uprisings.
But the ruling system has a problem in keeping a detested president long in power. The longer a president like Arroyo stays in power, the more rotten and despicable she makes the system to the increasingly exploited and oppressed people. And whoever is the president, so long as the rotten system persists, the people will detest it and have all the opportunity to strengthen themselves, irrespective of how long or short a president can stay in office.
The broad masses of the people demand that the basic roots of their oppression and exploitation are addressed. They wish to empower themselves against the US and the local exploiting classes that torment and make them suffer. They wish to uphold national sovereignty, conserve the national patrimony, carry out land reform and national industrialization, promote a national, scientific and democratic culture and adopt an independent foreign policy for world peace and development.
The crisis of the ruling system has become so grave that the ruling classes can no longer rule in the old way. The people want are volutionary change of government, in which the toiling masses of workers and peasants obtain and exercise their due share of political power. There are revolutionary forces that can lead the people in the revolutionary process.
Social degradation and political turmoil will continue so long as the ruling system of big compradors and landlords persists. The victoryof the broad united front against the Arroyo regime should lead to the formation of a transition council and a government that accommodate the patriotic and progressive forces of the legal democratic movement and pave the way for the success of peace negotiations with the revolutionary forces and people represented by the National Democratic Front of the Philippines. ###
Saturday, July 09, 2005
Thursday, July 07, 2005
Stop U.S. Intervention In The Philippines
by: Philippines Cultural Studies Center
Friday, Jul. 01, 2005 at 5:14 AM
philcsc1@yahoo.com
Signs of U.S. intervention in the political crisis in the Philippines are surfacing fast. Lessons need to be drawn from the mistakes and failures of People Power 1 and People Power 2. Systemic change is needed, not simply change in personnel. People Power 3 need not mimic the first two--otherwise, everything remains the same, even worse.
STOP U.S. MANIPULATION OF ARROYO'S DOWNFALL AND U.S. INTERVENTION IN CHOOSING HER SUCCESSOR
Incontrovertible signs from Washington and elsewhere indicate that theBush Administration and its reactionary cabal have already instructed their local agents in Manila to replace Arroyo with one of the elite factions, together with a bloc of traditional military-business groups. This is routine maneuver for the US State Department and Pentagon. As in the February 1986 overthrow of Marcos, their agents will use both normal and violent means to maintain its hegemony in its neocolony, particularly when its Mindanao military/political base is at stake.
The Philippines of course has historically been pivotal toUS. projection of its military power in Asia and the Middle East. Besides, Filipinos are famous worldwide for being 200% Americanized and martyrs for "Americanism" everywhere.
Washington is now plagued with the mounting disasters of the war inIraq and Afghanistan. Public resistance to the on going war is increasing, especially among military families and business sectors. Meanwhile, the challenges of Iran, North Korea, and of course China, not to mention Chavez's Venezuela and the insurgents in Colombia, Nepal, and elsewhere, are extremely worrisome to the corporate power elite.
To be sure, the Philippines is not comparable to oil-rich Indonesia ore ven touristy Thailand. Nonetheless, the U.S. hegemonic bloc is extremely fearful that a nationalist, nay a left-wing, alternative may take advantage of the chronic weakness of the Filipino oligarchy ridden with corruption, internal antagonisms, and sycophancy to corporate U.S. and foreign interests. Preparations to transfer the Okinawa operations to the Philippines are being expedited even as the militarization of Japan proceeds without let-up. The Philippines also provides about 10 million migrant contract workers to service corporate globalization around the planet (for example, building Guantanamo prison-cells and cleaning the barracks of the troops inIraq).
After September 11, 2001, the New People's Army and the Communist Party of the Philippines were promptly declared "terrorist organizations" by the U.S. State Department. This is meant to paralyze any international support for the nationalist insurgency. The millions of Filipinos abroad might be a support base for the NPA and the National Democratic Front—just as the Islamic nations supported the Moro National Liberation Front during the Marcos dictatorship. The systematic media exploitation of the Abu Sayaff as somehow comparable in scale to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, together with its linking of the Abu Sayaff with left-wing and nationalist dissent, has conditioned the U.S. public to recent military incursions ("exercises") in the Philippines. It has allowed Bush and his generals to refurbish the politically bankrupt Arroyo and the AFP as part of their united front against opponents of U.S. neocolonial encroachment wherever profits can be made.
Ever since IBON and other pollsters began documenting the decline of public support for Arroyo amid the jueteng scandals involving her family, the U.S. has begun to follow their tested modus operandi on"regime change." They have consulted with opposition politicians, the Catholic Church, the Judiciary, and of course their military operatives. Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo recently solicited the backing of key U.S. lawmakers for Arroyo such as Republican Senator Thad Cochran, chair of the US Senate Appropriations Committee; Republican Senators Robert Bennett of Utah and Jim Kolbe of Arizona, as well as Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein of California (where the majority of Filipino Americans reside). Romulo also got the support of World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, former adviser to President Bush, and one of the shrewd authors of the project to resuscitate the obsolescent American Empire in the post-Cold War epoch.
A revealing interview of US diplomat Karen Kelley, which appeared in the online Inquirer (reported by Agence France Press, June 29, 2005), suggests the duplicitous mode of preparing for "regime change" as seen from the US Embassy in Manila. While former lackeys of Arroyo are abandoning ship and jumping into the Susan Roces bandwagon, the U.S. poses to defend orderly transition, which means appearing to endorse transparency and accountability while engaged in cloak-and-dagger shenanigans to preserve business and military interests in their former "showcase of democracy" in Asia. The case of "Cold Warriors" Ramon Magsaysay, Benigno Aquino, and Col. Edward Lansdale of the notorious Phoenix program in Vietnam easily come to mind.
Given the pre-emptive and unconscionable means used by globalizing capital to prevent any real substantive change in the local power hierarchy, we shouldn't be deceived by all this legalese rhetoric about democracy and freedom. It is necessary for all progressive forces not to rely solely on bureaucratic or parliamentary means to get rid of Arroyo and her business network. The few wealthy families have never relied only on peaceful means to seize power and maintain supremacy. Nor have the bourgeoisie anywhere in the world. "Civil society" and State as presently constituted only serve to maintain the seemingly "normal" unequal division of power and wealth. We need to be critical of current institutions and practices, and also guard against sectarian dogmatism and opportunist vanguardism. Let the dead bury the dead.
As events in our history have proved, representatives of the ruling class can never represent the genuine long-term interests of the people. Neither Aquino nor Arroyo (who represent sections of the privileged minority) can solve the systemic evils of rampant poverty and unnecessary deaths caused by the unequal division of wealth (in particular, land and other means of production) and the chronic backwardness of the economy due to subservience to U.S. dictates (via World Bank and International Monetary Fund conditionalities). Nor can populist gimmicks tied to Estrada and assorted "social democrats" obsessed with capitalist globalization elsewhere except in thePhilippines, mobilize informed grass-roots support for a thorough going land-reform program, industrialization, a halt to OFW warm-body export policy, and the genocidal war against Moro and indigenous communities.
How can the owners of Hacienda Luisita and the plantations in Negros, Davao, and elsewhere support the loss of their property and class privileges? How can the classes represented by Aquino, Ramos, Estrada and Arroyo really allow the break-up of feudal privileges and their monopoly of political power in their territories? Behind them stand the corrupt mendacious officers of the AFP and the PNP(notwithstanding the presence of some nationalist middle-level personnel in the ranks), as well as warlords and gangster-vigilante formations sponsored by the CIA.
This is not to exclude individual members of these conservative and reactionary groups from joining the anti-imperialist united front. What we need is adherence to and step-by-step implementation of a tactical and strategic program of nationalist development that will mobilize the masses of workers, peasants, women, youth, professionals, and indigenous communities. We do not need to repeat the mistakes of the past. What is needed? Not a mountain stronghold policy of imposing a party line in a sectarian manner, but a way of unleashing the energies, wit, cunning, and intelligence of the masses to destroy the old structures of oppression and exploitation that have victimized us since the days of Spanish colonialism, and particularly since the missionary agents of U.S. "Benevolent Assimilation" landed on our shores and civilized 1.4 million dead Filipinos.
We need to initiate and explore new radical means of emancipatory transformation. A transitional nationalist and popular-democratic government is needed to prevent the usual trick of using so-called legal procedures that have always reproduced the status quo to restore peace and "business as usual." If we want to avoid repeating the mistakes of People Power I and the delusions of People Power II, we need to rely on a united alliance of armed workers' and peasants' councils, community organizations, existing guerilla forces, and other grass-roots agencies to destroy the mechanisms of imperial domination through the institutions used by the landlords, compradors, bureaucrats and traditional politicians. Otherwise, we will prolong the injustice of the present set-up and the suffering of millions ofFilipinos now and in the future.
Only a massive mobilization of the majority of citizens, of all oppressed and exploited sectors, in particular the Moro people and the tribal communities, can rid us of the evils of the exploitation of labor, political tyranny of the U.S., WB/IMF, and WTO, foreign control of the economy, and the racialized inferiorization of our cultural heritage. We need to arm the masses to defend themselves against the counter-revolutionary violence of the U.S. and its local followers.
A thousand defeats and sacrifices litter the past; is history repeating itself?
But our countrymen who gave their lives fighting against Spanish, U.S. and Japanese colonialisms speak to us from the future, saying: "A new world is possible. It is there for us to win."Let us seize this crisis of the enemy—the oligarchic elite and U.S. imperialism—as an opportunity to advance the national democraticrevolution of the Filipino masses and liberate ourselves from the evils of neocolonialism, racial and gender oppression, commodification, and globalized misery.
KUNG HINDI NGAYON, KAILAN PA? MAKIBAKA, HUWAG MATAKOT!
By: The DIRECTOR AND STAFF
PHILIPPINES CULTURAL STUDIES CENTER
Friday, Jul. 01, 2005 at 5:14 AM
philcsc1@yahoo.com
Signs of U.S. intervention in the political crisis in the Philippines are surfacing fast. Lessons need to be drawn from the mistakes and failures of People Power 1 and People Power 2. Systemic change is needed, not simply change in personnel. People Power 3 need not mimic the first two--otherwise, everything remains the same, even worse.
STOP U.S. MANIPULATION OF ARROYO'S DOWNFALL AND U.S. INTERVENTION IN CHOOSING HER SUCCESSOR
Incontrovertible signs from Washington and elsewhere indicate that theBush Administration and its reactionary cabal have already instructed their local agents in Manila to replace Arroyo with one of the elite factions, together with a bloc of traditional military-business groups. This is routine maneuver for the US State Department and Pentagon. As in the February 1986 overthrow of Marcos, their agents will use both normal and violent means to maintain its hegemony in its neocolony, particularly when its Mindanao military/political base is at stake.
The Philippines of course has historically been pivotal toUS. projection of its military power in Asia and the Middle East. Besides, Filipinos are famous worldwide for being 200% Americanized and martyrs for "Americanism" everywhere.
Washington is now plagued with the mounting disasters of the war inIraq and Afghanistan. Public resistance to the on going war is increasing, especially among military families and business sectors. Meanwhile, the challenges of Iran, North Korea, and of course China, not to mention Chavez's Venezuela and the insurgents in Colombia, Nepal, and elsewhere, are extremely worrisome to the corporate power elite.
To be sure, the Philippines is not comparable to oil-rich Indonesia ore ven touristy Thailand. Nonetheless, the U.S. hegemonic bloc is extremely fearful that a nationalist, nay a left-wing, alternative may take advantage of the chronic weakness of the Filipino oligarchy ridden with corruption, internal antagonisms, and sycophancy to corporate U.S. and foreign interests. Preparations to transfer the Okinawa operations to the Philippines are being expedited even as the militarization of Japan proceeds without let-up. The Philippines also provides about 10 million migrant contract workers to service corporate globalization around the planet (for example, building Guantanamo prison-cells and cleaning the barracks of the troops inIraq).
After September 11, 2001, the New People's Army and the Communist Party of the Philippines were promptly declared "terrorist organizations" by the U.S. State Department. This is meant to paralyze any international support for the nationalist insurgency. The millions of Filipinos abroad might be a support base for the NPA and the National Democratic Front—just as the Islamic nations supported the Moro National Liberation Front during the Marcos dictatorship. The systematic media exploitation of the Abu Sayaff as somehow comparable in scale to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, together with its linking of the Abu Sayaff with left-wing and nationalist dissent, has conditioned the U.S. public to recent military incursions ("exercises") in the Philippines. It has allowed Bush and his generals to refurbish the politically bankrupt Arroyo and the AFP as part of their united front against opponents of U.S. neocolonial encroachment wherever profits can be made.
Ever since IBON and other pollsters began documenting the decline of public support for Arroyo amid the jueteng scandals involving her family, the U.S. has begun to follow their tested modus operandi on"regime change." They have consulted with opposition politicians, the Catholic Church, the Judiciary, and of course their military operatives. Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo recently solicited the backing of key U.S. lawmakers for Arroyo such as Republican Senator Thad Cochran, chair of the US Senate Appropriations Committee; Republican Senators Robert Bennett of Utah and Jim Kolbe of Arizona, as well as Democratic Senator Diane Feinstein of California (where the majority of Filipino Americans reside). Romulo also got the support of World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz, former adviser to President Bush, and one of the shrewd authors of the project to resuscitate the obsolescent American Empire in the post-Cold War epoch.
A revealing interview of US diplomat Karen Kelley, which appeared in the online Inquirer (reported by Agence France Press, June 29, 2005), suggests the duplicitous mode of preparing for "regime change" as seen from the US Embassy in Manila. While former lackeys of Arroyo are abandoning ship and jumping into the Susan Roces bandwagon, the U.S. poses to defend orderly transition, which means appearing to endorse transparency and accountability while engaged in cloak-and-dagger shenanigans to preserve business and military interests in their former "showcase of democracy" in Asia. The case of "Cold Warriors" Ramon Magsaysay, Benigno Aquino, and Col. Edward Lansdale of the notorious Phoenix program in Vietnam easily come to mind.
Given the pre-emptive and unconscionable means used by globalizing capital to prevent any real substantive change in the local power hierarchy, we shouldn't be deceived by all this legalese rhetoric about democracy and freedom. It is necessary for all progressive forces not to rely solely on bureaucratic or parliamentary means to get rid of Arroyo and her business network. The few wealthy families have never relied only on peaceful means to seize power and maintain supremacy. Nor have the bourgeoisie anywhere in the world. "Civil society" and State as presently constituted only serve to maintain the seemingly "normal" unequal division of power and wealth. We need to be critical of current institutions and practices, and also guard against sectarian dogmatism and opportunist vanguardism. Let the dead bury the dead.
As events in our history have proved, representatives of the ruling class can never represent the genuine long-term interests of the people. Neither Aquino nor Arroyo (who represent sections of the privileged minority) can solve the systemic evils of rampant poverty and unnecessary deaths caused by the unequal division of wealth (in particular, land and other means of production) and the chronic backwardness of the economy due to subservience to U.S. dictates (via World Bank and International Monetary Fund conditionalities). Nor can populist gimmicks tied to Estrada and assorted "social democrats" obsessed with capitalist globalization elsewhere except in thePhilippines, mobilize informed grass-roots support for a thorough going land-reform program, industrialization, a halt to OFW warm-body export policy, and the genocidal war against Moro and indigenous communities.
How can the owners of Hacienda Luisita and the plantations in Negros, Davao, and elsewhere support the loss of their property and class privileges? How can the classes represented by Aquino, Ramos, Estrada and Arroyo really allow the break-up of feudal privileges and their monopoly of political power in their territories? Behind them stand the corrupt mendacious officers of the AFP and the PNP(notwithstanding the presence of some nationalist middle-level personnel in the ranks), as well as warlords and gangster-vigilante formations sponsored by the CIA.
This is not to exclude individual members of these conservative and reactionary groups from joining the anti-imperialist united front. What we need is adherence to and step-by-step implementation of a tactical and strategic program of nationalist development that will mobilize the masses of workers, peasants, women, youth, professionals, and indigenous communities. We do not need to repeat the mistakes of the past. What is needed? Not a mountain stronghold policy of imposing a party line in a sectarian manner, but a way of unleashing the energies, wit, cunning, and intelligence of the masses to destroy the old structures of oppression and exploitation that have victimized us since the days of Spanish colonialism, and particularly since the missionary agents of U.S. "Benevolent Assimilation" landed on our shores and civilized 1.4 million dead Filipinos.
We need to initiate and explore new radical means of emancipatory transformation. A transitional nationalist and popular-democratic government is needed to prevent the usual trick of using so-called legal procedures that have always reproduced the status quo to restore peace and "business as usual." If we want to avoid repeating the mistakes of People Power I and the delusions of People Power II, we need to rely on a united alliance of armed workers' and peasants' councils, community organizations, existing guerilla forces, and other grass-roots agencies to destroy the mechanisms of imperial domination through the institutions used by the landlords, compradors, bureaucrats and traditional politicians. Otherwise, we will prolong the injustice of the present set-up and the suffering of millions ofFilipinos now and in the future.
Only a massive mobilization of the majority of citizens, of all oppressed and exploited sectors, in particular the Moro people and the tribal communities, can rid us of the evils of the exploitation of labor, political tyranny of the U.S., WB/IMF, and WTO, foreign control of the economy, and the racialized inferiorization of our cultural heritage. We need to arm the masses to defend themselves against the counter-revolutionary violence of the U.S. and its local followers.
A thousand defeats and sacrifices litter the past; is history repeating itself?
But our countrymen who gave their lives fighting against Spanish, U.S. and Japanese colonialisms speak to us from the future, saying: "A new world is possible. It is there for us to win."Let us seize this crisis of the enemy—the oligarchic elite and U.S. imperialism—as an opportunity to advance the national democraticrevolution of the Filipino masses and liberate ourselves from the evils of neocolonialism, racial and gender oppression, commodification, and globalized misery.
KUNG HINDI NGAYON, KAILAN PA? MAKIBAKA, HUWAG MATAKOT!
By: The DIRECTOR AND STAFF
PHILIPPINES CULTURAL STUDIES CENTER
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
AUPWU Position: No To a Bogus President
The All U.P. Workers Union, Manila Chapter and the National Executive Board have made a stand to the raging controversy on the Presidency of the Republic. Our stand: NO to a bogus and do nothing GMA regime.
The decision was arrived today in successive meetings: at 9:00 AM, the expanded Manila Chapter Executive Board meeting held at the PGH Pfizer Vitual Library and; at 1:00 PM the National Executive Board meeting held at the AUPWU Manila Conference Room. Prior to the unanimous decisions by both bodies, each meetings were marked by lengthy discussions and verbal tussle on the contents of the Gloriagate Tape and the wide ranging options-from "patawarin na" to ouster.
For the Manila Chapter, the stand was for the chapter to add its voice on the clamor for the ouster of a corrupt, anti-people and bogus GMA Presidency. An Ad Hoc Committee headed by Ms. Amond Olivar, the Chapter Secretary and four other members was formed to draft the official statement of the Chapter. The committee is expected to hand-in a draft statement to the Chapter President/National PRO on Monday, July 11, 2005 for editing and printing. The statement will be mass circulated by the Public Affairs and Special Projects Committees.
Meanwhile, the National Executive Board's stand was to get rid of the GMA government under any situation-from resignation to ouster. The National President and the Diliman Chapter were given the tasks of drafting, finalizing and printing of the Union's statement.
The decision was arrived today in successive meetings: at 9:00 AM, the expanded Manila Chapter Executive Board meeting held at the PGH Pfizer Vitual Library and; at 1:00 PM the National Executive Board meeting held at the AUPWU Manila Conference Room. Prior to the unanimous decisions by both bodies, each meetings were marked by lengthy discussions and verbal tussle on the contents of the Gloriagate Tape and the wide ranging options-from "patawarin na" to ouster.
For the Manila Chapter, the stand was for the chapter to add its voice on the clamor for the ouster of a corrupt, anti-people and bogus GMA Presidency. An Ad Hoc Committee headed by Ms. Amond Olivar, the Chapter Secretary and four other members was formed to draft the official statement of the Chapter. The committee is expected to hand-in a draft statement to the Chapter President/National PRO on Monday, July 11, 2005 for editing and printing. The statement will be mass circulated by the Public Affairs and Special Projects Committees.
Meanwhile, the National Executive Board's stand was to get rid of the GMA government under any situation-from resignation to ouster. The National President and the Diliman Chapter were given the tasks of drafting, finalizing and printing of the Union's statement.
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Apology In A Can of Worms
INSIDE PCIJ: Stories behind our stories
June 28, 2005 @ 2:58 am
Posted by Sheila Coronel
Filed under In the News
PRESIDENT Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's apology raises more questions than it answers. Tonight, after three weeks of silence, she admitted calling a Comelec official before and during the canvassing of the results of last year's elections. She apologized for this "lapse in judgment" and insisted that her actions were meant "not to influence the outcome of the election" but merely to protect her vote.
Mrs. Arroyo admitted to an impropriety, and asked Filipinos that she be allowed "to close this chapter and move on with the business of governing.
"This statement is a gamble. For sure, the President did not admit to conspiring to rig the vote. But her carefully worded apology in effect confirmed that the conversation or conversations with an unnamed Comelec official, presumably Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, took place.
Tonight's announcement also confirmed, if only indirectly, the authenticity of the "Garci" tapes (or at least portions of these), which have been at the center of the controversy roiling her administration. Such a confirmation has serious repercussions, if not for the President herself, then for a whole slew of other individuals, most of all Garcillano himself, who is recorded as being involved in various transactions aimed at rigging the count.
The conversations, after all, provide damning proof that Garcillano was, in the words of a Comelec official, "the plotter for electoral fraud, the overall supervisor and commander in chief" of the manipulation of the count in favor of the administration. The recording points to systemic and institutional fraud perpetrated by the Comelec. Does this mean that the President, by confirming her phone calls to the commissioner, also provided, albeit indirectly, a virtual confirmation of the fraud?
The President also in effect implicated former Senator Robert Barbers, who was caught on the tape arranging a payoff of P1.5 million to P2 million to Garcillano. About a dozen other Comelec officials and bureaucrats, whose conversations with the commissioner alluded, however indirectly, to manipulating the vote, should also be held to account, even if the President were found to be innocent.
But is she really? Were her calls to the commissioner really as harmless as she claims?
The President, according to the three-hour recording of Garcillano's conversations from May 17 to June 19, 2004, made 15 phone calls to the Comelec commissioner. On one day alone, May 29, she made three phonecalls. Were so many calls needed to "protect" her vote? Wouldn't a blanket statement to the commissioner that he should ensure that no cheating is done have sufficed? And why didn't she call the Comelec Chairman, instead of a functionary lower down the totem pole? Did she have to personally ask Garcillano about the count in specific towns and about specific incidents regarding the opposition's accusation of fraud in Mindanao?
Perhaps the most damning conversation between Garcillano and thePresident was the one that took place at 10:29 p.m. on June 2, 2004. During that call, Mrs. Arroyo expressed concern that the statement of votes (SOVs) that support the provincial/municipal certificates of canvass (COCs) in Basilan and Lanao del Sur did not match.
In that call, Garcillano said that the mismatch was possible but that the president should not worry because "itong ginawang pagpataas sa inyo…maayos naman ang paggawa, eh (the way in which your votes were increased was done well)." This was in effect an admission that there was, as the opposition had alleged then, a manipulation of the votes in those two provinces. Confirming that this conversation took place is a virtual admission that the cheating in those places also happened.
In the same conversation, Garcillano alluded to a rigging of the canvass in Basilan and Sulu. He told the President: "Sa Basilan, alam nyo naman ang military doon eh hindi masyadong marunong kasi silang gumawa eh. Katulad don sa Sulu, si Gen. Habacon. Pero hindi naman ho, kinausap ko na yung chairman ng board (of canvassers) sa Sulu. Ang akin pataguin ko muna ang EO (election officer) ng Pangutaran para hindi siya makatestigo ho. (In Basilan, the military wasn't so good at doing these things, like in Sulu, with Gen. Habacon. But I already talked to the chairman of the board of canvassers in Sulu. I think we should just ask the election officer of Pangutaran to hide first so he doesn't have to testify).
"This conversation implicates Maj. Gen. Gabriel Habacon, commanding general of the Army's 1st Infantry Division, whose area of operation covers Basilan, Sulu and the Zamboanga Peninsula. Garcillano implied that Habacon was party to the fraud.
The election officer of Pangutaran town in Sulu was Cipriano Ebron. It was in Pangutaran that the opposition alleged massive dagdag bawas operations took place, with Mrs. Arroyo's vote being padded by 8,000 and Poe's being shaved by 2,000. Such an operation would not have been possible without Ebron's cooperation. Apparently, the President was worried that Ebron would talk. This was why Garcillano assured her that Ebron would be asked to hide in the meantime so that the opposition he would not be able to force him testify on the anomalies. If the President says this conversation took place, then was she also not party, if not to fraud, at the very least to obstruction of justice?
In fact, more details surface in another conversation, this time with a certain "Ruben" to whom Garcillano recounted that the military had already told Ebron to make himself scarce. In yet another call, the commissioner described Ebron as his man ("tao ko yan") and even boasted that "kahit pakainin mo ng bala yun, di na magpapakita (evenn if they made him eat bullets, he wouldn't show up)."
But that is not all. Other conversations in the three-hour recording leave a trail of doubt about the intent of the President's conversations. At face value, the most frequently replayed question she asked of Garcillano, in a call at 9:43 a.m. on May 29, 2004, "So will I still lead by more than 1 M(million)?" may seem innocent enough.
But Garcillano's reply, "Pipilitin ho natin 'yan," would seem to indicate that the commissioner was in a position to ensure such alead. How can a Comelec official do that, except by manipulating the count?
In fact, Garcillano told the President during the same phone call that while Poe was leading in some places in Mindanao, votes from seven municipalities in Lanao would make up for the shortfall. The reality on the ground was this: Poe was ahead in Lanao del Sur 42,374 to32,389, at least according to the preliminary Namfrel count. But upon the Comelec's orders, special elections were called in seven towns where a failure of elections had been declared. Unsurprisingly, Mrs.Arroyo got an overwhelming majority of the vote in those towns: 30,447, against Poe's 6,805.
But the Namfrel chapter in the province, after comparing the certificates of canvass and the precinct-level election returns, found that the President's tally in seven Lanao del Sur towns was padded by 21,217 votes, while Poe's were shaved by 9,174. In another town, Poona Bayabao, the certificate of canvass showed Arroyo getting 4,700 votes, while Poe got zero, and this was what was reflected in the final count. The Namfrel chapter, however, showed precinct-level election returns that listed Arroyo getting 964 votes against Poe's 767.
In the end, the congressional canvass showed her final count in Lanao del Sur at 128,301 versus 43,302 for Poe. Given this context, Garcillano's assurance to the President that she could get her one million "if we can get more in Lanao" does not seem as innocuous as Mrs. Arroyo would like us to believe.
In fact, the overall sense of Garcillano's conversations was that the fraud was extensive and systemic, as it involved not just the Comelec but also the military and the police. Mrs. Arroyo's admission and apology tonight therefore open a can of worms. If Garcillano said all of those things, then he was guilty of fraud. But he was surely, certainly, not alone. He had a whole infrastructure of fraud behind him, and as Mrs. Arroyo herself confirmed tonight, also the implicit support of the President for what he was doing.
June 28, 2005 @ 2:58 am
Posted by Sheila Coronel
Filed under In the News
PRESIDENT Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's apology raises more questions than it answers. Tonight, after three weeks of silence, she admitted calling a Comelec official before and during the canvassing of the results of last year's elections. She apologized for this "lapse in judgment" and insisted that her actions were meant "not to influence the outcome of the election" but merely to protect her vote.
Mrs. Arroyo admitted to an impropriety, and asked Filipinos that she be allowed "to close this chapter and move on with the business of governing.
"This statement is a gamble. For sure, the President did not admit to conspiring to rig the vote. But her carefully worded apology in effect confirmed that the conversation or conversations with an unnamed Comelec official, presumably Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, took place.
Tonight's announcement also confirmed, if only indirectly, the authenticity of the "Garci" tapes (or at least portions of these), which have been at the center of the controversy roiling her administration. Such a confirmation has serious repercussions, if not for the President herself, then for a whole slew of other individuals, most of all Garcillano himself, who is recorded as being involved in various transactions aimed at rigging the count.
The conversations, after all, provide damning proof that Garcillano was, in the words of a Comelec official, "the plotter for electoral fraud, the overall supervisor and commander in chief" of the manipulation of the count in favor of the administration. The recording points to systemic and institutional fraud perpetrated by the Comelec. Does this mean that the President, by confirming her phone calls to the commissioner, also provided, albeit indirectly, a virtual confirmation of the fraud?
The President also in effect implicated former Senator Robert Barbers, who was caught on the tape arranging a payoff of P1.5 million to P2 million to Garcillano. About a dozen other Comelec officials and bureaucrats, whose conversations with the commissioner alluded, however indirectly, to manipulating the vote, should also be held to account, even if the President were found to be innocent.
But is she really? Were her calls to the commissioner really as harmless as she claims?
The President, according to the three-hour recording of Garcillano's conversations from May 17 to June 19, 2004, made 15 phone calls to the Comelec commissioner. On one day alone, May 29, she made three phonecalls. Were so many calls needed to "protect" her vote? Wouldn't a blanket statement to the commissioner that he should ensure that no cheating is done have sufficed? And why didn't she call the Comelec Chairman, instead of a functionary lower down the totem pole? Did she have to personally ask Garcillano about the count in specific towns and about specific incidents regarding the opposition's accusation of fraud in Mindanao?
Perhaps the most damning conversation between Garcillano and thePresident was the one that took place at 10:29 p.m. on June 2, 2004. During that call, Mrs. Arroyo expressed concern that the statement of votes (SOVs) that support the provincial/municipal certificates of canvass (COCs) in Basilan and Lanao del Sur did not match.
In that call, Garcillano said that the mismatch was possible but that the president should not worry because "itong ginawang pagpataas sa inyo…maayos naman ang paggawa, eh (the way in which your votes were increased was done well)." This was in effect an admission that there was, as the opposition had alleged then, a manipulation of the votes in those two provinces. Confirming that this conversation took place is a virtual admission that the cheating in those places also happened.
In the same conversation, Garcillano alluded to a rigging of the canvass in Basilan and Sulu. He told the President: "Sa Basilan, alam nyo naman ang military doon eh hindi masyadong marunong kasi silang gumawa eh. Katulad don sa Sulu, si Gen. Habacon. Pero hindi naman ho, kinausap ko na yung chairman ng board (of canvassers) sa Sulu. Ang akin pataguin ko muna ang EO (election officer) ng Pangutaran para hindi siya makatestigo ho. (In Basilan, the military wasn't so good at doing these things, like in Sulu, with Gen. Habacon. But I already talked to the chairman of the board of canvassers in Sulu. I think we should just ask the election officer of Pangutaran to hide first so he doesn't have to testify).
"This conversation implicates Maj. Gen. Gabriel Habacon, commanding general of the Army's 1st Infantry Division, whose area of operation covers Basilan, Sulu and the Zamboanga Peninsula. Garcillano implied that Habacon was party to the fraud.
The election officer of Pangutaran town in Sulu was Cipriano Ebron. It was in Pangutaran that the opposition alleged massive dagdag bawas operations took place, with Mrs. Arroyo's vote being padded by 8,000 and Poe's being shaved by 2,000. Such an operation would not have been possible without Ebron's cooperation. Apparently, the President was worried that Ebron would talk. This was why Garcillano assured her that Ebron would be asked to hide in the meantime so that the opposition he would not be able to force him testify on the anomalies. If the President says this conversation took place, then was she also not party, if not to fraud, at the very least to obstruction of justice?
In fact, more details surface in another conversation, this time with a certain "Ruben" to whom Garcillano recounted that the military had already told Ebron to make himself scarce. In yet another call, the commissioner described Ebron as his man ("tao ko yan") and even boasted that "kahit pakainin mo ng bala yun, di na magpapakita (evenn if they made him eat bullets, he wouldn't show up)."
But that is not all. Other conversations in the three-hour recording leave a trail of doubt about the intent of the President's conversations. At face value, the most frequently replayed question she asked of Garcillano, in a call at 9:43 a.m. on May 29, 2004, "So will I still lead by more than 1 M(million)?" may seem innocent enough.
But Garcillano's reply, "Pipilitin ho natin 'yan," would seem to indicate that the commissioner was in a position to ensure such alead. How can a Comelec official do that, except by manipulating the count?
In fact, Garcillano told the President during the same phone call that while Poe was leading in some places in Mindanao, votes from seven municipalities in Lanao would make up for the shortfall. The reality on the ground was this: Poe was ahead in Lanao del Sur 42,374 to32,389, at least according to the preliminary Namfrel count. But upon the Comelec's orders, special elections were called in seven towns where a failure of elections had been declared. Unsurprisingly, Mrs.Arroyo got an overwhelming majority of the vote in those towns: 30,447, against Poe's 6,805.
But the Namfrel chapter in the province, after comparing the certificates of canvass and the precinct-level election returns, found that the President's tally in seven Lanao del Sur towns was padded by 21,217 votes, while Poe's were shaved by 9,174. In another town, Poona Bayabao, the certificate of canvass showed Arroyo getting 4,700 votes, while Poe got zero, and this was what was reflected in the final count. The Namfrel chapter, however, showed precinct-level election returns that listed Arroyo getting 964 votes against Poe's 767.
In the end, the congressional canvass showed her final count in Lanao del Sur at 128,301 versus 43,302 for Poe. Given this context, Garcillano's assurance to the President that she could get her one million "if we can get more in Lanao" does not seem as innocuous as Mrs. Arroyo would like us to believe.
In fact, the overall sense of Garcillano's conversations was that the fraud was extensive and systemic, as it involved not just the Comelec but also the military and the police. Mrs. Arroyo's admission and apology tonight therefore open a can of worms. If Garcillano said all of those things, then he was guilty of fraud. But he was surely, certainly, not alone. He had a whole infrastructure of fraud behind him, and as Mrs. Arroyo herself confirmed tonight, also the implicit support of the President for what he was doing.
Friday, June 17, 2005
Arroyo's 'Martial Law' Will Be Thwarted By Waves Of Broad Protests
NEWS RELEASE
June 17, 2005
Reference: Elmer Labog, KMU Chairman
0920-6388960
Workers say never again to dictatorship" -- KMUMilitant labor center Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) today said that whatever plans by Malacanang and President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to put the country under Martial Law in order to suppress the people's growing clamor for her ouster will be frustrated by broad people's protests and resistance.
"KMU received information this morning that Arroyo is planning to declare Martial Law on or before June 21 and that hit squads are positioned within Metro Manila and surrounding provinces. The hit squads can either arrest or exterminate leaders of militant mass organizations.
We are currently taking all necessary precautions and security measures," said KMU Chairman Elmer Labog.
"The information may or may not be true, but we are expecting the worst. We are preparing our ranks for any scenario. Knowing Gloria, she can and she will do anything to hold on to her weakening presidency. But she will not succeed, workers say never again to another dictatorship," Labog stressed.
"Arroyo knows for sure that her regime is destined to collapse. She will be thrown out of Malacanang either through by people power or impeachment procedures following the exposure of audio tapes that are hard proof of the electoral fraud she committed during the elections last year. The political and economic crisis is so intense, even Arroyo and her clique doesn't know how to handle it."
"Like what Marcos did in 1972 when the country is in deep political and economic turmoil and tens of thousands of people are protesting against Marcos' policies, Arroyo is likely to declare open fascist rule to save her illegitimate leadership.
Actually, there is already an undeclared Martial Law with Arroyo's militarization campaign and severe political repression. Political activists and members of militant organizations are constantly harassed, abducted or murdered.
"We will frustrate Arroyo's Martial Law. We will hold a major mobilization on June 24 at Liwasang Bonifacio together with other sectors who are fed up with Arroyo's leadership. ###
June 17, 2005
Reference: Elmer Labog, KMU Chairman
0920-6388960
Workers say never again to dictatorship" -- KMUMilitant labor center Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) today said that whatever plans by Malacanang and President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to put the country under Martial Law in order to suppress the people's growing clamor for her ouster will be frustrated by broad people's protests and resistance.
"KMU received information this morning that Arroyo is planning to declare Martial Law on or before June 21 and that hit squads are positioned within Metro Manila and surrounding provinces. The hit squads can either arrest or exterminate leaders of militant mass organizations.
We are currently taking all necessary precautions and security measures," said KMU Chairman Elmer Labog.
"The information may or may not be true, but we are expecting the worst. We are preparing our ranks for any scenario. Knowing Gloria, she can and she will do anything to hold on to her weakening presidency. But she will not succeed, workers say never again to another dictatorship," Labog stressed.
"Arroyo knows for sure that her regime is destined to collapse. She will be thrown out of Malacanang either through by people power or impeachment procedures following the exposure of audio tapes that are hard proof of the electoral fraud she committed during the elections last year. The political and economic crisis is so intense, even Arroyo and her clique doesn't know how to handle it."
"Like what Marcos did in 1972 when the country is in deep political and economic turmoil and tens of thousands of people are protesting against Marcos' policies, Arroyo is likely to declare open fascist rule to save her illegitimate leadership.
Actually, there is already an undeclared Martial Law with Arroyo's militarization campaign and severe political repression. Political activists and members of militant organizations are constantly harassed, abducted or murdered.
"We will frustrate Arroyo's Martial Law. We will hold a major mobilization on June 24 at Liwasang Bonifacio together with other sectors who are fed up with Arroyo's leadership. ###
Monday, June 13, 2005
Scandals in the (First) Family
This is an excerpt from the Weblog of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (http://pcij.org/blog) related to the recent series of scandals that rocked the Presidency, and more...
June 13, 2005 @ 5:55 pm
Posted by Yvonne Chua Filed under General, In the News
IN his comment on the post "The missing pieces," cy_nick asked about the scandals that have rocked the Arroyo administration. Besides the two current controversies, now being called the "Juetenggate" and "Gloriagate," we’ve come up with this initial list. Feel free to add to it.
IMPSA: Four days after it assumed office, the Arroyo administration approved the awarding of a controversial $470-million contract to the Argentine firm IMPSA (Industrias Metalurgicas Pescarmona Sociedad Anonima) to rehabilitate a hydroelectric plant in Laguna. Justice Secretary Hernando Perez was later accused of demanding and receiving $2 million dollars from ex-Rep. Mark Jimenez, who brokered the deal. Jimenez said he wired the amount to the account of Ernest Escaler in Hong Kong on Feb. 23, 2001 from his bank in Uruguay. The former congressman has been extradited to the United States and has pleaded guilty to charges of mail fraud and making illegal campaign contributions.
SAN FRANCISCO: From the time she was first elected senator in 1992, President Arroyo had failed to declare in her sworn Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth the properties her husband, Jose Miguel Arroyo, bought in San Francisco through his California-based LTA Realty Corp. Newsbreak reported that Mr. Arroyo acquired, re-sold, and managed at least five properties with a total value of at least $7.1 million in the Bay City from 1992 to 2000. The First Couple said they bought the properties in trust for Mr. Arroyo’s younger brother, Ignacio, now a congressman.
BONG PINEDA: President Arroyo got loudly questioned about her personal connection with alleged jueteng boss Bong Pineda: She is godmother to one of Pineda’s sons. She denied any impropriety, saying she doesn’t associate with Pineda or his crowd. In an interview with Time Magazine in 2001, she said that when she was asked to be godmother, she got counsel from then archbishop of Manila Jaime Cardinal Sin. "Cardinal Sin said, as a Christian, if I am asked to be a godmother, it is my Christian duty," she relates, "because the sins of the father are not the sins of the son."
MIKEY’S HORSES: Newsbreak broke the news on a plan of first presidential son Juan Miguel “Mikey” Arroyo to import the 32 thoroughbred horses from Melbourne, Australia. The then Pampanga vice governor, now a congressman, denied the allegation. He admitted, though, he was in the horse trade business; he owns Franchino Farms along with cousin Franchino Pamintuan and friend Ralph Mondragon.JOSE PIDAL: On Aug. 18, 2003, opposition senator Panfilo Lacson accused First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo of money laundering for supposedly siphoning off at least P321 million in campaign funds and contributions to a secret bank account under the fictitious name Jose Pidal and three other accounts using the names of his aides. Among the “donors,” Lacson said, was then Rep. Mark Jimenez who contributed a total of P8 million. Lacson also accused Mr. Arroyo of having an affair with his accountant, Victoria Toh. Following Lacson’s allegations, Mr. Arroyo’s younger brother, Ignacio, came forward to say he is Jose Pidal.
AGRI FUND: First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo was linked in May 2004 to the alleged diversion of P728 million from the Ginintuang Masaganang Ani program to President Arroyo’s campaign war chest in the form of development assistance funds to local government units. Then Agriculture Undersecretary Jocelyn I. Bolante, Mr. Arroyo’s classmate at the Ateneo de Manila University and a colleague at the Rotary Club District 3830, cleared the First Gentleman of involvement. Bolante was tasked to oversee the implementation of the Ginintuang Masaganang Ani program at the time.
PHILHEALTH CARDS: Six weeks before the May 2004 elections, two lawyers from PRO-CON(stitution) filed a disqualification case against President Arroyo before the Comelec, saying she was behind the enhanced Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office’s Greater Medicare Access or GMA program which they claimed was meant to prop up her candidacy. Earlier, another PRO-CON lawyer filed a criminal suit, also before the Comelec, against then PCSO chief Maria Livia “Honeygirl” de Leon and PhilHealth president (now Health Secretary) Francisco T. Duque for vote buying, intervention of a public officer, using public funds for election purposes and using banned election propaganda. Public funds were allegedly spent to enroll families in PhilHealth for one year to induce the enrollees to vote for President Arroyo. The premium cost of P1,200 for each family member was chargeable to PhilHealth and the PCSO. The PhilHealth identification cards bore the President’s picture and the name. Their distribution coincided with the start of the election campaign.
LAS VEGAS SUITE: First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo was the subject of another controversy over his alleged use of a $20,000-a-night suite at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada during the boxing match between Manny Pacquiao and Mexico’s Erick Morales last March 19. The story first appeared as a blind item in the March 23 column of Inquirer sports columnist Recah Trinidad which said a "heavyweight backer" of Pacquiao had stayed in the $20,000 suite at the MGM Grand. The column did not mention Mr. Arroyo. Mr. Arroyo said he did not see anything corrupt about accepting a generous offer of a suite from the hotel as he thought that his stature as the husband of a head of state entitled him to such perks.
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June 13, 2005 @ 5:55 pm
Posted by Yvonne Chua Filed under General, In the News
IN his comment on the post "The missing pieces," cy_nick asked about the scandals that have rocked the Arroyo administration. Besides the two current controversies, now being called the "Juetenggate" and "Gloriagate," we’ve come up with this initial list. Feel free to add to it.
IMPSA: Four days after it assumed office, the Arroyo administration approved the awarding of a controversial $470-million contract to the Argentine firm IMPSA (Industrias Metalurgicas Pescarmona Sociedad Anonima) to rehabilitate a hydroelectric plant in Laguna. Justice Secretary Hernando Perez was later accused of demanding and receiving $2 million dollars from ex-Rep. Mark Jimenez, who brokered the deal. Jimenez said he wired the amount to the account of Ernest Escaler in Hong Kong on Feb. 23, 2001 from his bank in Uruguay. The former congressman has been extradited to the United States and has pleaded guilty to charges of mail fraud and making illegal campaign contributions.
SAN FRANCISCO: From the time she was first elected senator in 1992, President Arroyo had failed to declare in her sworn Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth the properties her husband, Jose Miguel Arroyo, bought in San Francisco through his California-based LTA Realty Corp. Newsbreak reported that Mr. Arroyo acquired, re-sold, and managed at least five properties with a total value of at least $7.1 million in the Bay City from 1992 to 2000. The First Couple said they bought the properties in trust for Mr. Arroyo’s younger brother, Ignacio, now a congressman.
BONG PINEDA: President Arroyo got loudly questioned about her personal connection with alleged jueteng boss Bong Pineda: She is godmother to one of Pineda’s sons. She denied any impropriety, saying she doesn’t associate with Pineda or his crowd. In an interview with Time Magazine in 2001, she said that when she was asked to be godmother, she got counsel from then archbishop of Manila Jaime Cardinal Sin. "Cardinal Sin said, as a Christian, if I am asked to be a godmother, it is my Christian duty," she relates, "because the sins of the father are not the sins of the son."
MIKEY’S HORSES: Newsbreak broke the news on a plan of first presidential son Juan Miguel “Mikey” Arroyo to import the 32 thoroughbred horses from Melbourne, Australia. The then Pampanga vice governor, now a congressman, denied the allegation. He admitted, though, he was in the horse trade business; he owns Franchino Farms along with cousin Franchino Pamintuan and friend Ralph Mondragon.JOSE PIDAL: On Aug. 18, 2003, opposition senator Panfilo Lacson accused First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo of money laundering for supposedly siphoning off at least P321 million in campaign funds and contributions to a secret bank account under the fictitious name Jose Pidal and three other accounts using the names of his aides. Among the “donors,” Lacson said, was then Rep. Mark Jimenez who contributed a total of P8 million. Lacson also accused Mr. Arroyo of having an affair with his accountant, Victoria Toh. Following Lacson’s allegations, Mr. Arroyo’s younger brother, Ignacio, came forward to say he is Jose Pidal.
AGRI FUND: First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo was linked in May 2004 to the alleged diversion of P728 million from the Ginintuang Masaganang Ani program to President Arroyo’s campaign war chest in the form of development assistance funds to local government units. Then Agriculture Undersecretary Jocelyn I. Bolante, Mr. Arroyo’s classmate at the Ateneo de Manila University and a colleague at the Rotary Club District 3830, cleared the First Gentleman of involvement. Bolante was tasked to oversee the implementation of the Ginintuang Masaganang Ani program at the time.
PHILHEALTH CARDS: Six weeks before the May 2004 elections, two lawyers from PRO-CON(stitution) filed a disqualification case against President Arroyo before the Comelec, saying she was behind the enhanced Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office’s Greater Medicare Access or GMA program which they claimed was meant to prop up her candidacy. Earlier, another PRO-CON lawyer filed a criminal suit, also before the Comelec, against then PCSO chief Maria Livia “Honeygirl” de Leon and PhilHealth president (now Health Secretary) Francisco T. Duque for vote buying, intervention of a public officer, using public funds for election purposes and using banned election propaganda. Public funds were allegedly spent to enroll families in PhilHealth for one year to induce the enrollees to vote for President Arroyo. The premium cost of P1,200 for each family member was chargeable to PhilHealth and the PCSO. The PhilHealth identification cards bore the President’s picture and the name. Their distribution coincided with the start of the election campaign.
LAS VEGAS SUITE: First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo was the subject of another controversy over his alleged use of a $20,000-a-night suite at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada during the boxing match between Manny Pacquiao and Mexico’s Erick Morales last March 19. The story first appeared as a blind item in the March 23 column of Inquirer sports columnist Recah Trinidad which said a "heavyweight backer" of Pacquiao had stayed in the $20,000 suite at the MGM Grand. The column did not mention Mr. Arroyo. Mr. Arroyo said he did not see anything corrupt about accepting a generous offer of a suite from the hotel as he thought that his stature as the husband of a head of state entitled him to such perks.
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Sunday, June 05, 2005
When Classes Open Today, Many Boys Won't Be in School
Posted on 5 June 2005
by YVONNE T. CHUA
"WHERE ARE the boys?"
Quezon City Schools Division supervisor Beth Meneses has been asking this question the past several years. On really bad days, she says, as many as one in five of the male students in the city's high schools could be anywhere — the streets, the canteen, the mall, the computer gaming shop — but in the classroom.
Throughout the country, even in Muslim Mindanao where girls have traditionally been kept out of the classroom, public high school teachers have been worrying about the boys. When classes open today and teachers in jampacked classrooms survey a sea of mostly female faces, they will again be wondering where the boys are.
Some teachers have personally hunted down the wayward teenagers, or at least sent the female students to chase after them. If the boys aren't brought back immediately to the classroom, the teachers say, the school system would lose a number of them for good.
Boys have long been more likely to drop out of school than girls in either the grade- or high school level. But as more families require more hands to generate income, parents and teachers get busier, and teenage distractions multiply, the ratio of males to females exiting prematurely from high school has worsened.
There were three male dropouts for every two female dropouts in high school eight years ago. There are now two for every one.
Boys are also leaving school earlier. Of the 211,171 male dropouts in schoolyear 2003-2004, 43 percent were freshmen or 13- to 14-year-olds. There are so many boys dropping out that only 57 of every 100 boys who entered first year end up with a high school diploma, compared to 71 girls.
Indicators in Public Secondary Education, Schoolyear 2002-2003
INDICATOR TOTAL MALE FEMALE
Gross Enrolment Ratio (%) 65.66 62.96 68.41
Net Enrolment Ratio (%) 45.56 41.76 49.44
Cohort Survival Rate (%) 63.88 56.71 71.22
Years Input per Graduate 5.66 6.24 5.19
Graduation Rate (%) 90.62 88.41 92.58
Promotion Rate (%) 83.82 78.49 88.97
Repetition Rate (%) 2.81 4.35 1.32
Failure Rate (%) 9.6 12.59 6.72
Dropout Rate (%) 6.58 8.92 4.31
SOURCE: Department of Education
The trend has altered the landscape of high schools, especially public ones, which account for 80 percent of student enrolment. Across the country, girls now outnumber boys in secondary education. While the excess of high school girls stands at seven percent on average, the gender imbalance is more pronounced in some parts of the country, where females outnumber the males by as much as 30 percent.
Says Eusebio San Diego, Quezon City's values education supervisor: "We keep talking about discrimination against women, but it's the boys we've forgotten."
There are now far more illiterate boys than girls. As a result, more men are jobless and subsequently suffer from low self-esteem. As it is, three out of five unemployed Filipino are now male while nearly 70 percent of today's overseas Filipino workers are female.
Ironically, one of the more frequently cited reasons why boys have gone missing from school is that they have to work. Educators say the deepening poverty in the country is forcing more schoolchildren — usually the boys — to contribute to the family coffers.
About 2.5 million or two-thirds of the four million working children are male, mostly from the rural areas and households with about six members, according to a 2001 survey on children by the National Statistics Office (NSO).
National Achievement Test - Fourth Year, Schoolyear 2003-2004
SUBJECT MALE FEMALE
English 44.08 50
Science 33.52 35.16
Mathematics 31.11 32.36
Total Test 36.24 39.17
SOURCE: Department of Education
San Diego says that poor families tend to make the boys work because they are considered to be more physically able than girls. In broken homes, mothers also expect the boys to take on the father's role. "They are depended on to help support the family," he says.
Because boys generally perform poorer in school, it also seems easier for parents to make them quit and get a job. "Parents would tell kids, 'If you're not doing well in school, drop out and work,'" says Education Undersecretary Juan Miguel Luz.
Most rural boys help farm and fish, says Rene Romero, presidential assistant on special projects and concerns at the Philippine Normal University (PNU). They also land temporary jobs in street diggings or drainage clearings. In some places, says Romero, young boys are employed in "light" work, such as collecting jueteng bets.
The NSO survey found that working boys who are still in school tend to have difficulty catching up with the lessons. Parents, in turn, find that work has affected their children's school performance, pointing to low grades and declining interest in learning.
More than a third of the country's four million child workers had stopped or dropped out of school. Male dropouts outnumbered the females with a ratio of 2:1, citing loss of interest in schooling as the top reason. Others dropped out because their families could not afford their education.
On the whole, Luz says, loss of interest is the chief reason that boys — whether working or not — give up on school. "Boys tend to do poorly than girls," he says. "As they become frustrated, they tend to drop out."
Overall, boys indeed score lower than girls in the National Achievement Test, which checks a child's learning in English, science and math. The biggest difference lies in English, where the boys' scores are five to six percentage points lower than girls'.
More boys (4.35 percent) than girls (1.32 percent) also have to repeat a year level. It also takes boys longer to finish high school: 6.24 years compared to the girls' 5.19 years.
These do not mean the boys are mentally inferior, emphasizes Gertrudes Macusi, assistant to the principal of Ramon Magsaysay High School in Quezon City. They are simply less academically prepared for various reasons, including their inattentiveness in class.
PNU's Romero says that girls value education more than boys do because they no longer see themselves merely staying at home when they grow up; they expect to have careers. Boys tend to assume they would be able to work even without finishing school. Says Romero: "If you let a girl study, she's more likely to finish and find a job here or overseas. You don't have to force them. But with boys, the parents have to force them to finish their schooling."
Girls, he adds, have good study habits compared to boys who have less patience and less endurance for studying, especially in reading and language subjects. Meneses, who taught English for more than two decades before becoming supervisor last year, agrees. "Boys don't like reading at all," she says. "They think reading is girl stuff."
San Francisco High School guidance counselor Philip Austria also observes, "We find that the problematic boys were lazy since elementary. Their study habits weren't formed. They're in second year, but they can't read and write English. They can't understand the lessons. Nababagot sila, naaburido sila (They get annoyed, they get frustrated)."
When that happens, some boys just give up. Jonathan Boadilla of Agoo, La Union was 15 when he enrolled at the town's President Elpidio Quirino National High School five years ago. When the second semester opened, he walked up to his teacher and returned all his books. He was quitting, he declared, because "school was hard."
Boadilla's mother persuaded him to return the following year, but he still passed freshman year with difficulty. Sophomore year turned out to be even harder for him. When the term ended, Boadilla had flunked his math and was asked by the school to enroll in summer class so he could proceed to junior year. He never did.
But grades were not Boadilla's only problems. His mother later found out that he usually cut classes, and instead drank and smoked with his barkada at a sari-sari store near the school. The principal's office kept sending his mother letters about his absences, but one in particular made Beth Boadilla decide to just let her son drop out. "He was caught drinking and smoking in school," she says. "It was embarrassing." In the months that followed, Jonathan's friends also dropped out.
San Diego is not surprised. He points out that adolescent boys are more adventurous, rebellious and daring than adolescent girls, and peer influence is strongest at this stage of development. "Boys are easily convinced (to do stuff) by their friends," he says.
These days the distractions available to the boys come in many forms, among them billiards, the malls and basketball. But educators in urban areas today brand network gaming as among their top foes. Meneses says most boys who miss class hang out in computer shops. "Computer gaming is like a vice," she says. "It's like gambling. You get hooked on computer games. Their allowance for school they use to buy load. I've had male students who lose interest in school because of gaming and drop out. When their teacher scolds them, they stop going to class."
She recalls one student's mother who went around computer shops looking for her son who had gotten hooked on network gaming. The determined mother would march the boy back to school, making sure he finished high school. But the consequence of missing too many classes had set in. The boy was not academically prepared for college or technical school despite having obtained a scholarship from a foreign foundation. Now jobless, he hangs around at the street corner where his mother sells fried bananas and cold drinks.
The problem has also been observed outside Manila. Delia Rivera, a teacher in La Union, recalls that truant boys used to be out playing in the fields or swimming in the river, and would even attend class with wet pants. "Come the 1990s and now, boys are cutting classes and you find them in computer shops," she says.
If not there, they hang out elsewhere. Says Lui Libatique, a master teacher at the Quirino National High School in La Union: "Here, the boys are fond of going out at night, sit under the trees to just talk. They wake up late in the morning and they miss class."
There are, of course, some extreme reasons why boys have gone missing in classes. A World Bank report says many more boys in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao drop out of school in their early teens, and do so about two years earlier than among boys in other parts of the country.
The pattern, the report says, "could be due to the continual armed conflict in the region, its disruptive effects on homes and schools, and its adverse impact on the economy. These consequences appear to have had a more disruptive effect on teenage boys than on girls of the same age. At the same time, early male dropout itself feeds the supply of boys who take up arms."
Still, educators themselves say that sometimes the conditions in the schools, teachers' attitudes, as well as the boys' families are crucial factors in just how long male students would keep going to class.
"Many parents," says Macusi, "are simply not paying enough attention to their children." She says several parents at her school, Ramon Magsaysay, a model institution in the Quezon City educational system, are market vendors and drivers who have to leave home very early and are unaware if their children ever make it to school later in the day. Unfortunately, some of the children head straight for the video and computer shops at Nepa Q Mart, a pedestrian bridge away from the school, rather than to class.
"When the child comes home, his mother is not yet there. The child really has no one to turn to but his friends, his barkada," Macusi says. Still, she says, the reality is that many parents do have to work long hours and cannot be there for their children all the time. "They're too busy. We have to accept that," she says.
Educators say the absence of one parent can have a big effect on a child's — especially a boy's — education. But they differ on which absentee parent has more impact on a boy's drive to go to school.
San Diego says, "When the father is missing, the boy has no one to be afraid of. Boys are scared of their fathers more than their mothers." Yet Romero argues, "When it is the mother who isn't there, it's more likely you won't go to school. The nanay takes care of the baon. The mother would supervise about homework. She is the extension of the school. The father rarely asks about homework or offers a child to help him or her do it."
Educators, though, agree the constant presence and supervision of both parents would minimize juvenile delinquency, which leads partly to the dropout problem. While some are expelled for serious misdemeanors, those who are suspended use that as a reason not to go back to school. Guidance counselor Austria says boys who get into trouble at the San Francisco High School tend to come from broken, large-size families. "They're into marijuana and gambling," he says. "Some cases involve carrying deadly weapons."
Yet even when the boys show up in school relatively ready to learn, it still takes some doing to hold their attention, especially in big, crowded schools. Public high schools have been growing at an annual five percent as hard times force more students to transfer out of private schools and into public institutions.
At the San Francisco High School alone, a standard classroom for 40 has been divided into two classes, each holding 50 to 70 students per section. "We're packed like sardines," says Meneses. She has noticed that the boys get easily irritated and are hot-tempered because they can barely move.
Ballooning school populations have also made monitoring students much harder. In some Quezon City high schools, a teacher handling five to six sections could have as many as 450 students. As a result, the teachers don't know their students well, and can barely tell one from the other.
The sectioning system employed in most schools is no help as well. Quezon City Schools Division journalism supervisor Ligaya Regis says that it only leaves the poor performers among the students even less inspired to improve. "The best teachers are in Sections 1, 2 or 3," she says. "The also-rans are in 29 to 30."
But sometimes, the teachers are themselves the problem. "We need to also discipline teachers," says Austria. "Some teachers don't show up because they're demoralized over low pay, lack of support to their profession, the low evaluation they are getting." Once a teacher is absent, the boys tend to slip out of class and don't return to school for the day, especially if the teacher who is absent happens to be assigned to the first subject of the day.
Austria also laments that some teachers don't mind when some of their students are missing. He observes, "Some teachers even prefer children to be absent. That means less kids whom they have to teach." — with additional reporting by Avigail Olarte
Copyright © 2005 All rights reserved.
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
by YVONNE T. CHUA
"WHERE ARE the boys?"
Quezon City Schools Division supervisor Beth Meneses has been asking this question the past several years. On really bad days, she says, as many as one in five of the male students in the city's high schools could be anywhere — the streets, the canteen, the mall, the computer gaming shop — but in the classroom.
Throughout the country, even in Muslim Mindanao where girls have traditionally been kept out of the classroom, public high school teachers have been worrying about the boys. When classes open today and teachers in jampacked classrooms survey a sea of mostly female faces, they will again be wondering where the boys are.
Some teachers have personally hunted down the wayward teenagers, or at least sent the female students to chase after them. If the boys aren't brought back immediately to the classroom, the teachers say, the school system would lose a number of them for good.
Boys have long been more likely to drop out of school than girls in either the grade- or high school level. But as more families require more hands to generate income, parents and teachers get busier, and teenage distractions multiply, the ratio of males to females exiting prematurely from high school has worsened.
There were three male dropouts for every two female dropouts in high school eight years ago. There are now two for every one.
Boys are also leaving school earlier. Of the 211,171 male dropouts in schoolyear 2003-2004, 43 percent were freshmen or 13- to 14-year-olds. There are so many boys dropping out that only 57 of every 100 boys who entered first year end up with a high school diploma, compared to 71 girls.
Indicators in Public Secondary Education, Schoolyear 2002-2003
INDICATOR TOTAL MALE FEMALE
Gross Enrolment Ratio (%) 65.66 62.96 68.41
Net Enrolment Ratio (%) 45.56 41.76 49.44
Cohort Survival Rate (%) 63.88 56.71 71.22
Years Input per Graduate 5.66 6.24 5.19
Graduation Rate (%) 90.62 88.41 92.58
Promotion Rate (%) 83.82 78.49 88.97
Repetition Rate (%) 2.81 4.35 1.32
Failure Rate (%) 9.6 12.59 6.72
Dropout Rate (%) 6.58 8.92 4.31
SOURCE: Department of Education
The trend has altered the landscape of high schools, especially public ones, which account for 80 percent of student enrolment. Across the country, girls now outnumber boys in secondary education. While the excess of high school girls stands at seven percent on average, the gender imbalance is more pronounced in some parts of the country, where females outnumber the males by as much as 30 percent.
Says Eusebio San Diego, Quezon City's values education supervisor: "We keep talking about discrimination against women, but it's the boys we've forgotten."
There are now far more illiterate boys than girls. As a result, more men are jobless and subsequently suffer from low self-esteem. As it is, three out of five unemployed Filipino are now male while nearly 70 percent of today's overseas Filipino workers are female.
Ironically, one of the more frequently cited reasons why boys have gone missing from school is that they have to work. Educators say the deepening poverty in the country is forcing more schoolchildren — usually the boys — to contribute to the family coffers.
About 2.5 million or two-thirds of the four million working children are male, mostly from the rural areas and households with about six members, according to a 2001 survey on children by the National Statistics Office (NSO).
National Achievement Test - Fourth Year, Schoolyear 2003-2004
SUBJECT MALE FEMALE
English 44.08 50
Science 33.52 35.16
Mathematics 31.11 32.36
Total Test 36.24 39.17
SOURCE: Department of Education
San Diego says that poor families tend to make the boys work because they are considered to be more physically able than girls. In broken homes, mothers also expect the boys to take on the father's role. "They are depended on to help support the family," he says.
Because boys generally perform poorer in school, it also seems easier for parents to make them quit and get a job. "Parents would tell kids, 'If you're not doing well in school, drop out and work,'" says Education Undersecretary Juan Miguel Luz.
Most rural boys help farm and fish, says Rene Romero, presidential assistant on special projects and concerns at the Philippine Normal University (PNU). They also land temporary jobs in street diggings or drainage clearings. In some places, says Romero, young boys are employed in "light" work, such as collecting jueteng bets.
The NSO survey found that working boys who are still in school tend to have difficulty catching up with the lessons. Parents, in turn, find that work has affected their children's school performance, pointing to low grades and declining interest in learning.
More than a third of the country's four million child workers had stopped or dropped out of school. Male dropouts outnumbered the females with a ratio of 2:1, citing loss of interest in schooling as the top reason. Others dropped out because their families could not afford their education.
On the whole, Luz says, loss of interest is the chief reason that boys — whether working or not — give up on school. "Boys tend to do poorly than girls," he says. "As they become frustrated, they tend to drop out."
Overall, boys indeed score lower than girls in the National Achievement Test, which checks a child's learning in English, science and math. The biggest difference lies in English, where the boys' scores are five to six percentage points lower than girls'.
More boys (4.35 percent) than girls (1.32 percent) also have to repeat a year level. It also takes boys longer to finish high school: 6.24 years compared to the girls' 5.19 years.
These do not mean the boys are mentally inferior, emphasizes Gertrudes Macusi, assistant to the principal of Ramon Magsaysay High School in Quezon City. They are simply less academically prepared for various reasons, including their inattentiveness in class.
PNU's Romero says that girls value education more than boys do because they no longer see themselves merely staying at home when they grow up; they expect to have careers. Boys tend to assume they would be able to work even without finishing school. Says Romero: "If you let a girl study, she's more likely to finish and find a job here or overseas. You don't have to force them. But with boys, the parents have to force them to finish their schooling."
Girls, he adds, have good study habits compared to boys who have less patience and less endurance for studying, especially in reading and language subjects. Meneses, who taught English for more than two decades before becoming supervisor last year, agrees. "Boys don't like reading at all," she says. "They think reading is girl stuff."
San Francisco High School guidance counselor Philip Austria also observes, "We find that the problematic boys were lazy since elementary. Their study habits weren't formed. They're in second year, but they can't read and write English. They can't understand the lessons. Nababagot sila, naaburido sila (They get annoyed, they get frustrated)."
When that happens, some boys just give up. Jonathan Boadilla of Agoo, La Union was 15 when he enrolled at the town's President Elpidio Quirino National High School five years ago. When the second semester opened, he walked up to his teacher and returned all his books. He was quitting, he declared, because "school was hard."
Boadilla's mother persuaded him to return the following year, but he still passed freshman year with difficulty. Sophomore year turned out to be even harder for him. When the term ended, Boadilla had flunked his math and was asked by the school to enroll in summer class so he could proceed to junior year. He never did.
But grades were not Boadilla's only problems. His mother later found out that he usually cut classes, and instead drank and smoked with his barkada at a sari-sari store near the school. The principal's office kept sending his mother letters about his absences, but one in particular made Beth Boadilla decide to just let her son drop out. "He was caught drinking and smoking in school," she says. "It was embarrassing." In the months that followed, Jonathan's friends also dropped out.
San Diego is not surprised. He points out that adolescent boys are more adventurous, rebellious and daring than adolescent girls, and peer influence is strongest at this stage of development. "Boys are easily convinced (to do stuff) by their friends," he says.
These days the distractions available to the boys come in many forms, among them billiards, the malls and basketball. But educators in urban areas today brand network gaming as among their top foes. Meneses says most boys who miss class hang out in computer shops. "Computer gaming is like a vice," she says. "It's like gambling. You get hooked on computer games. Their allowance for school they use to buy load. I've had male students who lose interest in school because of gaming and drop out. When their teacher scolds them, they stop going to class."
She recalls one student's mother who went around computer shops looking for her son who had gotten hooked on network gaming. The determined mother would march the boy back to school, making sure he finished high school. But the consequence of missing too many classes had set in. The boy was not academically prepared for college or technical school despite having obtained a scholarship from a foreign foundation. Now jobless, he hangs around at the street corner where his mother sells fried bananas and cold drinks.
The problem has also been observed outside Manila. Delia Rivera, a teacher in La Union, recalls that truant boys used to be out playing in the fields or swimming in the river, and would even attend class with wet pants. "Come the 1990s and now, boys are cutting classes and you find them in computer shops," she says.
If not there, they hang out elsewhere. Says Lui Libatique, a master teacher at the Quirino National High School in La Union: "Here, the boys are fond of going out at night, sit under the trees to just talk. They wake up late in the morning and they miss class."
There are, of course, some extreme reasons why boys have gone missing in classes. A World Bank report says many more boys in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao drop out of school in their early teens, and do so about two years earlier than among boys in other parts of the country.
The pattern, the report says, "could be due to the continual armed conflict in the region, its disruptive effects on homes and schools, and its adverse impact on the economy. These consequences appear to have had a more disruptive effect on teenage boys than on girls of the same age. At the same time, early male dropout itself feeds the supply of boys who take up arms."
Still, educators themselves say that sometimes the conditions in the schools, teachers' attitudes, as well as the boys' families are crucial factors in just how long male students would keep going to class.
"Many parents," says Macusi, "are simply not paying enough attention to their children." She says several parents at her school, Ramon Magsaysay, a model institution in the Quezon City educational system, are market vendors and drivers who have to leave home very early and are unaware if their children ever make it to school later in the day. Unfortunately, some of the children head straight for the video and computer shops at Nepa Q Mart, a pedestrian bridge away from the school, rather than to class.
"When the child comes home, his mother is not yet there. The child really has no one to turn to but his friends, his barkada," Macusi says. Still, she says, the reality is that many parents do have to work long hours and cannot be there for their children all the time. "They're too busy. We have to accept that," she says.
Educators say the absence of one parent can have a big effect on a child's — especially a boy's — education. But they differ on which absentee parent has more impact on a boy's drive to go to school.
San Diego says, "When the father is missing, the boy has no one to be afraid of. Boys are scared of their fathers more than their mothers." Yet Romero argues, "When it is the mother who isn't there, it's more likely you won't go to school. The nanay takes care of the baon. The mother would supervise about homework. She is the extension of the school. The father rarely asks about homework or offers a child to help him or her do it."
Educators, though, agree the constant presence and supervision of both parents would minimize juvenile delinquency, which leads partly to the dropout problem. While some are expelled for serious misdemeanors, those who are suspended use that as a reason not to go back to school. Guidance counselor Austria says boys who get into trouble at the San Francisco High School tend to come from broken, large-size families. "They're into marijuana and gambling," he says. "Some cases involve carrying deadly weapons."
Yet even when the boys show up in school relatively ready to learn, it still takes some doing to hold their attention, especially in big, crowded schools. Public high schools have been growing at an annual five percent as hard times force more students to transfer out of private schools and into public institutions.
At the San Francisco High School alone, a standard classroom for 40 has been divided into two classes, each holding 50 to 70 students per section. "We're packed like sardines," says Meneses. She has noticed that the boys get easily irritated and are hot-tempered because they can barely move.
Ballooning school populations have also made monitoring students much harder. In some Quezon City high schools, a teacher handling five to six sections could have as many as 450 students. As a result, the teachers don't know their students well, and can barely tell one from the other.
The sectioning system employed in most schools is no help as well. Quezon City Schools Division journalism supervisor Ligaya Regis says that it only leaves the poor performers among the students even less inspired to improve. "The best teachers are in Sections 1, 2 or 3," she says. "The also-rans are in 29 to 30."
But sometimes, the teachers are themselves the problem. "We need to also discipline teachers," says Austria. "Some teachers don't show up because they're demoralized over low pay, lack of support to their profession, the low evaluation they are getting." Once a teacher is absent, the boys tend to slip out of class and don't return to school for the day, especially if the teacher who is absent happens to be assigned to the first subject of the day.
Austria also laments that some teachers don't mind when some of their students are missing. He observes, "Some teachers even prefer children to be absent. That means less kids whom they have to teach." — with additional reporting by Avigail Olarte
Copyright © 2005 All rights reserved.
PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
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