i Report Issue No. 3 2005 - Philippine Center for Investigative ...

i REPORT 

July-September 2005 

P75 

Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism 

THE PRESIDENTS 

AND THE 

(JUETENG) LORDS 

Special Focus 

on Filipino 

Youth: The Lost 

Generation 

IMPEACHMENT: WILL IT GET ANYWHERE? 

CHARTER CHANGE: WHAT NOW? 

SHADOWY CAMPAIGN: WHO CHEATED? 

2004 ELECTIONS: WHO SPENT? 

NOLI DE CASTRO: 

WILL 

HE BE 

PRESIDENT?

C O N T E N T S 

OVERVIEW 

ANAK NG JUETENG 2 

Sheila S. Coronel 

Like Joseph Estrada, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo 

has been accused of accepting money from illegal 

gambling. 

THE CAMPAIGN 

JEKYLL-AND-HYDE CAMPAIGN 6 

Yvonne T. Chua 

Alongside the official Arroyo campaign was a 

parallel structure that operated secretly and with 

little accountability. 

PRESIDENTIAL MAKEOVER 10 

A foreign PR firm is re-engineering Mrs. Arroyo’s 

image. 

CAMPAIGN FUNDS 

RUNNING ON TAXPAYERS’ MONEY 12 

Luz Rimban 

Billions of pesos in government funds were 

used to pump prime Arroyo’s candidacy. 

THE VICE PRESIDENT 

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE PRESIDENT 

16 

Luz Rimban 

Noli de Castro has come a long way from his 

days as a broadcaster; he may even end up in 

Malacañang. 

CHARTER CHANGE 

SOS: SYSTEM UNDER STRESS 20 

Sheila S. Coronel 

Can Congress be trusted to hold a credible impeachment 

trial and to change the constitution? 

IMPEACHMENT 

LIGHTS, CAMERA, IMPEACHMENT! 24 

Alecks P. Pabico 

The impeachment proceedings should be the 

best show in town, but so far, it’s been a sleeper. 

VOICES FROM THE PERIPHERY 

FOR VISAYANS, 

THE CENTER DOES NOT HOLD 

Resil Mojares 

THE MORO PEOPLE CAN BE PART 

OF A PLURAL SOCIETY WITHOUT 

LOSING THEIR IDENTITY 

28 

Omar Solitario Ali 

THE TIME FOR FEDERALISM 

IS NOW 

29 

Rey Magno Teves 

TWO AT EDSA 

“WHEN THE WHEELS OF HISTORY 

TURN, YOU HARDLY EXPECT THE 

WORLD TO TURN UPSIDE DOWN” 

Ed Lingao 

“I WAS AT EDSA OUT OF 

PURE DISGUST” 32 

Mylene Lising 

FOCUS ON FILIPINO YOUTH: 

THE LOST GENERATION 

FINDING SPACES 33 

Katrina Stuart Santiago 

They are the hi-tech generation, at ease with 

technology but otherwise lost when it comes 

26 

31 

to dealing with the complexities of a globalized 

world. 

SO YOUNG & SO TRAPO 36 

Avigail Olarte 

The Sangguniang Kabataan, training ground of 

future leaders, has fallen into the grip of traditional 

politics. 

TEEN & TIPSY 

40 

Vinia Datinguinoo 

More and more adolescent girls are drinking 

alcohol. 

PERILS OF GENERATION SEX 44 

Cheryl Chan 

Filipino women are having sex earlier, but are 

seldom aware of the risks, including sexually 

transmitted diseases. 

THE BEAUTY BUSINESS 46 

Cheryl Chan 

Shampoos, skin whiteners, and assorted other 

beauty products find a ready market among 

young women. 

MACHOS IN THE MIRROR 48 

Dean Francis Alfar 

Filipino men are spending millions to look—and 

feel—good. 

MALE & VAIN 50 

Photos by Jose Enrique Soriano 

Men are lining up to get facials, foot scrubs, and 

even dips in bathtubs filled with rose petals. 

GROWING UP FEMALE & MUSLIM 52 

Samira Gutoc 

Moro women still value religion and tradition, 

but are also responding to the challenges of 

modernity. 

VIRTUALLY YOURS 56 

Alecks P. Pabico 

Technology has redefined the barkada. 

Cover: Jueteng scandals have rocked two 

Philippine presidents, Joseph Estrada and 

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. 

Photo Credits: Malaya provided the photos 

for pages 2, 3, 4 (top photo), 10, 12, 14, 16- 

18, 20-22, 24-25, 35-39, and 46. Photos on 

pages 15 and 26 are by Laurent Duvillier. Joe 

Galvez took the photo of the jueteng gaming 

table on page 4. The photos of Ed Lingao on 

page 30 are courtesy of the author; that of 

Mylene Lising on page 31, also courtesy of 

the author, while Sid Balatan took the Edsa 

2 photo on that page. Sonny Yabao took the 

photos on pages 33 (top photo) and 34. The 

bottom photo on page 33 is from the National 

Youth Commission. The photos on pages 40- 

41 are by Vinia Datinguinoo; those on pages 

48-49 are by Jose Enrique Soriano; on page 

52 by Rick Rocamora, and on pages 56-58 by 

Alecks P. Pabico. 

CONFUSED CONFESSION 

Some of readers may be confused about 

our size. This year, i Report has come 

out two sizes: the book-sized version for 

No.1 and 2 and the magazine-sized version 

you hold in your hand. The reason is 

simple: we started out thinking that we 

could stray away from the news and focus 

instead on long-term social, political, 

and lifestyle trends. But then Gloriagate 

broke out and we were proven so wrong. 

The tempo of the times required that 

we keep our readers abreast of current 

events. That entailed giving up the less 

timebound, book-sized i in favor of the 

more current, newsmagazine format. 

Our dealers have also asked that we 

keep to this size, as it is more visible 

on the newsstands and easier to sell. 

We will oblige them. Our apologies for 

the confusion. We assure our readers 

that there will be no resizing of i in the 

foreseeable future. We know that you 

can take only so much uncertainty in 

this uncertain times. 

Feedback on the magazine is welcome. 

Email us at imag@pcij.org or fax us at 

929-3571. 

EDITOR Sheila S. Coronel 

DEPUTY EDITOR Cecile C.A. Balgos 

STAFF Yvonne T. Chua, Luz Rimban, 

Vinia M. Datinguinoo, Alecks P. 

Pabico, Avigail Olarte 

OFFICE MANAGER Fausta Cacdac 

BOARD OF EDITORS Philippine Center 

for Investigative Journalism 

Lorna Kalaw-Tirol, Sheila S. Coronel, 

Marites Dañguilan Vitug, Malou 

Mangahas, Howie G. Severino, David 

Celdran, Ma. Ceres P. Doyo 

BOARD OF ADVISERS Jose V. Abueva, 

Jose F. Lacaba, Cecilia Lazaro, Tina 

Monzon-Palma, Sixto K. Roxas, Jose 

M. Galang 

Published by the Philippine Center for Investigative 

Journalism; 3/F Criselda II Building, 107 Scout de Guia 

Street, Quezon City 1104 

T 4194768 F 929-3571 

Email: Pcij@pcij.org; imag@pcij.org 

PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM 

I REPORT 

1

SHEILA S. CORONEL 

NO TWO presidents 

could be 

more unlike each 

other. She is a 

workaholic with a 

PhD in economics. 

He is a college 

dropout and a movie actor 

who gets up at noon. She is most 

comfortable speaking in English 

and spouting economic jargon. 

He grunts rather than speaks, and 

when he does, he prefers Tagalog 

of the kanto 

boy variety. But 

then he has a natural charm and 

is effortlessly popular; his mass 

appeal is undeniable. 

She, on the other hand, is 

charisma challenged. While 

he acts like one of the boys, 

she behaves like an unpopular 

schoolmarm. Low on mass appeal, 

she projects herself as a 

skilled, hands-on executive, an 

image attractive to the middle 

class and the business community, 

but otherwise unappealing 

to the skeptical masa. 

In terms of style, personality, 

career track, and even linguistic 

preference, no two presidents 

could be more different from 

each other than Gloria Macapagal- 

Arroyo and her predecessor Joseph 

Estrada. But there is one thing that 

they have in common: jueteng. 

The scandals that have rocked 

both their governments involve the 

illicit numbers game, and no matter 

what they do, they will never live 

down their association with it. 

Nearly four years ago, Ilocos 

Sur Gov. Luis ‘Chavit’ Singson 

told a stunned nation that Erap 

was the “lord of all jueteng 

lords,” setting off street protests 

and a compromised impeachment 

trial that led to the president’s 

ouster. Today Arroyo is 

also facing impeachment, accused, 

among other things, of 

using jueteng money to bankroll 

her campaign and to bribe election 

officials. 

One would think that history 

would not repeat itself so crudely, 

or so soon. But then a closer look 

at history reveals the deep roots 

that jueteng has in Philippine 

social and political life. Jueteng 

thrives in the murky underworld 

where crime, politics, and poverty 

meet. It lives in the spaces where 

the rule of law is weak, where 

those who hold power are in the 

thrall of illicit money and wealth, 

and where the poor are made 

complicit in the structures that 

keep them powerless. 

Today we have, by all appearances, 

a very modern president, 

a Georgetown classmate of 

Bill Clinton who comports herself 

more like a technocrat than a politician. 

But the reality is that our 

politics has deep, feudal roots 

and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is 

as immersed in the sleazy world 

of traditional Philippine politics 

as her predecessor was. Despite 

the talk of reform and the ability 

to appeal to the urban middle 

class and the globalizing sectors 

of the business community, she 

has done little to yank the political 

system out of its feudal roots. 

It now looks that she is as trapo 

as they come. Like Estrada, she 

is anak ng jueteng, the child of 

a political system as tired and as 

old as that illicit numbers game. 

Jueteng therefore is at least 

100 years old. Its language alone 

betrays its age. The word itself is 

Chinese, deriving from the characters 

hue 

(flower) and 

eng 

(to 

bet). But because the game was 

probably introduced by Chinese 

traders during the Spanish colonial 

era, its vocabulary is in Spanish: 

cabo 

for the chief collector, 

cobradores 

for the bet collectors, 

cobranza for the collection. 

Jueteng’s links to local politics 

is probably as old. In 1929, for 

example, Mariano Arroyo, then 

the governor of Iloilo and the 

most powerful man in the province, 

was accused of coddling a 

Chinese jueteng lord and of operating 

a gambling den himself in 

order to raise money for the 1931 

VERY OLD AND VERY 

LUCRATIVE 

The first jurisprudence on jueteng, 

says lawyer Sonny Pulgar, dates 

back to 1905, when a U.S. judge 

in the Philippine Supreme Court 

upheld a lower court’s decision 

that found two individuals guilty 

of “unlawful gambling” in Malabon. 

The tribunal upheld the 

sentences: a fine of 625 pesetas 

and imprisonment of two months 

for the owner and “banker” of 

the gambling establishment and a 

325-peseta fine and a prison term 

of one month and a day for the 

woman caught betting there. 

2 PHILIPPINE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM I REPORT

O V E R V I E W 

Jueteng keeps the police 

running as well: police officers 

use bribes from gambling 

lords to buy gasoline for their 

vehicles, office supplies, even 

medicine for sick cops. In addition, 

jueteng provides jobs—one 

estimate is that it employs close 

to 150,000 people throughout 

Luzon. Its grassroots base includes 

millions, many of them 

poor people who bet P1 or more 

in a game of chance that has 

deep roots in popular folklore. 

In short, jueteng is a parallel 

government, funding the social 

services that government, if it 

were working properly, should 

be delivering. Jueteng may be 

the most organized and the most 

public racket in the country, but 

it serves a social function, too. 

For sure, it preys on the poor 

and keeps them trapped in 

relationships of patronage, but 

it also provides them with temporary 

relief from their misery. 

Jueteng is not a victimless crime. 

As the parade of witnesses in the 

Senate hearings since May have 

shown, jueteng corrupts, and 

corrupts absolutely, including 

possibly even the presidency. 

TWO OF A KIND? Both the 

Arroyo and Estrada presidencies 

have been tainted by their 

association with illegal gambling. 

JUETENG 

elections. Because of exposés that 

ran in a local paper, Arroyo was 

investigated and subsequently 

dismissed from his post. Mariano 

had a brother, Jose, whose 

grandson is Jose Miguel Arroyo, 

the president’s husband. 

This is by no means unusual. 

Over the years, the names 

of politicians who have been 

linked to jueteng reads like a 

who’s who of Philippine political 

families. The names of 

the Singsons of Ilocos, the Cojuangcos 

of Tarlac, the Josons 

of Nueva Ecija, the Villafuertes 

of Camarines Sur, the Lees of 

Sorsogon, and the Espinosas of 

Masbate have all been tainted, 

whether rightly or wrongly, by 

jueteng. Some of these families 

have been accused of protecting 

illegal gambling operators. Others 

have been known to operate 

jueteng networks themselves. 

Puerto Princesa Mayor Edward 

Hagedorn, one of the 

president’s staunchest supporters, 

is a self-confessed former 

jueteng big boss. The current 

Batangas governor, Armand 

Sanchez, now also an Arroyo 

loyalist, was on the list of gambling 

operators who regularly 

gave Estrada a cut from their 

collections. More recently, the 

Lapids of Pampanga—action 

star Lito, now senator, and his 

son Mark, the provincial governor—have 

been linked to illegal 

gambling as well, not so much as 

operators but as protectors and 

beneficiaries of one particularly 

notorious jueteng lord. 

In most of Luzon, jueteng is 

the lifeblood of local politics. 

It is a source of campaign contributions. 

During elections, its 

network of collectors doubles as 

a campaign machine. It is, more 

importantly, also a well of money 

that allows local officials to deliver 

patronage. A significant cut 

of jueteng profits passes from the 

gambling operator to the mayor, 

congressman, or governor, who 

in turn doles out some of the 

money to his or her constituents. 

For generations, voters have 

brought their supplications to 

politicians, who are seen as the 

local DSWD (Department of Social 

Welfare and Development). 

A MULTIBILLION-PESO 

INDUSTRY 

In 1995, Rep. Roilo Golez estimated 

that jueteng was an P18- 

billion-a-year industry. In 1999, 

retired Philippine National Police 

(PNP) Gen. Wilfredo Reotutar 

put the daily bets placed with 

jueteng operations in Luzon 

and the Visayas at P84 million 

a day, or about P30 billion 

a year. About a third of this 

amount—P25 million daily or P9 

billion a year—goes to protection 

money paid to government 

and police officials, Reotutar 

reported. In 2001, when Chavit 

Singson exposed his pal Erap’s 

jueteng links, the Ilocos Sur politico 

estimated the total jueteng 

collections from just 22 Luzon 

provinces at about P50 million a 

day or P18 billion a year. 

Wenceslao Sombero, a retired 

police colonel who was 

once chief of the Detective and 

Special Operations Office of the 

PNP’s Criminal Investigation 

and Detection Group (CIDG), 

estimated that in the post-Estrada 

era, jueteng had expanded to 27 

Luzon provinces, with operators 

raking in about P75 million in 

bets a day or about P27 billion 

a year. This is almost equal the 

2004 gross revenues of Fortune 


I REPORT 

3

Tobacco, the country’s biggest 

cigarette manufacturer, and is 

more than half the total sales that 

year of the country’s two biggest 

mobile-phone-services companies, 

Globe and Smart, which 

are roughly in the P50-billion 

range and are among the top 10 

companies in the country. 

Unlike the corporate Top 

1000, however, jueteng lords 

have low overheads, don’t pay 

taxes, and get cash collections 

on the spot, thanks to a network 

of cobradores. Jueteng is also 

a low-capital, low-tech operation; 

little investment in product 

innovation and research and 

development is needed. No advertising 

is required. Aside from 

its collectors, all it needs is the 

protection of officials. 

Although it had fallen into the 

pits of disrepute after Estrada, 

JUETENG WHISTLEBLOWER. 

Chavit Singson exposed 

Estrada’s jueteng links in 

2001, but the numbers 

game (below) still flourishes 

in many parts of the country. 

jueteng thrived in the post-Edsa 

2 period, when a few gambling 

lords, most notably the Pampangueño 

jueteng boss Rodolfo 

‘Bong’ Pineda, expanded and 

consolidated their operations. 

The complicity of the police and 

of local officials is partly to blame, 

because jueteng cannot operate 

without the tacit cooperation of 

law enforcers. But, police sources 

say, Pineda and the others were 

able to operate freely because 

of the perception that they were 

close to Malacañang and that the 

Palace was giving its blessings 

to their operations. Until the 

recent police crackdown in the 

wake of the Senate hearings, the 

signal being sent down the line 

was apparently that the present 

administration was okay with 

jueteng. 

JUETENG AND LOCAL 

POWER 

Jueteng’s intimate relationship 

with local power stems from its 

decentralized operations. The 

activities of a jueteng lord are 

confined to a town or a province; 

gambling operators do not cross 

jurisdictions, where they risk 

incurring the ire of rivals who 

have already been operating 

there for years. Moreover, jueteng 

is based on local knowledge: 

operators rely on a long-established 

network of cabos, usually 

respected local people whom 

they personally know and trust. 

It is hard to do that if one is an 

outsider or unable to speak the 

local language. Jueteng operators 

also invest in relationships with 

local officials and other local influentials, 

including parish priests 

and journalists. Outsiders would 

find it difficult to penetrate these 

local networks of trust. 

Unsurprisingly, the two presidents 

who have been linked to 

jueteng—Estrada and Arroyo— 

are also those with firm roots in 

small-town politics. Estrada was 

a longtime mayor of San Juan. 

He was mayor in the sense of 

a small-town boss, who took 

cuts from the illicit trades in his 

municipality, jueteng included. 

For Estrada, the presidency was 

the mayoralty writ large. This 

was why, according to Singson, 

just barely two months into his 

presidency, Erap already arranged 

to get a three-percent 

share from the collections of 

jueteng operators throughout 

the country. He apparently did 

the same for smuggling, according 

to his former finance secretary, 

Edgardo Espiritu. Estrada 

looked, and played, the part of 

gangster-president, and it was 

this that caused his ouster. 

While Arroyo herself did 

not spring from local politics 

as Estrada did, she has roots in 

Lubao, Pampanga, her father’s 

hometown and also the home 

base of jueteng uberlord Pineda, 

whose wife Lilia, a former Lubao 

mayor, is said to be a close presidential 

friend. No one can spend 

time in Lubao and not be aware 

of the tremendous hold that the 

Pinedas have there. 

Estrada’s relationship with 

jueteng operators was more 

like that of a mafia lord. It 

was a relationship motivated 

by pure greed: Estrada apparently 

thought that since jueteng 

bosses were making tons of easy 

money, there was no reason the 

president should not share in 

the loot. From the testimonies 

so far presented against her, 

Gloria Arroyo appears to have 

related to jueteng more like a 

politician than a godfather like 

Erap. Determined to contest the 

presidency in 2004 and anxious 

about her popularity, Arroyo, 

like many other politicians, 

apparently saw jueteng as a 

hard fact of Philippine political 

life—and that it could be used 

for electoral purposes. 

Unlike Estrada, who insisted 

on a share of gambling collections 

being delivered to him 

regularly, the testimonies so far 

given in the Senate hearings on 

jueteng point to presidential 

relatives—not President Arroyo 

herself—receiving far smaller 

(P500,000 monthly), but still 

regular, shares of jueteng collections 

from selected areas. 

Moreover, the collections were 

not aggregated nationally like 

they were during the Erap era 

(Estrada was alleged to have 

amassed P500 million in jueteng 

funds over a two-year period). 

There is therefore a difference in 

scale as well as purpose. 

To Arroyo, there is a difference 

in style as well. In 2001, after 

she assumed the presidency, she 

famously insisted in interviews 

that she was different from Estrada 

because she didn’t socialize 

with gamblers. “Is my social life 

entwined with their social life?” 

she asked in an Asiaweek inter- 

view. “Do I play mahjong with 

them, travel with them, drink with 

them? I am a godmother of one 

of (Pineda’s) children, but that is 

the custom, to have the highest 

official in the town be a sponsor. 

And I even asked Cardinal Sin 

about the propriety of accepting 

being godmother of a child of 

somebody with a dubious reputation. 

Cardinal Sin told me it is my 

obligation to accept because the 

sin of the father is not the sin of 

the child.” 

Despite her religious denials, 

the association with Pineda 

persists. The most damning 

accusation against the president 

so far is that she allowed 

jueteng money to be used for 

her campaign and to bribe 

elections officials. This was the 

gist of the testimony given on 

August 1 by political operative 

Michaelangelo Zuce, who said 

he witnessed payoffs to elections 

officials made in the Arroyo 

home by Lilia Pineda. Not only 

that, Zuce said that the Pinedas 

bankrolled other expenses of 

elections officials. 

Before that, Lingayen Archbishop 

Oscar Cruz had accused 

the president of receiving support 

“in kind” from the Lubao jueteng 

lord. Much earlier, when she ran 

for the Senate in 1995, politicians 

like Senator Aquilino Pimentel Jr. 

already accused Arroyo of having 

her famous Nora Aunor look-alike 

posters printed by Pineda. Some 

senatorial candidates also said 

that Pineda’s jueteng network 

were mobilized for the Arroyo 

campaign that year. 

THE PROBLEM WITH 

PINEDA 

What rouses the suspicions of 

jueteng watchers is that Bong 

Pineda has done exceedingly 

well during the Arroyo presidency, 

faring much better than he did 

during the Estrada era, when he 

had the president in his pocket, 

in a manner of speaking, being 

one of the main contributors 

listed in Chavit Singson’s famous 

ledger. Ex-cop and avid gambling 

watcher Sombero reckons that 

Pineda probably nets close to 

P2 billion a year from jueteng 

operations in 10 areas. These include 

his home base Pampanga, 

Pangasinan, Isabela, Bulacan, 

Bataan, Zambales, Camarines 


O V E R V I E W 

Sur, Camarines Norte, Albay, and 

parts of Metro Manila, a lucrative 

territory that Pineda reportedly 

shares with his former boss and 

mentor, the now aging jueteng 

lord Tony Santos. 

No one else in the history of 

jueteng in the country has been 

able to expand and consolidate 

illegal gambling operations as 

Pineda supposedly has. He is a 

jueteng franchisee, the Jollibee 

of jueteng according to Sombero, 

who was also vice president of 

the gambling firm BW Resources 

during the Estrada period. There 

are maybe half a dozen jueteng 

franchise operators in the country. 

These are the entrepreneurs 

and financiers who link up with 

a local jueteng operator, paying 

for the costs of protection to 

provincial, regional and national 

government and police officials, 

thereby allowing local gambling 

networks to operate free from 

official harassment. 

Sombero says local operators 

pay a one-time franchise fee of 

about P500,000 to P1 million 

each, and also shoulder the 

payoffs to the winning bettors. 

In a fairly large province, total 

bet collections would amount to 

about P5 million a day or P150 

million a month. By Sombero’s 

calculations, which jibe with 

testimonies made by several 

witnesses in the Senate investigation 

on jueteng, the national 

operator or franchise holder 

shoulders the following: 

• the salaries of cabos (average 

15 per town) and cobradores 

(15 per cabo) - 12 

percent of total collections 

or about P18 million monthly 

(in a province with 30 towns, 

this is about P2,500 monthly 

per person); 

• the payoffs to local officials 

- eight percent or about P12 

million monthly, including 

payments to the mayor, 

vice mayor, and sometimes 

councilors as well as chief 

of police; also includes contributions 

to the church and 

other charities as well as 

bribes to local media; and 

• the payoffs to higher-level 

officials and the media—10 

percent or about P15 million 

a month, including 

the governor (P1 million 

to 3 million), congressman 

(P1 million or less), board 

members, the head of the 

PNP regional (P1.5 million) 

and provincial commands 

(P2 million), the CIDG in the 

region and in the province 

and CIDG headquarters. 

The national franchise holder 

nets about five percent of the 

total collections, about P7.5 million 

monthly per province, and 

it is from these that payoffs to 

presidential relatives are made, if 

needed. But he could earn more 

if, like Pineda, he finances the local 

operations himself. The local 

operator, according to Sombero, 

gets 65 percent of the total collections, 

but has to pay the winners 

from this amount as well as 

personnel and other expenses, 

which could add up to about 

five percent of the collections. 

Local operators are dispersed; one 

working in just one town like Senate 

witness Wilfredo ‘Boy’ Mayor 

who operated in Daraga, Albay, 

would net P100,000 to P300,000 

a month. Someone who operates 

in an entire congressional district 

or province could net P1 million 

to P2 million monthly. The operators 

earn more if they cheat the 

winners and rig the bola, or the 

raffle where the winning numbers 

are picked. 

BULGING CASH COW 

In other words, jueteng is as 

big a cash cow as they come. 

And since the Estrada era, officials 

have wizened up to how 

much they can actually squeeze 

from gambling operators. Ten 

years ago, according to Mayor, 

the payoff to a congressman 

was only P25,000 a month; to a 

governor, just P100,000. Today 

Mayor says a governor would 

ask for at least P1 million. The 

amounts of bribes vary, though, 

and some officials do refuse to 

accept jueteng payoffs. 

But the trend throughout 

the country is that of ballooning 

payoffs. The increased demand 

is driven by the fact that 

elections—and the day-to-day 

doleouts that are required of 

patronage politics—are now 

more expensive. Because government 

finances are tight, there 

are fewer opportunities to make 

money out of public works and 

other contracts. The private sector, 

too, is feeling the pinch, and 

therefore not inclined to top up 

political contributions. At the 

same time, the demands for patronage 

are rising, as constricting 

economic opportunities leave 

more and more voters with few 

options left except relying on the 

tender mercies of politicians. 

For all these reasons, including 

the fact that politicians 

now have a clearer idea of how 

much gambling operators make, 

jueteng has emerged as a stable 

source of political funding at the 

local level, on top of traditional 

sources like Chinese-Filipino 

businessmen and government 

contractors. There is also now an 

evident phenomenon of jueteng 

operators running for local office. 

Apart from Pineda’s son (and 

the president’s godson) Dennis, 

who is now mayor of Lubao, 

there’s Armand Sanchez, who 

was elected Batangas governor 

in 2004. Liberal Party officials say 

that Arroyo herself interceded 

with the LP to adopt Sanchez a 

few months before the elections, 

so he could contest the governorship 

as a member of the party. 

At the national level, jueteng 

funds were supposedly mobilized 

for at least one particularly 

favored senatorial candidate in 

2004. And if the testimonies of the 

likes of Zuce are to be believed, 

jueteng funds were also used for 

“special operations” linked to 

Arroyo’s 2004 presidential campaign. 

As a source of campaign 

contributions, however, jueteng 

lords are still dwarfed by the 

Chinoy tycoons, among them the 

likes of Lucio Tan, who supposedly 

gave Estrada P1.5 billion in 

1998. While Pineda is swimming 

in cash, it is unlikely he can 

cough up that much even for a 

favorite president. Capt. Marlon 

Mendoza, the ex-security aide 

of former election commissioner 

Virgilio Garcillano, alleges that 

DEATH BY EXPOSÉ. 

Arroyo beams as Estrada’s 

vice president at a public 

function before jueteng 

brought about his fall. 

he heard the official saying that 

Pineda had given P300 million to 

the Arroyo campaign. 

If these charges are true, then 

it is clear that the one danger of 

accepting that kind of money 

is discovery. The expansion of 

the Pineda jueteng empire was 

achieved by crushing rival operators. 

Apparently, these rivals 

were only biding their time. “He 

(Pineda) edged out everyone 

else,” Senator Panfilo Lacson told 

reporters in June. “He is the reason 

cited by many operators who 

have offered to be witnesses in 

the (Senate) investigation.” 

If this plot sounds familiar, it’s 

because we’ve heard and seen this 

before. In 2001, Chavit Singson 

revealed all about Erap because 

he felt edged out of the gambling 

racket. Now the small jueteng 

operators are ganging up against 

Pineda by surfacing witnesses attesting 

to the possible involvement 

of the president and her kin in the 

illegal numbers game. 

In 2001, we wrote of Estrada, 

“Death by exposé: this is the 

danger of treating presidency as 

a protection racket.” 

For sure, Estrada is suffering 

the consequences of his jueteng 

misdeeds. But everyone else, including 

Pineda and the two dozen 

or so jueteng operators who made 

Estrada rich, remain in business. 

Today is another day, another 

presidency. Jueteng is still going 

strong, and not only because it is 

a lifeline for politicians. It persists 

because of the failure of state and 

society to enforce the law, deliver 

services, and provide for the needy. 

All of us are anak ng jueteng. 


I REPORT 

5

THE TWO FACES OF GMA. 

Aides say that while the 

president has a reformist 

side, she has also accepted 

the realities of trapo politics, 

including paybacks and payoffs. 

JEKYLL-AND-HYDE 

CAMPAIGN 

YVONNE T. CHUA 

I 

N THE 

May 2004 elections, 

President Gloria Macapagal 

Arroyo maintained a 

campaign organization so 

elaborate it even included 

a group dubbed “Special 

Ops,” an infamous abbreviation 

for “special operations” that 

many equate with “dirty tricks,” or 

cruder still, poll cheating. 

What the “Special Ops” group 

under then presidential liaison 

officer for political affairs Jose 

Ma. ‘Joey’ Rufino was tasked 

to do—or did exactly—was not 

known to the president’s official 

campaign advisers. Up to now, 

many of them are still clueless 

about that group’s tasks. 

Former presidential peace 

adviser Teresita ‘Ging’ Deles 

can only say that Rufino’s activities 

were never taken up in 

the meetings of the executive 

council Arroyo convened to take 

charge of plotting and directing 

her campaign. Deles was part of 

that council, also referred to as 

the advisory council. 

“We thought we were running 

the campaign,” says another 

council member, former social 

welfare secretary Corazon ‘Dinky’ 

Soliman. “We thought we were in 

the inner circle of the box.” 

But since the wiretapped 

conversations between Arroyo 

and Commission on Elections 

(Comelec) commissioner Virgilio 

Garcillano became public on June 

6, and the subsequent sworn 

statement issued on August 1 by 

Garcillano nephew and Rufino 

subaltern Michaelangelo ‘Louie’ 

Zuce, Deles and Soliman now 

know better. Quips Soliman: “Inside 

the box was a smaller box.” 

Apparently working alongside 

Arroyo’s official campaign 

team was an informal network 

that included Garcillano, Comelec 

field personnel, the police 

and the military, freelance political 

operators, and perhaps 

a banana-chips processor and 

assorted businesspeople in 

Mindanao and elsewhere. Said 

to be on top of it all was First 

Gentleman Mike Arroyo, ably 

assisted by now Antipolo Rep. 

Ronaldo ‘Ronnie Puno, a veteran 

campaign strategist who was 

part of the Marcos, Ramos, and 

Estrada campaigns. 

These “backroom operators,” 

as one ex-Palace insider describes 

the motley team, made up 

several groups whose functions 

ranged from the seemingly mundane, 

such as quick-counting 

votes, to more questionable tasks 

that could have had electoral 

manipulation among them. 

These parallel operations 

seem to come as little surprise 

to those who have worked for 

the president, given what some 

describe as her “dualistic” nature. 

A former aide notes that 

during the canvassing, Arroyo 

was going around the Carmelite 

convents, including those in Bacolod 

and Iloilo, even as she was 

then placing “improper” calls to 

Garcillano. “It’s like Jekyll and 

Hyde,” says the ex-aide. 

At the height of the political 

crisis, even her Cabinet split into 

two groups: one concerned with 

the president’s “survival at all cost,” 

the other pushing for “reforms.” 

Soliman, a former Arroyo 

confidante, says of the president’s 

personality: “She was exposed 

and has accepted the practices of 

traditional politics such as paybacks, 

payups, operations of dirty 

tricks. At the same time she also 

believed in instituting reforms in 

the economic, social and governance 

spheres using principles of 

transparency, accountability, and 

service to the people. She believed 

that both worlds can exist 

in one person and the dissonance 

and disconnect will not clash in 

her and in her actions.” 

Soliman says that in a crisis, 

such as now, when the two parts 

of the president become dissonant, 

Arroyo is more comfortable 

with traditional politicians 

and reverts to the old world of 

wheeling-dealing and compromises 

that she knows so well. 

THE OFFICIAL COUNCIL 

When she was with her executive 

council during the campaign, it 

was the no-nonsense technocrat 

Gloria Arroyo that presided over 

the meetings. The council shared 

with the president the top rung 

of her official campaign organization. 

From January 2004 to the 

elections, the council met weekly 

to hear and analyze Palace pollster 

Pedro ‘Junie’ Laylo’s report 

on the province-by-province 

surveys he was running. It identified 

strategies for Arroyo in areas 

where her showing was weak, to 

turn “swing” votes among the undecided 

voters to her favor, and 

to maintain her showing in places 

where she was likely to win. 

Former President Fidel V. Ramos 

co-chaired the meetings with 

Arroyo. Aside from Ramos, council 

members included Deles and Soliman 

(both of whom represented 

civil society), campaign manager 

Gabriel Claudio, and campaign 

spokesman Michael Defensor. Also 

part of the council were the leaders 

of the political parties that made up 

the administration K-4 (Koalisyon 

ng Katapatan at Karanasan sa 

Kinabukasan) coalition: Speaker 

Jose de Venecia and then Defense 

Secretary Eduardo Ermita of the 

Lakas-CMD, Senate President Franklin 

Drilon and then Batanes Rep. 

Florencio Abad of the Liberal Party, 

Sen. Manuel Villar of the Nacionalista 

Party, and National Security 

Adviser Norberto Gonzales of the 

Partidong Demokratiko-Sosyalista 

ng Pilipinas. 

Businessman and Philippine 

National Oil Company president 

Paul Aquino occasionally sat in 

the council meetings in his capacity 

as K-4’s consultant. Then 

presidential adviser for media 

and ecclesiastical affairs Conrado 

‘Dodie’ Limcaoco, who was in 

charge of the K-4 senatorial slate, 

was also in the meetings. 

Initially, the council met at the 

Palace. But when Cabinet meetings 

became irregular in the runup to 

the polls, the council would get 

together at the old Macapagal family 

residence in Forbes Park, Makati. 

Drilon also took over in the latter 

part of the campaign, says Deles. 

At the Cabinet, then Executive 

Secretary and now Foreign 

Secretary Alberto Romulo was in 

charge of how members were to 


T H E C A M P A I G N 

“CONSULTATIONS” 

WITH CASH 

Apparently more focused on 

their “tasks” were Garcillano and 

his cohorts. Indeed, Garcillano 

already seemed to know what he 

would be doing when he applied 

for the post of Comelec commissioner. 

In his Nov. 11, 2003 letter 

to the president, Garcillano 

reminded Arroyo that he was 

among those approached by 

her husband when she ran and 

topped the 1995 senatorial polls. 

He also underlined his role in 

monitoring and protecting the 

votes of the Lakas senatorial candidates 

in 2001. Garcillano was 

formerly the Region 10 (Northern 

Mindanao) Comelec director. 

Sen. Aquilino Pimentel called 

him a “dagdag bawas” (vote-padding 

and shaving) operator, but 

he was named elections commissioner 

anyway in February 2004. 

The burly Zuce says he was instrumental 

in bringing Garcillano 

to Rufino’s —and consequently 

the president’s––attention. In his 

sworn statement, Zuce says Garcillano, 

with Rufino’s blessings, in 

2002 organized three “consultation 

meetings” with Mindanaobased 

Comelec officials in Lanao 

del Norte and General Santos City 

during which he solicited their 

support for the president’s candidacy 

and gave out cash ranging 

from P5,000 to P20,000. 

A year later, says Zuce, Mindanao 

regional directors and procampaign 

for the president. Cabinet 

members, for example, were 

told to make a pitch for Arroyo 

when they distributed Philhealth 

cards. “We asked if we could 

campaign and they said we could 

legally because we were political 

appointees,” says Soliman. 

On election day onward, 

Cabinet members fanned out 

to the provinces to gather the 

provincial certificates of canvass 

and the accompanying statements 

of votes. This time they 

took their cues from then presidential 

legal counsel and now 

Defense Secretary Avelino Cruz, 

who had set up a quick-count 

center at the basement of the 

Olympia Towers in Makati. 

Cruz also headed a legal panel 

assembled for the president’s 

election bid. Operating out of Olympia 

Towers as well, the panel 

included former local governments 

undersecretary and now 

Government Corporate Counsel 

Agnes Devanadera, ex-Comelec 

Commissioner Manuel Gorospe, 

and election-law experts Romulo 

Makalintal and Al Agra. 

A BIG WINNING MARGIN 

Like any candidate, Arroyo 

wanted to win. That much was 

clear to all the president’s men 

and women. Actually, says 

an ex-Cabinet member, “she 

was obsessed with the idea of 

winning. She (couldn’t) stand 

a loss….(She) felt she had to 

redeem her father (the late president 

Diosdado Macapagal) who 

lost in his reelection (bid).” 

That the president should 

win by at least a million votes, 

however, was never made 

known to most members of her 

Cabinet. Yet it apparently was 

common knowledge among the 

other groups working for her. 

A handler of a K-4 senatorial 

candidate says that two weeks 

before the May 10, 2004 elections, 

a campaign operative had 

said the president would win by 

800,000 votes. “Plantsado na 

raw 

(It was already arranged),” 

the handler says. That statement 

would make sense to the handler 

only after the “Hello, Garci” 

tapes controversy broke out. 

More interestingly, however, 

is that other campaign insiders 

say First Gentleman Mike Arroyo, 

Kampi stalwart Ronaldo ‘Ronnie’ 

Puno, and a top government official 

met regularly at the Wack Wack 

Country Club before the campaign 

to discuss ways to ensure not only 

the president’s victory, but also a 

huge winning margin. 

As campaign manager, presidential 

political adviser Gabriel 

Claudio was the K-4’s public face 

in last year’s elections. But those 

with the administration party say it 

was Mike Arroyo who was the de 

facto campaign manager, and that 

he got a lot of help from Puno. 

At the peak of the political 

crisis, the president herself told 

some Cabinet members that 

she had called in the Antipolo 

congressman to help. But during 

the campaign, he had no official 

role in the Arroyo camp. “He was 

never mentioned, he was never 

seen,” says Deles. “I would even 

deny his involvement in the president’s 

campaign. Even the First 

Gentleman was not visible.” 

Some Palace insiders, however, 

say Puno was working 

quietly behind the scenes with 

the First Gentleman and had recommended 

“unorthodox” means 

to clinch Arroyo’s huge winning 

margin over her opponent, actor 

Fernando Poe Jr. 

A campaign strategist who 

was part of the K-4 coalition 

also recalls a K-4 lawyer assuring 

them that they were certain to get 

help. “The same operations as 

Sulo Hotel and Byron Hotel,” the 

strategist was told, apparently in 

reference to Puno’s operations at 

Sulo Hotel in Quezon City when 

he helped Ramos’s 1992 presidential 

campaign and at Byron Hotel 

in Mandaluyong when he backed 

Joseph Estrada’s presidential bid. 

The strategist says, “DILG 

(the Department of Interior and 

Local Governments that Puno 

headed under the Estrada presidency) 

people in the provinces 

were used as listening posts. 

They even knew who drug and 

jueteng money were funding.” 

Both Claudio and Puno were 

with the Ramos campaign. In a 

2003 interview with PCIJ, Puno 

scoffed at allegations that he was 

the architect of Ramos’s supposed 

dirty-tricks department based at 

Sulo Hotel. He said he delivers 

because he has the science, citing 

his experience a campaign 

consultant for the U.S. lobbying 

firm Black, Manafort, Stone, and 

Kelly, which has strong links to 

the Republican Party. 

In 2002, Puno supposedly set 

up camp again at Byron Hotel 

to build a comprehensive elections 

database for Arroyo. A K-4 

campaign strategist says Puno 

disbanded the group when President 

Arroyo announced on Rizal 

Day in 2002 she was not running. 

But he quickly got the group 

back together in April 2003, long 

before the president announced 

her candidacy. The strategy, this 

source says, was to use the database 

to pinpoint places where Arroyo 

was strong and employ “all 

means” to increase her votes. 

Malaya columnist and opposi- 

tion stalwart Lito Banayo, quoting 

Loren Legarda’s electoral recount 

consultants, says Byron Hotel was 

the “headquarters of choice in the 

2004 electoral experience of a 

coven of pre-fabricators of election 

returns” used to ensure the president’s 

landslide victory in Pampanga, 

Cebu, Iloilo, and Bohol. 

One member of the K-4 campaign 

says Puno oversaw the 

Mindanao canvassing after being 

proclaimed Antipolo City’s congressman. 

This source asserts that “Ronnie 

Puno played a big role,” although 

he was “distracted because he was 

running at the same time.” 

vincial election supervisors met 

at the Grand Boulevard Hotel on 

Roxas Boulevard to discuss the 

president’s candidacy. Envelopes 

containing P17,000 each were 

distributed to the participants. 

On Jan. 10, 2004, Garcillano, 

through Rufino’s office, organized 

yet another meeting with 

23 Mindanao election officials, 

again at the Grand Boulevard. 

This time, each Comelec official 

got P25,000, Zuce says. 

But Zuce’s most damning allegation 

so far is that President 

Arroyo hosted dinner for 27 Mindanao-based 

Comelec officials at her 

La Vista residence in Quezon City 

four months before the elections, 

and that envelopes containing 

P30,000 each were distributed by 

Lilia ‘Baby’ Pineda, wife of jueteng 

lord Rodolfo ‘Bong’ Pineda, to 

her guests in her presence. Zuce, 

who was invited to the dinner 

and got an envelope himself, says 

Garcillano and former Isabela Gov. 

Faustino Dy were also present. 

Zuce told the PCIJ as well as 

the Senate later that the president 

hosted another dinner that same 

month for about 20 Comelec officials 

from Luzon and the Visayas. 

Baby Pineda again distributed 

money to the officials before they 

left Arroyo’s home. 

Malacañang has issued no 

categorical denial about the dinners, 

although the president herself 

has said, “Ang masasabi ko 

walang nagbibigay ng suhol sa 

harap ko (All I can say is no one 

gives out bribes in front of me).” 

The now ailing Rufino’s own 

statement said, “I and my office 

have never been involved in influencing, 

much less bribing, 

Comelec officials to support Lakas-NUCD 

candidates including 

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.” 

Comelec officials led by 

Region 4 Director Juanito ‘Johnny’ 

Icaro, who allegedly distributed 

the envelopes at La Vista, have 


I REPORT 

7

likewise rebutted Zuce’s charges. 

But Comelec regional director 

Helen A. Flores, who was not in 

any of the meetings Zuce said 

took place from 2002 to 2004, says 

Garcillano, through his security officer 

and nephew Capt. Valentino 

Lopez, had offered her P50 million 

to rig the 2004 polls. Flores says 

she spurned the offer. Four days 

before election day, she was relieved 

as regional director for the 

Autonomous Region of Muslim 

Mindanao and moved to Region 9 

(Western Mindanao). Lopez, now 

with the Army Headquarters Support 

Group, denies involvement 

in the bribery attempt. 

ZUCE’S MINDANAO 

TRIPS 

On August 10, Capt. Marlon Mendoza, 

a former Intelligence Service 

officer assigned as Garcillano’s 

chief security officer during the 

polls, surfaced to say he flew to 

Mindanao on May 11, 2004 on 

Garcillano’s order, and accompanied 

Zuce when the latter visited 

Lanao del Norte and Cotabato 

City. Mendoza told the Senate 

he saw Zuce handing Lanao 

provincial election supervisor Ray 

Sumalipao a “large amount of cash 

in an envelope” on May 12. A 

Comelec director in Cotabato City 

also received cash from Zuce on 

May 14, he said. 

Mendoza said that by May 16, 

he and Zuce were in Iligan City. 

As their group was having lunch in 

a restaurant there, he heard someone 

say, “Huling binibilang ang 

balota sa 

area ng Lanao del Norte 

at Lanao del Sur para makakuha 

ng dagdag (The ballots from Lanao 

del Norte and Lanao del Sur will be 

the last to be counted so we can 

increase these) if GMA will lose in 

other areas in the country.” 

In a recorded May 29 conversation 

with Garcillano, the president 

had asked pointedly, “So will 

I still lead by more than one million 

(votes)?” The commissioner 

replied that her rival’s count was 

high but “mag-compensate 

po 

sa Lanao 

‘yan (that will be com- 

pensated in Lanao).” At the time, 

the counting of votes from seven 

towns in Lanao del Sur’s 39 provinces 

was far from over. 

Zuce says his uncle sent him 

to Mindanao to coordinate with 

the Comelec personnel there. He 

says the region’s “special operations” 

headed by Ernesto ‘Butch’ 

Paquingan, a political consultant 

based in Cagayan de Oro City, 

helped in ensuring Arroyo’s victory. 

Zuce says Paquingan was 

reporting directly to then Executive 

Secretary Romulo. 

Paquingan has called Zuce 

a liar. Zuce, he added, told him 

the opposition had offered him 

P4 million to P5 million to testify 

against Arroyo. 

But an old hand in electoral 

RIGGING THE COUNT. 

“Special operations” in 

Mindanao supposedly 

widened Arroyo’s lead. 

campaigns says Zuce worked 

with Paquingan in previous polls, 

including the 1998 elections. Many 

candidates for national position 

also engaged Paquingan’s services 

to help them win in Mindanao, 

says the campaign veteran. 

In his Senate testimony, Mendoza 

said Garcillano sent him 

to Cagayan de Oro on May 11, 

2004 as security officer for Zuce, 

Paquingan, “King James,” and a 

certain “Jun L. Bamboo” of the 

Presidential Management Services. 

He identified Paquingan as 

“a consultant related to DFA Secretary 

Romulo” and “King James” 

as George Goking, whom he said 

was Arroyo’s close friend. 

In the “Hello, Garci” tapes, 

there are two recorded conversations 

between the Comelec commissioner 

and Zuce. The first 

was on May 28, 2004 when Garcillano 

asked Zuce and Goking, 

a Cagayan de Oro businessman 

who is also a director of the Philippine 

Amusements and Gaming 

Corporation (Pagcor), to come to 

his house for a meeting. 

Zuce, who confirmed to the 

Senate that he was among those recorded 

in the “Hello, Garci” tapes, 

called the commissioner again on 

June 16 to say he and “George” 

(apparently Goking) were at Harrison 

Plaza. In both conversations, 

Zuce addressed Garcillano as 

“’cle,” short for uncle. 

The campaign veteran says 

Mindanao is home to many freelance 

operators, including businessmen, 

who help candidates 

by buying votes for them. Zuce 

had been Garcillano’s conduit 

to some of these key players, 

according to the source. 

“(The operators) join Senate 

party coalitions if not hired by 

a senatorial candidate,” says the 

campaign expert. “Then they 

moonlight toward the finish line 

either buying votes or doing 

presidential campaigns. After 

the campaign, they are hired as 

political officers.” 

The campaign veteran says 

the operators have long been 

in existence; all a candidate has 

to do is tap into the existing 

syndicates and networks. 

“OPLAN MERCURY” 

Businessman Rodolfo Galang, 

however, says it is also important 

to ensure the “cooperation” of local 

officials and political rivals for 

a candidate to win. Galang says 

he volunteered to do this for the 

president in parts of Mindanao 

during the 2004 elections. 

Galang, who co-owns a banana 

chips processing plant in 

Maguindanao with Paulino Ejercito, 

brother of ousted President 

Estrada, says he decided to help 

the Arroyo camp because he 

believed the country would not 

benefit from a Poe presidency. 

Galang had also been eyeing a 

slot machine franchise from the 

Pagcor. He never got it. 

Soon after the polls, Galang 

changed his mind about Arroyo 

and executed on June 21, 2004 

an affidavit he later filed with the 

Office of the Ombudsman. His 

affidavit charged the Arroyo administration 

with buying off local 

officials and opposition candidates 

in Romblon and certain areas in 

Mindanao under “Oplan Mercury.” 

These were Lanao del Sur, Davao 

City, Davao del Norte, Maguindanao, 

Cotabato City, Davao Oriental, 

South Cotabato, Davao del 

Sur, Sulu, North Cotabato, Sultan 

Kudarat, Tawi-Tawi, Samal, Compostela, 

Sarangani, Zamboanga 

Sibugay, and Bukidnon. 

Galang says his conduit to the 

president was Limcaoco. A March 

28, 2004 memorandum for Arroyo 

purportedly coursed through 

Limcaoco identified the political 

leaders who Galang said he could 

convince to pledge their support 

for the president, paving the way 

for the conversion of about a third 

of Poe’s projected votes to Arroyo’s. 

He estimated this roughly 

to be 1.6 million of the 5.5 million 

votes in the “Mercury” areas. 

The “conversion,” according to 

Galang, could be made by using 

the carrot of fund releases to convince 

local government officials to 

mobilize support for Arroyo. Thus, 

in his affidavit, Galang implicated 

the officials who made those fund 

releases possible: Nena Valdez, 

the president’s former Assumption 

Convent classmate who reportedly 

took charge of the funds released 

for Oplan Mercury; then Agriculture 

Secretary Luis Lorenzo for approving 

the release of the fertilizers 

given to Mindanao officials; then 

National Food Authority director 

Arthur Yap for the rice distributed 

to them; Pagcor chair Ephraim 

Genuino for the capital equipment 

that was also given out; and then 

Health Secretary Manuel Dayrit for 

the medicine. (See “Running on 

Taxpayer’s Money.”) 

Before the March 2004 memo, 

Galang says he submitted to the 

president, again through Limcaoco, 

analyses of the political situation 

these places, including informal 

surveys assessing the chances of 

Arroyo and local candidates. The 

document on Maguindanao projected 

Poe would win 70 percent 

of the votes, or about 284,310. 

“Oplan Mercury” would pad the 

votes to ensure that Arroyo got 

262,2440, leaving Poe with only 

43,740 votes. (PCIJ has copies of 

the Maguindanao document and 

the March 2004 memo.) 

Right after Galang disclosed 

“Oplan Mercury” in a press conference 

last year, Limcaoco dismissed 

his allegations as hearsay 

and baseless. He said Galang had 

volunteered to campaign for K-4 

but “he was never my employee 

or political operator. Nor did we 

authorize or support any illegal 

operation.” 

Former Cabinet members 

say it was unlikely Limcaoco 

had time to mount such an operation. 

They say taking care of 

the K-4 senatorial candidates 

was a full-time job. 

Still, the president did post one 



of her biggest winning margins 

in the congressional count for 

Maguindanao, garnering 193,938 

votes against Poe’s 59,892. The opposition 

considers the outcomes 

in eight towns there as highly 

dubious. Poe scored zero in Ampatuan 

and Datu Piang, and got 

as little as five to 174 votes in six 

other towns. 

In their June 6 conversation, 

the president sought Garcillano’s 

assurance that the documents in 

Maguindanao were consistent. 

The commissioner had replied 

that Maguindanao wasn’t really 

much of a problem. 

Four days later, Arroyo expressed 

concern over the local 

canvassing in South Upi town, 

where Comelec had proclaimed 

different winners. But she told 

Garcillano that the important thing 

was “hindi madamay ‘yung sa 

taas 

(we don’t get affected at the 

top).” The commissioner assured 

her that he had control there. 

A SHADOW QUICK 

COUNT 

Like the other Cabinet members 

gathering certificates of canvass, 

Deles brought the documents 

she had collected to presidential 

legal counsel Cruz, who ran the 

K-4’s official quick-count center 

at Olympia Towers. But that was 

not the only Arroyo quick-count 

in town. K-4 campaign handlers 

now speak of another done with 

the help of the Philippine National 

Police (PNP), then under 

Gen. Hermogenes Ebdane. Now 

public works secretary, Ebdane’s 

name was mentioned in the 

“Hello, Garci” tapes. 

The PNP appeared to have 

instructed some of its members to 

get copies of precinct-level election 

returns. These were forwarded to 

the K-4 headquarters for senatorial 

candidates and their handlers to 

monitor. On the count’s third day, 

however, the Senate tally was canceled, 

forcing the candidates to get 

their own precinct count. 

A consultant of a K-4 senatorial 

candidate was told the PNP 

received word to send the results 

straight to Malacañang. The consultant 

was then asked to call 

two phone numbers to check 

the count’s progress: one number 

was a phone at the Olympia Towers; 

the other was picked up by 

someone at the Department of 

National Defense or DND. 

Soliman recalls that as election 

day neared, then Defense Secretary 

Ermita increasingly took the 

lead among the Cabinet members 

in the president’s campaign. But 

Deles says Arroyo had stressed the 

need for Ermita, a Lakas regional 

chairman known for his good political 

instincts, to stay “behind the 

scene.” Neither Deles nor Soliman, 

though, remembers any instructions 

given to the DND. 

The K-4 candidate’s consultant, 

however, says ex-elections 

commissioner Gorospe, who 

reportedly had his own group 

besides being in the K-4 legal 

team, was often at the DND during 

the counting. A former DND 

staffmember also says access to 

the Defense Intelligence Service 

Group (DISG) compound at the 

back of the DND building in 

Camp Aguinaldo was prohibited 

during the elections. The DISG 

primarily provides the security escort 

of the defense secretary and 

pursues intelligence projects. 

Heavily tinted vehicles were 

GUIDE TO NAMES IN THE CAMPAIGN CHART 

Silvestre Afable: then Arroyo’s communications 

director; chief government negotiator 

with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front 

Al Agra: elections and local governance 

law expert 

Amable Aguiluz: founder and chairman 

of the AMA Education System; special 

envoy to the Gulf Cooperation Council 

Tomas Alcantara: businessman, former trade 

undersecretary; now presidential chief of staff 

Paul Aquino: Philippine National Oil Co. 

president and CEO 

Hernani Braganza: mayor of Alaminos, 

Pangasinan; a Lakas stalwart 

Gabriel Claudio: political adviser 

Avelino Cruz: then presidential legal 

counsel, now defense secretary 

Angelo Tim de Rivera: commissioner, 

Commission on Information and Communications 

Technology 

Michael Defensor: then housing chief; 

now environment secretary 

Rodolfo del Rosario: Davao del Norte 

governor; also presidential adviser for 

New Government Centers 

Agnes Devanadera: former local government 

undersecretary, now government 

corporate counsel 

Marita “Mai Mai” Jimenez: former presidential 

assistant on appointments and 

former secretary for special projects and 

overseas development assistance; now 

Philippine representative to the Asian 

Development Bank 

Pedro “Junie” Laylo: formerly with Social 

Weather Stations; now Palace pollster 

Conrado Limcaoco: then presidential adviser 

on media and ecclesiastical affairs; 

now Cabinet Offi cer for Provincial Events 

Edgardo “Ed” Pamintuan: presidential 

adviser on external affairs 

Abraham Purugganan: former deputy 

presidential adviser for special concerns; 

now Philippine National Construction Corp. 

director 

Jose Ma. “Joey” Rufino: then presidential 

liaison offi cer for political affairs 

Corazon “Dinky” Soliman: then social 

welfare secretary 

Patricia “Pat” Sto. Tomas: labor secretary 

seen coming in and out of the 

DISG, even at late nights and 

early hours in the morning, according 

to the ex-DND insider. 

New computers were moved 

there, along with Arroyo election 

paraphernalia. Ermita’s 

head executive assistant Alfredo 

Bunye, the presidential spokesman’s 

brother, was said to have 

held office at the DISG during 

this period as well. 

Requests from local goverment 

officials for election materials were 

directed to the DISG. On occasion, 

DND soldiers and personnel 

were used to distribute the materials 

to requesting parties, says the 

former DND staff member. 

Non-party Mobilization 

Grassroots Sector 

(Abraham Purugganan) 

Political Bureau 

(Gabriel Claudio) 

Overseas Ops 

(Amable Aguiluz) 

Speakers Bureau 

Campaign Spokesman 

(Michael Defensor) 

Legal 

(Al Agra) 

MIS / Database 

(Angelo Tim de Rivera) 

Political Intelligence 

Admin and Logistics 

Parallel/Support Groups 

(Hernani Braganza / 

Edgardo Pamintuan) 

Presidential Candidate 

(Gloria Arroyo) 

Executive Council 

(See Story for List) 

General Campaign Manager 

(Gabriel Claudio / Paul Aquino) 

Nena Valdez: former classmate of Arroyo 

at Assumption College; former presidential 

assistant on internal household affairs in 

charge of the president’s personal finances 

Communications 

(Silvestre Afable) 

FACT-FINDING BODIES 

AND ANTIDOTES 

After the “Hello, Garci” tapes 

revealed what appears to be military 

involvement in manipulating 

last year’s elections, the military 

formed a fact-finding board to 

investigate four senior officers 

mentioned in the conversations: 

Lt. Gen. Hermogenes Esperon of 

the Special Operations Command; 

Maj. Gen. Gabriel Habacon of 

the 1st Infantry Division; Brig. 

Gen. Francisco Gudani, assistant 

superintendent of the Philippine 

Military Academy; and retired 

lieutenant general Roy Kyamko. 

During the 2004 polls, Kyamko 

was Southern Command 

chief. Esperon was the deputy 

chief of Task Force HOPE, Gudani 

the former chief of Task 

Force Ranao, and Habacon chief 

of Task Force Comet. 

In a statement last August 4, 

a group calling itself “The Young 

Officers Union of the new generation 

(YOUng)” sought the investigation 

of other officers for their 

supposed part in the alleged electoral 

fraud: Brig. Gen. Nehemias 

Pajarito, chief of the Army’s 104th 

Brigade based in Marawi City; 

Brig. Gen. Nelson Allaga, 3 rd 

Marine Brigade commander; Navy 

Capt. Feliciano Angue, then head 

of Naval Task Force 62 operating 

in Tawi-Tawi and now Navy operations 

chief; Marine lieutenant 

colonels Melvin Pelonia and Elmer 

Estopin based in Tawi-Tawi and 

Sulu, respectively; Army Colonels 

Rey Arde and Aminkandra Undug; 

and a certain Colonel Pereno and 

Captain Perez. 

It’s uncertain if there was a 

military component to the socalled 

“Antidote Group,” which 

a senator’s adviser first heard of 

weeks before the polls. While 

fretting over the absence of a 

K-4 senatorial campaign plan, 

the adviser was assured by a 

presidential consultant, “Don’t 

worry, there’s an antidote.” 

Rufino also referred to an 

“Antidote Group” in his marginal 

note to Arroyo when he 

endorsed Garcillano as elections 

commissioner. Wrote Rufino: 

“He (Garcillano) will be a great 

asset to you. He has proven 

track record and can deliver! 

Part…The Antidote Group.” 

The senator’s adviser says the 

Antidote Group was often offered 

as the solution whenever the 

campaign had problems. Whoever 

made up the group remains a 

mystery to the adviser, but its purpose 

has since become clear. “Our 

own quick count showed some 

election returns did not match 

the certificates of canvass,” says 

the adviser. But many of these 

somehow got “cured.” 

Finance Committee 

(Rodolfo del Rosario) 

Events and Appointments 

(Tomas Alcantara / Paul Aquino 

Budget and Accounting 

(Nena Valdez) 

Governance Liaison 

(Marita Jimenez / Patricia Sto. Tomas) 

VP/ Senatorial Coordinator 

(Conrado Limcaoco for Senatorial) 

Rallies and Sorties 

(Corazon Soliman / Pearl 

Viernes) 

Sample Ballots 

Poll Watch 

(Avelino Cruz / Agnes 

Devanadera) 

Operations 

Operation Quick Count 

Special Ops 

(Jose Ma. Rufino) 

Strategic Research & 

Surveys (Pedro Laylo) 

Merchandising Production 

and Distribution 

Pearl Viernes: professional events organizer 

in charge of recruiting showbiz 

personalities for the campaign 


I REPORT 

9


Presidential Makeover 

ELLEN TORDESILLAS 

WHEN TV and newspapers 

carried images 

of President Gloria 

Macapagal-Arroyo 

and some members of her family 

taking a Sunday morning stroll 

along Baywalk on Roxas Boulevard 

last July, those who had 

witnessed the dying days of the 

Marcos regime were reminded 

of a presidential family photo in 

1985, showing the Marcoses relaxing 

on Malacañang grounds. 

The Arroyos’ Baywalk stroll 

and the Marcoses’ Malacañang 

garden picnic both tried to give the 

impression that they were spontaneous, 

casual activities. In reality, 

however, both were well-planned, 

serious undertakings that were 

part of high-budget communication 

plans hatched with the help 

of international public-relations 

companies. 

During the critical Marcos 

years, Black, Manafort, Stone 

and Kelly was directing the show. 

This time around, Arroyo is being 

helped by Burson-Marsteller, a 

leading global communications 

company that lists among its 

capabilities, crisis and issues 

management, reputation management, 

and media relations. 

For what could be as high as $2 

million, the president is getting 

a service that Press Secretary 

Ignacio Bunye says is aimed 

primarily at communicating “to 

international audiences that the 

economic team is promoting economic 

reform and actively managing 

a growing economy.” 

Bunye, however, says Burson-Marsteller 

does not advise 

“on the president’s image, (and) 

neither are they involved in domestic 

communication issues.” 

It was in fact the late Benigno 

‘Ninoy’ Aquino Jr.’s sister, 

director Lupita Kashiwahara, 

who hovered over the Arroyos at 

Baywalk and gave instructions on 

each shot. But as a local publicrelations 

expert points out, even 

if Burson-Marsteller is supposed 

to ensure a good international 

image for the Arroyo administration, 

that would still mean it has 

to help package the president for 

the Filipino audience. 

That could be a real challenge. 

Since 2001, when she took over 

ousted President Joseph ‘Erap’ 

Estrada, Gloria Arroyo has undergone 

so many makeovers she 

could make Oprah Winfrey’s head 

spin. From Iron Lady to Dolorous 

Mother of the Nation, Arroyo has 

done it all. Yet the president still 

can’t seem to connect with the 

public, especially the masa, and 

often ends up being perceived as 

insincere. 

Indeed, when her foreign PR 

consultants sat down with her early 

last year, “lacking in charisma” 

and “perceived as untrustworthy” 

topped their list of her liabilities. 

Husband Mike Arroyo was also a 

negative factor, they said. 

On the plus side were her being 

an economist and her unassuming 

only daughter, Lourdes Evangeline, 

better known as Luli. 

It may seem precious dollars 

were wasted for an assessment 

that could have been obtained free 

in coffeeshops. Although Roberto R. 

Romulo, presidential adviser for international 

competitiveness, denies 

the supposed $2 million price tag for 

Burson-Marsteller’s services, local 

PR people say it’s not unheard of for 

a hotshot global PR firm. Says one 

public-relations executive: “I imagine 

that (Burson-Marsteller) would be 

charging the Arroyo premium rate 

considering that it includes crisis 

management.” 

In 2002, when Burson-Marsteller’s 

ties with the Arroyo administration 

first became public, Presidential 

Management Staff head 

Rigoberto Tiglao said its fee was 

$800,000 for a one-year contract 

paid by a group of businessmen. 

In any case, Arroyo’s business 

relationship with Burson-Marsteller 

allowed the consultants to be frank 

with her, something no Palace official 

would dare do. A Malacañang 

insider says Arroyo just listened as 

the foreign PR experts talked. 

Apparently, her domestic handlers 

had their ears pressed 

against the wall. Even if Burston- 

Marsteller’s assessment was for 

a PR campaign abroad, Arroyo’s 

local team used it to craft her 

political strategy. Mike Arroyo 

deliberately kept a low profile 

during the election campaign. 

Luli, meanwhile, was featured in 

at least two of the president’s 

campaign ads, with mother and 

daughter talking about leadership 

and governance. 

Last June, as the twin issues 

of jueteng and election fraud were 

pummeling the president, Burson-Marsteller 

representatives 

discussed with some Cabinet members 

ways to promote a “soft image” 

for Arroyo. Social Services Secretary 

Dinky Soliman submitted her “Bright 

Child” campaign aimed at producing 

healthier, brighter Filipinos with 

programs starting from prenatal 

care to high school education. Soliman 

resigned on July 8, along with 

nine other key officials. On July 29, 

Arroyo launched the “Bright Child” 

campaign, followed two days later 

by a breastfeeding project. 

Soliman says the foreign consultants 

had also suggested a 

more prominent role for Luli. Sure 

enough, after the Baywalk stroll, 

the First Daughter was interviewed 

on TV and in newspapers 

and was soon being called her 

mother’s “secret weapon.” 

But Luli is not the only family 

member Arroyo has mobilized to 

win the public over. In her speeches 

and inter views nowadays, 

Arroyo often invokes the memory 

of her father, the late President 

Diosdado Macapagal. “I talk to 

my father, ‘Dad, please intercede 

with God for me,’ “she said in a 

recent TV interview. 

Toddler Evie, daughter of Arroyo’s 

younger son Dato and his 

wife, Kakai, has also been popping 

up in presidential photo ops. 

Just recently, the Palace released 

a picture of her straying into her 

grandmother’s office while the 

president was having a meeting. 

A smiling president had cuddled 

the child at Baywalk, and later at 

nearby Aristocrat restaurant, where 

the family stopped for a bite. 

“She is now smiling a lot,” 

says Campaigns Advocacy and 

PR’s Ramon R. Osorio. He says 

there has been a marked improvement 

in Arroyo since her 

disastrous “I am sorry” speech. 

Osorio says it’s fortunate that her 

favorite color is blue, which lightens 

her otherwise steely aura. 

Arroyo, however, used to relish 

her Iron Lady persona, which she 

has donned a few times in the last 

four years. One of her first images 

as president was as a Tough Mama, 

perhaps to compensate for her lack 

of an electoral mandate. “Strike 

now so I can crush you,” she had 

dared Estrada’s followers, who took 

up her challenge and tried to storm 

Malacañang on May 1, 2001. 

“Isang bala ka lang (You’ll fall with 

just one bullet),” she taunted Abu 

Sayyaf bandits. Tons of bullets and 

millions of dollars in U.S. aid later, the 

bandits have become terrorists. 

For a time, Arroyo seemed unfazed. 

To underscore her fight against 

crime, she posed with criminal suspects 

in the Palace. When a notorious 

convict was slain, she motored 

to Cavite to have her picture taken 

viewing the fly-infested corpse. 

The public, however, remained 

unimpressed. And so she turned 

into “Ina ng Bayan” asking for the 

people’s help. She also became a 

tricycle-riding Ate Glo who even went 

to market in flip-flops. 

But the image she is most comfortable 

with is as a working president. 

As a strict chief executive, she 

scolded officials in front of TV cameras. 

Today the working-president 

image has been resurrected, but 

she has not snapped at an underling 

in public since the controversy 

over the tapes broke out. 

Admittedly hardworking, Arroyo 

has been doing overtime in trying 

to make herself more appealing to 

Filipinos. At the beginning of her 

unelected presidency, she held a 

weekly press conference telecast 

live. Her messages, however, were 

often overshadowed by her smirks, 

frowns, and dismissive replies 

when provoked with questions not 

to her liking. 

She tried weekly lunches with 

small groups of reporters without 

TV cameras, and then a radio program 

every Saturday. Neither lasted 

long. Malacañang tapped actresssinger 

Jolina Magdangal to host 

the “The Working President” on 

government-controlled TV stations. 

But Arroyo continued to post dismal 

approval and trust ratings. 

Ironically, Arroyo has the 

most competent media team 

ever assembled in post-Marcos 

Malacañang. It is headed by two 

ex-journalists, Bunye and Tiglao. 

Cabinet Secretary Ricardo Saludo 

is also a former journalist. 

Since August 2004, there 

has also been the Office of Communications 

Director, which has 

a Crisis Communicating Team “to 

assist in meeting extraordinary issues.” 

But when the “Hello Garci” 

issue exploded, Arroyo imported 

Kashiwahara from San Francisco. 

When that still wasn’t enough, 

Mai Jimenez, who took charge 

of media for the Arroyo camp 

during the 2004 polls, re-entered 

the scene. Last July 5, Jimenez 

presented a communication plan 

meant not to makeover Arroyo but 

to “stress on programs, projects 

and reforms to show that the 

government is committed.” 

Before the current crisis, Arroyo 

had scheduled foreign trips 

starting with Hong Kong and 

Singapore to sell what she called 

“an economy about to take off.” 

She pushed through with the 

Hong Kong leg in June, but all they 

wanted to hear from her there was 

about the “Hello, Garci” tapes. 

The Singapore visit, scheduled 

for July, was moved to August. 

It has since been postponed 

indefinitely. Says a foreign affairs 

official: “What is she going to tell 

foreign investors when she doesn’t 

even know if she is going to make 

it to the end of the year?” 

And that’s why Burson-Marsteller, 

Arroyo’s PR for an international 

audience, should and 

could be concerned as well with 

her domestic survival. 


RUNNING ON 

TAXPAYERS’ MO 

LUZ RIMBAN 

HOW MUCH does 

it cost to become 

president? Seasoned 

politicians 

and political observers 

say the 

price tag of the 

presidency these days could be 

anywhere from a low of P2 billion 

to a high of P8 billion. That’s 

how much is needed to finance 

nationwide campaign rallies over 

a three-month period, produce 

assorted election paraphernalia, 

fund multimedia advertisements, 

subsidize the campaigns of senatorial 

and local candidates, pay 

campaign staff, commission surveys, 

and, if there’s enough left, 

feed election watchers and volunteers 

for the duration of the count, 

which could last for weeks. 

Where in the world does 

anyone get that much money? 

No wonder the country went 

broke after the 2004 polls, 

with a fiscal crisis threatening 

the economy a mere few 

months after the elections. But 

then it’s always been that way. 

Most incumbents who ran for 

re-election have made Filipino 

taxpayers foot their campaign 

expenses. In 1969, in what is 

still touted as the costliest and 

dirtiest of Philippine elections till 

then, the incumbent Ferdinand 

Marcos spared no expense to get 

himself re-elected. Massive election 

spending that year triggered 

a balance of payments crisis and 

a currency devaluation. 

Fortunately, the 1987 Constitution 

banned presidents from 

running for a second term. An 

incumbent, after all, has power 

over the government’s vast 

organization and resources, including 

the funds in the national 

treasury intended for government 

services. He or she therefore 

has a built-in advantage no 

other candidate can equal. 

Traditionally, the biggest donors 

to presidential campaigns 

have been Chinese-Filipino businessmen, 

but even they put 

together are unlikely to come up 

with all the billions needed to fill 

a campaign chest. The biggest 

donor to the 2004 presidential 

campaign could have been none 

other than the Filipino taxpayer. 

This was where Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo 

edged out her 

rivals. In the weeks before and 

during the campaign, billions in 

government funds were released 

as doleouts to local officials, 

signaling that the incumbent 

was giving out largesse to those 

who would support her, amounts 

that the opposition could not 

possibly equal. Large sums were 

also made available in thinlydisguised 

projects to promote 

Arroyo’s candidacy, including the 

dissemination of millions of government-funded 

health-insurance 

cards (with the president’s photo 

imprinted on them), the distribu- 


C A M P A I G N F U N D S 

Buying votes. In 

the 2004 elections, 

President Arroyo used 

government funds 

to win the loyalty of 

local officials and the 

affection of voters. 

NEY 

tion of free rice and fertilizers, the 

emergency employment of thousands 

of street sweepers, and the 

nationwide display of road signs 

bearing the president’s name. 

Today the public is being 

treated to the spectacle of witness 

after witness spewing out 

exposés about the president and 

her family using jueteng money 

to fund the election. In reality, 

the state funds used for Arroyo’s 

election campaign dwarf the alleged 

jueteng contributions. By 

our estimates, at least P5 billion 

could have been pooled from 

various government agencies to 

oil Arroyo’s campaign machinery. 

Farmers’ groups allege that even 

part of the confiscated Marcos 

wealth was used for projects to 

advance the president’s re-election. 

In comparison, the most 

sensational claims so far have 

been that jueteng lord Rodolfo 

‘Bong’ Pineda contributed P300 

million to the Arroyo campaign. 

It took years to lay the 

groundwork for mobilizing government 

resources for the president’s 

re-election. It entailed, 

first of all, the appointment of 

allies to government agencies 

with pots of funds that could 

be tapped for the campaign. It 

also entailed the identification 

of those funds and their release 

at the right time. Such strategic 

planning, in the words of Senator 

Sergio Osmeña III, “was so 

systematic, it’s mind boggling.” 

WHERE THE MONEY 

CAME FROM 

Most of the fund releases began 

in early February, just before the 

start of the 90-day campaign for 

the presidency, and continued 

till April. But huge chunks of 

money were already released 

to local officials even in late 

2003. The amounts involved 

are huge, and they included the 

following: 

● On February 2, 2004, Labor 

Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas, 

in her capacity as chairperson 

of the Overseas Workers’ 

Welfare Administration 

(OWWA), along with then 

OWWA Administrator Virgilio 

Angelo signed a resolution 

transferring P530 million 

from the OWWA medicare 

fund to the Philippine Health 

Insurance Corporation. This 

amount was used to subsidize 

the Philhealth cards 

given away in places where 

Arroyo campaigned. 

● On February 3, 2004, Budget 

Secretary Emilia Boncodin 

signed a Special Allotment Release 

Order or SARO addressed 

to the Office of the Secretary of 

the Department of Agriculture 

(DA) for P728 million. The 

amount was “to cover the 

purchase of farm inputs,” and 

was classified as an additional 

program. The amount was distributed 

to mayors, governors, 

and congressmen. 

● On February 11, 2004, Boncodin 

signed another SARO 

for the DA, making available 

P1.1 billion “to cover the GMA 

Rice and Corn and Livestock 

Program.” Again, the amount 

was disbursed to mayors, governors, 

and congressmen. 

● On March 23, 2004, the Department 

of Budget and Management 

(DBM) released to 

the National Irrigation Authority 

(NIA) P541 million from the 

Marcos wealth supposedly for 

activities in connection with 

the Comprehensive Agrarian 

Reform Program. That fund, 

which was allegedly used for 

the campaign, has yet to be 

accounted for. 

● On April 10, 2004, the 

president issued an executive 

order instructing that the 

poorest families be identified 

and that those with college-age 

children be given 

P10,000-vouchers each that 

they can use for technical or 

college education. 

● On April 28, 2004, the DBM 

also informed the Department 

of Agrarian Reform (DAR), of 

the release of P544 million 

“to cover funding requirements 

for the Ginintuang 

Masaganang Ani (GMA) Rice 

Program.” This amount, too, 

came from the Marcos wealth. 

This fund was more than what 

was actually needed for the 

purpose. The program has yet 

to be completed, and farmers’ 

groups suspect that a large 

portion of the funds was diverted 

for election purposes. 

● As early as November 2003, 

Arroyo and then Public Works 

Secretary Florante Soriquez 

began what is known as the 

“Kalsada Natin, Alagaan Natin” 

program, from which numerous 

posters, billboards and 

road signs bearing Arroyo’s 

In aid of re-election. 

Philhealth cards (above) were 

given out during elections so 

poor voters can get medical 

services for free. 

name and face were funded. 

Opposition leaders are saying 

P1.4 billion from the Motor 

Vehicles’ Users Charge was 

used for election purposes. 

(An interesting aside: on January 

14, 2004, Secretary of 

the Cabinet Ricardo Saludo 

issued a memo instructing 

cabinet secretaries “to change 

the word PGMA to ‘President 

Gloria’ in all billboards and 

notices of the president’s 

programs and projects.” Apparently, 

many people didn’t 

know what PGMA stood for. 

Saludo warned, “The PNP 

shall monitor and validate the 

change within the next two 

weeks.”) 

● In mid-2003, the Department 

of Agriculture headed at that 

time by Luis Lorenzo transferred 

P423 million in funds 

to the National Food Authority 

then headed by Arthur Yap to 

buy fertilizers under the Ginintuang 

Masaganang Ani (GMA) 

Rice Program. Some of the 

disbursements from this fund 

were given in cash to congressmen 

and local officials. 

It is hard to make an exact 

accounting of other government 

funds used to finance Arroyo’s 

campaign. For one, it is difficult to 

tell which expenditures were incurred 

in the natural course of her 

work as president and which went 

to promoting her candidacy. 

For instance, cabinet secretaries 

were actively involved in 

the Arroyo campaign. Former 

Social Welfare and Development 

Secretary Corazon ‘Dinky’ Soliman 

herself admits the town hall 

meetings dubbed “Pulong Bayan” 

that Arroyo conducted during the 

campaign were organized by the 

DSWD from funds provided by 


I REPORT 

13

the Office of the President. Those 

town hall meetings would have 

been part of the normal discharge 

of the president’s functions, 

except they also became automatic 

public relations events that 

upped Arroyo’s visibility. 

In the scheme of things, however, 

the DSWD was not that vital 

to the campaign. For fund-raising 

purposes, the agencies that mattered 

were those awash with cash 

and could serve as channels of patronage 

from Malacañang to local 

officials who could be called upon 

to marshal the votes for the president. 

In fact, early in the Arroyo 

presidency, some government 

officials were already saying that 

Gloria and Mike Arroyo were strategically 

placing their most trusted 

lieutenants in the most cash-rich 

and well-positioned government 

agencies in preparation for a 2004 

campaign. 

AGRICULTURE FUNDS 

Among the first of the Arroyo 

couple’s friends given a crucial 

government position was Jocelyn 

Bolante, friend and confidante of 

First Gentleman Mike, who was 

named undersecretary for finance 

of the Department of Agriculture 

soon after the government came to 

power in 2001. In October 2002, 

the president appointed her former 

student, Arthur Yap, administrator 

of the National Food Authority, an 

agency under the DA. 

In July 2004, DA whistleblower 

Marlene Esperat filed charges 

against Yap and Bolante for allegedly 

conniving to defraud the 

government of P428 million. The 

amount was to be used to purchase 

fertilizers under the 2003 

GMA Rice Program. Esperat questioned 

the huge amount that had 

been released, considering that the 

program’s officer in charge had requested 

only P28 million. The contract 

was also given to a favored 

company to purchase fertilizers at 

a cost Esperat said was bloated. 

Esperat did not live long enough 

to see the case prosper. She was 

gunned down in her home in 

Sultan Kudarat last March. 

The fertilizer fund was not the 

only questionable transaction at that 

time at the DA, a huge organization 

with huge allocations, regional offices 

and decentralized operations, 

and a variety of programs and 

projects whose expenditures were 

difficult to account for. 

Some of those expenditures 

include allocations for the use 

of congressional districts, towns, 

and cities. According to former 

solicitor general Frank Chavez, 

there were two huge amounts 

funneled to local governments 

just as the election campaign 

was getting underway. One was 

the P728-million-fund supposedly 

intended for farm inputs, 

while the other was the P1.1 billion 

fund for the GMA Rice and 

Corn and Livestock programs. 

The two amounts were released 

within eight days of each 

other, the smaller amount on 

February 3, 2004, and the bigger 

one on February 11. 

Chavez said that the P728 

million was disbursed to 105 

congressmen, 53 governors, and 

23 city and municipal mayors. 

He also revealed that some of 

these recipients received actual 

cash and not the farm inputs 

they were intended for. 

“It appears that the modus 

operandi is this: there is a ranking 

official in the DA who is linked 

to Ms. Macapagal-Arroyo’s husband, 

Jose Miguel Arroyo. This 

DA official has ‘runners’ who approach 

local government officials 

who will extract a commitment 

from the local officials that they 

should get these ‘fertilizers’ in 

liquid state from them,” Chavez 

said in the plunder case he filed 

against the president last year. 

Chavez added that the amount 

is shared among the DA officials, 

Mike Arroyo, farm input suppliers, 

and runners. The Arroyos 

and the DA denied these allegations 

last year. 

In response to the plunder 

charges, the Ombudsman has 

asked the Commission on Audit 

Praying for victory. El 

Shaddai leader Mike Velarde 

(in checked skirt) supported 

the Arroyo campaign, 

which was oiled by massive 

infusions of state funds. 

(COA) to report on how the DA 

funds were spent. COA sources 

say they are still tracing the flow 

of money and are trying to determine 

which officials did get 

their shares and how. COA’s 2004 

annual audit of the DA, however, 

was already peppered with comments 

of undocumented expenses 

and unliquidated cash advances. 

“Disbursements out of (Priority 

Development Assistance Fund allocated 

to members of Congress) 

and GMA Rice Program totaling 

P41.2 million and P6.250 million, 

respectively, were irregular and 

excessive,” said COA. 

When she started her new term 

of office in July 2004, Arroyo promoted 

Yap first as undersecretary; 

in 2004, he became agriculture 

secretary. Bolante, meanwhile, was 

named to the board of the Government 

Service Insurance System. In 

July, Yap quit his post after the Bureau 

of Internal Revenue charged 

his family with tax evasion. 

MARCOS WEALTH 

The Department of Agrarian 

Reform was another agency 

with money that made disbursements 

during the campaign 

period. DAR is the lead agency 

implementing the Comprehensive 

Agrarian Reform Program 

(CARP), and money for this 

program comes from portions of 

the Marcos wealth that had been 

returned to the government. 

On January 30, 2004, the Philippine 

National Bank remitted 

to the National Treasury $624 

million, equivalent to P35 billion, 

representing the biggest amount 

recovered so far from the Marcoses’ 

wealth. Just days earlier, the 

Supreme Court had declared with 

finality that the amount belonged 

to the government, denying an appeal 

from the Marcos family. Under 

the law, this money is to be used 

only for CARP and specifically for 

land acquisition and other activities 

to help farmer beneficiaries. Part of 

it eventually went to the DA. 

A hearing conducted by the 

House Oversight Committee 

earlier this year found that as of 

October 2004, nearly P9 billion 

of the Marcos money had already 

been spent. The bulk of this went 

to buying land from landowners, 

while the rest went to program 

beneficiaries and expenses under 

the nebulous DAR-Fund 101. 

Farmers’ groups, however, 

say there were two questionable 

disbursements made from the 

Marcos wealth. 

On March 8, 2004, then DAR 

officer-in-charge Jose Mari Ponce 

signed a Memorandum of Agreement 

with Agriculture Secretary 

Lorenzo allowing the DA to use 

P544 million from the Marcos 

wealth supposedly for “seed assistance” 

to agrarian reform beneficiaries, 

again under the Ginintuang 

Masaganang Ani (GMA) Hybrid 

Rice Commercialization Component. 

On April 28, the amount was 

released by the DBM. 


C A M P A I G N F U N D S 

On March 18, the Presidential 

Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) 

asked the DBM to again draw from 

the Marcos wealth, again for the 

DA. The amount was P541 million 

and the ultimate beneficiary was 

supposed to be the DA agency, the 

National Irrigation Administration. 

“The amount shall finance 

various on-going and new CARP 

irrigation projects,” said the 

Presidential Agrarian Reform 

Council. Although Ponce’s name 

appears as signatory, being DAR 

officer-in-charge and PARC vice 

chairman, the letter did not bear 

his signature. It had only that of 

Jeffrey Galang, a PARC secretariat 

member Ponce supposedly 

authorized to seek the release of 

P500 million in CARP funds. 

Farmers’ groups say strange 

things seem to be happening 

with the Marcos wealth and 

they even fear the money might 

already have disappeared. But 

they suspect that both amounts, 

totaling over P1 billion, were 

spent for the campaign. 

The P544 million was meant 

for buying seeds for 600,000 

hectares of land for 2004. Yet 

when the money arrived, the 

target coverage was slashed to 

300,000 hectares. As of March 

2005, says Manuel Quiambao of 

the farmers’ group Peace Foundation, 

only 162,000 hectares 

had received the GMA seeds. 

As for the P541-million fund 

meant to benefit small, communal 

irrigation projects, Quiambao says 

that to this day, the NIA has been 

unable to furnish them with a list 

of farmers who benefited from the 

project. “We’re reviving the ‘Bantay 

Marcos Wealth’,” he says. “Stolen 

money has been stolen again.” 

OVERSEAS WORKERS’ 

FUND 

Early in the presidential campaign, 

Sto. Tomas, with OWWA’s Angelo, 

signed a resolution transferring 

P530 milllion from the OWWA 

medicare fund to the Philippine 

Health Insurance Corporation. The 

amount came from the OWWA 

Medical Health Insurance Fund or 

OM-HIF, a fund built from contributions 

of overseas workers. 

What made this possible was 

an executive order signed by 

President Arroyo on February 

14, 2003, transferring OWWA’s 

medicare functions to Philhealth. 

Dr. Francisco Duque, a close 

friend of the Macapagal family 

and neighbor of the Arroyos at 

La Vista in Quezon City, was 

Philhealth head at the time. He 

is now the health secretary. 

That P530 million was, according 

to Philhealth, just 15 

percent of the entire OM-HIF. As 

of June 2004, the remaining OM- 

HIF fund stood at P3.5 billion. 

During her campaign sorties, 

President Arroyo gave away 

Philhealth cards valid for a year 

to people in the places she visited. 

What riled migrant groups 

was that at that same time, the 

OWWA was turning down the 

health claims of hundreds of 

overseas workers, ostensibly 

because the OWWA medical 

program was put on hold. 

According to the Migrante 

party-list group, 461 overseas 

workers who either had medical 

reimbursements pending or 

checks for pick up at OWWA 

were told the agency was not 

going to process the claims. The 

group says OWWA stopped all 

medical reimbursements in a 

meeting on January 16. 

This was just one of the many 

complaints migrant groups had 

against OWWA. In 2002, Sto. Tomas 

issued a resolution changing 

the guidelines for the use of the 

OWWA fund, limiting it only 

to overseas workers who had 

valid contracts. Before that, any 

overseas worker who had made 

contributions to the fund could 

avail himself of it, even without 

a valid contract. 

ROAD PROJECTS 

In November 2003, just three 

months before the presidential 

campaign began, Arroyo launched 

her “Kalsada Natin, Alagaan Natin” 

project in which she involved the 

barangays in the task of maintaining 

and protecting national roads. 

With her during the launch was 

then Public Works Secretary Soriquez. 

An Office of the President 

press release said that project funds 

would come from the Motor Vehicle 

Users’ Charge (MVUC), or the 

road users’ tax. 

The MVUC is the tax imposed 

on vehicle owners by Republic 

Act 8794. The law specifies that 

the money can be used for only 

three purposes: for road improvement 

and drainage repairs, for 

traffic lights and safety devices, 

and to control air pollution. Vehicle 

owners pay the fee each time 

they register with the Land Transportation 

Office (LTO). How the 

fund is used is up to the National 

Road Board, where the public 

works secretary sits as ex-oficio 

Farmers’ funds. Large 

amounts of money 

used in the 2004 

campaign came from 

the Departments 

of Agriculture and 

Agrarian Reform. 

member. Sen. Sergio Osmeña 

estimates the total amount collected 

from motorists since 2001 

has reached P16 billion. 

At the height of the presidential 

campaign, former LTO 

chairman Mariano Santiago filed 

a case before the Commission 

on Elections seeking President 

Arroyo’s disqualification. He argued 

that she used government 

money to fund her campaign 

and cited the “Kalsada Natin” 

program funded with P1.4 billion 

drawn from the MVUC. 

Santiago and members of the 

opposition said they noticed the 

program had morphed into a vehicle 

to promote Arroyo’s candidacy. 

Billboards announcing the project 

bore Arroyo’s face and name, 

while street sweepers hired under 

it wore uniforms touting it as the 

president’s employment project. 

In March 2004, newspapers 

reported that Soriquez had signed 

Memoranda of Agreement (MOA) 

with barangay captains all over 

the country allowing them to hire 

street sweepers for the “Kalsada 

Natin” program. These sweepers 

were to be provided with two T- 

shirts and a hat. When the uniforms 

were delivered, they bore the text: 

“Programang Pantrabaho ni GMA.” 

In effect, the MOA between the 

Department of Public Works Department 

of Public Works and Highways 

(DPWH) and barangay captains 

turned the fund for road repair into 

a job-generating program. 

The Philippine Information 

Agency defended the president by 

saying, “The present brouhaha of 

allegations that revenues were spent 

for the thousands of blue-shirted 

road laborers along with the ‘Kalsada 

Natin, Alagaan Natin’ signage which 

appear to be campaign propaganda 

can be explained by the fact that the 

Road Board has decided to shift to 

community-based road maintenance 

rather than contracting the road 

maintenance works.” 

As it turned out, the DPWH 

by April 2004 had installed some 

44,325 portable signages and 682 

billboards. The figures excluded 

4,963 billboards put up in school 

buildings. All of these signs carried 

the president’s name and 

face. Carlos Mutuc, then acting 

director of the DPWH’s Bureau of 

Maintenance said the department 

had agreed to include the phrase 

“Project ni Pangulong Gloria Macapagal 

Arroyo” on these signs. 

No audit of the MVUC has 

been done for 2004. The DP- 

WH’s internal audit office says 

the department has been administering 

the fund for only two 

years, and is the responsibility of 

the National Road Board. 

In 2003, however, COA already 

passed judgment on the MVUC 

used by the DPWH that year. Using 

the fund for purposes other 

than those specified in the law is 

illegal, COA said. It noted that the 

DPWH had used P9 million from 

the fund to pay casual employees 

and to fund the operations of various 

DPWH offices, violating Republic 

Act 8794. “We recommend 

that management should stop the 

practice of charging expenditures 

of other DPWH offices to the 

MVUC fund, which is tantamount 

to juggling of funds,” COA said. 

COA’s audit of the DPWH for 2004 

remains unfinished. 


I REPORT 

15

THE MAN 

WOUL 

PRESIDEN 

LUZ RIMBAN 

LIKE IT or not, Filipinos 

will have to 

accept the fact that 

Noli de Castro might 

just be president 

one of these days. 

It could be sooner, 

if President Gloria Macapagal- 

Arroyo suddenly gets stricken 

with delicadeza and resigns, 

or later, if Congress eventually 

decides to put an end to the 

crisis and impeach her. Either 

way, Filipinos will have to get 

used to the idea of a de Castro 

presidency, especially if they 

don’t want Susan Roces heading 

a caretaker government or 

Jose de Venecia becoming prime 

minister for life. 

Filipinos don’t seem to have 

much of a choice. Being vice 

president puts Noli de Castro 

next in line and just a breath 

away from being the 15th president 

of the republic. The middle 

class may not relish having 

another celebrity in Malacañang, 

and traditional politicians may 

be gritting their teeth over a neophyte 

having it quick and easy. 

But no matter what they say, if 

Arroyo falls, de Castro will have 

to rise to the challenge. 

That will be some déjà vu. De 

Castro would become the third 

consecutive vice president elected 

after 1986 to have ascended 

to the top, following in the 

footsteps of Joseph Estrada and 

Gloria Arroyo. The two are not 

particularly pleasant precedents. 

One was ousted in the middle 

of an impeachment trial, while 

the other appears headed in the 

same direction. Unless he breaks 

the jinx, de Castro just might end 

up like his predecessors not too 

far into the future. 

That is why he is playing it 

coy and cautious these days. 

He keeps a low profile, hardly 

gives any interviews, and rarely 

opens his mouth. His friends say 

he does not want to be branded 

power-hungry or to be seen as 

a deserter. In July, at the height 

of the “Hello, Garci” controversy 

when 10 cabinet and sub-cabinet 

members cut ties with Arroyo, de 

Castro refused to seize the position 

that was his for the taking. 

“He will never be party to 

the ouster of President Arroyo 

whether extraconstitutional or 

contra constitutional,” says Cesar 

Chavez, a former newsman who 

was de Castro’s campaign manager. 

“Ayaw niya maging traydor. 

Ang sa kanya, ituloy ang proseso, 

ano man ang prosesong ‘yan, 

kung impeachment man o ano 

(He doesn’t want to be a traitor. 

The way he sees it, we must let 

the process continue, whatever 

that process is, impeachment or 

something else).” 

“He had good judgment,” 

says Senator Ralph Recto, a 

friend and former colleague of 

de Castro. “He’s not a traitor, and 


T H E V I C E P R E S I D E N T 

WHO 

D BE 

HEADED FOR 

MALACAÑANG? Noli de 

Castro has come a long 

way from his beginnings 

as an unknown radio 

broadcaster. 

T 

that’s a value Filipinos cherish 

as well. He could have easily 

grabbed the opportunity to become 

president, I suppose, but 

he’s not like that.” 

ICON FOR THE MASSES 

What exactly is he like then? 

To the public, Noli de Castro is 

the Joseph Estrada of the 1990s, 

an icon for the masses of his 

generation. People know his TV 

image too well—the guy who 

appeared on nationwide television 

night after night for close to 

20 years, the news anchor who 

practically held the patent to the 

phrase “Magandang Gabi, Bayan 

(Good evening, Philippines).” 

The nation also knows him as 

the candidate who topped the 

2001 senatorial race and won 15 

million votes in the vice-presidential 

contest in 2004. 

But de Castro has something 

Joseph Estrada didn’t 

have: a college degree. And he 

has something Gloria Arroyo 

doesn’t: a feel for the public 

pulse borne of years as a broadcaster. 

His friends and supporters 

insist these and other traits, 

plus knowledge of the basics, 

more than make up for de Castro’s 

inexperience and lack of 

political savvy. 

“He listens attentively….He 

knows how to ask questions,” 

says Recto. “Sometimes I listen to 

him during his Saturday programs. 

He makes sense naman.” 

Former social welfare secretary 

Dinky Soliman says practically 

the same thing. “Noli asks 

if he doesn’t know what’s going 

on. He doesn’t pretend that he 

knows things,” she says of de 

Castro, her seatmate during 

cabinet meetings. 

Having a vice president 

who might be clueless about a 

lot of things isn’t a particularly 

comforting thought; elevate that 

person to the presidency and 

chances are there will be a lot 

of handholding going on. But 

presidents were never meant to 

have all the answers, de Castro’s 

supporters say. That’s where his 

friends and advisers come in. In 

the event of a de Castro presidency, 

what the people will get 

is Team Noli. 

“No single person is the 

answer to all our problems” is 

Recto’s reply to those who expect 

de Castro to be the nation’s 

savior. “It’s always a team,” the 

senator insists. “That’s why you 

have political parties….There is 

no messiah. Noli’s not a messiah 

definitely.” 

“PLUS-PLUS” AND 

MINUSES 

If Noli de Castro becomes president, 

Soliman says, Filipinos will 

be getting a package deal: de 

Castro, plus the support of at 

least four major political blocs, 

plus immediate economic and 

political reform. She calls it the 

“Noli-Plus-Plus” scenario. “The 

challenge is convincing people 

that the Noli-Plus-Plus scenario is 

a better deal than we have now,” 

says Soliman who was one of the 

cabinet members who quit last 

July. In this scenario, pushed by 

some NGOs, Noli would be a 

transition president who would 

preside over a process of charter 

change and pave the way for new 

elections and a new government. 

He would also govern with a 

council of advisers drawn from a 

cross-section of political groups. 

It’s going to take a lot of 

convincing. Right now, what 

people are thinking when they 

see de Castro is not the possibility 

of a top-notch team working 

for the good of the country. 

Instead, what most likely comes 

to mind is a pack of friends waiting 

for their turn to ravage it. In 

classic Erap lingo, it’s “weatherweather” 

all over again. 

The danger really is that there 

are far too many people who 

see de Castro as a blank slate on 

which they can write whatever 

they want. Actually, perhaps the 

better metaphor for a former “talking 

head” is a puppet that moves 

only according to the pulls of the 

puppeteer – or in this case, puppeteers. 

Harsh as that may sound, 

it is nevertheless apt for a person 

who has yet to be portrayed as 

making a decision on his own, or 

at least against the interests of his 

supposed handlers. 

Former University of the 

Philippines president Francisco 

Nemenzo, convenor of the 

democratic-left alliance Laban 

ng Masa, summarizes the apprehensions 

over a Noli presidency: 

“De Castro’s track record 

as an envelopmental journalist 

and short stint as senator with 

no real credentials or evidence 

FAMILIAR FACE. De Castro, shown with coanchor 

Korina Sanchez in the early 1990s, 

read the primetime news for nearly 20 years. 

of competence has shown him 

to be simply an all too willing 

pawn of elite interests, especially 

the Lopez oligarchy.” 

The Lopezes, of course, own 

the giant media organization 

ABS-CBN, de Castro’s former 

employer. Rumors of de Castro’s 

so-called envelopmental journalism, 

or his “attack-and-collect, 

defend-and-collect” (ACDC) 

style of reporting have hounded 

him and ABS-CBN for years. In 

the 2004 elections, reports surfaced 

that he took money from 

subjects of his investigative reports 

who wanted certain stories 

quelled. The payoffs were reportedly 

in cash or in kind. 

De Castro has denied them 

all, but the rumors persist. Charges 

like these, though, are difficult 

to prove. To some, it may have 

been simple just to point to de 

Castro’s P51.3 million net worth 

declared in his 2004 Statement of 

Assets and Liabilities that included 

choice real-estate holdings. 

Or cite as evidence the fact that 

in the 2004 polls, he declared to 

the Commission on Elections that 

he put in P59.3 million of his and 

his family’s own money into the 

campaign. But then it shouldn’t 

be a surprise that de Castro has 

that much wealth. He worked for 

one of the country’s most generous 

employers for decades, after 

all, and he was even ABS-CBN’s 

highest-paid news anchor for 

several years. He held the title 

vice president for news for quite 

sometime, too, and owns, along 

with his wife Arlene Sinsuat, the 

production outfit that produces 

the weekly investigative program 

“Magandang Gabi, Bayan.” 

THE LOPEZ FACTOR 

But perhaps more than the reports 

of unethical journalistic 

practices, it is De Castro’s Lopez 

connection that is the public’s 

unspoken fear. Long a fixture 

in Philippine politics and business, 

the Lopezes preside over 

an interlocking web of business 

interests that range from power 

generation to power distribution, 

telecommunications to water concessions, 

infrastructure, to broadcasting 

and publishing. Because 


I REPORT 

17

T H E V I C E P R E S I D E N T 

of some of their companies’ histories, 

the Lopezes are perceived 

by many as having monopolistic 

tendencies and prone to ruthless 

business tactics. 

Numerous focus-group discussions 

conducted by the TV 

industry show that the viewing 

public perceives the Lopezes 

to be using ABS-CBN to further 

their interests. The question 

many Filipinos have now is 

this: Would they likewise use de 

Castro for their own ends if and 

when he becomes president? 

The group Freedom From 

Debt Coalition (FDC) says the 

Lopezes already have done that 

with the vice president. They say 

that President Arroyo, through 

de Castro, allowed the bailout of 

the Lopezes’ beleaguered Maynilad 

Water company by allowing 

the government water agency 

Metropolitan Waterworks and 

Sewerage System (MWSS) to 

shoulder some of the Lopez 

company’s debts. 

Aside from this, the government 

allowed not only Maynilad 

Water to charge higher rates, but 

also let the Lopezes’s Manila 

Electric Company (Meralco) do 

the same. 

But Chavez insists, “Noli 

will never compromise or sacrifice 

the national interest to big 

business.” The vice president, 

says Chavez, understands these 

things and is aware of the 

country’s political and economic 

history and the role cronyism 

played in the past. 

DE CASTRO’S INNER 

CIRCLE 

Friends like Recto are also trying 

to correct that impression. Recto 

says de Castro isn’t the type “to 

favor anyone….He understands 

that for business it’s leveling the 

playing field (that’s important). 

He understands (the need for) 

equal protection of the law. 

Simple naman ‘yun di ba (It’s 

simple, isn’t it)?” 

Well, not really, at least not 

for de Castro. One of de Castro’s 

former media colleagues says 

that Eugenio ‘Gabby’ Lopez III, 

President of ABS-CBN Channel 

2, is the one person closest to 

de Castro, the person whose 

voice is the most often in the 

vice president’s ear, closer even 

than his friends in the so-called 

“Wednesday Group.” 

The Wednesday Group is de 

Castro’s political gang, made up 

of four other senators he struck 

a friendship with when he began 

his political career in 2001. 

They are former human-rights 

lawyer Joker Arroyo, businessmen 

Manuel ‘Manny’ Villar and 

Recto, and ex-student leader and 

lawyer Francis ‘Kiko’ Pangilinan. 

The group meets at least once a 

week to exchange political gossip, 

give each other advice, and, 

since June, help de Castro prepare 

for bigger things ahead. 

Recto describes how the 

group came together: “Joker 

became somewhat of a Yoda— 

considering his age and experience, 

he’s the eldest in the 

group. Manny and Noli are of 

the same age. Me and Kiko are 

of the same age. Joker, Manny, 

and I all came from the Ninth 

Congress so we’ve been together 

since 1992. Noli was a neophyte 

as well. We had good rapport in 

the session hall.” 

But de Castro’s former media 

co-worker describe them this 

way: “Ralph and Kiko are the 

outer flank, Manny and Joker are 

the inner circle, and right beside 

Noli is Gabby Lopez.” 

A “PROBLEMATIC” 

FRIEND 

De Castro, however, has friends 

of his own outside the realm of 

politics and big business, and 

one of them actually put him in 

a bad light. 

When de Castro was named 

head of the Housing and Urban 

Development Coordinating 

Council (HUDCC) and given 

the Housing portfolio after becoming 

vice president last year, 

he brought with him his friend 

Celso de los Angeles. 

In September 2004, de los 

Angeles was appointed chairman 

of the National Home Mortgage 

Corporation (NHMFC), the 

agency that provides community 

mortgage programs to urban 

poor groups. De los Angeles 

didn’t last a year in office. He 

filed sick leave prior in mid-July, 

to going on terminal leave. 

Nongovernmental organizations 

in the housing sector say 

that the few months that de los 

Angeles headed the agency was 

a time of “flagrant and brazen 

graft and corruption” at the 

NHMFC. By the last few weeks 

of de los Angeles’s term, these 

NGOs were asking President 

Arroyo to kick him out. 

“We believe that one impediment 

in your housing program 

for the poor is Mr. Celso de los 

A LITTLE HELP FROM HIS 

FRIENDS. The vice president, 

shown here during his days 

as a radio broadcaster, has 

strong links with the Lopez 

family which owns ABS-CBN. 

Angeles,” said the Philippine 

Undertaking for Social Housing 

and other groups working in the 

area of Community Mortgage 

Program (CMP), in a paid print 

advertisement addressed to President 

Arroyo on July 1, 2005. “We 

urge you to remove him from 

office because he is not morally 

fit to be in government.” 

Their reasons had nothing 

to do with the fact that de los 

Angeles got into a very public 

fight with TV starlet Regine 

Tolentino over the P8 million 

worth of jewelry he supposedly 

gave her. Neither did they have 

anything to do with the fact that 

Ilocos Sur Governor Luis ‘Chavit’ 

Singson, in his testimony during 

the impeachment trial of former 

President Joseph Estrada, described 

de los Angeles as “isang 

jueteng operator din noong araw 

(someone who used to be a 

jueteng operator).” 

INSTITUTIONALIZING 

PATRONAGE 

What the housing NGOs had 

protested was the culture of 

palakasan 

and alleged increased 

incidence of extortion that prevailed 

at the NHMFC during de 

los Angeles’s watch. A turning 

point in the campaign against 

de los Angeles was the arrest of 

Nestor Favila, head of the Task 

Force Community Mortgage Program, 

on June 24, 2005. 

Favila was caught in an entrapment 

operation accepting 

P85,000. The sting operation had 

been prompted by several complaints 

against Favila for allegedly 

extorting from landowners 

selling land to the NHMFC. 

On top of this, say organizers 

of the National CMP Congress, 

NHMFC officials encouraged 

urban poor residents’ associations 

to seek the intercession of 

congressmen, senators, and local 

officials in following up their 

community mortgage programs. 

The result: the institutionalization 

of patronage politics in the 

housing sector. 

Nobody in de Castro’s circle of 

close advisers seems to know anything—or 

wants to talk—about his 

relationship with de los Angeles. 

Recto says he never heard of de 

los Angeles before, while Chavez 

would only say that de los Angeles 

was someone whom his staff saw 

in the 2004 campaign sorties twice 

or thrice. Yet he is apparently 

close enough for de Castro to 

have endorsed as head of a crucial 

government agency. 

But de los Angeles did not 

seem that indispensable to the 

vice president. To de Castro’s 

credit, says Soliman, the vice 

president immediately took heed 

when told of reports of controversies 

de los Angeles found 

himself in. “Alisin na natin kung 

ganun (In that case, let’s take 

him out of that post),” Soliman 

quotes de Castro saying. 

Hopefully, de Castro has no 

more friends like de los Angeles 

and Lopez waiting for him to 

be president. For sure, to most 

Filipinos, that would hardly be 

a “plus-plus.” 


HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN? In 1998, 

Gloria Arroyo, shown here with running 

mate Jose de Venecia (left), ran for vice 

president with the endorsement of the 

incumbent, Fidel V. Ramos, who rescued 

the embattled Gloria when she faced the 

worst crisis of her presidency in July. 

SOS 

System under Stress 

SHEILA S. CORONEL 

Gloriagate has 

put all our 

institutions 

under scrutiny, 

perhaps 

more scrutiny 

than they can 

w i t h s t a n d . 

C e r t a i n l y 

more scrutiny than they had 

been subjected to in the past. 

Since the scandal over jueteng 

broke out in May and the “Hello 

Garci” tapes were made public 

in June, the spotlight has been 

on the presidency. Accusations 

of bribery and election fraud 

have soiled the integrity of the 

president and of the office she 

holds. While Gloria Macapagal 

Arroyo has put up a valiant effort 

to fend off these accusations 

and has tenaciously hung on 

to power despite the odds, her 

credibility has been damaged 

severely, putting her continued 

stay in office in great doubt. 

For now, her biggest ally 

is not really, as some assume, 

former president Fidel Ramos. It 

is public cynicism. Ramos should 

of course get the credit (or the 

blame) for rescuing President 

Arroyo on July 8, when her 

government was shaken by the 

resignations of eight Cabinet 

members who also asked that 

she leave. Malacañang insiders 

say that in the late afternoon of 

the same day, Arroyo came very 

close to resignation. 

But the truth is that she remains 

in office not just because 

Ramos rushed to the presidential 

palace with his rescue remedy 

of charter change. She is there 

largely because the public is 

skeptical of everyone else who 

aspires to replace her. There is 

a sense among many Filipinos 

that our politics is so damaged, 

removing Arroyo will not make 

much of a difference. 

Gloria Arroyo is therefore 

president not by virtue of the 

public trust. On the contrary, the 

opinion polls show her trust rating 

dropping as the crisis drags. 

She remains in Malacañang 

largely because there is a dearth 

of public enthusiasm for the 

alternatives to her presidency, 

whether it is Vice President Noli 

de Castro, people power, or a 

revolutionary government run 

by either the Left or the Right. 

As some analysts have astutely 

pointed out, the crisis of the Arroyo 

presidency also exposed a 

much deeper malaise: a vacuum 

in political leadership that leaves 

many Filipinos in a bind—dissatisfied 

with the president they have, 

but equally antsy about those who 

hope to succeed her. 

We are at the moment not so 

much in an impasse, but in the 

painful process of forging a consensus 

about the president and 

her future. The anti-Gloria forces 

in both Congress and outside are 

hopeful that the impeachment, 

with its menu of scandal and 

more scandal, will lead toward a 

broad public agreement that the 

president is guilty as charged. 

They think that as more witnesses 

emerge from the woodwork, 

attesting to bribery and electoral 

fraud, the public—especially 

the politicized and influential 

sectors that make up the Edsa 

constituency—will arrive at the 

moral certainty that the president 

is culpable, thereby compelling 

Congress to convict her, and 

failing that, setting off an Edsa 4 

that will force her ouster. 

At the same time, the president’s 

supporters are hoping 

that the impeachment will acquit 

her, thereby restoring trust in the 

presidency and allowing her to 

serve out the remaining fourand-a-half 

years of her term. 

They are keeping various other 

options open, including charter 

change, which, if successful, 

would divert the energies of 

legislators from impeachment 

and if needed, pave the way for a 

graceful exit for the president. 

The outcome can go either 

way. The president may fall. 

But she can also survive, if not 

till the end of her term, at least 

a bruising impeachment trial 

that will lead to her acquittal 

and eventual, if premature, exit 

from power. 

Whatever the outcome, the 

crucial question is whether our 

institutions can survive the journey. 

Can they live up to the expectations 

of most Filipinos—a 

credible process that holds a sitting 

president accountable, and 

if it takes place at all, a process 

of constitutional change that is 


C H A R T E R C H A N G E 

driven not so much by narrow 

and short-term interests but the 

bigger, longer-term interests of 

the nation? 

The burden now is on Congress. 

Whatever the result of the 

impeachment, the key question 

for both Houses is whether they 

can rise above partisan and pecuniary 

interests and the temptation 

to play up to the gallery in 

order resolve the issues linked 

to alleged presidential wrongdoing 

in a manner acceptable 

to the majority of the people. 

Otherwise, this latest episode 

could result, if not in an outburst 

of people power, then with the 

already tattered credibility of 

Congress in shriveled shreds. 

Without a credible impeachment 

process, other sectors—the 

military, the Catholic Church, 

and the middle class—may once 

again be forced to resolve the 

impasse through extraconstitutional 

means. More than the 

fate of the presidency, therefore, 

what is at stake in the current 

crisis is the credibility—and the 

future—of democratic institutions, 

and of democracy itself. 

DAMAGED CONGRESS 

The problem begins with Congress. 

Since the fall of Marcos 

in 1986, the history of that body 

has been far from stellar. Instead, 

the legislature has been a 

disappointment on many counts, 

including in its ability to hold 

other institutions to account. 

Indeed, the outcomes of previous 

impeachment processes 

initiated by the House raise serious 

doubts about congressional 

independence and efficacy. 

In 2002, the compromised 

Ombudsman Aniano Desierto 

was let off the hook twice by 

the House justice committee. The 

first time involved a complaint 

alleging that Desierto received a 

bagful of cash from a banker and 

real-estate developer who had a 

pending case in his office. The 

businessman wrote the justice 

committee denying the charge. 

The committee promptly threw 

out the complaint as “sufficient 

in form but not in substance” 

and refused to take in any more 

evidence from the complainants. 

The second complaint, alleging 

that the Ombudsman bungled 

its investigation of the multimillion-peso 

tax credit scam, was 

dismissed on the ground that no 

complaint could be filed against 

an official within the same year. 

Thanks once more to the 

justice committee, Commission 

on Elections commissioner 

Luzviminda Tancangco, whose 

many lapses are blamed for 

the ill-starred modernization of 

elections, also survived impeachment 

in 2002, despite compelling 

evidence showing she approved 

an overpriced and questionable 

voter-registration contract. 

In both these cases, the 

House was judged by civil-society 

groups and the media as acting 

in a scandalously self-serving 

way. It was accused of clearing 

powerful officials who were well 

connected to the leadership of 

the legislature. The acquittals 

also got legislators into the good 

graces of powerful executive 

officials, one of them charged 

with investigating graft cases 

(of which congressmen have 

many); the other, with running 

and adjudicating elections (in 

which legislators regularly and 

enthusiastically take part). 

Chief Justice Hilario Davide 

Jr., meanwhile, was publicly seen 

as the victim of a congressional 

lynch mob that put together 

a questionable impeachment 

complaint in 2003, accusing him 

of anomalies in the use of the 

Judiciary Development Fund. 

The charges against Davide were 

viewed not so much as part of 

an earnest desire to hold the 

highest court to account, but as 

an attempt of the faction aligned 

with beer magnate Eduardo Cojuangco 

Jr. to pressure the high 

tribunal to rule in Cojuangco’s 

favor in the long-running coconut 

levy cases. 

Earlier in 2003, Davide and 

seven other justices had already 

been the subject of an 

impeachment complaint, which 

questioned the constitutionality 

of their action in swearing in 

Arroyo as president in the heat 

of Edsa 2. That complaint was 

dismissed by the justice committee. 

Within weeks, the committee 

began hearing another 

impeachment complaint against 

Davide, even if it was the second 

filed against the chief magistrate 

in the same year. 

The impeachment was allowed 

to prosper, with the tacit 

approval of House Speaker Jose 

de Venecia. In just over a week, 

the complaint already had over 

80 signatures, more than enough 

to forward it to the Senate for 

an impeachment trial. President 

Arroyo kept mum on the issue 

for some time; only after protests 

from business, Church, and civil 

society groups, did she speak 

out, urging the House to drop 

the complaint and to instead 

form a body to investigate 

the charges. The impasse was 

broken by the Supreme Court, 

which ruled the complaint unconstitutional 

because of the 

one-year prohibition. The House 

soon followed with a resolution 

to dismiss the impeachment 

complaint. The resolution was 

signed by the majority of congressmen 

led by de Venecia, 

who sensed that public opinion 

was turning against Congress. 

Then of course there was 

Estrada’s aborted impeachment 

trial in 2001, when public outrage 

over what it deemed was 

the Senate’s partiality toward 

the then president spilled out 

into the streets and catalyzed 

People Power 2. This time, the 

blame was heaped on the Senate, 

rather than on the House. 

ARE HER DAYS NUMBERED? 

Anti-Arroyo protesters say 

the president has to go or 

she will be ousted. 

Several pro-Estrada senators 

were accused of receiving payoffs 

in the tens of millions of 

pesos to ensure the president’s 

acquittal. 

Given all these, the skepticism 

about Congress’ capacity 

to carry out an impeachment 

process that will produce a just 

result is understandable. The 

track record is simply not there. 

The first obstacle Congress faces 

is its own past. 

A STRING OF FAILURES 

The legislature’s other failures 

are also to blame. Congress 

fails in terms of efficiency: the 

12 th Congress, which ended its 

term in 2004, passed all of four 

laws and could not even pass 

the national budget, forcing it 

to reenact the old one. Most 

days, there isn’t even a quorum 

in the House, making it difficult 

to deliberate on laws and other 

pending business. The slow burn 

of the impeachment complaint in 

the House committee of justice 

is not unusual: the normal pace 

of Congress is glacial. 

Congress also fails in terms of 

costs: Congress gets more expensive 

every year, even as it passes 

fewer laws. Already, Economic 

Planning Secretary Romulo Neri 

says that the stupendous sum of 

P6.4 billion may be set aside for 

the expenses of Congress if it is 

convened as a constituent body 

to amend the constitution. 

More importantly, Congress 

fails in terms of representation. 

If there needs to be proof that 

the Philippines is an oligarchy, 

one only has to look at the 

composition of the legislature. 

As the PCIJ book The Rulemakers: 

How the Wealthy and 

Well-Born Dominate Congress 

shows, nearly all the members 

of both Houses are millionaires; 

most are also part of political 

families whose members have 

held public office for two or 

more generations. Through the 

years, legislators have tended 

to stay longer in office, despite 

term limits, making it difficult for 

new entrants, especially those 

who do not come from political 

families, to get into Congress. 

In the House, two of every 

three congressmen are part of 

political clans. In the Senate, 

the average assets of members 

is growing every term, with an 

increase by P27 million between 

1998, when the 11 th Senate assumed 

power, and 2001, when 

the 12 th Senate took over. 

Congress likewise fails in terms 

of accountability: accounting and 

auditing rules are honored more 

in the breach in both Houses, 

as shown in The Rulemakers. 

Moreover, through the years, 


I REPORT 

21

legislators have given themselves 

privileges—for travel, district 

expenses, and other perks—that 

they would have never allowed in 

other agencies of government. 

STATE OF THE NATION. Opposition 

congressmen (above) filed an impeachment 

complaint against Arroyo, as crowds, including 

children, massed up outside the House. 

THE STRUGGLE FOR 

SPOILS 

Most spectacularly of all, Congress 

has failed in its primordial duty 

to advance the national interest, 

which is often sacrificed for the 

narrow, short-term interests of 

legislators. The organizing principle 

of Congress is the struggle for 

spoils. Legislators have used their 

powers to make laws, to conduct 

inquiries, to examine the national 

budget, and to vet presidential 

appointments to get benefits for 

themselves, their allies, and their 

kin. Spending on pork barrel has 

increased dramatically through the 

years, declining only last year and 

only because of severe budgetary 

constraints and a Senate that was 

eager to embarrass the House. 

There is also more than ample 

evidence to show that the business 

and proprietary interests of 

lawmakers and their families and 

friends have benefited greatly 

from preferential legislation, tax 

exemptions, and less-than-partial 

government regulation. 

In short, the majority of legislators 

in the last two decades 

have behaved like trapos, political 

mercenaries concerned 

mainly with delivering patronage 

to their districts, ensuring their 

families remain in power, and 

getting as much benefit as they 

can from their seat in Congress. 

Like the presidency, Congress 

has been hounded by scandal. 

A few random examples should 

suffice: in 1993, House Speaker 

de Venecia convinced a number 

of representatives to vote against 

a bill that would put a ceiling on 

foreign-debt payments by promising 

to release P200 million of 

their pork barrel. In 2000, partylist 

representatives exposed how 

congressmen were being offered 

P500,000 each by House leaders 

to vote for the controversial Electric 

Power Industry Reform Act or 

Epira. In 2003, National Electrification 

Administration chief Manuel 

Sanchez also confirmed that he 

had authorized the release of P2.5 

million each to 150 congressmen 

who had voted for that law. 

The recent reports on how 

some congressmen have each 

been offered P500,000 not to 

sign the impeachment complaint 

against President Arroyo only reinforce 

the people’s worst suspicions 

about Congress. Even the opposition 

is tainted, if only because not 

too long ago the shoe was on the 

other foot. Four years ago, when 

Estrada was on the verge of impeachment, 

the likes of Ronaldo 

Zamora, Rolex Suplico, Imee Marcos, 

and Francis ‘Chiz’ Escudero, 

now at the forefront of the anti- 

Arroyo opposition in the House, 

were on the side of the disgraced 

president. Can Filipinos, therefore, 

be blamed if they think the game 

of presidential impeachment is 

much like musical chairs? 

And given this, should it be 

any wonder that the president, 

in order to survive, has struck a 

Faustian bargain with the most 

trapo elements in Congress, promising 

them the parliament of their 

dreams, one that will finally enable 

one of them to be the head of 

government? Having been deserted 

by the reformist, civil-society 

elements of her government after 

the resignation of the Hyatt 10, 

the president now seeks, through 

the promise of charter change, 

to consolidate her remaining 

constituency: the patronage-and 

spoils-oriented local officials and 

members of Congress. Now that it 

is her presidency that is at stake, 

Gloria Arroyo is mobilizing not 

people power as she did in 2001, 

but trapo power. 

THE GRAVEST DANGER 

In a speech broadcast in the 

evening of July 7, when she announced 

that she was asking all 

her Cabinet secretaries to resign, 

the president said, “Over the 

years, our political system has 

degenerated to such an extent 

that it’s very difficult to live 

within the system with hands 

totally untainted.” 

It is a theme she would repeat 

in subsequent speeches, 

most famously in her July 25 

State of the Nation Address. The 

message is clear: the problem is 

not me, it is the system. Many 

Filipinos will agree that the country’s 

political system is as tainted 

as the president has painted it. 

This is why, as the article in this 

issue, “So Young and So Trapo,” 

shows, even young people who 

are elected to the Sangguniang 

Kabataan end up being sucked 

into corruption and wheelingdealing. 

But Mrs. Arroyo is also 

being disingenuous. By scapegoating 

the system, she hopes to 

evade her own culpability. 

For many on both sides of 

the political spectrum, the problem 

is not just the system, but 

the people the president says 

should be entrusted to reform 

it. They object to convening 

Congress as a constituent assembly. 

To them, it is like giving 

the most retrograde elements of 

the Philippine polity the power 

to craft a new constitution 

that would only buttress their 

powers and further entrench 

patronage politics. Or, to put it 

somewhat differently, it’s like 

letting serial killers draft the 

Penal Code. 

It is interesting that the critics 

of cha-cha from both the Left and 

the Right are one in sensing this 

danger. “The biggest flaw” in the 

charter change proposals, writes 

conservative columnist Antonio 

Abaya of The Manila Standard, 

“is the fact that the constitutional 

amendments will be drafted by a 

constituent assembly made up of 

trapos and political dynasts who 

now control the present Congress 

and who will do everything to 

retain their positions, power and 

privileges in the new Parliament.” 

On the opposite end of the 

political spectrum, Satur Ocampo, 

representative of the leftist 

Bayan Muna party-list group 

says cha-cha “will not solve but 

even make matters even worse 

as they only promote cosmetic 

change, keep the status quo, 

and offer no new solutions… 

At the core of these proposals is 

the undemocratic idea of keeping 

Filipinos farthest away from 

instituting political, electoral, 

economic, and social reforms.” 

In 1986, the 48-member 

commission that drafted a new 

constitution was made up of 

representatives of the Edsa constituency. 

They were lawyers, 

scholars, NGO activists, street 

parliamentarians, a priest and a 

nun, anti-Marcos politicians, even 

those from the radical Left. These 

were, broadly speaking, the 

reformist elements of Philippine 

society that were mobilized in the 

struggle against dictatorship. The 

constitution they drafted may be 

flawed but it had strong provisions 

for human rights and civil 

liberties. It made the president 

still powerful, but less powerful 

than it previously was, with presidential 

arbitrariness held in check 

by a powerful judiciary, an even 

more powerful legislature, and 

independent commissions and 

offices like that of the Ombudsman. 

Moreover, that constitution 

had provisions designed to allow 

broader representation, especially 

in Congress, through the election 

of party-list representatives, the 

imposition of term limits on all 

elected officials, and a curb on 

political dynasties. 

The truth is that Congress has 

been notoriously slow in enacting 

the laws that would breathe 

life into these provisions. It took 

years to pass the party-list law, 

and a ban on political dynasties 

has yet to be legislated. 

If Congress is left alone to 

think about charter change, 


C H A R T E R C H A N G E 

chances are our lawmakers will 

write a more regressive constitution 

than the one we already 

have. How can a body that has 

benefited so much from the 

system be expected to reform 

it? The legislature has not even 

passed long-standing proposals 

for political and electoral reforms 

that would, among others, place 

a ban on party switching, provide 

subsidies for political parties, and 

regulate campaign finance. 

QUICK FIXES 

The real impetus for the drive to 

change to a parliamentary system 

is that the trapos are threatened 

by the rise of media and movie 

celebrities and their possible 

dominance of the commanding 

heights of political power 

in the Philippines—the Senate 

and the presidency. The quick 

fix they propose to this is quite 

simple: establish a unicameral 

legislature (thereby doing away 

with the Senate) and changing to 

a parliamentary system (thereby 

eliminating a president elected 

by popular vote). 

But the problem with beginning 

what Arroyo calls “the 

great debate on charter change” 

is that it could also open the 

floodgates for real reforms that 

would threaten trapo power. 

And so when the president said 

she preferred cha-cha through 

con-ass (constituent assembly), 

de Venecia was clapping wildly. 

It meant a process that could be 

contained, as the speaker and 

his allies had contained similar 

processes in the past, within the 

halls of the legislature. 

The parliamentary system as 

envisioned in House Concurrent 

Resolution 004 passed earlier 

this year will pave the way for 

trapo consolidation of political 

power vis-à-vis celebrities and 

the middle-class, modernizing, 

and reformist elements that have 

managed to crash into the halls of 

power since 1986. This proposal 

does away with party-list, sectoral, 

or proportional representation. 

Term limits are similarly removed, 

while each term of elected officials 

will be four years instead 

of the current three. All members 

of a unicameral parliament will 

be elected at the district level, 

meaning that the power base of 

political families, which lies in 

single-member legislative districts, 

will remain unchallenged. 

In the face of resistance 

to the idea of constitutional 

reforms, the president subsequently 

said she would also 

form a citizen’s commission on 

charter change. This, as well 

as pressure from the outside, 

could force Congress to make 

more progressive constitutional 

changes. After all, the proposals 

for constitutional reform of the 

likes of scholar Jose V. Abueva 

advocate more far-reaching 

changes that lie beyond the 

imaginings of de Venecia and 

his allies. (See table showing a 

comparison of various proposals 

for constitutional change.) 

The citizen’s commission, 

however, is largely intended to 

generate popular backing for the 

notion of charter change. As the 

May 2005 survey of the Social 

Weather Stations indicated, only 

about a third of Filipinos were 

open to the idea of cha-cha. 

Such indifference is also 

the reason why the president 

has endorsed a federal form of 

government, which has wider 

support from various sectors 

around the country. (See “Voices 

from the Periphery.”) In comparison, 

the proposed shift to a 

parliamentary system has been 

met with far more skepticism 

and suspicion. 

THE GREAT DEBATE 

But all this is speculative. The 

main obstacle that faces cha-cha 

now is the Senate. Unless the 

Senate agrees to a con-ass, it will 

never happen. So far, it doesn’t 

seem likely that the Senate is 

willing to dance to the cha-cha 

beat. The reason is plain to see: 

many senators have presidential 

ambitions and are not about 

to abandon these, or for that 

matter, their powers and privileges 

as members of the “Upper 

House.” Moreover, many of 

them are looking forward to the 

impeachment, if only because it 

will provide the senators more 

television time than a dozen 

high-profile “investigations in 

aid of legislation.” They would 

thus likely prefer to go through 

the impeachment trial first, before 

even discussing cha-cha. 

Despite this, the charterchange 

proponents remain 

hopeful. Ramos, for example, 

has proposed a fast track to 

cha-cha that would allow a 

referendum on the constitution 

in early 2006. The House timetable 

proposed by the likes of 

Rep. Constantino Jaraula sees a 

referendum taking place the second 

quarter of next year. Both, 

however, see a new parliament 

in place by 2007. This is also 

the graceful exit option for the 

president: she bows out of office 

and is home free of the charges 

she now faces. 

But this formula will work 

only if the president is genuinely 

willing to cut short her term 

and to push for charter change 

as a real option, rather than as 

a diversion from impeachment. 

If cha-cha is the delaying tactic 

Arroyo critics say it is, then the 

president could just be stringing 

Ramos and de Venecia along. 

Joel Rocamora of the Institute 

for Popular Democracy points 

out that the president knows 

very well that by next year, legislators 

would be too consumed 

by preparations for the 2007 

elections for them to pay too 

much attention to constitutional 

changes. If cha-cha is delayed 

beyond 2007 and she is not 

impeached, then Gloria Arroyo 

remains president until 2010, he 

says. This is precisely the kind 

of brinksmanship game that Arroyo 

likes to play, say those who 

know her well. 

Some cautionary notes as the 

great debate begins: in a country 

with a sophisticated and resilient 

political elite, institutional 

change or shifts in the form of 

government may not change 

very much. Our elites have 

shown great capacity for reinventing 

themselves. They adapt 

easily to new political circumstances 

and have mastered how 

to talk the talk of reform, without 

actually walking the walk. 

The flaws of our political system, 

therefore, can be remedied 

not merely through a change in 

institutions; reforms should include 

measures that would open the way 

for major changes in the kinds of 

people elected to public office. If 

the same families dominate political 

power, then nothing changes very 

much. If the trapo political culture 

of patronage and spoils remains ascendant, 

then it will be more of the 

same. The cha-cha rescue remedy 

could end up a mere placebo that 

provides temporary relief but not a 

lasting cure. 

PROPOSALS FOR CHARTER CHANGE 

Proposal of Jose V. Abueva* 

Bicameral Parliament, 

with Upper House 

composed of representatives 

chosen from states 

assemblies 

80% of about 300 Lower 

House seats elected by 

single-member districts; 

20% by proportional 

representation 

Prime minister as head of 

government, elected by 

Parliament; forms Cabinet, 

mostly from members 

of Parliament 

President as symbolic 

head of state, elected by 

Parliament from among its 

members 

Federal government to be 

installed 5-10 years, with 

11 states. Federal government 

to have powers over 

defense, foreign relations, 

currency & monetary 

policy, human rights and 

Supreme Court & Court of 

Appeals. All other powers, 

including taxation, to be 

devolved to states. 

House Proposal** 

Unicameral Parliament 

called the National Assembly 

All seats to be elected by 

single-member districts, 

assembly members to serve 

4-year terms, no term limits 

Prime Minister as head of 

government, elected by 

Parliament; forms Cabinet, 

majority of which should be 

from Parliament 

President as symbolic 

head of state, elected by 

Parliament from among its 

members 

Federal government to be 

installed in 10 years, with 

the National assembly to 

decide how many independent 

states there would be, 

and their powers 

Coalition for Charter Change Now*** 

Unicameral Parliament 

300 seats in Parliament, 240 for 

district representatives, 60 for partylist 

representatives serving 5-year 

terms. No party-switching 1 year 

before election. Only those who are 

members of a political party for at 

least 1 year are qualified to run. 

Prime Minister as head of government, 

elected by Parliament; forms 

Cabinet, majority of which should be 

from Parliament 

President as symbolic head of 

state, elected by direct vote for a 

5-year term 

Federal Parliament to enact a law 1 

year after new constitution, to create 

11 states, most of which will be 

established within 5-6 years. Federal 

government to have powers over 

defense, foreign affairs, currency, 

foreign trade, public debt, transport 

& communications. All other powers, 

including taxation, given to states. 

*Abueva is on the board of the Citizens’ Movement for a Federal Philippines and has been named 

member of a citizen’s commission on constitutional reforms that will be convened by the government. 

** The House proposal is contained in House Concurrent Resolution 004 filed earlier this year. According 

to Rep. Constantino Jaraula, this resolution will be the basis of discussions to be undertaken 

by Congress once it is convened as a constituent assembly to amend the constitution. 

*** The Coalition is nongovernment, but its members are closely associated with House Speaker 

Jose de Venecia. 


I REPORT 

23

LIGHTS, 

CAMERA, 

IMPEACHMENT! 

ALECKS P. PABICO 

as 

WW H E N 

MILLIONS 

of Filipinos 

were glued 

to their TV 

s e t s d u r - 

ing the impeachment 

trial of President 

Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada almost 

five years ago, the leader on the 

dock was decidedly even more 

colorful than the characters he 

used to portray in his old action 

flicks. In terms of sheer showbiz 

value, the Estrada impeachment 

did not disappoint. 

The opposition today says an 

impeachment trial starring President 

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo 

would also be the best show in 

town. But all they are eliciting 

so far are yawns. It’s not just 

because Arroyo as a subject is a 

bit of a snore or even that we’ve 

all been there and done that. 

More than anything else, it has 

just become too obvious that the 

opposition has yet to get its act 

together. Many also find themselves 

overpowered by a sense of 

moral ambiguity at the sight of an 

opposition cast of characters that 

includes the “usual suspects,” that 

is, politicians who are perceived, 

rightly or wrongly, to be at least 

villainous as the person they 

are trying to impeach. 

Throw in enough legal questions 

and gobbledygook to slow 

the process and you might just 

as well turn off all the lights and 

send everyone home. 

The administration’s gameplan 

is quite obvious. Unlike in 

Estrada’s case where he had the 

numbers in the Senate to block his 

conviction, Arroyo is not assured 

of such a balance of forces in the 

current composition of the upper 

chamber to snare an acquittal for 

herself. Hence, the impeachment 

promises to be a fierce battle over 

technicalities to be fought in the 

arena of the House. 

But the opposition in the 

House insists the show will go 

on, even though its “creeping” 

impeachment complaint is at 

a standstill at the moment. It 

has even begun picking who 

among its legislators could be 

part of the House prosecution 

panel, which it has decided will 

be headed by San Juan Rep. Ronaldo 

Zamora. And of course it 

insists that there were only two 

complaints filed, one of which 

has already been withdrawn. 

NOT ONCE, BUT 

THRICE? 

Political analyst Ramon Casiple 

of the Institute for Political and 

Electoral Reform (IPER) says he 

had this sneaking suspicion early 

on that the issue of multiple 

complaints would be brought 

up, since there is a Supreme 

Court ruling that allows only 

one impeachment case against 

impeachable public officials in 

a year. He was proved right; 

the question regarding “three” 

impeachment complaints has 

been raised. 

The first impeachment complaint 

against Arroyo was filed 

by Marcos lawyer Oliver Lozano 

on June 27. This later evolved 

into the amended complaint 

filed by the minority and initially 

endorsed by 41 congressmen 

when the 13th Congress 

opened for its second regular 

session on July 25. The amended 

complaint expanded on Lozano’s 

lone charge of betrayal 

of public trust arising from Arroyo’s 

alleged taped conversations 

to include two other impeachable 

grounds—culpable 

violations of the Constitution, 

and bribery and graft and corruption. 

Among the charges under 

these grounds are: 

• undermining the independence 

of the Commission on 

Elections (Comelec), 

•-cover-up of evidence of 

electoral fraud, 

• overpricing of the North 

Rail and Piatco airport terminal 

projects, 

• releasing Philhealth cards 

and use of other government 

funds for electioneering, 

• benefiting from jueteng 

payoffs, 

• hiding real estate in the 

United States, and 

• complicity in the murder of 

political activists. 

On July 5, a second complaint 

also accusing Arroyo of 

betraying the public trust was 

filed by a private citizen, lawyer 

Jose Rizaldo Lopez, and was endorsed 

by Palawan Rep. Antonio 

Alvarez of the Lakas-CMD. It 

has since been withdrawn, but 

now the amended complaint is 

being considered as a separate 

or third complaint. That’s because 

Alagad party-list Rep. Rodante 

Marcoleta, who endorsed 

the Lozano complaint, says he 

was not consulted about the 

amendments. 

Iloilo Rep. Rolex Suplico, 

however, argues, “An endorser 

does not become the complainant 

by his mere endorsement. 

As such, he acquires no rights 

over the complaint. His prior 

consent need not be obtained 

if the complainant (Lozano) 

desires to amend the original 

complaint.” 

“CREEPING” COMPLAINT 

QUESTIONED 

But whether or not the amendments 

should be considered a 

separate complaint is only one 

in a growing list of legal issues 

pro-administration lawmakers 

have put on the table. Another 

concerns the “creeping” impeachment 

adopted by the opposition 

and which was also the 

route taken by those who had 

pushed for the impeachment 

of President Estrada in 2000. 

At the time, fewer than 20 congressmen 

filed the complaint 

against Estrada. Once it had the 

needed number of signatories, 

though, then House Speaker 

(now Senator) Manuel Villar 

Jr. immediately transmitted the 

articles of impeachment to the 

Senate without waiting for the 

report of the justice committee. 

When it was filed, the 

amended impeachment complaint 

against Arroyo had only 

41 congressmen endorsing it. 

As of this writing, it has 10 more 

signatories. But now some lawmakers 

like Davao Rep. Prospero 

Nograles say the rules do not 


I M P E A C H M E N T 

allow for a “creeping” impeachment. 

Justice committee chair, 

Maguindanao Rep. Simeon Datumanong 

of Lakas also says 

that the complaint stays with the 

committee and can no longer be 

transmitted to the Senate. 

Opposition legislators and 

the private lawyers working 

with them of course beg to 

disagree. They say the resolution 

of impeachment is different 

from the resolution of endorsement 

by congressmen. 

“Anytime during the process, 

once they have the numbers, 

congressmen can just file a 

resolution saying that they are 

endorsing the complaint so it 

can immediately be transmitted 

to the Senate,” says University 

of the Philippines law professor 

Ibarra Gutierrez III. 

Actually, the minority and the 

other impeachment-complaint 

endorsers had wanted to avoid 

a confrontation at the justice 

committee where the odds are 

definitely stacked against them. 

But they found themselves with 

no option other than filing the 

amended complaint even with 

less than the 79 signatures to 

avoid, ironically, being slapped 

with a technicality. 

“For the amendment to be 

included, it had to be filed before 

the referral of the complaint 

to the justice committee,” 

says lawyer H. Harry Roque Jr., 

another UP law professor and 

private counsel for the House 

prosecution panel. 

Congress insiders reveal that 

there were at least a dozen congressmen 

who committed to 

sign the complaint but whose 

signatures were missing when 

it was filed. Some of these are 

members of the majority who 

could just be waiting for the 

right moment to affix their signatures. 

Others are said to be 

wary of being lumped together 

with the minority, and want 

to distinguish themselves from 

the bloc led by Sorsogon Rep. 

Francis Escudero, the House 

prosecution team’s designated 

manager and the opposition’s 

most credible face. 

IPER’s Casiple notes that during 

Estrada’s time, there were 

also fencesitters who adopted 

a wait-and-see posture. “Villar 

did not sign until the count 

reached 68 and needed only 10 

more votes,” he recalls. “When 

he finally signed, it served as 

a go signal for his allies in the 

House for them to also affix 

their signatures.” 

A HOUSE REHASH 

So let’s say the complaint survives 

what seems like an attempted 

murder by numbers in 

the House. To many, the first 

few scenes of the main act at 

the Senate may not look that 

different from the prologue now 

being played out in the House. 

Even Gutierrez, who will work 

as a private lawyer for the 

prosecution, says, “I anticipate 

that they will raise all sorts of 

technical questions and insufficiencies. 

Like in Erap’s trial, the 

defense won’t immediately file 

an answer. They will probably 

file a motion to dismiss or motion 

to quash like what (Estrada 

lawyer) Estelito Mendoza did.” 

He also says part of Arroyo’s 

legal strategy could be to try to 

suppress as much evidence as 

possible without turning the 

proceedings into a “second envelope” 

situation. “They will be 

more conscious of that now,” 

says Gutierrez. “But they cannot 

afford to let it get out of hand 

to the extent that all sorts of 

charges will come out in open 

court. It would be very politically 

damaging.” 

Some observers are already 

anticipating that debates would 

break out over whether the 

“Hello, Garci” tapes are admissible 

as evidence or not. Should 

they be suppressed, there could 

be a replay of the “second envelope” 

scenario, albeit with 

many people knowing this time 

around what the tapes contain. 

But Gutierrez argues, “If they 

object and invoke the right to 

privacy, in effect they admit that 

it was her. That would be very 

damaging, maybe not in terms 

of the trial, but in the public 

perception.” 

“The bar against using 

wiretapped conversations 

clearly applies in courts, in 

nonconstitutional processes,” 

he concedes. “(But) since the 

impeachment trial is sui generis 

(of its own kind), constitutionally 

mandated, the implication 

is the Senate can come up with 

its own rules, including making 

the wiretapped conversations 

admissible for purposes of 

this particular process, without 

violating the nature of the impeachment 

trial.” 

Since impeachment proceedings 

are also not criminal 

in nature, and in fact constitute 

a political process to determine, 

in this case, whether or not Arroyo 

is fit to remain in office, 

the prohibition can be waived. 

Cases decided in the United 

States have admitted wiretapped 

material when there is a 

public interest involved. 

BEYOND THE TAPES 

Then again, Roque says their 

legal strategy is not limited to 

the tapes, anyway. “If at all, the 

tapes are only third on our list,” 

he says. “Our first and strongest 

ground is that President Arroyo 

talked to a Comelec commissioner. 

The fact that she violated 

her duties to execute all laws, 

undermining the constitutional 

independence of the Comelec 

is itself a culpable violation of 

the Constitution.” 

As to the second ground 

concerning election fraud, 

which was detailed in the tapes, 

Roque says they can prove it 

through independent evidence 

like tampered election returns 

and witnesses (including Garcillano’s 

nephew and self-confessed 

bagman Michaelangelo 

‘Louie’ Zuce). “All the events 

in the tapes actually happened,” 

he adds. “It’s as simple 

as subpoena-ing the individuals 

involved to reconstruct the 

contents of the tapes. Besides, 

there’s the admission that she 

talked to a Comelec official.” 

Such words may not comfort 

those who already think 

the opposition has been too 

obsessed with presenting witnesses 

and doing public exposés 

instead of devoting their 

time to hard, honest-to-goodness 

research. Some veteran litigators 

have also pointed to the 

THEN AND NOW. (Above) 

Senators opening evidence 

during the Estrada impeachment 

and below, opposition legislators 

gear up for Arroyo’s trial. 

relative court inexperience of 

the prosecuting team. That includes 

one-time bar topnotcher 

Zamora, who has admitted that 

if the impeachment trial pushes 

through, it would be his chance 

to finally take part in an actual 

trial. 

Yet in the end, the real 

drama may unfold not at the 

Senate, but elsewhere. As in 

Estrada’s case, events around 

the trial could determine the 

outcome and resolution to this 

long drawn-out, mind-numbing 

political serye. As Casiple 

sees it, the impeachment is only 

meant to buy Arroyo some time 

so her wards could turn around 

the adverse public opinion 

against her. 

“Unless the opposition or the 

people develop the capacity to 

get her out, it’s just going to be 

a political stalemate,” predicts 

Casiple. But if there is an obvious 

failure of the process, an extraconstitutional 

backlash in the 

form of another “people power” 

revolt may become imminent. 

When that happens, Casiple says 

people will have a higher moral 

reason to do so “because they 

think she already cheated, and 

now she’s cheating again.” 


I REPORT 

25

For Visayans, the 

center does not hold 

RESIL B. MOJARES 

T 

HE IDEA of a Fed- 

eral Republic was 

already raised at 

the time of the Philippine 

Revolution. 

In 1898, when the 

Aguinaldo government 

had not yet established its 

presence in the Visayas, leaders 

in Iloilo took the initiative of 

forming “The Federal State of 

the Visayas,” anticipating the 

formation of a federal republic 

with three states: Luzon, Visayas, 

and Mindanao. 

In 1899, a group of “eminent 

Filipinos” submitted to the US 

Philippine Commission a draft 

for a Federal Republic of the 

Philippines, which proposed 

to divide the country into 11 

regions or states. In 1900, the 

maverick Ilocano intellectual 

Isabelo de los Reyes also published 

a proposal for a federal 

constitution that would divide 

the country into seven states. 

These ideas were not developed 

because of the Aguinaldo 

government’s need to create a 

unitary state with strong central 

powers to fight a war. The federal 

alternative was also rejected by 

the US Philippine Commission 

(on the grounds of Filipino 

unpreparedness for the system) 

and the idea was completely 

swamped as the United States 

consolidated its rule and set the 

country on track toward a unitary 

form of government. The 

goal of federalism, however, has 

persisted as a recurrent theme 

in debates on the best structure 

of government for the country. 

In the 1971 Constitutional 

Convention, for instance, the 

shift to a federal system was 

strongly supported by many of 

the Muslim delegates as well 

as other Christian and Muslim 

leaders and intellectuals. In the 

1980s, Reuben Canoy’s Mindanao 

Independence Movement 

proposed a “Federal Republic 

of Mindanao” and produced as 

part of its propaganda campaign 

a constitution, passports, and the 

Mindanao dollar. 

The accumulation of experiences—enabling 

as well as disabling—under 

the 1991 Local Government 

Code and the creation 

of autonomous regions has built 

a consensus that decentralization 

GOING FEDERAL. Those living 

in the country’s periphery, 

like these Negros sugarcane 

workers, have always felt 

neglected by “imperial” Manila. 

has to be pushed forward. There 

are those who hold the view of 

“maximum decentralization short 

of federalization” and there is 

genuine anxiety over the prospect 

of such a radical structural shift 

as federalization. There is lack of 

consensus about the exact shape 

of federalism to be adopted, and 

the discourse has stayed largely 

at the level of leaders rather than 

among the people themselves. 

Yet federalism has moved 

clearly to the center of discussions 

on constitutional reform. 

It has become even more urgent 

because of today’s crisis at the 

center. At no other time has the 

level of public frustration about 

how our unitary presidential 

system works been highest as 

now. Disillusion with the system 

is such that there are leaders in 

Davao, Cebu, and the Ilocos who 

have publicly declared that if 

the present crisis in Manila spins 

out of control, their respective 

regions will “withdraw” from 

Manila and declare their “independence.” 

This is not just political 

theatrics but an expression of 

deep frustration over the central 

government. This has made federalism 

a vital concern. 

A CENTRAL VISAYAN 

STATE 

Central Visayas may be among 

the best positioned for a transition 

to a federal state. This is 

because it is a fairly definable, 

self-conscious unit on linguistic 

cultural (high degree of homogeneity 

in language and religion), 

geographic (it is internally well 

connected), economic, and political 

grounds. 

Cebu, the region’s de facto 

capital, has a tradition of local 

autonomy supported by such 

factors as geographic location 

(distance from Manila, strategic 

location in the South), cultural 

difference (chiefly, language), 

and economic and political base 

(southern economic hub, Cebuano 

cultural “homeland”). 

Its leaders have built on Cebu’s 

reputation as a rival center 

to Manila and styled themselves 

political vanguards of “local autonomy.” 

This is clearly illustrated 

by the Osmeñas, the region’s most 

influential and enduring political 

family. In the early 20 th 

century, 

when unitary state-building was 

the imperative, Sergio Osmeña 

Sr. styled himself as the “apostle 

of national unity.” In the postwar 

period, when the inefficiency 

of central government was the 

popular lament, Sergio Osmeña Jr. 

(gearing up for a national position 

as chair of the League of Provincial 

Governors and City Mayors in 

1957) billed himself “champion 

of local autonomy.” With the 

distrust of central government 

heightened by the experience of 

martial rule and the perceived 

weakness of the post-EDSA governments, 

other Osmeñas put 

themselves at the forefront of the 

local autonomy movement. In 

1991, Emilio ‘Lito’ Osmeña, running 

for vice president under Fidel 

Ramos’s Lakas-NUCD, formed the 

Local Autonomy Movement of the 

Philippines. In the same election, 

his brother John, also eyeing the 

vice presidency (later settling 

for a senatorial seat), formed a 

registered political organization, 

Pilipinas 1992, that advocated 

federalism. 

Yet while the relation between 

the region and the center 

is contested, the discourse on 

politics in the region has always 

been one of local power in the 

context of the unitary state. The 

region has never harbored a 

secessionist movement; it is the 

seat of what may be called “conservative 

anti-centralism.” 


V O I C E S F R O M T H E P E R I P H E R Y 

SHIFTS IN THINKING 

Over the past century, claims 

on local power by Cebuano 

leaders have been expressed in 

three ways: exercising control 

over local territory, usually limited 

to a municipality or district 

(classic “bossism”); carving out 

a base to leverage national influence 

(which includes alliance 

building and indirect power 

over a more extensive territory 

like a region); or building “autonomous 

regions” (in relations 

of avoidance or negotiation 

with the central government). 

I would like to think that there 

has been through time a shift 

from one pole to the other (at 

least in Cebu’s case), a shift 

among local and regional leaders 

from “thinking nationally” 

(using a local base for a raid 

on national power) to “thinking 

regionally” (seeing the region 

as itself a meaningful, sufficient, 

and effective arena for political 

action). It is a sea of change that 

fosters political conditions more 

favorable to federalism. This is 

true not only of the Osmeñas. It 

may be noted that major political 

leaders in the region are supportive 

of federalism. 

We are speaking not just of 

the self-interested maneuvers 

of political leaders. “Regional 

thinking” is part of a public, 

region-based consciousness of 

separateness and difference. 

Regional autonomist sentiment 

is illustrated, for instance, in the 

Pusyon Bisaya phenomenon of 

the martial-law period. In the 

1978 elections for the Interim 

National Assembly, 13 seats were 

contested in the Central Visayas. 

A ragtag opposition group called 

Pusyon Bisaya fielded a slate of 

relative unknowns against a stellar 

ticket of Marcos’s Kilusang 

Bagong Lipunan that included 

the biggest political leaders of 

the region (Osmeña, Durano, 

Cuenco, Gullas). In a wave of 

popular, anti-dictatorship sentiment, 

Pusyon Bisaya wiped out 

Marcos’s candidates, 13 to 0. An 

observer at that time said, “Even 

if the opposition had fielded a 

dog against the Marcos candidates, 

the dog would have won.” 

This was in 1978, at the height of 

martial rule. What has not been 

well noted is that the first public 

manifestations of middle-class 

protest against the dictatorship 

took place in the Central Visayas 

even before the 1983 Aquino 

assassination. 

Autonomist sentiments became 

pronounced in the late 1980s 

during the so-called “Ce-Boom” 

when, in a national context of 

negative growth, Cebu became the 

country’s fastest growing economy. 

The Central Visayas gross domestic 

product posted an average growth 

rate of 17.4 percent from 1987 to 

1991. Though this tapered off to 

11.5 percent in 1992-1997, it fueled 

a can-do attitude among Cebuano 

and other Visayan leaders. 

This show of autonomy began 

even before martial rule when 

Cebuano leaders tried to build on 

self-initiative to develop the local 

economy independent of Manila. 

An example is the “Island in the Pacific” 

tourism promotion campaign 

that marketed Cebu as though it 

was not part of the Philippines. 

After the fall of Marcos, riding the 

crest of market optimism, Cebuano 

and other Central Visayan leaders 

BITING THE BAIT. Many in the 

provinces support the president’s 

suggestion to shift to a federal 

form of government. 

launched initiatives to promote 

the regional economy independent 

of Manila, even envisioning 

(in a flush of hubris) Cebu as a 

global city (“like Hong Kong or 

Singapore”) delinked from the 

Philippines. The attitude of Manila-defiant 

entrepreneurship is 

expressed by a Cebuano leader 

who, when warned that a project 

may not get Manila’s approval, 

said, “If Manila does not approve, 

we’ll go ahead anyway.” 

CENTERS AND 

ENCLAVES 

A major concern in the creation 

of federal states is that this will 

lead to the entrenchment of 

bossism and dynastic enclaves. 

Center-periphery conflicts will 

also persist, although relocated 

to the regional level. 

Bossism will continue to be 

a problem. There are factors, 

however, that will contribute to 

its enervation or mutation: the 

strengthening of state institutions, 

regional economic development, 

and continued efforts in decentralization 

and development initiatives 

that give primacy to community 

mobilization and participatory approaches. 

These factors will have 

greater efficacy or force if played 

out in a federal (rather than unitary) 

context where negotiations 

are close range rather than long 

distance, external interventions are 

held in check, and demands for accountability 

and transparency can 

be exercised more effectively. 

Consider the current controversy 

over the division of 

Cebu province into four separate 

provinces. Spearheaded by three 

congressional representatives 

who want to carve out their 

districts into separate provinces, 

the bill to create “four Cebus” has 

been filed in Congress and set 

for committee hearings in July. 

Here one has a case of districtlevel 

bosses who aim to combine 

local control with access to the 

national legislature (with its traditional 

practice of horse trading 

on bills of “local application”) 

in order to gain greater share of 

local and national resources and, 

in the process, carve out local 

fiefdoms. A federal system will 

not forestall conflicts of this kind 

but may provide a better context 

in dealing with the problem. 

In Central Visayas, centermargin 

tensions have already 

been manifested in complaints 

about “imperial Cebu.” In the late 

1980s, Negros Occidental Gov. 

Emilio Macias II, smarting at Cebu’s 

dominance, demanded that the 

province pay “tribute” for its use 

of power from a geothermal plant 

in Negros Oriental. In 1995, Boholanos 

resisted a Cebu-initiated plan 

to build a 30-km undersea pipeline 

that would pump water daily from 

the Inabanga River in Bohol to 

storage facilities in Mactan. 

INTERDEPENDENCE 

DESPITE IMBALANCE 

While these examples point to 

intraregional imbalance, they 

also underline the reality of intraregional 

interdependence. Despite 

its primacy, land-poor, water- and 

energy-deficient Cebu needs, to 

put in crudely, a “hinterland.” 

(Shopping malls in Cebu, for 

instance, have profited from highspeed 

ferries transporting shoppers 

from neighboring islands.) 

Moreover, economic changes 

like improved transport and communications, 

greater capital mobility, 

and flexible business siting 

(as the new economy opens up 

new production sites, e.g. from 

coal mines to call centers) will 

affect the base of local bosses by 

allowing new areas to be opened 

for development and hence be 

empowered politically. The expansion 

of tourism in Bohol and 

plans to market Negros Oriental 

as an information technology hub 

will empower these provinces in 

relation to Cebu. Some Cebuano 

leaders have already put forth 

the idea that if a “Federal State 

of Central and Eastern Visayas” 

were to be created, they would 

support locating the state capital 

in Leyte to prime development in 

eastern Visayas and open a new 

corridor connecting the region to 

both Luzon and Mindanao. 

All this may be an overly optimistic 

view but when one does 

not find much cause for optimism 

looking toward Manila, one has 

to look for it elsewhere. 

Over 100 years ago, Jose Rizal 

had a vision of the country as a 

single, healthy, vitally functioning 

nervous system, a highly intricate 

but wonderfully coordinated network 

in which neurological impulses 

travel throughout the body, 

to and from the cortex, the stem, 

the senses, processing what comes 

in from outside as well as what 

happens within the body itself. 

This centralized, unitary system 

is not working. The forebrain 

is diseased, the spinal 

column eroded, the senses disoriented 

or deadened. There is a 

nervousness coursing throughout 

the system, a chronic state 

of instability, but parts of the 

body are not quite sure what is 

happening, and are not moving 

according to the same signals. 

Today it seems the body 

politic is all “nervousness” and 

no system. It is time the body is 

reconfigured. 

Resil Mojares is based in Cebu 

and has authored several books 

on Philippine politics, history, 

and literature. 


I REPORT 

27

The Moro people can be 

part of a plural society 

without losing their identity 

OMAR SOLITARIO ALI 

T 

HE 500 years of virtu- 

ally continuous war 

against the Moro 

people—launched 

in the beginning by 

the Spaniards, the 

Americans, the Japanese, 

and then the Philippine government 

for the last 58 years—is 

proof enough that the Moro cannot 

be annihilated through massacres, 

using paramilitary marauders 

(Ilaga), depopulating communities 

and grabbing land, establishing 

Christian settlements in Moro areas, 

burning whole villages, hamletting, 

ear-cutting, and other inhuman 

methods. Up till now, the Moro 

stand tall despite heavy battering 

by mighty forces. 

Some elements of the Philippine 

military, some political leaders, 

and some business groups had this 

notion that the insurgents should 

be terminated by force; that there 

is no way to lick them through 

peace; that they are a negligible 

portion of the population—15,000 

armed followers, 2,500 full timers, 

40,000 mass support or roughly 

one percent of the five million 

Muslims in the Philippines. But 

that is oversimplification. There is 

no way to terminate that 55,000 or 

so without collaterally damaging, 

affecting, or converting the entire 

Moro population, thereby making 

the war mutually destructive and 

unending. 

Conversely, after five centuries 

of Moro resistance to foreign domination, 

after 33 years of the latest 

phase of Moro conflict that began 

in 1970, the Moro insurgents and 

the people in general should by 

now accept the fact that there is no 

foreseeable victory in the coming 

century if the goal remains carving 

out a portion of Philippine territory 

to establish an independent republic 

ruled by Muslims. If victory were 

really possible then they should 

have won in the early 1970s when 

they were a united front; when 

the Organization of the Islamic 

Conference (OIC) was extending 

unlimited financial, material and 

political support; when the Moro 

masses were solidly behind them; 

when the United States was pinned 

down by détente or the Russian 

factor and unable to declare itself 

the policeman of the world. 

FACING HARD REALITIES 

Today Moro insurgents are deeply 

fragmented. A great number of 

them are with the government or 

have decided to lie low. The OIC 

will no longer support armed 

struggles. The Moro people as a 

support base has tremendously 

weakened or lost hope in the 

Moro insurgents. Now the United 

States as the self-declared antiterrorist 

crusader of the world is 

alert and eager to go after Muslim 

insurgents wherever they may 

be, and especially if they can be 

declared terrorists. 

The Moro Islamic Liberation 

Front’s (MILF) desire for a United 

Nations-supervised referendum is 

actually not feasible. That worked 

in East Timor because the Christians 

there were united and firm 

in their desire to secede from Indonesia. 

The Moro people are not 

that united in a desire for secession 

and the MILF will surely not 

be allowed to coercively influence 

the outcome of a referendum. 

The hindrances to peace are 

tremendous. Our constitution is 

deemed sacred even if fighting 

can be avoided just by restructuring 

the system of government as 

allowed and provided for in that 

same charter. There are some 

influential chauvinistic Filipinos in 

Luzon and especially in Mindanao 

who want nothing less than continuing 

and completing the crusade 

to terminate Islam and Muslims 

in this country. They think 

that after five centuries, success 

is near, with the Muslims driven 

from Luzon and the Visayas and 

now restricted to only a third of 

Mindanao. For full political and 

economic takeover of Mindanao 

to happen, what remains only is 

to finish Muslims off. 

It will take a strong-willed 

and broader-thinking Philippine 

leader to go beyond the subjective 

analysis and recommendations 

of interest groups and 

reverse our maladies. We must 

begin by accepting the hard fact: 

there is no military solution to the 

conflict. The antidote is peaceful, 

political and diplomatic. 

AN ACCIDENTAL STATE 

Our policy makers must make 

a delicate and radical decision. 

They must re-diagnose this country 

in order to affirm the fact that 

it is pluralistic. This is one state 

by accident of history but not 

one nation because nationhood 

is ethno-linguistic, religious, 

cultural, historical, artistic, and 

serial. The Moro as far as nationhood 

is concerned is truly distinct 

from that of the Filipino. 

The Cordillera people, the 

Bicolanos, the Ilocanos, the Cebuanos, 

the Ilonggos of Western 

Visayas, the Warays of Eastern 

Visayas, those of the Cagayan 

Valley, the Tagalogs, those in 

Eastern Mindanao and Northern 

Mindanao—all of them are 

lumped under one system and 

one rule of conduct. But they are 

all basically different. In each of 

their habitats, there are traditions 

and commonly accepted norms 

which other areas or regions 

might consider unacceptable. 

The Philippine government 

and the MILF are negotiating and 

talking about cessation of hostilities, 

ancestral domain, economic 

development, demilitarization 

and rehabilitation. But there has 

been constant violation of past 

agreements because there are no 

broad parameters, political systems, 

or structure of government 

that will give way to mutual tolerance, 

coexistence, productive 

competition or unity in diversity 

tailored to the temperament, 

ethnicity, and plurality of Philippine 

society. 

Federalism is thus proposed as 

possible savior of the peoples of 

the Philippines. Federalism is the 

embodiment of unity in diversity of 

productive competition, of mutual 

tolerance and coexistence, of giving 

way to plurality yet not giving 

away belongingness, of encouraging 

the optimum use of latent skills 

and resources in every region, of 

allowing the free advocacy and 

practice of distinct cultures and 

religion, of self-determination and 

autonomy in every region, of making 

each region responsible for its 

own future instead of relying and 

then blaming an overburdened 

central government. 

A TRIPLE SUCCESS 

In a federal form of government, 

the Philippines will be subdivided 

into states, each of which will have 

a state constitution providing for 

laws in consonance and complementary 

with a federal or national 

charter. Each state will have its 

own Supreme Court, legislature, 

and executive branch headed 

by a chief minister. All states will 

be contributing portions of their 

income to sustain the efficient 

functioning of the country, such 

as national defense, finance, and 

foreign service. But instead of the 

national government distributing 

IRA (internal revenue allotment) 

shares, congressional countryside 

funds, and the like, the states will 

be in control of their regional resources. 

The national constitution, 

promulgated and affirmed by the 

whole Philippine population, will 

give sufficient consideration to 

generally acceptable principles, 

but will leave local issues to be 

shaped by peculiar state policies. 

With a state of their own 

(which they may call an Islamic 

State), where they may adopt 

the Qur’an and Hadith as main 

features of their state constitution, 

whose land and resources Muslims 

will effectively control, the 

pledge of the Moro mujahideen 

for the liberation of the homeland 

and firm establishment of Din El 

Islam will have been achieved. It 

will be a strong and progressive 

state because it will be a component 

of a bigger and mutually 

supportive formation. This is also 

an honorable way out for the 

Philippine government, which just 

has to be open-minded so that this 

country remains intact, united, and 

progressive. All of us may then 

declare triple success: we gain 

what we want, we won it fast, and 

we won it through peace. 

May the MILF and the Philippine 

government be divinely 

guided so that they will not give 

up on peace and consider alism as a win-win 

feder- 

option. 

Omar Solitario Ali, a former 

MNLF commander, is mayor of 

Marawi city. 


V O I C E S F R O M T H E P E R I P H E R Y 

The time for 

federalism is now 

REY MAGNO TEVES 

where 

MAKE NO mistake 

about 

it. While the 

packed gallery’s 

enthusiastic 

applause 

for the president’s 

last State of the Nation Address 

reeked of hakot (paid audi- 

ence), there was some measure 

of spontaneity particularly from 

the promdis—also known as lo- 

cal government officials —who 

were dressed to the nines. 

The grins were genuine when 

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo 

said it was time to start the charter 

debates. Bigger cheers came 

when the president announced 

her preference for a shift from the 

unitary system of government to a 

federal one. There was also loud 

clapping when she mentioned a 

change from the presidential to a 

parliamentary form. 

But it’s safe to assume that the 

idea of federalism resonated better 

among the local government 

executives than the notion of 

parliamentary government. After 

all, the local governments would 

be clear beneficiaries of a federal 

system that by definition disperses 

political power to the regions. 

Under the present system, 

regional development has been 

uneven and inequitable, and there 

has been creeping realization—especially 

in the countryside—that 

it is no longer just a question of 

having good and effective leaders. 

We’ve had dramatic leader changes 

in the past two decades, but there 

seems to be no parallel profound 

transformation in the lives of the 

people. Most of us are still in a 

rut, and the way out looks like it 

involves a change in the system. 

Which is probably the reason 

why the current brouhaha seems 

confined in the National Capital 

Region. Even civil society groups 

in the Visayas and Mindanao 

who were active in Edsa 1 and 

Edsa 2 have been conspicuously 

silent. They’re apparently done 

with just leader changes, and 

personality-oriented politics 

controlled by imperial Manila. 

That’s coming from places 

poverty and deprivation 

are deepest. Indeed, areas farthest 

from the capital experience more 

savage poverty and injustice. The 

Autonomous Region of Muslim 

Mindanao (ARMM), Caraga (Agusan 

and Surigao provinces), Bicol, 

Samar, and Leyte are among the 

regions that bear the brunt of the 

center’s neglect. These are also 

the areas that have bred numerous 

insurgents and continue to 

fuel uprisings and rebellion. 

MINDANAO AND 

SEPARATISM 

Of course, when it comes to rebellion, 

Mindanao is the first that 

comes to mind. It is the home 

of the Moro National Liberation 

Front (MNLF), which fought for 

independence until it agreed in 

1996 to a measure of autonomy 

under the Southern Philippines 

Council for Peace and Development 

framework. Today the MNLF 

is somewhat disjointed, with some 

elements tending back toward 

separation even as many of its 

leaders (or former leaders) sit in 

Congress, as well as in local governments 

as governors and mayors, 

and also in jail (specifically 

founder-chairman Nur Misuari). 

Mindanao is home as well to 

the presently more potent Moro 

Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), 

which has carried the torch of independence 

since splitting from 

the original MNLF in 1976. Four 

years ago, it began engaging 

the Philippine government in a 

peace process. It didn’t drop its 

demand for independence, but 

it has expressed willingness to 

discuss other options “short of 

outright independence but more 

than autonomy.” 

The MILF, though, has rejected 

the current movement for 

a Mindanao Republic, particularly 

that version being espoused by 

the group called One People 

Mindanao (OPM). In a recent 

official statement, the MILF said, 

“We cannot endorse anything that 

we are not a party to, and where 

the programs for the Bangsa 

Moro people are not clear.” 

Be that as it may, Muslim 

rebels and activists have long lost 

their monopoly on separatism. 

Although the latest Bright Idea is 

not directly connected with two 

previous Mindanao Independence 

Movements (MIM One under 

the late Datu Ugtog Matalam 

in the 1970s, and MIM Two under 

Reuben Canoy in the late 1980s), 

it certainly draws from the same 

logic and circumstances that propelled 

those MIMs. It therefore 

cannot be dismissed easily. 

Then there’s Davao Ciy Mayor 

Rodrigo Duterte’s pronouncement 

that he is ready to set up a separate 

Mindanao Republic. It may not 

be a serious, organized challenge, 

but it’s not exactly an empty 

threat, since it is premised on the 

possibility, remote or otherwise, 

that President Arroyo would be 

removed from office unconstitutionally. 

It’s even been adopted 

by the Confederation of Mindanao 

local government executives, and 

then echoed in Ilocos by Gov. Luis 

‘Chavit’ Singson and in the Visayas 

by a convention of leaders. Which 

means Mindanao itself cannot 

claim to have a monopoly on having 

separatist sentiments. 

CITIZENS FOR 

FEDERALISM 

Federalism, however, offers 

another alternative to those of 

us in the peripheries who have 

suffered because of policies 

emanating from a callous center. 

It seems to be a no-brainer. Yet 

before the Citizens Movement 

for a Federal Philippines (CMFP) 

was launched in February 2003 

in Marikina City, there seemed to 

be no nationwide effort toward 

federalism. Instead, many of the 

calls came individuals. 

During the 1970 Constitutional 

Convention, several proposals 

touting federalism were submitted. 

Oldest delegate Antonio 

de las Alas proposed a Federal 

Philippines with 20 autonomous 

states similar to Swiss cantons. UP 

professor Leopoldo Yabes, meanwhile, 

called for the creation of 10 

states with smaller units patterned 

after the U.S. county system. Yet 

another suggestion was for three 

main geographical subdivisions: 

Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao. 

None of the proposals, however, 

went beyond committee. 

In 1982, a new national political 

party spearheaded by Mindanaoan 

Aquilino Pimentel Jr. had 

federalism as part of its main political 

platform. This was the Pilipino 

Democratic Party or PDP, which 

later merged with Benigno ‘Ninoy’ 

Aquino Jr.’s Lakas ng Bayan or Laban 

to become PDP-Laban. But the 

party has not really pushed hard 

for federalism, not even during the 

drafting of the 1987 Constitution, 

which eventually reinforced the 

unitary system. 

In the 1992 national elections, 

a group called PILIPINAS 92 

espoused federalism. But the organization 

proved to have a short 

life, partly because it got identified 

with an aborted presidential 

bid of then Senator John Osmeña, 

who was its founding chair. 

In 1998, Senators Pimentel, 

John Osmeña, and Francisco Tatad 

filed a joint resolution calling for 

a constitutional convention or 

con-con to adopt a federal system 

of government. It also did not go 

beyond committee. Pimentel is the 

only one among the three left in 

the Senate. He continues to champion 

federalism all by his lonesome 

there, yet he has now taken a stand 

as well against charter change. 

Because it is citizen-led and 

citizen-run, the CMFP believes it 

has a good chance of keeping the 

idea of federalism alive. It will also 

be able to spread the word faster 

across the country. Organized 

by the Lihok Pideral Mindanaw 

(LPM), the CMFP’s basic strategy is 

networking and alliance building, 

including with elected leaders and 

politicians. It now has core groups, 

chapters, and allied networks in all 

of country’s 17 regions. It has also 

helped form a national alliance 

for the establishment of a Federal 

Parliamentary Philippines through 

a constitutional convention. It is 

this mode of charter change, and 

not via a “con-ass” or constituent 

assembly, that the CMFP and its 

allies are fighting for. 

Now more than ever, the CMFP 

slogan is apt: Federal Philippines, 

Panahon Na (It’s Time)! 

Rey Magno Teves, a longtime 

advocate of federalism, is chair 

and convenor of Lihok Pideral 

Mindanaw. 


I REPORT 

29

TWO AT EDSA 

‘When the wheels of 

history turn, you hardly 

expect the world to 

turn upside down’ 

ED LINGAO 

DURING THE last 

Edsa anniversary 

celebrations, we 

thought of having 

a reporter find out 

what the younger 

generation knew of Edsa. 

Some excerpts: 

Question: What was Edsa ’86 

about? 

Answer: …it was a massacre, 

right? 

Question: What was Edsa ’86 

about? 

Answer: A strike? 

Question: When did the 1986 

Edsa revolution occur? 

Answer: Sometime in 1989… Oh 

no, it was in 1990. 

The event that made a generation 

so proud to be Filipino, made 

us stand straighter when we heard 

the national anthem, that one event 

that defined us in the eyes of the 

world, may as well have been, 

for a different generation, another 

episode of “Wow Mali!”—except 

this was a lot funnier than anything 

Joey de Leon could cook up. It 

would have been hilarious had it 

not been so sad. 

What makes it so painful is the 

fact that these interviewees were 

not comedians or bums hanging 

out at the neighborhood sari-sari 

store. They were Metro Manila 

college students from private 

schools. These were the crème de 

la crème. One shudders at what 

the rest of the crop thinks. 

I was among those massed at 

Edsa in 1986, a dot among a couple 

million other Filipinos. I was 

still a junior at UP at the time, and I 

had come with a few of my college 

buddies. But we soon lost each 

other in the crowd and I found 

myself near some praying nuns. 

That’s when Times 

photographer 

Pete Reyes snapped that photo 

that would be the iconic image 

of that one hot Sunday afternoon 

in Ortigas when nothing mattered 

more than standing still. 

The expressions on the faces of 

the nuns froze a precious moment 

of terror and fright as the marines 

started the engines of their LVTs, 

those huge, boxlike amphibian 

tanks. Everyone sit, someone shouted, 

and everyone in front did. Some 

rushed forward to put their hands 

against the hot metal, only to feel 

how frighteningly solid and heavy 

eight tons of armor must be. The 

marines gunned their engines, and 

the exhaust pipes spewed black 

against the sky. Suddenly, the tank 

jerked forward, and the marine on 

top of the tank begged everyone to 

clear a path or be crushed under the 

tracks. People were screaming and 

crying. But the line stayed. The tank 

jerked forward again, and we shut 

our eyes and prayed that the driver 

had children of his own. And still 

the line stayed. 

Nineteen years later, the line 

was broken beyond repair. In fact 

the line had changed so many 

times that it was hard to recall 

who stood with you then. Post 

Edsa, Cory went one way, Enrile 

went the other; the Marcoses came 

back, not to be prosecuted, but to 

Ed Lingao (in dark 

glasses) faced the tanks 

in Edsa 1. Above photo 

shows him posing in 

front of a tank while 

covering the Iraq war. 

be icons of the new young (“Aiii, 

ang pogi- pogi ni Bongbong! [Ay, 

Bongbong is so handsome!]”) or 

fashion statements. Imelda was 

allowed to be herself, which was 

perhaps as good a punishment as 

any. No one, whether coup plotter 

or plunderer or human-rights abuser, 

was sent to jail. Those rounded 

up were the usual suspects—the 

activists, the strikers, the eternally 

discontent. It all sounds so trite, 

yet it all sounds so true. Colors 

changed so blindingly fast, and the 

rainbow coalition soon saw former 

street parliamentarians rubbing 

elbows with some of the biggest 

Marcos cronies. Ninoy’s Laban became 

the LDP, which was soon led 

by those who laughed in Ninoy’s 

face a decade before. Later, the parliamentarians 

would become the 

cronies, and the dictator’s cronies 

would act like persecuted activists. 

When the wheels of history turn, 

you hardly expect to see the world 

turn upside down. 

We were under no illusion 

that the revolution was over 

when Marcos left. But we never 

thought that people would forget 

EDSA. Sometimes it seems they 

never even heard of it at all. 

The author is a TV journalist who 

covered the Iraq war and the conflict 

in Mindanao. He is now head 

of news operations of ABC-5. 


T W O A T E D S A 

TWO AT EDSA 

‘I was at Edsa out of 

pure disgust’ 

MYLENE LISING 

MY H U S B A N D 

Dino tried to dissuade 

me from 

holding it up. 

It was, after all, 

supposed to be 

a moment of triumph for all of 

us: Erap had been forced to step 

down, and now Gloria Arroyo 

was at the Edsa shrine, taking 

her oath as the 14 th president 

of the Republic. Everywhere 

one looked there was palpable 

jubilation. All my husband 

was asking was for me not to 

spoil the moment. But I really 

wanted her to read my message. 

If not right there—maybe she 

wouldn’t be able to see over 

all those heads and would be 

busier getting her oath right than 

scanning the swollen crowd for 

streamers—then maybe later, if 

my handmade poster attracted 

some person’s camera. 

Mylene Lising never 

attended rallies until she 

went to Edsa 2 to display 

this prescient placard. 

True enough, my poster 

caught Sid Balatan’s eye and 

was recorded for posterity. It 

was actually more a reminder 

than a threat. And it was really 

addressed to whoever would 

have taken the place of Erap. It 

just happened that it was Gloria 

who was there. All I wanted to 

say was, gone are the days when 

you can get away with murder. 

Well, now I’m not so sure about 

that. But I’m still certain that it is 

our responsibility to get involved. 

My poster was also a reminder 

to the rest of the citizenry that 

we cannot just keep saying our 

leaders should take care of us. 

We should do our part. 

To think that at the time of 

Edsa Dos I had started out so 

apathetic. I was 30, married, 

and an Ateneo graduate. Hindi 

uso sa Ateneo 

ang pakikibaka, 

we don’t just take to the streets. 

Edsa Dos was the very first time 

I ever did anything remotely 

resembling activism. 

During the 1986 EDSA revolt, 

I was still in the province. But I 

also wasn’t old enough then. I 

was about to graduate from high 

school, and my only concern 

was whether or not there would 

still be a senior prom. 

But on the night of January 

16, 2001, we were watching 

television at my in-laws’. We 

saw the impeachment court vote 

down the opening of the second 

envelope. I’d been watching the 

impeachment from day one, although 

there was a time when I 

tuned out. But by then I’d heard 

enough, even Clarissa Ocampo’s 

testimony. The vote on the envelope 

made me really agitated. It 

only took an SMS from a friend 

for me and my husband to go 

out in our bedroom slippers to 

join people who had started a 

noise barrage along Katipunan 

Avenue. They were mostly Ateneans, 

by the way. Not too long 

after, we would all proceed to 

Edsa where people had started 

to gather. 

I was at Edsa out of pure 

disgust. I campaigned for Estrada 

in 1998. I can’t even call 

that hard work because the 

candidate was so popular. I 

campaigned for him because I 

had hope. Here was a guy who 

Filipinos felt—whether rightly 

or wrongly—was one of them. I 

harbored the hope that he would 

be able to inspire Filipinos to become 

better citizens and help us 

become the democracy that we 

want to be. But it soon became 

clear Estrada was failing my 

hope. At Edsa, I kept thinking, ‘I 

have every right to bitch.’ 

Four years later, I’m having 

déjà vu. I remember looking at 

Gloria while she was taking her 

oath, surrounded by her family. 

I’d kept thinking to myself how 

paper-perfect this new president 

was. She’s educated, she’s intelligent. 

But I knew that coming 

from a privileged background, 

she could very easily disengage 

from what’s going on around 

her. That’s also why I held up 

that poster. Now look what she 

has done. She should have kept 

the integrity of the Office of the 

President intact. It was her duty 

as president. But now, whether 

guilty or not, her credibility is 

shot and so is the credibility of 

other institutions around her. 

The scenarios all look bleak 

to me. I want to pack up and 

leave! That’s a feeling shared 

by a lot of people, but can you 

blame us? 

Sure, I still have hope. But I 

am also more cynical because I 

don’t trust any of our politicians. 

All this talk about changing the 

Constitution doesn’t reassure 

me. I agree there is a need to 

change the Constitution, but 

who will gain? I have my doubts 

about how it’s going be done 

considering JDV almost levitated 

clapping during Gloria’s SONA. I 

have never trusted the guy and 

I still don’t. 

The author is an interior decorator, 

entrepreneur, and former 

Senate staffer. 


I REPORT 

31

FOCUS ON FILIPINO YOUTH 

DEFYING THEIR ELDERS. 

Today’s youth confound their 

parents because they enjoy 

more freedom and are so at 

home with technology. 

Finding 

Spaces 

T KATRINA STUART SANTIAGO 

Tthe TOO OFTEN 

Filipino and cellphones, but unable to 

Tyouth is viewed with the con- communicate well without a 

Tventional eyes of our elders: keypad or a clicking mouse. 

Twe are the future of the nation, 

Our relationships are charac- 

Twe are the agents of change. 

terized by, even built on, text 

The government counts on 

messages and electronic mail, 

Tus to help save the country, impersonal as these may be. 

Tcivil society exhorts us to be We conspire with piracy and 

Tvigilant, the media remind us 

free Internet downloads with 

Toften enough that we are the 

gleefully open eyes, morality 

Thope of the nation. For the and ethics aside. We sit before 

Tmost part, however, they are 

our computers to find our- 

Tdisappointed. Especially when selves, if not in writing, then in 

Tit’s convenient, we remain in- 

creating websites, or in looking 

Tcomprehensible to our elders, 

for jobs, friends, a community 

Tand it’s easy to see why. we might belong to. For many 

We are the high-tech generation, 

adept at computers best friends, personal 

of us, our computers are our 

exten- 


T H E L O S T G E N E R A T I O N 

tion have brought us the call 

centers where half our youth 

are employed, changing their 

biological clocks, messing up 

relationships, and creating demand 

for 24-hour McDonalds 

and Jollibees in the strangest 

street corners. A small percentage 

of the other half are selfemployed, 

given rich parents 

who are only too happy to put 

up seed money and get their 

kids started on the capitalist 

course. Others with moneyed 

parents have the luxury of doing 

volunteer and NGO work, 

moved as they seem by a need 

to “give something back to the 

country” without necessarily 

seeing the big picture in which 

rich (probably their) families 

are the oppressors. Many are 

still part of the Philippine Left, 

confusing as that label has 

become, in all its denominations. 

At least those of us who 

are part of the different leftist 

movements have a better sense 

of what ails this country, even 

when we have to go from 

simple terms like poverty and 

corruption to the abstract levels 

and jargon of imperialism, busions 

where our work, our 

studies, our lives are conducted—if 

not created and re-created—as 

frequently as we find 

the need for it, which is quite 

often. 

Our dependence on computers 

and cellphones is not 

only an indication of our aptitude 

for high-tech tasks and 

processes, it’s also an indication 

of our need for something 

we can hold on to, something 

that somehow defines us, and 

only us. We love being incomprehensible 

to our elders because 

of this technology, and 

we revel in it. Unfortunately, 

a lot of the time we also reveal 

our incapability at discernment, 

as we unthinkingly forward 

ill-informed text messages or 

emails, upload pictures on 

the Internet without realizing 

the probability of its distribution, 

take stolen videos with 

our phones and think nothing 

of it. We have a hard time 

deciding whether something is 

right or wrong, dangerous or 

not; worse, we are unable to 

discern just what role technology 

is playing in our lives, or 

why it has become so important 

to us. 

This lack of clarity about 

the things that define us may 

be the only thing that we of 

this generation have in common. 

Born in the late 1970s to 

early 80s to possibly activist 

or hippie parents, or to the 

straight conservative ones who 

stayed aloof of either extreme, 

ours is a generation that can’t 

seem to find a reason for its 

existence. At least our activist 

parents had the Left to believe 

in and the Marcos regime to 

struggle against; our hippie 

parents had the liberation of 

sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll 

to live up; our conservative 

parents had the Church and 

the institution of family to hold 

on to. By comparison, we are 

faced with nothing but the 

dregs of these institutions, now 

all unstable, often unintelligible, 

usually in the process of 

compromise. It’s practically a 

nonspace of resistance and liberation, 

with uncertain enemies 

and even less certain ideologies 

to back us up. 

Not that all of us are having 

a difficult time finding the 

right spaces within which we 

may exist, if only to survive. 

Cheap labor and globaliza- 

AT A LOSS. For all their worldliness, 

young people are not 

clear about where they want 

to go and the sort of future 

they should aspire for. 

reaucrat capitalism, and fascism. 

But so many more of the youth 

have left, or are set to leave. 

Our prospective teachers, doctors, 

nurses are on a constant 

exodus to different parts of the 

world, with a small middle to 

upper class percentage leaving 

in disgust what they think is a 

sinking boat. The bigger chunk 

of those who say goodbye 

though are of the lower classes, 

and they’re the ones who say 

that they shall return, when 

they’ve ensured their futures 

with the dollars they will earn. 

BUT MOST, if not all of us, 

are at a loss. It’s not clear why 

we’re living our lives the way 

we do, doing the things that 

occupy us. There’s always 

a sense of uncertainty, not 

about the future, but about the 

present: What exactly are we 

doing? Why is this what we 

do? Whereas the generation 

before us always had a sense 

of a future—with family, with 

career, with house and lot and 

what-have-you—we are always 

looking at a future that’s closer 

to the present, where we may 

finish our studies, find a job, 

write a book, or just simply 

see the month’s end and decide 

then what’s next. 

This is not to say that we 

aren’t enjoying ourselves, 

uncertainties and all. Thanks 

to the fruits of our hippie and 

activist parents’ labors, we 

live at a time when there’s 

freedom in the music we hear, 

the books we read, the television 

shows and movies we 

watch. We are liberated from 

the strict rules of the Church 

and the institutions of family, 

school, and employment. 

Freed from the stereotypes our 

parents rebelled against, we 

think nothing of reconfiguring 

our roles to suit our needs. 

We are redefining relationships 

as often as we redefine 

ourselves—literally with vanity, 

or figuratively with spiritual or 

religious beliefs, and the next 

hip ideology. Homosexuality in 

all its dimensions has become 

our norm. Easily accessible 

organic herbs, designer drugs, 

and expensive alcohol are 

inanimate friends we can count 

on. And then there’s the sexual 

freedom we are heir to, which 

most of the time we abuse, misuse, 

and unthinkingly tie our 

lives around. Our liberation, 

handed down as it was, has 

become the freedom we can’t 

quite live up to. We wear what 

we want, we can be what we 

want, and do as we please. But 

that doesn’t mean we’re actually 

doing something. 

For the most part, we are 

easily satisfied with ourselves, 

and that’s where the problem 

lies. We can do volunteer work 

for an NGO by day and party 

with abandon by night without 

feeling conflicted—we deserve 

it, we think, because we’re doing 

something for the country. 

We can sit at a café all day and 

talk about what ails our lives, 

our relationships, our country, 

and think that this is productive. 

We go to a token rally 

“for the truth to come out” and 

imagine ourselves socially relevant. 

We look at EDSA 2 and 

think: hah! that was my doing, 

without a sense of what it has 

truly brought this country, 

which isn’t much. 

FOUR YEARS ago, tasked to 

teach critical thinking and the 

essay to college sophomores 

eight to 10 years my junior, I 


I REPORT 

33


decided that the only way they 

could learn to think critically 

would be to show them where 

exactly they were coming 

from, and where they should 

speak from, given the state of 

the nation. I wanted to help 

them realize that in everything 

they said, did, or thought, they 

were speaking, doing, and 

thinking as Filipinos, whether 

they liked it or not. With that 

realization would come the 

responsibility not just to speak 

as Pinoys and Pinays, but to 

be Pinoys and Pinays in their 

analysis of everything from 

soap operas to foreign critical 

theories, from current events 

to the clothes they wear. 

Of course given that we all, 

young and old alike, continue 

to be messed up about our 

identity as a people, I could 

only ground them in certain 

realities about our country that 

we manage, consistently, not 

to confront. Realities that we 

keep in check because we can, 

since we are not directly burdened. 

The most basic of these 

that needs to be acknowledged, 

I found, is the fact 

that we are an impoverished 

country, never mind that we’re 

driving the newest cars, or that 

we have the latest cellphones, 

or that we are not the poor. It 

does not mean that everybody 

else is as well-off—because 

not a whole lot are. Only upon 

realizing this can we raise the 

question: Why are we poor? 

A question that can only be 

answered by history, hopefully 

a Constantino history, which 

tells of how we have been 

oppressed for centuries and 

by what, and how we have 

always fought back. 

A SENSE OF history is a good 

beginning, I believe, for those 

of us in this generation, students 

and teachers alike, seeking 

a reason for our existence 

at this point in time. Because 

we may be hi-tech and all, free 

to make life choices, and liberated 

in the way we dress, think, 

and do things, but in truth, we 

are misplaced and displaced by 

a lack of consciousness about 

where we truly come from in 

the context of the country we 

irrevocably belong to. When 

the poverty is acknowledged, 

our enemies become obvious. 

Ours is a long history of 

governance that has not had 

the interests of the majority of 

this country in mind, allowing 

globalization to eat us alive, 

allowing the elite to continue 

owning more and more of this 

country’s money and natural 

resources for themselves, 

allowing booty capitalism to 

prosper at the expense of the 

poor and hungry majority. And 

then there’s us, the educated 

middle class, some of whom 

choose to remain complacently 

uncertain about what we may 

do, and some of whom choose 

to take off, in search of happier 

spaces. 

But the space we search for 

can only be here, in the one 

country we are born to and can 

truly call ours. Whatever we do, 

whether we’re leaving or staying, 

taking to the streets for the 

masses or going to the countryside 

and joining the armed 

DOOMED GENERATION? Perhaps the 

young people of today are condemned 

to an endless process of searching for 

the truths that will lead them toward real 

freedom and genuine understanding. 

struggle, whether we’re writing in 

English or living up the Filipino 

language, teaching in a university 

or answering complaints at a call 

center, we make our decisions 

in the context of the state of 

this nation, as we know it. This 

is all the space we need, and 

the space where we are most 

needed. We only need to know 

enough to see it. 

Meanwhile, we wander 

among the spaces we create 

and wonder what it will take 

to knock some sense into our 

heads about the changes we 

have the power to effect. Quite 

possibly, we are a generation 

doomed to an endless process 

of searching—in denial about 

this country’s truths, not ready 

to give up our lives for the bigger 

battles, uncertain of what 

exactly it is we can do. Probably, 

we are a transition generation, 

finding and making spaces 

in the strangest of places—be 

it in the technology we so love 

or in the bars of Malate, be it in 

waging war or in observing the 

peace, in writing or in taking to 

the streets—living out our contradictory 

lifestyles and values, 

creating an open space for the 

time when we may all agree 

on what we stand for, and find 

it in ourselves to fight the real 

struggle for country vs. poverty, 

enemies and all. 

Hopefully we see that this 

time can be now. 

The author is currently doing 

her thesis for an M.A. in 

Philippine Studies at the U.P. 

Departamento ng Filipino at 

Panitikan ng Pilipinas. She 

does freelance writing and 

editorial work on the side. Her 

passion is teaching. 



So 

Young 

& So 

Trapo 

AVIGAIL OLARTE 

HE WAS the man who would 

be president, or so Romanne 

Posadas thought at age 10, 

when he walked up to his 

father and asked what it would 

take to be one. Good-looking, 

bright, and highly ambitious, 

he was the personification of 

Joseph the Dreamer, who as a 

boy knew he would one day 

be king. 

Years later, Posadas took 

the first step toward his dream. 

He won as Sangguniang 

Kabataan (SK) chairman in his 

barangay, the largest in the 

town of Urbiztondo, Pangasinan. 

So glorious was his victory 

that one of the first things 

he did afterward was to hold a 

great feast for the people who 

had helped him clinch it. 

“Gusto ko ( 

dati) 

sikat ako 

(I wanted to be famous),” 

Posadas, now 26, says with a 

wicked smile. A homeroom 

president from grade one and 

an excellent orator, he was 

“the perfect candidate.” But 

Posadas quickly adds that he 

also had a desire to serve, figuring 

he had talents he could 

use to help others. 

Like most greenhorn politicians, 

the newly elected Posadas 

worked enthusiastically and 

STARTING EARLY. Quezon City 

vice mayor Herbert Bautista 

began his political career with 

the Sangguniang Kabataan. 

delivered the kind of projects 

expected of him: sportsfests, 

fiestas, and barangay beautification. 

He was particularly proud 

of the basketball court that was 

built on his first year. But it was 

also this project that introduced 

him to another kind of “reward”—10 

percent from the 

contract price that, a barangay 

councilor told him, represented 

his part in awarding the deal to 

a contractor the councilors had 

recommended. 

The unexpected windfall 

must have been most welcome 

because succeeding projects 

found Posadas anxiously waiting 

for the “SOP,” also known 

as standard operating procedure 

or rebates or kickbacks. 

“Kinain ako ng sistema 

(I was 

devoured by the system),” he 

now says with a sad, strained 

voice. “We were exposed to 

the wrong kind of politics at a 

very young age.” 

As the breeding ground for 

the next generation of leaders, 

the Sangguniang Kabataan was 

supposed to be an instrument 

for moral recovery. But the 

early assimilation of young, 

idealistic aspirants like Posadas 

into traditional politics has led 

many to conclude that SK is 

failing miserably in fulfilling 

that vision. Instead of creating 

a new breed of politicians, the 

SK seems to have fallen into 

the grip of traditional politics, 

complete with patronage, corruption, 

and inefficiency. 

As the country reels from 

a political crisis that is threatening 

the credibility of key 

institutions, the SK hardly offers 

a beacon of hope. Instead, 

what should ideally have been 

a portent of a brighter political 

future has wound up reflecting 

almost everything that is wrong 

with Philippine politics. 

There are those who say 

that could only be expected 

of a body patterned after the 

Kabataang Barangay (KB), a 

brainchild of the late strongman 

Ferdinand Marcos. The 



KB was meant to counter the 

growing popularity of the Left 

among the youth but soon 

became a tool to perpetuate 

the Marcos regime and deprive 

his enemies of recruits. But 

those who created the SK years 

later apparently saw something 

in the KB structure that made 

them appropriate it for the 

new youth organization. That 

wasn’t what made it open to 

corruption, though. Rather, 

it was the new components 

that exposed the Sangguniang 

Kabataan to the possible penetration 

of trapo 

ways. 

IT TOOK 

six years after the fall 

of Marcos before the KB was 

revived under a new name, the 

Sangguniang Kabataan, and 

only after the creation of the 

Local Government Code made 

such a resurrection possible. 

Like in the case of the KB, 

the law allowed the elected 

SK chair in each barangay to 

sit as an ex-officio member 

of the council, affording him 

or her the power to legislate. 

The same would follow for the 

elected SK federation president 

in a town or city (as councilor) 

and in a province (as board 

member). 

This one seat, which meant 

one vote, made the young 

ex-officio lawmakers “potent 

conduits of power.” But there 

was more: under the new law, 

the SK heads would receive 

regular compensation and allowances. 

And at the barangay 

level, the SK representative 

would have the discretion on 

how to spend the organization’s 

10-percent share from 

the general fund for youth-related 

projects and programs. 

That discretion has since 

been abused. Just this summer, 

in a barangay in an eastern 

Metro Manila city, a local 

DEVOURED BY THE SYSTEM. Young 

people vote for representatives to 

the Sangguniang Kabataan, which 

has fallen into the grip of corruption 

and traditional politics. 

official says the SK spent its 

P2.2-million budget in a barangay-wide 

sportsfest that cost 

them P1 million in uniforms 

alone and P500,000 in referee’s 

fees. The barangay captain and 

the SK chair, he says, wanted 

such an elaborate event that 

they paid for the uniforms of 

over 2,000 players and even of 

the cheerleading competition 

contestants. 

A supplier says he sold 

each basketball uniform to 

the barangay for P450 even if 

he could have settled ordinarily 

for P350. He says he had 

to factor in the cut of the SK 

chair and the whole barangay 

council. “In each project in 

this barangay, whether the 

money came from the SK fund 

or not, the whole council gets 

its share,” says the supplier. 

“So if it’s worth P100,000, they 

divide the P10,000 among 

themselves.” 

Another supplier, who has 

sold sports and office equipment 

to the six barangays of the 

same city, says SK officials have 

been receiving kickbacks from 

projects since she began doing 

business there in 1999. The cuts 

start at 10 percent; not one SK 

official has turned down his or 

her share in all six barangays, 

says the supplier. One particular 

SK chair—a 19-year-old—has 

even gained notoriety for 

demanding SOPs in advance. 

Says the supplier: “We give it 

after the barangay has paid 

us, not before. Pero makapal 

talaga mukha nito (But this one 

is really something else). Yet 

since we also want to continue 

doing business with them, we 

have to do what they want.” 

The supplier adds that the share 

in SOPs had even caused a 

dispute in the SK council; apparently, 

the chair had not been 

giving the other members their 

own share. 

Overall, the amounts 

involved are staggering. This 

year alone, P2.9 billion went to 

SK funds, representing 10 percent 

of the total Internal Revenue 

Allotment (IRA) distributed 

among the 41,885 barangays 

across the country. With SOPs 

said to range from 10 to 20 

percent, a total of P290 million 

to P580 million could be ending 

up as mere grease money 

for young politicos throughout 

the country. 

That’s the big picture. Yet 

even the amount of money 

entrusted to each SK is nothing 

to scoff at. Aside from its percentage 

from a barangay’s IRA, an 

SK’s money pot also includes the 

group’s share of the taxes and 

dues collected in a barangay. 

In rich and commercial areas in 

Metro Manila, an SK’s annual 

budget could even run into several 

million pesos. (See Table 1) 

BECAUSE OF the large 

amounts of money allocated to 

the SK, debates have broken 

out over how the fund should 

be handled. Some have argued 

that an SK should be guided by 

other officials in the barangay. 

That is assuming, however, 

that these officials are wise and 

beyond reproach. 

That certainly couldn’t 

be said about the barangay 

captain that Carlo (not his 

real name) found himself up 

against in 2002, when he was 


I REPORT 

37

(top and bottom) YOUTH FOR MARCOS. 

In the 1970s, presidential daughter Imee 

Marcos led the Kabataang Barangay, the 

precursor of today’s Sangguniang Kabataan. 

just 15, the minimum age 

requirement for an SK aspirant. 

Carlo had wanted to make 

a difference, noting that his 

predecessor spent six years in 

the SK without any project to 

show afterward. Carlo planned 

to put up a library for the 

youth and have a computer in 

the SK office. But the barangay 

captain said no. “Ayoko (I just 

don’t want to), ” was the kapi- 

tan’s 

explanation. 

The kapitan, however, had 

more to say after Carlo posted 

a “Walang Ku-Corrupt” advocacy 

sticker used during the Edsa 

2 revolution on the SK office’s 

door. That night, the kapitan 

called an emergency meeting 

with the whole council and 

several people present. Carlo 

was being accused of, of all 

things, vandalism. “Pinapar- 

inggan mo ba kami 

(Are you 

implying something)?” the enraged 

barangay chief asked. After 

that incident, all of Carlo’s 

proposals were rejected. Had it 

not been for the barangay accountant 

who helped him push 

for the release of his funds, 

he would not have even been 

able to implement his projects. 

“The SK needs protection,” 

says the Institute for Popular 

Democracy’s Francis Isaac, 

who was elected SK councilor 

in Pasay in 1992. “The first protection 

it needs is protection 

from the barangay chair.” 

The barangay, in fact, is just 

the first and lowest level of the 

power hierarchy. SK officials 

have to deal with mayors, 

governors, and congressmen as 

well. But with the SK’s influence 

over a large number of wouldbe 

voters, politicians have keen 

interest in SK affairs. There are 

even those who go to the extent 

of having key people—preferably 

a close relative— become 

part of the SK. 

Crucial SK posts invite 

rather heavy-handed ways. 

Posadas, for instance, recalls 

how no one dared to nominate 

another candidate as SK 

federation president apart from 

the mayor’s daughter. Posadas 

was himself eyeing the seat, 

but everyone fell silent when 

the nomination was closed 

immediately after the name of 

the mayor’s hija 

was entered. 

In Zambales, meanwhile, 

SK chairs each received 

P3,000, a 3310 Nokia phone, 

and an SK jacket from the 

mayor’s nephew before one 

particular SK poll. “He was just 

15 years old,” says one of the 

recipients. “Three days before 

the election he and his father 

came to our homes and offered 

us the ‘gifts.’ Of course, 

most accepted the offer since 

they couldn’t afford a phone. I 

only got the jacket since it had 

my name on it. Bigay daw ni 

mayor 

(They said the mayor 

gave it). It was at that point 

that I lost all hope.” 

Some say the “bargaining” 

is even worse during the election 

of the provincial SK federation 

head in some areas. Gari 

Lazaro, president of the Center 

for Youth Advocacy and Networking, 

has worked with the 

youth sector long enough to 

know that even the “kingmakers” 

who put the youngsters in 

power have vested interests. 

“Whatever their motives,” he 

says, “it will surely affect the 

performance (of the SK).” 

“Our culture is subversive,” 

he adds. “The no.1 rule is 

obedience. And if you can’t 

assert yourself, you won’t win 

in the battle.” 

In a barangay in Manila, a 

20-year-old SK chair can barely 

concentrate on her work. “I 

think I won only because my 

aunt (the barangay captain) 

wanted me there,” she says. 

“She makes me sign papers I 

never get to read. Employees 

at the city hall kept telling me, 

‘Makukulong ka na lang ‘di mo 

pa alam 

(You’re headed for jail 

and you don’t even know it).’” 

These days the city government’s 

Youth Bureau is waiting 

for her to file a complaint 

against her aunt, who apparently 

made it appear on paper 

that several donated medals 

and trophies had been purchased. 

This is just the latest 

among the accusations hurled 

her aunt’s way. The SK chair 

fears that she, too, might soon 

be implicated in one of her 

aunt’s alleged shenanigans. 

Iloilo Rep. Janette Loreto- 

Garin, who used to be Leyte’s 

SK federation head, says it’s 

not easy for an SK official to 

have relatives in government. 

Herself part of a political clan, 

Loreto-Garin says, “You have 

to consider your relatives so 

that they won’t be offended.” 

But Richard Alvin Nalupta, 

commissioner-at-large of the 

National Youth Commission 

(NYC), says this isn’t necessarily 

true. Another scion of a 

political family, Nalupta was 

provincial SK head in Ilocos 

Norte while his father was 

the vice governor. He says his 

father never attempted to influence 

his stand on issues. “He 

didn’t impose,” says Nalupta. 

“In fact, we even debated (during 

sessions).” 

Former Pasay SK member 

Isaac, however, wants a clean 

break from the old order, which 

includes political dynasties. “SK 

is an arena of struggle between 

the kind of trapo politics 

that we have and the kind of 

politics we want to emerge,” 

he stresses. The clamor for new 

politics, he says, comes with 

the need for autonomy. “It has 

no dynamism of its own,” says 

Isaac. “The older people have 

no real appreciation of the SK 

as an institution for good governance 

and democratization. 

To them, it’s all about politics.” 

THE CALL 

for reforms in the 

sector came as early as 1996, 

when there was news that the 

first batch of SK was not performing 

and had been taken 

over by trapolitos 

or young 

traditional politicians. 

“Walang pingakaiba ‘yan 

sa gusto mong maging artista 

at pipila ka sa 

Starstruck (They 

were chosen in the same way 

votes are garnered by contestants 

in Starstruck),” Lazaro 

POLITICAL INITIATION. 

Mikee Cojuangco, 

former movie star and 

member of a political 

clan, was introduced 

to politics through the 

Sangguniang Kabataan. 



says. “They (the youth) vote 

whom they think is popular, 

who looks better than the 

other candidate, and friendlier.” 

Rather than just orienting 

the youth about their rights as 

voters, his group decided to 

launch a political education 

campaign. Recounts Lazaro: 

“We wanted them to know 

how the system worked, how 

to recognize the motives of 

each political player, and to 

exact accountability from the 

people they voted for.” 

The NYC, created in 1994 

to establish programs on youth 

development, also proposed 

an SK Reform bill in 1997. But 

up to now, Congress has yet 

to pass one. HB 3592, which 

was introduced last year by 

party-list group Akbayan is an 

improved version of the earlier 

bill. It seeks oversight powers 

for the Katipunan ng mga 

Kabataan or KK (youth in the 

community) to make SK officials 

accountable and transparent 

in planning projects, budgeting, 

and disbursing funds. 

The KK is actually the SK 

electorate, or youths between 

the ages of 15 and 17 in a 

community. SK officials are 

supposed to convene the KK 

at least every three months 

and present accomplishments 

and consult it regarding 

projects. But getting a considerable 

number of youths 

together to listen to a report is 

tricky to say the least. Nalupta 

points out that most of those 

who make up the KK are in 

school. And in really poor 

places, he says, youths would 

rather attend to their family’s 

needs, such as scrounging for 

their next meal, than listen to 

a bunch of their peers. 

Nalupta says the NYC 

favors the Akbayan bill, but 

they received feedback recently 

that it may not stand a chance 

since Congress wants a radical 

change in the SK. Nalupta says 

they might just go for the bill 

filed by Cavite Rep. Gilbert 

Remulla. That bill, perceived 

by many as a move to abolish 

the entire SK body, allows one 

youth representative per barangay. 

Nalupta says removing the 

collegial body would save the 

government a lot of money. 

He says it might be the right 

step to take since most of the 

time the council fails to meet 

because its members are busy 

with their studies. 

Since any of the bills might 

not be passed anytime soon, 

many are calling for Congress 

to at least revert the age bracket 

of those qualified for SK to 

the original 15 to 21 years old. 

In 2002, Congress limited SK 

candidates’ maximum age to 17. 

“There are criticisms from Congress 

that the SK is too young,” 

says Nalupta. “It’s ironic because 

it was the same institution that 

reduced the age bracket.” 

Lazaro, for his part, thinks 

there should be a body to review 

and assess the SK before 

any change is made. He says 

the study’s outcome would be 

a better indicator of the kind 

of reforms SK needs. Right 

now, he says, “there are no 

hard data, only perceptions.” 

Raine Arandia, SK president 

in Botolan, Zambales, 

says before he was elected 

in 2002, he also had negative 

views about the SK. “I might 

not have been as open-minded 

about the SK if I hadn’t been 

a part of it,” he says. “Others 

think it’s just nothing. But I 

learned many things.” He has 

also been busy; among his 

projects have been marathons 

for the anti-drug campaign, 

as well as clean- and-green 

programs. He has even put out 

newsletters on the pitfalls of 

smoking and drinking. But he 

admits that half of his budget 

went to sports, explaining, 

“As SK chairmen, we head the 

youth and sports development 

committee and that’s what we 

try to deliver.” Some of his 

SK colleagues, though, have 

spent considerable amounts on 

beauty and bikini contests. 

Arandia says if he had more 

funds, he would hold symposia 

for the youth on moral values 

and the Zambaleño culture and 

identity. “Values have eroded,” 

he says. “The young people 

today are apathetic and have 

no concern for issues.” 

Lazaro, though, says Edsa 

2 gave the youth a chance to 

fight for good governance and 

accountability. “It was,” he 

says, “the peak of the political 

awareness of the youth.” And, 

he says, it made the government 

see the youth as a formidable 

mobilizing force. 

“HISTORICALLY,” SAYS 

Nalupta, “the youth have been 

fighting for empowerment.” 

In theory, the SK gives them 

that. This may be why people 

like Nalupta refuse to give up 

on it that easily. Says the NYC 

official: “There may be failures 

(in the SK). But the frustrations 

and disillusionment could be 

responded to by bold changes.” 

Nalupta himself tried to 

implement some reforms as 

national SK federation head. 

Under his leadership, the SKs 

were provided guidelines in 

allocating their budgets, making 

them more capable in addressing 

the needs of the youth. 

Nalupta also partnered with 

agencies like the Office of the 

Ombudsman for anti-corruption 

trainings and with ABS-CBN 

for disaster relief assistance and 

Yes to Clean Air campaigns, 

among other things. He set up 

the SK Academy, which now 

serves as a training center and 

youth hostel. 

Several SKs have also been 

making a difference in their 

respective communities. In San 

Fernando, La Union, the SK 

has put up a Teen Center that 

has a mini library, as well as 

recreation and sports facilities. 

It also offers peer counseling 

and a youth-registry system 

that aims to compile youth 

profiles. In addition, the San 

Fernando SK launched an 

adolescent reproductive health 

program along with values education 

and campaigns against 

substance abuse. In Olongapo 

City, the SK set up readingand-learning 

centers in several 

barangays. SKs elsewhere have 

conducted feeding programs, 

medical and dental missions, 

and even livelihood programs 

for the youth. 

Indeed, although many have 

been disillusioned with the SK, 

it still has its believers. Isaac says 

“one more soul shouting for 

reform” is already a big achievement. 

“We should learn from 

our mistakes,’ he says. “Who 

knows? The next generation 

might just give us surprises.” 

Posadas, however, seems to 

have had enough. He says the 

country’s political framework 

isn’t ideal. He can still hear the 

call of public service, but he is 

no longer eager to answer it, 

even though he knows many 

others have parlayed their SK 

past into bigger political fortunes. 

(There are about 212 former 

SK members who were elected 

into higher public posts in 2004, 

including Iloilo Rep. Garin and 

North Cotabato Rep. Emmylou 

Taliño-Santos. (See Table 2.) 

The rather jaded Arandia of 

Zambales can probably commiserate 

with Posadas. Yet unlike 

Posadas, he is still hoping for 

better things to happen. His 

mother, a dedicated community 

worker, had told him not to allow 

disillusionment to overshadow 

his passion and willingness 

to serve. “She reminded me,” he 

says, “that my performance in 

office largely defines the kind of 

person that I am.” 

Table 1. Barangays in Makati with the largest general fund 

Barangay 

Bel-Air Village 

San Lorenzo Village 

Forbes Park 

Urdaneta Village 

Dasmariñas Village 

Source: City budget office, Makati 

Representative 

Governor 

Vice governor 

Provincial board member 

Mayor 

Vice Mayor 

Councilor 

Barangay Captain 

Total 

General fund (IRA 

+ taxes, dues, and 

fees) 

104,600,000.00 

89,508,587.00 

18,139,551.00 

18,372,028.39 

16,023,131.00 

SK fund (10-percent 

share) 

10,460,000.00 

8,950,858.70 

1,813,955.10 

1,837,202.84 

1,602,313.10 

Table 2. Elective positions (2004) held by former SK officials 

Position 

Source: NYC 

No. of seats 

occupied 

2 

1 

1 

22 

10 

11 

160 

5 

212 


I REPORT 

39


INTOXICATION 101. More 

young people are drinking 

alcohol now than ever before. 

Teen 

Tipsy 

& 

VINIA DATINGUINOO 

RONA AND her friends don’t 

want you to know their real 

names, although their favorite 

pastime is no secret among their 

own families. Well, at least Rona’s 

mother knows about it, even let- 

ting the girls indulge in it in the 

family home. That way she also 

knows they are safe, even if she 

figures that at 21, the girls already 

know what they’re doing. 

But she worries nonetheless, 

and constantly tells Rona and her 

katropa, which includes Marissa 

and Jenny, to go slow. When she 

was their age it wasn’t common 

to have girls enjoying drinking 

sessions. These days it apparently 

is, and it may not even take too 

long before the girls match the 

boys bottle for bottle. 

“It is increasingly becoming 

more acceptable among young 

people to drink alcohol,” says 

demographer Grace Trinidad- 

Cruz of the University of the 

Philippines. She also says that 

while in absolute numbers 

there are still more young 

males than females who are 

drinking, the gender gap is 

narrowing with the faster rates 

of increase among girls. 

Cruz was part of the team 

that worked on the 2002 Young 

Adult Fertility and Sexuality 

Survey (YAFS), the third in a 

series of nationwide surveys 

on adolescent sexuality, fertility 

and reproductive health. 

The first YAFS was done in 

1982. Two decades later, data 

showed drinkers as starting 

younger, drinking more, and 

less likely to drop the habit. 

Nearly 42 percent of 15- to 

24-year-olds drank alcohol, up 

from 37 percent in 1994, when 

YAFS2 was conducted. That 

increase in drinking prevalence 

among young people was 

traced mostly to females. Between 

the two survey rounds of 

1994 and 2002, the proportion 

of young females who drank 

rose by a huge 65 percent; 

among the males, the increase 

was a much lower 10 percent. 

YAFS says it’s a pattern that 

is evident not only in drinking, 

but in other risk behaviors, too, 

both sexual and nonsexual. 

More girls are smoking, more 

girls are trying illicit drugs, and 

more girls are having early sex. 

According to Cruz, these are 

manifestations of girls “becoming 

more liberal,” shedding 

themselves of inhibitions. For 

Dr. Cecilia Conaco, a psychologist 

and adolescence expert 

from the University of the Phil- 

ippines, it’s “parang 

what boys 

can do, girls can also do.” 

Jang, who also wants 

to hide her identity, readily 

admits to drinking, which 

she says she started doing in 

first year high school. She is 

now a nursing school freshman. 

She is also only 16 years 

old, which means she began 

drinking when she was about 

12 or 13. 

Rona and her group began 

even earlier, when they were 

all in fourth grade. The father 

of a fourth common friend 

always had a stock of San 

Miguel at home, and the girls 

would raid the fridge whenever 

they were over for a visit. “It 

was so bitter we’d take sugar 

after every gulp!” recalls Rona. 

Since then, they have tasted all 

sorts of alcoholic drinks, from 

wine to tequila, to brandy and 

vodka. They say there is no 

special reason why they drink. 

They just like drinking, period. 

“Trip lang 

(We just like to),” 

Jang says as well, when asked 

why she and her friends—also 

16-year-olds—drink. But she 

also says alcohol enables them 

to open up more and tell each 

other about their problems. 

They drink “twice, maybe three 

times a month…or anytime 

we feel like it and we have 

money,” says Jang. San Miguel 

and the stronger Red Horse 

beer are their favorites. But if 

money is tight, they settle for 

fiery Gilbey’s gin, which comes 

out cheaper because they can 

share a bottle. 

DRINKING has become so 

ordinary among many youths, 

girls included, and it is not only 

surveys and tongue-clucking 

adults saying so. Jang echoes 

other youths in saying, “Tala- 

mak na ‘yan (It’s widespread).” 

But perhaps this shouldn’t 

be surprising in a country where 

beer is the unofficial national 



drink even as the biggest local 

brewery says about 22 bottles 

of its gin are consumed by 

Filipinos every second. Numerous 

provinces also boast of their 

own potent local brews, which 

are imbibed by both men and 

women in great quantities. 

Yet as late as a generation 

ago, drinking among the youth 

was not seen as hip and desirable, 

although then as now, 

the ability to hold a drink was 

taken as one of the signs of 

growing up. But even that was 

true only for the boys. 

These days there are still 

“coming of age” beer and brandy 

commercials aimed at young 

men. There are, however, now 

also advertisements where 

young women are the featured 

drinkers. One commercial for a 

gin brand, for example, features 

starlet Anne Curtis, who looks 

16 but is actually 21. The ad 

has her sauntering in a dance 

club full of gyrating young bodies 

and pouring herself a glass 

of gin on the rocks. In the past, 

that commercial would have 

had her pouring that drink for 

her date. 

While alcohol ads have 

always had women in them, 

they used to be mere props, 

sometimes appearing as if they 

were meant to be among the 

pulutan 

enjoyed by the men 

along with their beer, brandy, 

rum, or gin. Today the ads 

show young women drinking 

with equally young men, either 

in trendy clubs or parties. 

“They’ve shifted from sleazy 

to hip,” anthropologist Joyce 

Valbuena says of the alcoholicdrink 

makers’ latest marketing 

strategies. “The message is, it’s 

cool to drink.” Even for young 

women, apparently. And the 

companies have not stopped 

at just placing youth-andwomen 

focused ads. They also 

sponsor events like musicfests 

that feature whatever bands 

are most popular among the 

young. There are even annual 

drinking festivals inspired by 

Germany’s Oktoberfest where 

beer goes for a peso per glass. 

In its reports on the Philippine 

alcoholic-drink industry 

in the last two years, marketing 

research company Euromonitor 

noted how companies 

such as San Miguel and Asia 

Brewery have begun targeting 

“entry drinkers” and women 

to expand their markets. The 

strategy made sense since, 

Euromonitor pointed out, the 

mean age in the Philippines 

is 21. More women are also 

entering the workforce, giving 

them “the predisposition, 

the money and the urge to 

spend on alcoholic drinks.” In 

other words, said Euromonitor, 

“drinking to unwind after 

a hard day’s work is no longer 

just limited to men.” Conaco 

agrees that the alcoholic-beverage 

industry has noted the 

rise in the number of working 

women. “So they’re thinking, 

‘let’s tap into that’,” she says. 

The fact that more women 

are earning their own keep and 

may have even become the 

family breadwinners could also 

have something to do with the 

changing attitudes among young 

Filipinas. Younger women now 

thus have role models (among 

them former-First-Daughterturned-TV-host 

Kris Aquino) 

who have not only kept pace 

with the men, but have sometimes 

even outdone them. If 

men drink, then so can women. 

DEMOGRAPHERS AND health 

experts, though, stress that the 

rise in popularity in drinking 

among the youth is something 

to be very concerned 

about, and not only because 

there was once a time when 

“proper” young girls would not 

be caught dead with a bottle 

of beer or gin in their hands. 

“We are alarmed because now 

we know better,” says Dr. Lynn 

Panganiban of the National 

Poison Control and Information 

Service (NPCIS) at the UP- 

Philippine General Hospital. 

We know now, she says, 

that alcohol is toxic. “The least 

amount has the potential to 

kill,” she adds. She isn’t exaggerating. 

There are people who 

are predisposed to have allergic 

reactions to alcohol, but are unaware 

of such until they drink. 

There are also those who drink 

beyond their individual tolerance 

limits, causing their bodies 

to react as if these were under 

siege. Other experts stress as 

well that youths normally have 

lower tolerance for alcohol 

compared to adults. 

From January to March 

alone the NPCIS treated 11 

youths between the ages of 13 

to 19 for alcohol abuse. If that 

trend keeps up, NPCIS could 

be looking at a total of 44 for 

TARGETING 

THE YOUNG. 

Beer companies 

are gunning 

for the youth 

market. 

the whole 2005, a big jump 

from last year’s 27 and 2003’s 

24 cases of young people— 

boys and girls—brought in 

by their friends after imbibing 

more alcohol that their systems 

could take. “These are teenagers 

who go out, sometimes on 

a weekday, they binge, one 

of them ends up unconscious 

or vomiting violently and they 

panic,” says Panganiban. 

In many other parts of the 

world, the practice of heavy 

alcohol drinking among young 

people has been a problem for 

many years now. In the United 

States, binge drinking has 

been the bane of many college 

campuses since the 1970s. In 

Britain, doctors’ groups have 

started to engage the advertising 

industry in a battle, calling 

for a ban on alcohol advertising 

to contain what they call 

a “binge-drinking epidemic” 

among their young. 

Here in the Philippines, 

binge drinking—or as medical 

anthropologist Michael Tan 

and the British magazine New 

Scientist put it, “drinking to get 

drunk”—has yet to be as widespread 

among the young, partly 

because even if beer and gin are 

relatively cheap, Filipino youths 

just don’t have that much money 

to spare. A store-bought bottle 

of beer, for example, could take 

20 percent of the daily allowance 

of a middle-class college 

student. But experts warn that 

the smaller quantities being 

imbibed by young Filipinos 

don’t necessarily rule out serious 

consequences. The brain goes 

through dynamic changes during 

adolescence and alcohol can 

seriously damage long-term and 

short-term growth processes. 

Damage from alcohol during 

adolescence can be irreversible. 

Even short-term drinking 

impairs learning and memory far 

more in youth than adults, and 

adolescents need only to drink 

half as much to suffer the same 

negative effects. 

Health experts add that 

long years of alcohol use affect 

the liver in the long term, until 

the organ simply gives up. And 

while alcohol facilitates blood 

circulation in the heart, in the 

long run the heart muscle is 

weakened, leaving it unable to 

pump blood efficiently. This, 

in turn, affects the lungs, liver, 

and brain. 

For females, alcohol poses 

more danger because of their 

lower physiological thresh- 


I REPORT 

41


olds. As women metabolize 

alcohol differently than men, 

they reach higher peak blood 

alcohol levels with the same 

amount of drink, making them 

at higher risk for medical 

problems. 

ACCORDING TO NPCIS, the 

accepted universal definition of 

moderate drinking is, for males, 

no more than three standard 

drinks per session or 15 per 

week; and for females, no more 

than two standard drinks per 

session or 10 per week. “Standards” 

vary by drink; one regular 

320-ml beer bottle is standard 

and so is a glass of wine. Ditto 

with a shot of gin. Beyond 

these standards, the behavior is 

considered “at risk.” 

“Tama lang naman ang 

pag-inom namin 

(We drink 

just right),” fresh college graduate 

Marissa insists. Her friends 

say the same thing; they set 

limits. Rona, for example, will 

have no more than two bottles 

of San Mig Light or a bottle 

and a half of the stronger Red 

Horse in one sitting. Using the 

NPCIS definition, they would 

seem “moderate” drinkers. 

In general, local experts 

define drunkenness at a blood 

alcohol level of 0.1 percent 

or 100 mg/dL. The amount of 

alcohol that one needs to take 

in to be intoxicated actually 

varies, and depends on factors 

such as gender, age, body 

weight, and metabolism rate. 

For a normal, 15-year-old girl 

who weighs 50 kgs., for example, 

intoxication can come 

after she drinks nearly three 

320-ml bottles of pale pilsen, 

or just a smidgen more than a 

365-ml bottle of strong beer, or 

two 50-ml jiggers of gin. 

Elsewhere, experts define 

binge drinking as having a 

blood alcohol level of 0.08 

percent or 80 mg/dL. Tan 

quotes New Scientist 

as saying 

that “on average, males taking 

in five or more ‘standard 

drinks’ or females taking 

in four or more ‘standard 

drinks’ in two hours send 

blood alcohol soaring to that 

80-milligram level.” But he 

notes that since the magazine 

is talking of Western bodies, 

Filipinos would probably need 

less than that in less time to be 

considered “binge drinkers.” 

Panganiban herself is not 

at all reassured with all this 

talk of moderation. “Thresholds 

are naturally pushed up,” 

she says. Jang, for instance, 

began drinking with a limit 

of two Red Horse bottles per 

session. Now she can drink 

three bottles and not even feel 

slightly tipsy. Her friends have 

an even higher tolerance—or 

so they think. MJ, also 16, 

can drink up to eight bottles 

of beer in one sitting without 

feeling drunk. But experts 

have repeatedly emphasized 

that there are people who do 

not show or feel the effects 

of having dangerous levels of 

alcohol in their systems. More 

often than not, the realization 

comes only after they have 

already figured in an accident 

or wake up in a hospital. 

MJ, though, is unperturbed. 

“Sometimes, my drinking buddies 

are my aunts,” she says. 

“They say it’s okay so long as I 

don’t drink too much.” 

College lecturer Carole 

Diamante, who teaches at an 

exclusive girls’ school, feels 

habitual drinking may have 

harmful consequences. But 

she says she tries to understand 

her students who drink. 

“I guess I’m just indulgent by 

nature,” she says, laughing at 

herself. Diamante says students 

like drinking because “alcohol 

brings out the spirit.” She’s a 

theology teacher, and she and 

her students have noted that 

Jesus shared a goblet of wine 

with the Apostles, urging them 

to drink in His memory after 

His death. 

To Diamante, the students’ 

drinking is akin to the way 

ordinary wage earners turn to 

bottles of beer to relieve their 

workday aches and pains. She 

says academic life can be just 

as stressful. “So they binge,” 

she says of her students. 

“(They) enjoy the moment 

because they know they will 

(soon) go back to reality.” She 

says her students even drink 

with their parents, a setup that 

she believes helps rein in the 

youngsters. “They tell their 

daughter, ’O, not the very hard 

drink ha,’” says Diamante. “Or, 

‘On the rocks lang ha.’” 

THERE ARE indeed several 

youngsters who are drinking 

openly with their friends at 

home. But many times, adult 

supervision is lacking because 

both parents are too busy either 

with work or attending to 

the rest of the family. Meanwhile, 

outside, the drinking 

continues in bars and restaurants, 

especially for college 

students, who imbibe even 

during lunch and merienda. 

There are schools that have 

had to ask nearby restaurants 

not to serve alcohol during 

the day so that their students 

will stop showing up in class 

tipsy—that is, if these show 

up at all. Apparently, the 

restaurants assume college 

students are all at least 18, 

the legal drinking age, and it 

is therefore okay for them to 

drink. 

College teachers also say 

there are students who bring 

alcohol-filled thermoses, the 

contents of which are usually 

chugged inside the rooms of 

the various school organizations. 

Teachers who pick up 

on the distinct smell of beer 

reprimand the students, who 

appear contrite and swear 

never to bring the brew to 

school again. But that is a 

promise writ in air, and it 

quickly dissipates even before 

the teachers’ backs are turned. 

“Our society,” says anthropologist 

Valbuena, who is with 

the Health Action and Information 

Network (HAIN), “has 

yet to regard alcohol drinking 

as a problem.” This is despite 

a high awareness that those 

who drink are more likely to 

engage in other risk behaviors. 

Alcohol impairs decision-making 

abilities and reflexes; studies 

done abroad have shown 

alcohol as a factor in as much 

as 30 percent of all vehicular 

accidents. 

In HAIN’s own focus-group 

discussions for the qualitative 

component of YAFS3, participants 

said they were more 

likely to have sex after drinking. 

In the United States, it 

is estimated that teenage girls 

who binge drink are up to 63 

percent more likely to become 

teen mothers. 

“It’s not automatic,” cautions 

adolescence expert Conaco. 

“But you’re drinking, your 

inhibitory senses are depressed, 

and you’re fooling around with 

your boyfriend? The same way 

you say do not drink and drive? 

Do not drink and date.” 

Marissa says this is why 

she puts limits on her drinking 

and stops before she becomes 

unable to think clearly. “We’ve 

had friends who became 

pregnant because they were 

drunk,” she says. Stories of 

date rapes also abound. 

Jang and her friends tell 

similar tales. “When you’re 

drunk, you don’t know what 

you’re doing,” Jang says. 

That’s why she says she and 

her friends are careful. Whenever 

her parents scold her 

about her drinking, Jang also 

tells them that she knows the 

consequences of drinking too 

much, and that they need not 

worry. 

“They’re not ignorant,” demographer 

Cruz concedes. It’s 

just that they have been unable 

to resist the call of the bottle, a 

call magnified as much by the 

desire of alcoholic-drink manufacturers 

to increase profits 

as it is by changes in societal 

attitudes. 


Stay, serve poor first, 

Stay, serve poor first, 

Health Secretary Duque appeals to doctors 

Health Secretary Francisco T. Duque III, former 

President and CEO of the Philippine Health 

Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) recently 

appealed to accredited doctors to stay and serve the 

country’s poor first befre pursuing a more lucrative 

career overseas. 

Duque called on 

PhilHealthaccredited 

doctors 

to pool their 

resources and 

render their 

services to needy 

communities. He 

said that recent 

reports of doctors 

studying to become 

nurses overseas have alarmed the health sector. He 

said the impact of this exodus of health care 

professionals is also felt by PhilHealth. 

“Ang health insurance program ay umaasa sa mga 

doktor at nars na nagbibigay ng serbisyong kalusugan 

sa ating mga miyembro,” Duque said, adding that if the 

exodus continues, “...mawawalan ng saysay ang health 

insurance.” Instead, Duque called on fellow doctors to 

put up small hospitals in areas that badly need medical 

care services. He noted that there are a lot more areas 

in the archipelago that lack quality medical assistance. 

Duque also said that Congress’ move to require new 

doctors to render in-country service before going 

overseas is not a novel concept. He cited that he was, 

in fact, one of those who were required to render 

community service first by virtue of a Decree issued 

by then President Marcos. “Siguro imumungkahi ko sa 

mga mambabatas na kanilang repasuhin ang mga 

polisiya noong mga nakaraang taon,” noting that if the 

government continues to allow doctors and nurses to 

leave the country, “sino na ang magbibigay ng 

kinakailangang serbisyo sa ating mga mamamayan?” 

He said that an increase in the salaries of health 

care professionals in government might be a solution, 

given that doctors invest so much in their education 

and yet some are not compensated well for their 

services. 

“Ito nga ang maganda sa PhilHealth,” he said, “dahil 

malaki na rin ang bahagi ng binabayad ng PhilHealth 

sa mga doktor at ospital.” Through the benefit package 

provided by PhilHealth to its members nationwide, 

accredited doctors are compensated based on the 

relative value unit of surgical procedures performed on 

patients, as well as in their daily visits to patients. 

“Talagang kinakailangang pakiusapan ng 

pamahalaan ang mga doktor at nars, kung hindi, 

babagsak ang kalidad at antas ng serbisyong 

pangkalusugan,” he said. 

To date, there are 

18,955 PhilHealthaccredited 

doctors 

that include general 

practitioners and 

specialists 

nationwide. 

PhilHealth continues 

to call on doctors and 

other health care 

professionals to be 

part of its service 

delivery network to ensure that the medical care benefits 

are available and accessible to members.


CHERYL CHAN 

Generation Perils of 

Sex 

UP A FLIGHT OF 

stairs, in a 

room with red, yellow, purple, 

and green walls, the talk is all 

about sex, all of the time. This 

is, after all, the hotline center of 

the Teen Foundation for Adolescent 

Development (FAD), an organization 

dedicated to adoles- 

cent health. In this room, among 

a few potted plants, counselors 

are always ready to answer calls 

from youths and discuss with 

them the consequences of premarital 

or unprotected sex. 

In the past, typical hotline 

questions involved girl-boy relationships 

and family, school, and 

peer issues. But in the last year 

alone, the number of inquiries 

about sexually transmitted infections 

(STI) has soared. It now 

ranks third among the top five 

most commonly asked issues. 

“It’s very alarming,” says 

Cecilia Villa, president of FAD, 

which has its offices right smack 

in the heart of Manila’s university 

belt. Awareness is higher 

now, she explains, but very 

few people realize they can be 

infected with a disease because 

of one mistaken assumption or 

a momentary lapse of judgment. 

With the invincibility characteristic 

of the young, they “know 

about it but don’t think it can 

happen to them.” 

Dr. Rosendo Roque, head of 

adolescent health of the Philippine 

Obstetrical and Gynecological 

Society (POGS), is himself 

quite worried. There is a lack of 

statistics and woeful underreporting, 

but based on feedback 

from obstetricians and gynecologists 

across the country and 

from his private practice, Roque 

believes STIs among youth is a 

growing health concern. 

STIs are infections of the 

reproductive system, transmitted 

through sexual contact generally 

through warm, moist mucous 

membranes such as the vagina, 

anus, urethra, and the mouth. 

“STI” is used interchangeably 

with the more common term 

“STD” or sexually transmitted 

disease. Some organizations, 

including the Department of 

Health (DOH) and the World 

Health Organization, are now 

using the more politically correct 

STI. The most common 

STIs diagnosed are gonorrhea, 

known in the vernacular as tulo, 

chlamydia, trichomoniasis, genital 

herpes, and genital warts. 

There are many factors behind 

the increase of STIs, says 

Dr. Teresita Brion, an ob-gyn at 

St. Luke’s Hospital in Quezon 

City. “There’s the media. 

There’s the barkada. There’s 

the breakdown of families. You 

don’t need hormones surging 

to want to experiment.” 

There is certainly no lack of 

stimuli either. Today’s youth are 

exposed to sex and sexuality 

earlier and in larger doses. There 

may still be the constant nagging 

of elders about sex being a sin, 

but between advertisements us- 

ing sex to sell products, double 

entendres on noontime variety 

shows, and pirated pornographic 

DVDs sold for less than P80 in 

Quiapo to gyrating MTV starlets 

and explicit lyrics of hip-hop 

songs, young people are constantly 

bombarded with messages 

about sex. These contribute 

to a shift in cultural values that 

makes casual sex more permissible 

and traditional preconditions 

for sex such as marriage or true 

love increasingly irrelevant. 

As a result, Filipino youths 

are having sex earlier. Last year, 

Roque’s youngest patient was all 

of 14. This year he has a 12-yearold. 

Brion sees patients who are 

sexually active even before their 

first menstrual cycle. According 

to the 2002 Young Adult Fertility 

and Sexuality (YAFS) survey of 

the University of the Philippines 

Population Institute, the average 

age for the first sexual encounter 

for both men and women is 18. 

About 55 percent of these first 

sexual experiences were not 

planned or were something the 

teenagers did not want to happen 

at that time. 

Premarital sex is also 

becoming more accepted, 

its prevalence rising from 18 

percent in 1994 to 23 percent in 

2002. But the sex is often unplanned, 

sporadic, or a product 

of either being nadala (carried 

away) or peer pressure. It often 

takes place before teens learn 

about STIs and other health 

risks. “They still don’t know 

what is going on in them,” 

says Roque. “Most of them are 

getting into it because of peer 

pressure or experimentation. 

They are not well-guided.” 

He also cites the impact 

of broken families, absentee 

parents, and lack of role 

models created by the mass 

exodus of Filipinos overseas. 

Parents abroad shower their 

children with gifts in order to 

compensate for their absence, 

so the children grow up in an 

environment of material excess 

without proper guidance. 

In today’s sexually charged 

landscape, there is a surfeit of 

teenagers left on their own to 

figure out their own values. 

Dr. Brion suspects that 

experimentation on bisexuality 

and homosexuality, as well as 

one-night stands and having 

sex “for old times’ sake” or 

“just because” have become increasingly 

common. And while 

the dominant practice is still to 

have a single partner, there is a 

trend toward multiple partners, 

especially among young men. 

YAFS data show that about 50 

percent of men have had multiple 

sex partners compared to 

about 11 percent of women. 

THE CALLERS of FAD’s phonea-friend 

hotline are a good mix 

of students and young professionals. 

Most are male. One 

possible reason is because males 

are more likely to have multiple 

partners and are therefore more 

vulnerable to contracting an STI. 

At the same time, some STIs 

tend to be asymptomatic among 

women. Only 20 percent of 

women, for example, exhibit 

symptoms of gonorrhea; just half 

show symptoms of trichomoniasis, 

which is marked by painful, 

burning urination and a yellowgreen 

discharge among females. 

The rest are thus unaware of the 

ticking time bomb in their bodies 

until it is too late, or when 

too many complications have 

already set in. 

STIs become a serious 

public health concern when 

ignored: in women, gonorrhea 

can lead to pelvic inflammatory 

disease, which increases 

the risk of infertility and ectopic 

pregnancy. Chlamydia, left 

untreated, can spread to the 

upper reproductive tract and 

in women, infect the uterus, 

fallopian tubes and ovaries, 



leading to infertility. Untreated 

syphilis may lead to nerve damage, 

mental disorientation, and 

eventually death. Yet approximately 

80 percent of men and 

women who experience reproductive 

health complaints such 

as painful urination, abnormal 

vaginal/penile discharge, genital 

warts, or ulcers do not even 

consult a health professional. 

This may be partly why the 

official number of STI cases in 

the country seems deceptively 

low. The 2003 National Demographic 

and Health Survey, for 

instance, says only 7.6 percent 

of men aged 15-19 and less than 

2.2 percent of those aged 20-49 

reported an STI or STI symptoms. 

But underreporting may be 

at work here; while public health 

centers usually report the STI to 

the health department for statistical 

purposes and the necessary 

contact tracing, private clinics are 

not obliged to do the same. 

Even patients of private 

clinics rarely openly acknowledge 

their sexual practices or 

articulate the suspicion they 

might have an STI. And the 

young, for instance, would not 

tell their parents they think they 

may an infection because of 

what this may imply about their 

sex lives (which their parents 

often assume they don’t have). 

But they also might be too embarrassed 

to tell their barkada 

so they go on the Internet and 

self-medicate. The good news 

is that some STIs like gonorrhea 

and chlamydia are responsive 

to antibiotics. The bad news is 

that with self-medication, these 

drugs have been abused by 

over medication, under medication, 

wrong dosage, or prematurely 

stopping medication 

before the required time frame. 

As a result, doctors say they are 

beginning to see strains that are 

resistant to antibiotics. 

When Lina (not her real 

name) experienced a burning, 

itching sensation while 

peeing two months ago, the 

first person she consulted was 

her yaya. The 18-year-old’s 

trusted nanny told her to use 

a feminine hygiene wash and 

put a hot water bottle on her 

tummy before sleeping. But 

the symptoms—which by then 

included an abnormal yellowish 

discharge—did not ease; 

Lina thought it was time to 

consult a doctor, by herself. 

Lina was shocked when the 

doctor told her she had gonorrhea. 

She is sexually active, she 

admits, but has been with only 

one partner, her high school 

sweetheart. They have been together 

for four years. Now she 

believes he has been unfaithful 

to her and gave her gonorrhea. 

Lina says she had planned 

to wait until marriage to have 

sex but college, with its accompanying 

independence, freedom, 

and openness of thought, 

challenged her long-held 

traditional beliefs. “Suddenly it’s 

ok to be affectionate with your 

boyfriend,” she says. “It’s ok to 

have sex with your boyfriend 

because everyone is doing it.” 

They did not use condoms. 

“I’m not an idiot,” she says. “I 

know I can get pregnant but he 

did not want to use one…” Her 

voice trails off, and then she says, 

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. 

Di naman ako nabuntis, ‘di ba 

(I didn’t get pregnant, did I)?” 

FAD’S PHONE-a-friend hotline 

is one of the few venues that 

young people can anonymously 

call and ask about questions 

about relationships and reproductive 

health. One hotline 

counselor there says that young 

people are likely to have many 

misconceptions and few facts. 

For example, she says, they will 

judge reproductive health on 

mere appearance. “They think if 

someone is beautiful or sexy and 

looks rich and clean, he or she 

is healthy,” the counselor says. 

“They say you can get STIs only 

from nightclub workers.” 

Sometimes, she says, callers 

reason, “Kilala ko naman siya. 

‘Di siya gano’n (I know the per- 

son. He/She is not like that.).” 

But it is precisely knowing 

their partner in the biblical sense, 

unarmed with the knowledge 

of the consequences, that gets 

these teens into trouble in the 

first place. Some other common 

misconceptions include drinking 

Coke to prevent STIs and jumping 

up and down steps to regulate 

the menstrual cycle. There 

are even those who believe one 

can’t get pregnant from one’s 

first sexual intercourse or if the 

woman is on top. 

Two of three respondents in 

the YAFS study said they know 

about STIs in general. Awareness 

of HIV/AIDS is near universal 

at 95 percent, yet only 27 

percent think there is a chance 

of them getting AIDS. Also, 

the misconception that AIDS is 

curable has worsened from 12 

percent in 1994 to 28 percent 

in 2002. Predictably, HIV/AIDS 

and STI awareness is higher in 

urban areas, among better-educated 

classes, and among older 

youth (20-24) vs. the younger 

(15-19), and those with more 

exposure to the media. 

The hotline counselor says 

that some teens are unfazed when 

they test positive for an STI. Adolescent 

males may even consider 

STIs to be “warrior marks,” proof 

of their sexual prowess. The first 

concern of younger callers—those 

16 and below who consult the 

hotline because they suspect 

they have been infected—is not 

their own health but how they 

could win back their girlfriends 

or boyfriends. “They don’t see 

it’s a serious problem,” notes the 

counselor. 

Indeed, they don’t. The 

YAFS study says only 80 

percent of young people used 

contraception the first time they 

had sex. Unsurprisingly, 74 

percent of all estimated illegitimate 

births are by 15-24 year 

olds. There are 400,000 cases 

of illegal abortions every year, 

and young women account for 

nearly four out of 10 cases of 

abortion complications. 

WHO IS supposed to teach 

young people about sex? 

Some experts believe schools 

should. They say many parents 

lack the knowledge and may 

even be the ones perpetrating 

misconceptions. In addition, 

studies show young people do 

not talk to their parents about 

sex. Information from family is 

often limited to ideal gender 

roles and lectures about 

refraining from sexual activity. 

Most teens get their information 

from peers, movies, television 

shows, and books. 

While the government has 

opened its doors to talking about 

adolescent health, it is unable to 

do this enough. There are NGOs 

that try to fill the gap but, as 

FAD’s Villa says, “we have limited 

reach.” The government, by comparison, 

“can be everywhere.” 

Unfortunately, the government 

can also block information. 

Without a clear national 

population control program, 

local health workers are obliged 

to obey municipal officials who 

impose personal beliefs on state 

policy. With Mayor Lito Atienza’s 

staunch stance against artificial 

birth control, for example, the 

city of Manila has become a 

hostile place for NGOs. Clinics 

are discouraged from promoting 

family planning and safe sex and 

from distributing condoms. 

Dr. Carolyn Sobritchea, director 

of the Center for Women’s 

Studies at the University of the 

Philippines, is aghast. “The right 

to reproductive health is a human 

right,” she says. “Governments 

must provide all the information 

for individuals to make the right 

decisions for themselves.” 

She adds, “I don’t look at it 

from a moral dimension. That’s 

not my place. As a teacher, I 

would like to imbue them with 

the knowledge and skills to 

protect themselves.” 

She calms down the fears 

of officials who think that more 

knowledge about sex could 

lead to promiscuity. “It’s simply 

not true,” she says. “I can cite 

the statistics of Japan and other 

countries where you have condoms 

and pills in dormitories.” 

Most health workers support 

sex education in schools although 

they unanimously stress 

that abstinence remains the best 

protection. But they reiterate 

that balanced teaching is key. 

Although information should 

never be withheld, it should be 

balanced with responsibility. 

FAD, for one, has produced 

“STI Confidential,” an educational 

video with popular 

young star Judy Ann Santos as 

host. POGS launched two years 

ago an STD awareness program 

aimed at schools, starting 

from Grade 5 onwards. 

Some schools have also taken 

steps toward more informative 

and grounded discussions 

on sex. Incoming freshmen at 

the University of the Philippines 

now have to take a mandatory 

course on gender, sexuality, 

and culture. The class tackles 

issues such as STIs, unwanted 

pregnancies, boyfriend battering, 

and sexual abuse. 

The likes of Sobritchea 

remain hopeful. “Young people 

today are very responsible,” the 

professor says. “They just need 

the proper information.” 

Cheryl Chan is Chinese-Filipino 

and moved to Canada in her 

teens. She is currently completing 

a master’s degree in journalism 

at the University of British 

Columbia in Vancouver. 


I REPORT 

45


real impact, especially among 

more impressionable youth. A 

2003 study by advertising giant 

McCann-Erickson found that media 

have become “surrogate parents” 

to the country’s youth. The 

media act as arbitrators of right 

and wrong, hip and cool, what’s 

in and what’s as passe as last 

year’s ponchos. TV viewership 

especially rates high among the 

youth who spend about eight to 

14 hours a week watching TV. 

CHERYL CHAN 

THE QUEUES 

in mall bathrooms 

attest to our national vanity. 

With all the women putting on 

lipstick, powdering their noses, 

and whipping their dangerously 

long, buhaghag-free hair be- 

tween vigorous brushstrokes, it 

is nearly impossible to get to the 

sink to wash hands. Whether the 

vanity is cause or effect, I’m not 

sure. Probably a little of both. 

Cutting una bella figura, as 

the Italians say, is important in 

the Philippines. Filipinas pride 

themselves on their looks and 

deservedly so. Filipinos are a 

beautiful people, a product of a 

beautiful heritage. Even the men 

haven’t been spared the urge to 

look good, and in recent years 

they have become increasingly 

willing to splurge on beauty 

products. But the majority of 

buyers is still female—and, it 

seems, getting younger. A quick 

browse in “Primp and Prettify” 

forum on GirlTalk, a popular 

message board dedicated to 

young women easily turned up 

threads on facial and underarm 

whitening, rebonding, dieting 

pills, and make-up brands. I can 

empathize. Being vain can be an 

empowering experience. As in: I 

am woman. I exfoliate. 

In the Philippines, manufacturers 

and advertisers are eager 

Business 

of Beauty 

to tap into the youth market, 

especially when it comes to 

personal care products. After 

all, the youth market is huge. In 

2001, about 57 percent of the 

population was under 25; 15-24 

year olds made up almost 20 

percent. Also, “me” products 

such as cosmetics, haircare, 

and beauty products do better 

with youth who are increasingly 

savvy, product-aware, and more 

willing to pamper themselves. 

And they also have more disposable 

income than older demographics. 

Plus, their being Pinoy 

means they will spend more time 

on their looks than most other 

people on the planet. 

If much of that marketing 

is still geared toward young 

females, well, girls have always 

been assumed to be conscious 

about their physical appearance. 

But these days it seems even 

those who are not yet quite in 

their teens are already worrying 

about how they look. Recently, 

our family was enjoying a 

birthday feast in honor of my 

grandfather when we noticed my 

12-year-old cousin just picking at 

her plate. It turned out she had 

put herself on a diet. I remember 

when my girlfriends and I were 

the same age and we thought 

nothing about stuffing our faces 

The 

with French fries and chocolates. 

Back then, only moms and much 

older sisters struggled with diets 

and exercise regimens. 

That wasn’t so long ago, 

yet things seem to have really 

changed since. Today the pressure 

to look good starts years 

before girls even hit puberty. 

The other day, my friend’s 

niece wistfully said she wished 

she were more maputi (fair- 

skinned). She is only six years 

old. Perhaps she aspires to be 

Snow White and she wants her 

very own set of seven dwarfs. 

Or she may have just walked 

away from the television set in 

which ads were extolling the 

virtues of fair skin and the other 

supposed standards of beauty. 

It seems we believe beauty 

is an ideal—especially when 

we leaf through glossy fashion 

magazines and see photos of 

gorgeous models. Or turn on 

the TV and wait eagerly for that 

magical moment when the kam- 

panerang kuba (hunchbacked 

bell ringer) is transformed into 

a beautiful mestiza. Incidentally, 

that’s a teleserye that has kids 

among its target audience. 

Billboards, radio jingles, television 

commercials, magazine 

flyers, newspaper ads, and press 

releases—media exposure has 

NOW MAYBE it’s easy to make 

a six-year-old believe she has 

to be maputi to be considered 

pretty, but have that kid grow 

up a bit and she may not exactly 

be snapping up just any beauty 

product that promises to make 

her fair-skinned. Teens are a 

fickle market with no brand 

loyalty, says Art Ilano, assistant 

marketing professor at the 

University of the Philippines in 

Diliman. They switch products 

easier, unlike older markets that 

tend to settle for certain brands. 

Because of this, companies have 

no choice but to bombard the 

youth market with constant reminders 

to “Buy me! Buy me!” 

And boy, do they bombard. 

According to market research 

company AC Neilsen, the personal-care 

industry poured P23.4 

billion in advertisements in 2004, 

a quarter higher than in 2003. In 

comparison, telecommunications 

is a distant second at P13 billion, 

and we already know how ubiquitous 

mobile-phone ads are. 

At P6 billion a year, skincare 

is second to haircare in 

ad expenditures, which stand 

at P10 billion (oral care is third 

at P3 billion). These numbers 

probably come as no surprise 

to people who drive down 

EDSA or read newspapers and 

magazines, and especially not 

to those who watch television, 

the most popular ad outlet. 

But it’s the skincare ad category 

that has seen the highest 

rate of growth. This is largely 

attributed to the increasing popularity 

of whitening products. 

According to a 2004 Synovate 

survey, skin-lightening products 

are popular across Asia. Some 

38 percent of women surveyed 

in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Korea, 

Taiwan, and the Philippines use 

skin-lightening products. 

Filipinas, however, are the 

most avid consumers with 50 

percent of respondents reporting 

current use. My neighborhood 



Watson’s store displays shelves 

upon shelves of skin whitening 

products. Most companies now 

include a whitening component 

in their entire product line, from 

soaps and moisturizers to toners 

and sunblocks and creams. 

Having fair skin, though, is not 

enough to be called a real beauty 

these days, at least based on the 

nonstop ads. At any given time 

of the day—and night—there is 

bound to be a shampoo commercial 

extolling the virtues of 

having long, shiny tresses. Once 

primetime hits, suds and bubbles 

practically spill out of the TV sets 

with all the hairwashing going on. 

On ABS-CBN between 6:00- 

6:30 pm, a shampoo commercial 

comes on air like clockwork. 

“Bounce!” it exhorts, “Freshness! 

Bounce!” while yet another 

mestiza model sashays around 

a basketball court bouncing her 

hair all over the place. Fifteen 

minutes later, there’s another 

shampoo ad, this time done like 

a bad MTV video with an inanely 

catchy refrain, dancing girls and 

a storyline that goes, girl wants 

boy, boy snubs girl because she is 

bruha-looking 

, girl uses shampoo, 

boy falls in love with girl, and 

they live happily ever—or until 

she stops using the shampoo. The 

commercial seems to last five long 

minutes. The tagline: instant ayos, 

parang magic 

talaga, kinamay 

lang inayos na (perfect hair 

instantly, just like magic, just with 

the fingers). 

A confused confession: 

I use that brand but my hair 

doesn’t ayos in a similar manner, 

instantly or even after I tug at it 

with my fingers for an hour. I still 

need to use a brush or a comb. I 

concede an advertiser’s creative 

and artistic license, and the small 

print does say “results may vary.” 

But I’d like to do a real-life test 

and see if any girl can attain a 

perfectly straight, perfectly shiny 

‘do just by running her fingers 

perfunctorily through her hair. 

ALA PAREDES, 22, host of 

IslaMusik on ABC5, as well as 

writer and model, is the proud 

owner of a crown of curls. She 

finds the current crop of haircare 

and skincare commercials 

“abominable” because they 

don’t promote uniqueness or 

diversity. “Instead of celebrating 

physical differences,” she 

says, “they make people think 

you have to look a certain way 

to be beautiful.” 

She should know. In an 

industry that prizes fair skin and 

straight hair, her morena skin 

color and loose, voluptuous 

curls are considered unconventional. 

This demand for an 

“ideal” look has cost her jobs, 

she believes, because casting 

people who deviate from the 

norm is risky. To think she already 

has a perceived edge, being 

the daughter of Jim Paredes 

of APO Hiking Society fame. 

People who look “different” 

are usually given character 

roles, while the lead goes to a 

fair, straight-haired girl. Curly 

hair may look gorgeous on Jericho 

Rosales but put the same 

mop on some girl’s head and 

there will be people thinking 

she could be Valentina’s longlost 

sister. Curly hair is often 

associated with messiness or 

wildness while straight hair is 

more malinis or neat to look at. 

Similarly, when it comes to skin 

color, white is associated with 

cleanliness and purity. 

Of course one can argue 

hair and skin color is a matter of 

preference. But you will almost 

never hear a person say about 

an actress or model, “I don’t like 

her because she has straight hair” 

or “Yuck, look at her, ang puti 

niya (she’s so fair)”—unless we 

are talking Sadako-white (then 

again, she was more on the gray 

shades). Obviously, says Paredes, 

a norm has been set. 

Some companies are not 

even above using blatantly 

discriminatory or politically 

incorrect methods to sell their 

products. Paredes cites a whitening 

product ad where a mestiza 

couple is having their baby 

baptized. The priest smiles at 

the couple but when he pulls 

the baby’s blanket back, he 

looks aghast. The camera then 

zooms in on the baby who has 

dark skin, and then zooms out 

to show the mother’s relatives 

having brown skin. Translation: 

mommy used the product. Says 

Paredes: “I felt they were presenting 

the baby in a ridiculous 

manner. The majority of Filipinos 

have dark skin, including 

me. I felt personally offended.” 

She’s not the only one. From 

talking to my young cousins and 

their friends, there seems to be a 

consensus that the marketing of 

these skin-whitening products is 

vaguely disturbing and occasionally 

offensive on some level. It 

raises many questions. What is 

wrong with our skin color? Why 

are we trying to look different 

from what we are? 

UNCONVENTIONAL 

LOOKS. Model 

Ala Paredes has 

curly hair in a 

country where long, 

straight hair(left) 

is considered the 

epitome of female 

beauty. 

TO ME the culprit is the plethora 

of advertisers imposing a lanky 

model with abnormally bouncy 

hair and porcelain-white skin on 

us hapless mortals. But Art Ilano 

disagrees. He says advertising 

isn’t really to blame for our seeming 

fixation with straight hair and 

white skin. According to him, “it’s 

ingrained in our culture.” 

Ilano argues that advertisers 

only ride trends; they don’t create 

them. “Someone somewhere tried 

skin whitening and saw there is 

a market for it,” he says. “Papaya 

soap used to be a niche market 

with no budget for advertising but 

people liked it. It had strong sales 

in the provinces. That’s when 

ads come in.” Advertising only 

does the market research. It does 

not transform people’s opinions 

but it serves to accelerate trends. 

“Besides,” Ilano adds, “marketers 

aren’t that creative.” 

Well, neither is the popularity 

of skin-whitening products caused 

by colonial mentality alone. Other 

countries like Korea or Japan 

which haven’t been colonies of 

Western powers also go ga-ga 

over whitening products. So if 

“culture” is to blame, that may really 

mean our Asian culture. 

As for long, straight hair, there 

used to be a time when this was 

associated with those who came 

straight from the provinces, or 

people who wanted to look “ethnic” 

or had ambitions of marrying 

foreigners (hence the phrase “export 

beauties”; for some reason, 

most Western men seem to pick 

women with long hair whenever 

they go hunting for a partner in 

Asia). Once upon a time, the 

mark of a mestiza was a head 

of wavy locks. It was the indios 

or natives who had straight hair. 

Actually, either that or kinky 

hair. Anyway, all these make it 

hard to argue that culture led to 

our present obsession with long, 

straight hair. 

But maybe it’s not a matter 

of culture vs. advertising. 

For all we know, they could 

be mutually feeding on each 

other. Unfortunately, we’re 

stuck with just the obvious: a 

constant assault of images and 

products promoting only one 

type of beauty and leaving little 

room for diversity. (Where 

is Benetton when you need it?) 

Yet despite the double-digit 

growth of skin whiteners and 

the prevalence of shiny, longhaired 

artistas 

in the country, 

many teens are aware, at least 

in theory, that beauty comes in 

many shapes, colors, and sizes. 

Sometimes, a company 

comes along believing that, too. 

In 2003 the local girls’ clothing 

line Bayo launched Kat Alano in 

its “A Girl Like You” campaign. 

An EDSA billboard depicted a 

pretty girl with a mop of curls. 

The emphasis was on being different. 

The campaign was a great 

success and today Kat Alano’s 

career is thriving. Perhaps this 

means that young Filipinas, as 

personal care consumers, are 

open, if not eager, for different 

types of beauty on our billboards 

and television screens. 

Now if only more advertisers 

and marketers become a little bit 

more creative and take note. 

Cheryl Chan was an intern at the PCIJ 

and is currently pursuing a master’s 

in journalism at the University of 

British Columbia. She shakes her fist 

at the television every time a shampoo 

commercial comes on. 


I REPORT 

47


Machos 

in theMirror 

I FEEL PRETTY. 

Filipino men 

are splurging 

on looking—and 

feeling—good. 

DEAN FRANCIS ALFAR 

I DON’T generally think of 

myself as vain, but then there’s 

this incident I remember from 

high school: some friends and I 

were assembled at my house so 

that we could all ride together 

to a party. As we were getting 

dressed in our Spandau 

Ballet-inspired finery (then the 

height of fashion), one of the 

barkada produced, from out 

of the depths of his bag, a can 

of mousse, which none of us 

hapless males had ever seen or 

even heard of before. Naturally, 

we all had to squirt some into 

our hands and smear it on our 

hair. Not knowing that we were 

then supposed to blow-dry or 

otherwise style it, we left the 

house feeling snazzy, while 

looking pretty much the same 

as we had prior to applying the 

mousse—at most, our hair was 

a little damper, vaguely crispy 

in texture, and certainly stickier 

than before. But we felt utterly 

transformed. We felt guapo. 

These days (long past high 

school, thanks), I don’t exactly 

wander around feeling guapo, 

but according to a survey by 

global research firm Synovate 

last year, a good many Filipino 

males do—48 percent of us, in 

fact. This is just a slightly lower 

percentage than males in the 

United States at 53 percent, and 

considerably higher than our 

Asian neighbors: 25 percent of 

Singaporean men think they’re 

sexy, and only 12 percent of 

guys from Hong Kong. 

Moreover, while less than 

half of us (which is already a significant 

figure) think that we’re 

God’s gift to Pinays, a whopping 

84 percent of Filipinos rate their 

looks as “quite” or “very” important 

to them. Assuming that the 

survey is accurate, this means, 

statistically speaking, that there 

is no male racial group on earth 

vainer than Filipino men. And, 

to my shock, I am one of them. 

I have the uncomfortable 

feeling that female readers will 

not be surprised to learn that 

Pinoys are full of themselves. I 

myself was astounded by these 

figures, and I don’t think my 

wife has stopped laughing yet. 

If you think about it, really, 

the evidence is all around us, 

and has been for decades. Way 

before the term “metrosexual” 

was ever coined (in 1994, by 

British journalist Mark Simpson, 

in case you’re interested), 

Filipino businessmen were 

going around toting clutch 

bags—which I’m told are meant 

to hold guns or money, but 

which also frequently contain 

combs and the occasional small 

mirror. Your average Pinoy traffic 

cop, while likely to sport an 

enormous gut that completely 

engulfs his regulation belt, is just 

as likely to brandish gleaming, 

rosy-hued, meticulously manicured 

fingernails. And practically 

everyone has at least one uncle 

or other older male relative who 

keeps his hair so slickly brilliantined 

that everyone else can 

conveniently fix his or her own 

hair by merely glancing at its 

mirror-like surface. 

Those are just what we’ll 

call the “traditional” examples. 

Among the younger set, I recall 

a time when you couldn’t walk 

into a classroom of boys without 

nearly asphyxiating on the 

overwhelming communal scent 

of Drakkar cologne. Nowadays 

the choice of fragrance is more 

varied, but the rabidly enthusiastic 

application of cologne, 

aftershave, or that hybrid substance 

strangely labeled as “deocologne” 

remains constant. The 

Synovate survey tells us that Filipino 

men bathe an average of 

1.5 times a day. (I’m not really 

sure how one takes half a bath, 

but I’m told by informed sources 

that such regular male hygiene 

is a source of relief and delight 

for Filipino women.) Since the 

1970s, the majority of Philippine 

beauty salons have become 

“unisex,” resulting in a large and 

growing number of young men 

who have never even set foot in 

a barber shop, which means that 

most of us go to salons—every 

three weeks or so, according to 

salon magnate Ricky Reyes, “for 

pampering.” 

Not that barbershops themselves 

are exactly bastions of 

simplicity and pure functionality 

anymore. High-end ones offer 

“personal care” services ranging 

from facials to foot scrubs to 

ear cleaning. (Does ear cleaning 

count as vanity?) Men also 

go to massage parlors—real 

ones, not quote-unquote massage 

parlors—not just to soothe 

their tired muscles, but often for 

skin-improving treatments like 

mud baths and herbal wraps. 

And speaking of skin treatments, 

more and more cosmetics 

companies are coming out with 

“just for men” lines of grooming 

products, including face scrubs, 

lotions, and astringents. What’s 

significant is that more and more 

Pinoy men are actually buying 

them: just 10 years ago, men 

accounted for only 10 percent of 

the total Philippine beauty care 

buying public. That figure has 

now mushroomed to 40 percent, 



meaning that there are nearly 

equal numbers of Pinoys and 

Pinays out there, snapping up 

creams and cleansers. 

Even cosmetic surgery has 

become not just acceptable, 

but desirable for many Filipino 

men—from standard dermatology 

for simple problems like 

acne, to unapologetic vanity procedures 

such as liposuction and 

“age-defying” Botox injections. 

Dr. Vicky Belo of the popular 

Belo Medical Clinic confirms, 

“Before, (men) only accounted 

for one-fourth of my total 

clientele. Now they are about 

one-third.” It’s gotten to the point 

where “Who’s your derma?” is 

a topic that can actually enjoy 

lengthy discussion time in a manto-man 

conversation, and surgical 

treatment has become something 

of a mark of status in Philippine 

showbiz. Actors Albert Martinez 

and John Lloyd Cruz, as well as 

singer Janno Gibbs, among others, 

readily (and proudly!) admit 

to being regular clients at the 

Belo Medical Clinic. 

CAN ALL this male vanity be 

laid at the door of celebrities like 

these and metrosexual poster 

boy David Beckham? Apparently 

not. For one thing, as I mentioned 

earlier, the Filipino trait 

of being vanidoso well predates 

Becks and his ilk. Besides, a metrosexual, 

by definition, is “a male 

who has a strong aesthetic sense 

and spends a great deal of time 

and money on his appearance.” 

While it seems that we Pinoys 

certainly do make the time and 

shell out the cash for our looks, 

we don’t always have enough of 

an aesthetic sense to know what 

we’re doing… unless there actually 

is a segment of the female 

populace I don’t know about 

that really does swoon over pink, 

manicured fingernails on a man. 

I can’t be sure there isn’t, having 

never tried the look myself. 

As for why we’re willing to 

spend so much time and money, 

it may, surprisingly, be a product 

of social and economic factors. 

During the U.S. recession, it was 

observed that lipstick sales shot 

up, only to taper down again 

once the recession was over. 

Consistent repetition of this phenomenon 

led economists to conclude 

that, when consumers feel 

less than confident about the future, 

they tend to purchase small, 

comforting indulgences such as 

lipstick rather than splurging on 

larger items like appliances and 

electronic gadgets. Correspondingly, 

Ricky Reyes has noted that 

more customers flocked to salons 

during the 1997 economic crisis 

in the Philippines, turning to 

relatively low-priced services like 

haircuts in order to make themselves 

feel better in an unstable 

living environment. 

While the purchase of 

lipstick per se may not exactly 

be applicable (so far!) to the 

Filipino male, we can obviously 

draw a corollary with your 

average Pinoy, who might be 

understandably reluctant to buy, 

say, a flat-screen TV in a country 

where coup d’etat rumors circulate 

at least twice a year. Instead, 

he might choose to spend his 

money on his appearance, 

perhaps subconsciously reasoning 

that his shiny, bouncy hair, 

glowing, healthy skin, and, yes, 

tidy pink nails are all conveniently 

portable in the event that 

he should need to duck and run 

for cover. And these are straight 

guys we’re talking about here. 

According to Noel Manucom, 

head of planning and strategy at 

Splash cosmetics, the quest for 

beauty may also be perceived 

as a quest for social equality. 

“Filipinos, especially those in 

the C and D (classes), are still 

influenced by their colonial 

mentality that white skin and a 

tall nose are what those in high 

society have,” Manucom says. 

“They may not be able to afford 

to have their nose done, but the 

desire to have a fairer skin can 

be met by buying… products.” 

In fact, the double-digit 

growth in skin care popularity 

among Filipino males over the 

last six years is largely attributable 

to skin-whitening formulas. 

Pinoys are still devoted to hair 

care products and fragrance 

above anything else—with 

growing interest in bath washes, 

oral hygiene, and weight loss or 

gain—yet skin care is acknowledged 

to be the main fuel of the 

Philippine beauty industry. This 

has led to some very disturbing 

(to me, at least) TV ads, particularly 

the one where a twentysomething 

young man testifies, 

with evident smugness, that his 

male friends have been telling 

him, “Pare, pumuputi ka yata, 

ah (Man, you look fairer)!” 

NOW PERSONALLY, I have 

never had a verbal exchange like 

that with any of my friends, male 

or female. But I am beginning to 

dread that I just might someday. 

Not that I use whitening products, 

but, given the evidence 

from that time in high school up 

to the present, it seems irrefutable 

that I am, contrary to my 

previous belief, vain. 

I visit my barber in Greenhills 

once a week—and while 

this does, indeed, occur at a 

barbershop, I not only have my 

head shaved and my beard and 

moustache trimmed, I have my 

feet tended to, as well. When 

I feel particularly filthy, I have 

a facial. Once in a while, my 

barber takes it upon himself to 

shape my eyebrows with a razor—I’m 

still not sure I approve 

of this, but I’ve never stopped 

him, either. And that’s not all 

my barbershop offers. I can opt 

for an Iontophoresis, Deep Laser 

Cleaning, Skin Bleaching, Skin 

Whitening, Underarm Whitening, 

Wart Removal, Paraffin Waxing, 

Hair Dyeing, Hair Rebonding, 

something called “Kilay,” 

and a host of other services I 

never thought would be found 

in a bastion of manliness. 

These days, most women 

will tell you that they don’t 

necessarily pamper and primp 

in order to please men; they do 

it to please themselves. Most 

vain men, I think, will tell you 

exactly the opposite: we like to 

look good because women like 

men who look good. Because 

when all is said and done about 

socio economic factors, media 

proliferation, and all that, what 

we Pinoy peacocks really have 

in common, before anything 

else, is that we are romantics. 

Unlike males of many other 

ethnicities, we still take courting 

seriously. Even married 

men like me still make ligaw, 

in a sense, and we go whole 

hog when we do it: we buy the 

flowers, we pick up the check, 

we open doors and pull chairs 

out for the objects of our affections. 

Heck, many of us would 

probably still be willing to whip 

our name-brand jackets off our 

backs and lay them across mud 

puddles so our women wouldn’t 

have to step 10 measly inches 

out of their way. Compared to 

that, what’s a little extra effort to 

smell nice and try to look like 

someone they’d actually be willing 

to be seen with in public? 

So what I’m saying is, when 

you get right down to it, Filipino 

male vanity probably stems from 

one unifying cultural imperative: 

to woo women (or, well, 

men, depending on your gender 

preference). Even women we’re 

already married to, women 

we have no actual romantic or 

sexual interest in, women we 

know we don’t have a chance 

in hell of even speaking to at all. 

It’s not just to get someone into 

bed (not that we’d mind); it’s to 

merit, at the very least, that look 

in a woman’s eye that says, “You 

know, that guy’s not bad.” Because 

this is what we’re thinking 

(well, let’s just say we’re a little 

more visceral about it) when we 

look at women all the time. And 

it’s simply nice to have the positive 

appraisal reciprocated once 

in a while. 

Therefore, ladies, when 

you see men like me preening 

or looking bewildered yet 

grimly determined in the facial 

cleanser aisle of your favorite 

personal care store, remember 

that we’re most likely doing it, 

ultimately, for you. 

Now will you please stop 

laughing? 

Dean Francis Alfar is a husband, 

father, playwright, fictionist, comic 

book creator and businessman. 

He is a 7-time Don Carlos 

Palanca Awardee,recipient of the 

National Book Award, and an 

internationally published author. 

His nails are never ever pink. 


I REPORT 

49


Male 

PHOTOS BY JOSE ENRIQUE SORIANO 



and Vain 


I REPORT 

51


SAMIRA GUTOC 

BEFORE ME 

was an Islamic 

religion studies graduate, an al- 

eema 

who divorced her 

aleem 

(Islamic learned man) husband 

for beating her up. She was 

lecturing on significant Muslim 

women in Islamic history. So far 

she had taken up the Prophet 

Muhammad’s wife Khadija 

and daughter Aisha. Today’s 

topic: Madina’s Umu Sulaim 

Rumaisa. All were women of 

virtue whose lives could give 

us insights on what a Muslim 

woman should aspire to. 

Every Sunday, a few of us 

women and girls in the barrio 

would gather in a small shop 

of a lady leader to read the 

Qur’an and listen to aleemas, 

who would arrive garbed in 

traditional dress, with only their 

eyes peering out of their veils. 

But once they were in front of 

us, they would shed their facial 

covering and discuss themes 

ranging from women heroes to 

marriage and women’s obligations—basically 

all things domestic. 

Through an association 

of women “seeking faith,” the 

seminars provided us a place 

to rest, as well as to bond and 

learn with other women. 

My village at Buadi Sacayo, 

one of the homes of the old 

sultanates, has held on to many 

traditions. It is a close-knit community 

where residents, especially 

the young, congregated in the 

street or during Friday prayers. 

People here are proud of their 

roots, a pride they made evident 

through their colorful homes 

decorated in the traditional style. 

Across this village, at the other 

end of the highway, is Mindanao 

State University (MSU), 

where the more Western-educated 

reside and teach. While my 

barrio provides spiritual congregation, 

it is on the secular, modern 

campus that I meet a host 

of other highly educated and 

“modern” women. Our most 

recent topic was women’s rights 

and all the rah-rah of promoting 

it. The context: cleaning up the 

elections, especially the ARMM 

polls in August. 

Despite living away from 

the metropolis for the past year, 

I find staying in the Islamic 

city of Marawi refreshing for 

I see the best of two worlds: 

those who gave up on the old 

ways and those who live it. At 

one end is the sandal-and-backpack 

crowd, people who live 

on just the basics and whose 

ultimate activity is prayer. At 

the other end are those who 

push for material success and 

crave recognition—the professionals, 

politicians, and yes, 

NGO workers. One fact ties 

each extreme to each other: 

both are made up of Muslims. 

I myself feel I am between 

both worlds. Sometimes, I even 

feel like an interloper. Having a 

hijab (veil) on and having non- 

Muslim friends makes me feel 

half-Muslim and half-Christian 

(or mestiza). It is not the religion 

that makes me feel like I always 

have to be in the middle of a 

religious discourse. Instead the 

feeling arises from the curiosity/ 

half-acceptance I encounter in 

both Muslim and Christian circles. 

When I am with Muslims, I 

have to defend my “liberal” media 

profession. When I am with 

Christians, I have to explain 

Islam’s practices. 

But what is being Muslim 

anyway? Was it all about the 

five pillars, about the sayings 

of the Prophet and the 

Qur’an? What of the women, 

like me—had we rights, could 

we speak out? And how about 

pop music, my favorite, was it 

haram 

(forbidden)? Was living 

all about following rules? 

These were among the questions 

I had while growing up, 

and I have been asking even 

more questions since. I had been 

brought up to be conscious of 

my heritage, to always protect 

our maratabat, our good name, 

to avoid overexposure to the 

outside world. This was my culture 

as a Maranao. My religion, at 

least as taught to me, said almost 

the same thing—to observe the 

rituals, to lead a structured life. 

But I have since realized that 

religion is actually dynamic and 

that it was only the elders who 

had interpreted it otherwise. 

As postmodernist author Akbar 

Ahmed says, Islam and balance 

are compatible, meaning Muslims 

are not prohibited from embracing 

principles such as tolerance, 

democracy, and justice. So 

could a Muslim have a Christian 

as a best friend? Can we sing and 

dance? Could Muslim women 

wear jeans? And how do we see 

the Pope and Madonna? 

I THINK Muslim communities 

have yet to confront questions 

Growing 

Fema 

& 

Mus 


le Up 

le lim 

CHANGING FACE. Muslim 

women are slowly moving out 

of the safe cocoons of clan 

and community. 

like those I have, and so have yet 

to bridge a generational gap that 

has formed. During the National 

Muslim Youth Summit held at the 

Asian Institute of Management in 

2003, “confusion” was the catchword 

in the workshop discussions. 

The speakers were learned 

elders. The participants, meanwhile, 

were part of Generation 

M(uslim). Although they came 

from different cultural communities, 

they were all multilingual 

and educated in some of the top 

schools around the country and 

even abroad. 

One of the speakers 

crowed that this was the “new 

generation of future Muslim 

leaders”—mobile, techie, and 

assertive. But some of the participants 

expressed disappointment 

at their elders’ lack of 

sympathy for their “confusion.” 

“I don’t wear a veil but no 

one can question my faith,” 

said 24-year-old Maguindanaon 

Nora, a Manila-based nurse. 

“We are confused because we 

are curious.” She raised the 

issue of smuggling by a few 

Muslim entrepreneurs to which 

some elders had been willing to 

turn a blind eye, so long as the 

proceeds were given as zakat 

or charity. “Can (smuggling) 

be made permissible by giving 

(the proceeds) as zakat?” an 

incredulous Nora asked. 

“Have you read the whole 

Qur’an?” posed Lucman, offering 

advice from the elders. “Pray 

five times and affirm yourself 

with the graces of Allah.” 

All the speakers had advised 

us to “learn Islam.” Former MSU 

regent Ansary Alonto also said, 

“Islam is a system, a way of life.” 

But the older yuppies among 

the participants advised the 

youngsters to maintain an open 

mind. Said Aldean Alonto, who 

had gone to Oxford University 

on an interfaith event: “Islam is 

a process, and (acknowledges) 

an effort to find yourself.” 

For me, that process is still 

ongoing. When I was a child, 

I thought I would end up as a 

singer. I had been starstruck as 

a kid and was a big movie fan; 

I loved performing as well. Yet 

being Maranao—and a girl— 

meant there were many things 

I could not do. Interest in the 

arts was discouraged because 

of its perceived anti-Islamicism. 

Even today many of us 

are still unable to deviate from 

professions chosen for us, like 


nursing, medicine, engineering, 

and law. I took up law at the 

behest of my parents, although 

my heart wasn’t in it. It was 

only when I failed major prelaw 

courses that I allowed myself 

to follow my desire, which 

by then was no longer singing, 

but journalism. 

As the eldest of five, I had 

learned early on to be conscious 

of the larger group, to 

sacrifice and put the group’s 

interests first. Following tradition, 

we girls had to be very 

careful in choosing our friends. 

While my brothers had girlfriends, 

my sisters and I were 

chaperoned to avoid “developing” 

our crushes. We weren’t 

allowed to date or sleep over 

at other people’s houses. Contrary 

to what many outsiders 

assume, however, we girls—at 

least those in my family—were 

made to excel in academics. 

Mother wanted to be sure that 

if we were to marry and then 

were left by our husbands, we 

could use our education to 

survive on our own. (Mother’s 

own father had left their family 

for another woman.) Father, 

too, put a premium on education 

for his children. He was 

from a clan that placed professionals 

on pedestals and was 

himself an inspiration to many 

of his relatives to acquire an 

education and land a good job. 

Yet for all the restrictions and 

expectations put upon us, I still 

managed to have fun in high 

school. I was lucky because Father 

was a career diplomat and I 

was exposed to Western education. 

Traveling was an eye-opener. 

I learned to be sensitive and 

be open to other cultures aside 

from my own. Practicing my 

faith had its ups and downs, but 

I was soon to learn that to know 

my religion, I had to experience 

the lack of it. 

THAT CAME when I reached 

college. I suddenly had the 

freedom to party and socialize. 

That freedom, however, also 

brought me one dilemma after 

another. While my upbringing 

taught me precaution, the 

ethos on campus was to live 

life. While I was boxed in by 

rules before, I was now being 

urged to make my own rules. 

My response in part was to 

widen my search for myself. I 

met atheists who questioned 

God and all the fundamentals 

of existence. I attended masses, 

learned of the Christian faith. I 

read alternative literature aside 

from the religious text. Yet as I 

searched, I had one tangible evidence 

of my Muslim identity: my 

hijab, which I began wearing at 

age 17. I had made the decision 

to wear one on my own, without 

any parental prodding, without 

a mullah lecture, without 

pressure from my peers. I had 

read through the Qu’ran and 

saw in there the rationale for the 

veil. Rather than being segregationist 

or purist, the hijab is an 

acknowledgement that women 

can work alongside any individual, 

male or non-Muslim. I do 

not have to be judged based on 

my physical appearance, even as 

my hijab makes me aware that 

I have to be “good” to earn my 

keep for the afterlife. 

I have since noticed that 

others wear the veil as a matter 

of convenience or culture, 

with the hijab taking on different 

nuances, depending on the 

wearer’s community or tribe. 

Women of the Tausug tribe wear 

their caps with sequins, those 

in Maguindanao prefer colored 

nets, and the Maranao go for 


I REPORT 

53


the full triangular cover. Others 

match their veils with eyes 

heavy with eyeliner. Western 

Muslim ladies I have met seem 

more conservative alongside our 

own; they have no colored veils 

and there is no strand of hair 

peeping out of their hijab. 

Wearing the veil, of course, 

is just one symbol, just one of 

the many experiences, of being 

a Muslim woman. Yet public 

discussions regarding Muslim 

women rarely go beyond our 

head covering. And in public 

discussions, we are usually 

rendered voiceless. 

It’s a given that there seems 

to be a segregation of the sexes, 

where women are defined and 

respected for their role in the domestic 

sphere. Even those who 

are educated and well-traveled 

among us find that when they 

speak outside of that sphere, 

their voices are not always heard. 

Sometimes that may be because 

they are put in “their place.” In 

Maranao public events, for instance, 

young women are usually 

found in the kitchen, in another 

side of the room separate from 

the men, and are rarely part of 

political discussions. 

In a way, someone also tried 

to put me in my place, or at least 

what he thought that should be, 

on a business trip I took to Baguio. 

One bearded religious leader 

there asked me why I travel 

without the traditional mahram 

(a chaperone, because women 

are discouraged from traveling 

alone). I told him that if men 

were doing my media work, I 

need not do this. I was trying 

hard not to retort rudely. 

BUT THINGS may be starting to 

change. Just last March, a young 

women’s forum was held for the 

first time at MSU to celebrate 

BUILDERS OF PEACE. Muslim 

women can become pillars 

of harmony in communities 

ravaged by war and conflict. 

international women’s month. 

Many young women and even 

men came to listen to women 

speakers and students in veil 

talk freely about sex—and the 

lack of knowledge about it. 

Gender and sex were differentiated. 

Social stereotyping and 

assigning of roles was exposed. 

We even shook our body and 

exercised to let loose. For once, 

we were having something 

besides the traditional seminar/lecture 

that has become the 

most acceptable form of public 

discourse among Muslims. 

So there we were, even 

talking about early and arranged 

marriages. I felt thankful 

for my open-minded parents, 

who consulted us if they 

were choosing partners for us. 

In Maranao tradition, the parents 

do the search for prospective 

spouses for their children, 

and arrange the unions among 

themselves, often without asking 

the ones who are to be 

married. Oftentimes the couples 

are not prepared emotionally 

and intellectually for the 

kind of responsibility marriages 

entail, but that does not seem 

to matter to the elders. 

Someone I know married 

at 18; she is now 31. She managed 

to finish college, but has 

been unable to use her education 

to have a career of her 

own. She thought she would 

be happy taking care of her 

family, but she lapsed into 

depression. I think because of 

an overdose of cultural obedience, 

she simply forgot all 

about herself. 

Muslim youths today—male 

and female—aspire to be educated 

and useful to their communities 

and beyond. Medical student 

Naheeda Dimacisil of Laguna 

expresses her distaste over some 

Muslim men who still do not 

see the “equality with women in 

responsibilities,” which includes 

seeking knowledge. 

A study done by Xavier 

University found that religion, 

family, education, and work, 

were the top priorities of Muslim 

youths. It further found that 

young people thought that education 

is important because it is 

seen as a vehicle for social mobility, 

a way to escape poverty, 

and a means to help others. 

Many also want to become 

among the best in their fields to 

“dispel the negative image of Islam.” 

Ateneo de Davao freshman 

law student Sahara Aliongan says 

she hopes to become the first 

Muslim woman to top the bar 

exams. Then she plans to “write 

a book and change the negative 

views of people about Muslims.” 

Many Muslims criticize the 

media for the negative and simplistic 

portrayal of their communities. 

For many Filipinos, it would 

seem “Muslim” has become 

synonymous with terrorists, criminals, 

bandits, and the Abu Sayyaf. 

Many among our countrymen 

ignore the complexities of tribal 

differences, the difference between 

a religion and its followers, 

and other such nuances. 

For us Muslim women, the 

struggle is twofold: we struggle 

against the discrimination 

foisted upon us within our own 

communities, and we struggle 

against the Muslim stereotype 

when we step out of the confines 

of our family and tribe. 

MARAWI CITY Council Jehan- 

ne Mutin-Mapupuno says part 

of the problem is the lack of a 

Muslim role model. “There are 

no successful Muslim personalities 

featured on radio or TV,” 

she says. “Young Muslims don’t 

have positive (role) models to 

identify with or an association 

of peers they can relate to.” 

She’s not really off the 

mark. After all, the top broadcast 

news organizations have 

just begun adding knowledge 

of Muslim concerns among 

their criteria for new recruits. 

And there is still that pressure 

from elders for youths to pursue 

non-arts courses. 

But while the media have 

yet to offer a model for Muslims, 

there are already the likes of 

women’s rights activist and cancer 

survivor Yasmin Busran-Lao 

of Lanao del Sur to show us the 

way. Busran-Lao is a recognized 

advocate for reforms in the Shariah 

legal system, where men 

have interpreted the laws. She 

has received the Ninoy Aquino 

Public Service award, and was 

featured not only on the Sunday 

Inquirer but also on CNN. 

There is also Sulu’s Warina 

Jukuy, an outspoken spitfire, 

who filed for candidacy for the 

gubernatorial post of the Autonomous 

Region for Muslim 

Mindanao although she thinks 

her chances of winning are 

.00001 percent. So why even try? 

Her response: just to show the 

corruption within the system. 

Peace advocate Minang 

Sharief Dirampatan, meanwhile, 

is a professor and theater artist 

who has become a fixture at the 

MSU, which she has called home 

for the last 25 years. She has also 

served as mentor and guide to 

many outstanding MSU youths. 

Dirampatan and Busran-Lao 

were of a generation that segregated 

Muslim men and women 

in communities and prioritized 

men over women when it came 

to schooling. They broke tradition. 

They have also nurtured 

a new generation of thinkers 

and idealists among Mindanao’s 

youth. Though Dirampaten at 

58 may not be as mobile as before, 

she mentors others so that 

the ideas of peace and human 

rights trickle down to younger, 

more energetic advocates. 

Women like Dirampatan are 

in my thoughts as I continue my 

journey. I also think, since most of 

the world’s conflicts today involve 

Muslims, it is imperative that Muslim 

women become promoters 

of peace even at the village level. 

They should direct their energies 

to peacebuilding, which includes 

conflict resolution, advocacy, and 

governance. Working for peace 

can also include teaching the values 

of peace, promoting interfaith 

dialogue, and peace journalism 

and research. 

It is work worth devoting 

one’s life to. 

Samira Gutoc, a freelance journalist, 

is a Sagittarian and one of the founders 

of Young Moro Professionals. 

She obtained a fellowship at Oxford 

University and has represented the 

Philippines in international conferences 

on women, youth, and minorities. 

She is secretary general of the 

Philippine Muslim Women Council 

and chairs the National Youth 

Parliament Alumni Association. 



ALECKS P. PABICO 

I’M A CERTIFIED Nethead 

and I can get down and talk 

digital with the best of them. 

But Rochelle Lazarte and her 

five friends make me feel as 

ancient as a rotary phone. 

Formed only seven months 

ago, their barkada is basking 

in its newfound friendship that 

traces its beginnings—the same 

way that many relationships 

among young people are being 

born and nurtured today—in 

cyberspace. 

With today’s fast pace, my 

own friends and I have found 

ourselves relying on technology 

to keep in touch, too. But our 

friendships were forged long 

before PCs and the World Wide 

Web. Born in the late 1960s, our 

peer interaction was primarily 

face to face, complemented 

by letters and telephone 

conversations—well, that is if 

your family was among the 

fortunate lot to have acquired 

a landline connection in the 

pre-“zero backlog” era of a 

telecommunications monopoly. 

These days, people still 

meet each other face to face. 

But new technologies, very 

much an indispensable part 

of our daily social life, have 

significantly influenced and 

altered the way we interact and 

communicate with each other. 

a universe of possibilities 

regarding a lot of things, it 

hasn’t really changed the 

nature of friendships and how 

these are maintained. Which is 

quite comforting for not-so-old 

fogies like me. 

Take Rochelle—better 

known as Roch—and her 

cyberkada. They may have 

been all strangers pre-chat, but 

except for Lei Cruz, they did 

have something in common 

from the start: they all went 

or are still going to the St. 

Joseph’s Academy in Las Piñas. 

Roch is now a sophomore 

English major at the Philippine 

Normal University. July Tan 

is in his freshman year at the 

University of Santo Tomas. 

Jeff Din is a senior at the 

academy, while Jeric Aragon 

and Margo Flores are both 

juniors there. Only Jeric and 

Margo were already friends 

before that, although they had 

been introduced to July when 

he was still the editor of the 

academy’s school paper and 

they were contributing artists. 

Actually, they have seen 

each other only twice since 

they officially became a 

group—the second time being 

when they had a physical gettogether 

for this piece (minus 

Jeff, who couldn’t make it). 

But just like any other barkada, 

they are in constant touch. The 

twist is they do so virtually, 

CYBER BARKADA. Teenagers (left to right) Jeric 

Aragon, Lei Cruz, Roch Lazarte, Margo Flores, 

and July Tan are the best of friends. They rarely 

see each other, but the Internet and mobile 

phones keep their friendship alive. 

Virtua 

This is especially true among 

the so-called Generation Y, 

or those born after 1979, who 

have been “the first to grow 

up in a world saturated with 

networks of information, digital 

devices, and the promise of 

perpetual connectivity.” Yet 

while technology has opened 

meeting daily via the Internet 

Relay Chat (IRC) in a chat 

room called #rochy. 

Begun in the chatter’s realm 

of IRC’s Undernet late last year, 

#rochy is obviously named 

after Roch, who at 17 is one of 

the oldest in the group and is 

regarded as the ate, a role she 

takes rather seriously. But it was 

really the bubbly chinito July 

who gave the channel its name, 

which he says was inspired by 

a lengthy private chat with Roch 

via Yahoo!’s instant messaging 

service about her musings on her 

trip to her hometown in Batangas 

during the last Christmas break. 

Before that, most of what would 

later make up their group were 

only faceless denizens lurking 

in #josephians, the chat channel 

set up by members of Batch ’99 

for fellow students—former and 

current—of their beloved alma 

mater. 

“When she came back, she 

immediately started chatting. 

She sent me a PM (private 

message) telling me about her 

problem...something about a 

budding romance. She met a 

guy, two boys actually,” reveals 

July half in jest. 

In truth, the source of 

Roch’s melancholy was her 

pining for the extremely 

Y 



lly 

ours 

wonderful time she had 

(including perhaps meeting 

some boys on the side) during 

her stay in the province. Her 

mood was even spelled out in 

her online status in Yahoo!— 

“Ibalik niyo ako sa Batangas 

(Bring me back to Batangas!!!)” 

Because he had to pick up 

something from Margo’s place, 

July had to momentarily excuse 

himself from the sharing session 

with Roch. Somehow he and 

Margo got to talking about 

Roch’s “problem.” So the next 

thing July did was to create a 

channel that for reasons only 

known to him was named in 

Roch’s honor. That night till 

the wee hours of dawn the 

following day, he and the rest 

of the boys would also listen 

to each other’s thoughts and 

feelings. 

IT MAY seem odd that Roch 

and company prefer the 

Net over mobile phones, 

the gadget of choice of 

many Filipinos, young and 

old alike. But the group 

does use cellphones as a 

secondary communication 

tool. In fact, once they go 

offline, they make the most 

of their common telco’s offer 

of unlimited call and texting 

among its subscribers. 

Anj Heruela, a 17-yearold 

second year broadcast 

communication student at the 

University of the Philippines in 

Diliman, has not exactly sworn 

off the mobile phone either. 

She still uses it but mainly for 

the “practical uses” of calling 

or sending SMS. 

But when she was younger, 

the cellphone was her lifeline. 

Originally from Iloilo, Anj went 

to the Philippine High School 

for the Arts in Los Baños, 

Laguna. During her freshman 

year, she got a text message 

from an anonymous texter, 

who turned out to be a friend 

of a grade school classmate’s 

friend. Their relationship 

began with the usual exchange 

of forwarded “Hallmark”- 

type messages, witty quotes, 

and jokes. Much like what 

sometimes happened between 

phone pals in pre-digital times, 

Anj and her textmate soon had 

a romance going. At its most 

intense, it had Anj consuming 

P250 week with her prepaid 

subscription. Yet Anj and her 

cyberboyfriend never had a 

chance to “eyeball” (meet), and 

it was all over in eight months. 

While it lasted, though, the 

romance gave the homesick 

Anj the attention and company 

she craved. 

Anj now has a real 

boyfriend. But she also chats 

on occasion, as well as blogs, 

which she says is more about 

“wanting people to read what 

I write,” which is essentially 

poetry and other stuff out 

of spontaneous bursts of 

creativity. So far, she has 

authored four blogs. 

The yearning for attention 

and recognition is of course 

inherent in the youth, who find 

in the new media the venue 

for exploring and defining their 

own identities, and establishing 

their independence. That is 

why teeners have populated 

the blogosphere in droves, 

using blogs, being essentially 

personal online diaries, as their 

podium for self-expression. 

At the same time, blogs 

are also becoming hubs of 

virtual communities of friends. 

One Filipino collective blog 

of adults is aptly named 

blogkadahan. Teen blogs in 

Live Journal, for instance, are 

only accessible by bloggerfriends. 

Members of the 

Rochy gang are themselves 

bloggers who make it a point 

to visit and post comments 

on each other’s blogs as a 

way to maintain the flow of 

communication. 

WHAT MAKES information 

and communication 

technologies (ICTs) alluring 

to children and teenagers, 

says Kathryn Montgomery, 

co-founder of the Washingtonbased 

nonprofit group Center 

for Media Education, are three 

basic elements: interactivity, 

convergence, and ubiquity. 

Indeed, as a more interactive 

medium, the Internet provides 

several ways for young people 

to communicate with each 

other, interact with what is 

on a site, and create their 

own content. Combining new 

technologies with existing 

ones are also expanding the 

scope of computer-mediated 

communications to include 

personal and professional 

interactions. And the new 

media are becoming more 

pervasive, touching all aspects 

of the lives of the younger 

generation. 

But the young are also using 

ICTs far differently from the 

ways they have interacted with 

the old media of television, 

radio, and newspapers. They 

are likewise relating to the new 

technologies in a manner that 

their parents never did—keen 

about the complexities and 

challenges of the technologies, 

as well as about being able 

to learn them. This attitude 

Idit Harel, a noted new media 

expert formerly with the Massachusetts 

Institute of Technology’s 

Media Lab, has summed 

up in the phrase “High tech is 

now my tech.” 

Since they themselves are 

helping define the uses of the 

new digital media, teenagers 

like Roch, July, Margo, Jeric, 

and Lei are really adept at— 

and comfortable—conducting a 

great deal of their lives online. 

For most of them, computers 

were already a fixture at home 


I REPORT 

57


and in school at an early 

age. Jeric, Margo, and July 

were sixth graders when they 

first experienced surfing the 

Internet to do research for 

their homework, as well as 

acquiring their first cellphones. 

Jeric and Margo derived so 

much satisfaction just from 

getting cheat codes for the PC 

games they were playing then 

until they discovered IRC. 

They were introduced to 

chatting only in their third or 

fourth year in high school, 

SO YOUNG AND SO HI-TECH. 

These teenagers have only 

met each other twice, but 

their gadgets ensure they 

remain the best of friends. 

with July confessing to 

developing an addiction to it 

just last year. In a week, he’d 

be online for 50 hours, costing 

him P200 in prepaid Internet 

cards. There came a point, 

though, when he got bored of 

chatting. But then he met his 

new gang. 

Lei, the only one in the 

group without any connections 

to St. Joseph’s, also started 

chatting last year, initially with 

the chat rooms in Yahoo!. 

Then she found her way to 

IRC and stumbled upon Roch 

in #makata. 

“I met Roch when we took 

turns composing lines for a 

poem in #makata,” recounts 

Lei, a psychology sophomore 

at Polytechnic University of the 

Philippines. “Then, someone 

using the nick (alias) ‘anak 

ko’ entered the chat room. 

That prodded me to ask Roch 

to become my virtual mom 

and adopt me. She took me 

to #rochy and that’s where I 

eventually met the others.” 

Roch and July’s friendship 

started out through an even 

more peculiar encounter. 

Narrates Roch: “I came to 

know July when I commented 

in the main channel how ugly 

the current issue of Josephian 

was. I was expressing concern 

because I also wrote for the 

paper before.” 

July replied to Roch in 

private, agreeing with her 

comment but without telling 

her that he was the paper’s 

editor. “She eventually learned 

who I was,” he says. “After 

that, we arranged a meeting 

at the school patio. We have 

become close since then.” 

OUTSIDE OF the church 

confessional, baring one’s soul 

in a faceless encounter may 

seem unimaginable to many 

grown-ups. Today’s youths, 

however, are at ease with 

such a situation, and take 

advantage of the “always on” 

peer interaction allowed by 

the technology. As Roch puts 

it, “It’s easier to open up when 

there’s no eye-to-eye contact. 

When the exchange becomes 

very personal, you can cry to 

your heart’s content without 

the other person seeing you. 

That way, you don’t embarrass 

yourself.” 

The others agree. “As far 

as I’m concerned,” says July, 

“I hate to approach somebody 

and cry on that person’s 

shoulder. It’s fine with me 

to just have someone there 

listening to me, even if it’s not 

personal, only technological.” 

Yet hearing him and the 

rest of the rochy barkada 

attest how they have known 

each other more intimately, 

becoming closer than siblings 

from their online interactions, 

gives me the impression that 

there is more to the social 

networking than just the 

technology. Of course, ICTs 

are helping them a lot to keep 

in constant touch with their 

intimate community. But these 

young people are also seeking 

out those in whom they find 

a genuine interest, individuals 

with whom they have 

something in common, people 

who are much like them. 

In this regard, they are no 

different from us who made 

friends in a pre-networked 

world. Only that in forging 

their cyberfriendships, they 

don’t check out someone’s 

physical attributes first, though 

they may send each other 

scanned images of themselves 

later or post avatars on their 

instant messengers and blogs. 

So who are we to argue 

that our generation nurtured far 

more meaningful and dynamic 

relationships only because ours 

did not need the intervention 

of machines? Of course, some 

may argue that relationships, 

whether of the filial, fraternal, 

or romantic kind, require the 

personal, face-to-face, human 

touch for them to endure the 

test of time. But even without 

this, relationships may thrive 

if there is one remaining 

constant: communication in 

whatever form and manner 

that generations may choose. 

That is why I can’t say I still 

have a relationship with 

my friends in high school. 

We haven’t been in touch 

for a long time, despite the 

emergence of the cellphone, 

the Net, the virtual chat rooms. 

The communication lines have 

been broken. The technology is 

there, but we have simply not 

used it. 

All these have led me 

musing over how technology 

would figure in my two 

young daughters’ future 

relationships. My eight-yearold 

and three-year-old will 

be teenagers sooner than I 

expect and will be exposed 

to a digital culture even more 

different from what we have 

now. Roch herself says that 

while relationships of all sorts 

are still possible offline, “it’s 

hard to communicate and 

maintain them without the use 

of new technologies because 

they are a major part of our 

generation.” If that’s the way it 

is today, my daughters could 

be looking at relationships 

that are highly wired—and 

wireless—and “forever on.” 

Well, so long as they don’t 

get too tied up as to greet their 

parents “good morning” in a 

chat room. 


“Buti na lang 

SSS member 

ako” 

SOCIAL 

SECURITY 

SYSTEM

GRASSROOTS GAME 

Jueteng has deep roots in Philippine village life. Its 

network of collectors come from the community, so 

do the cabos or chiefs who supervise them. It has 

existed for more than 100 years, and before the recent 

police crackdown, millions were betting on the illicit 

numbers game everyday. 

At the village level, jueteng is not seen as a syndicated 

crime, but as popular entertainment and distraction. 

Bettors make their wagers based on dreams, omens, 

and premonitions. In jueteng, numbers take on a 

mystical quality: the heavens send signs and favor 

those who read them well. 

Joe Galvez’s photos on this page show how jueteng 

bets are collected and added up in a small village 

somewhere in Central Luzon. There is nothing 

extraordinary about these scenes. Jueteng is in the 

realm of the everyday: to the plain folk who wager 

a few pesos on the game, it is both ordinary and 

magical. At the national level, though, jueteng is 

fodder for political scandal and ammunition that can 

be used to oust presidents. 

Finally, an attempt at an explanation. Some readers 

may be confused about our size. This year, i Report 

has come out in two sizes: the book-size version for 

No.1 and No. 2 and the magazine-size version you 

hold in your hand. The reason is simple: we started 

out thinking that we could stray away from the news 

and focus on long-term social, political, and lifestyle 

trends. But Gloriagate proved us so wrong. The tempo 

of the times required that we keep our readers abreast 

of current events. 

This is why we are giving up the less timebound, 

book-size i in favor of the more current, newsmagazine 

format. Our dealers have also asked that we keep to 

this size, as it is more visible on the newsstands and 

easier to sell. Our apologies for the confusion. 

BACK COVER PHOTOS: JOE GALVEZ 

FRONT COVER: 

ESTRADA PHOTO BY EY ACASIO/ 

MANILA STANDARD TODAY

i Report Issue No. 3 2005 - Philippine Center for Investigative ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?