BusinessMirror March 27, 2016

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Sunday, March 27, 2016

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Vol. 11 No. 169

CHRIST IS RISEN A family takes pictures with the statue of the Risen Christ at the Monasterio de Tarlac in San Jose, Tarlac. Christians the world over celebrate Easter Sunday today. MAU VICTA

Ex-Pangasinan solon, wife charged with plunder before Ombudsman B O G Correspondent

A

LCALA, Pangasinan—For allegedly misspending over P569 million in tobacco excise-tax shares from 2010 to 2012, former Rep. Mark Cojuangco of the province’s Fifth District is now facing plunder charges before the Office of the Ombudsman.

Income gap between poorest, richest Pinoys remains wide

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B C U. O

EXCLUSIVE

ESPITE President Aquino’s efforts to attain inclusive growth, the narrowing of the gap between the incomes of the richest and the poorest Filipinos remains slow under the current administration.

Data obtained by the BusinessMirror from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed the income growth of the richest Filipinos—those at the top 10 percent of the income bracket—is 11.35 times more than what the poorest, or the bottom 10 percent, earn.

Reducing income inequality is S “I G,” A

Tourists pour ₧1B into Samal Island’s coffers

₧569M

Tobacco excise-tax shares allegedly misspent by former Rep. Mark Cojuangco A group of tobacco farmers, belonging to the North and Central Luzon Tobacco Farmers Association Inc., filed on March 16 a complaint-affidavit against the former solon for violation of Republic Act (RA) 7080, plunder law; RA 3019, or the antigraft and corrupt practices law; and RA 6713, otherwise known as the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standard for Public Officials and Employees.

The farmers’ group, represented by its President Ruben Lagmay and Secretary-General Virginia Salta, also accused Cojuangco’s wife, Carmen Kimi, incumbent Fifth District congresswoman, of similar offenses.

In their complaint, Lagmay and Salta accused the Cojuangco couple of “conspiring to defraud the tobacco farmers of the proceeds of the S “P,” A

PESO EXCHANGE RATES

LOCAL tourists enjoy the pristine waters and white-sand beach of Talicud Island in Barangay Santa Cruz, Samal, Davao del Norte. NONIE REYES

B M T. C

Mindanao Bureau Chief

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AVAO CITY—Samal Island drew in P1 billion in tourism receipts in its coffers last year, bringing in the needed revenue to spur more interests and development.

The amount represents the conservative expenses that foreign and local visitors spent on the island’s food, accommodation, resort amenities and services last year, said Jennifer Cariaga, the chief tourism officer of the Island Garden City of Samal.

US 46.4930

JAPAN 0.4154

Last year 758,000 visitors were logged in to its 70 beach resorts and other tourism destinations, such as the Hamiguitan Falls, the cultured giant clams and the Guinness-entered fruit-bat caves inside the Monfort estate.

This was 100,000 more than the previous year’s 651,000 visitors, and at this rate, Samal Island authorities expect their first 1-million mark in tourists’ visits in 2018, Cariaga said.

Samal’s attraction is its proximity to Davao City, which can be reached through the 24-hour barge service in less than 30 minutes.

She said summer, school midterm break and Christmas holidays

UK 66.8337

HK 5.9973

CHINA 7.1638

are the common seasons for Samal visits. Weekends are equally full for its beach resorts.

Samal Island is also closely linked to the annual Visit Davao Fun Sale, a destination and shopping-spree event launched three years ago, which the island-tourism sector hopes would spur wider and more frequent visits to the island.

This summer also, a half-marathon event sponsored by an airline company would be held on the island on April 17. Organizers said the event is part of the Visit Philippines Year 2016.

Cariaga said a livelier tourism sector could also generate more opportunities for livelihood for local residents.

SINGAPORE 34.1860

SMC POWER IN ALBAY STILL REELING FROM INHERITED PROBLEMS B M M. U Correspondent

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EGAZPI CITY—Two years after buying the problematic Albay Electric Cooperative (Aleco), giant San Miguel Corp. (SMC) continues to steady the debt-ridden power cooperative serving 230,000 consumers in Albay.

Last year the SMC-owned Albay Power and Energy Corp.

(Apec) disconnected the power lines of consumers with months of accumulated unpaid power bills. These customers had supported the boycott move, spearheaded by the Aleco union members who were terminated by the new administration.

Among those disconnected were the Mariners Polytechnic Colleges Foundation (MPCF) in Legazpi City and the Redemptorist Church. The MPCF is owned by the family of retired Col. Dante Jimenez, chairman of the Volunteers Against Graft and Corruption, which, according to Apec records, had close to P2-million accumulated unpaid power bills equivalent to eight months.

Jimenez and the parish priest of the Legazpi Redemptorist Church strongly supported the boycott movement against Apec. Jimenez and the Redemptorist Church have lodged a complaint in court against Apec for illegal disconnection.

Aleco Labor Employees Union (ALEU) Vice President Ephraim de Vera said the 70

AUSTRALIA 35.2370

EU 52.2674

employees who were dismissed a few months before the Apec takeover in January 2014 have the Return-to-Work Order (RTWO) from the Department of Labor, issued in February 2014, but the concessionaire would not honor the order. He said that, with the RTWO, the dismissed employees have not been given duties and responsibilities, and have received no salary during the past two years.

De Vera said Apec continues to reel from the Aleco campaign to boycott payment of their bills and declared SMC’s acquisition of Aleco as both immoral and illegal. They said a petition filed by the ALEU for the contract revocation continues to be heard by the Energy Regulatory Commission.

De Vera is blaming local executives and the five Albay congressmen for endorsing the Aleco privatization movement. He said now they have conveniently disappeared from public view, despite the glaring failure of the concessionaire to deliver the promised “heavensent” power service. They also blamed Legazpi Bishop Joel Baylon, who was chairman of the discredited interim Aleco board created by the National Electrification Administration that formulated the privatization movement, guaranteeing that the privatization of Aleco was the only solution to save it from total collapse.

S “A,” A

SAUDI ARABIA 12.3991

Source: BSP (22 March 2016 )

NewsSunday BusinessMirror

A2 Sunday, March 27, 2016

Plunder…

C  

tobacco excise tax by taking undue advantage of their official position, authority, connection and influence.”

“We have the right to know where the money intended to ben-

efit us was spent,” Lagmay said in an interview after the filing of the complaint at the Office of the Ombudsman in Quezon City.

The complainants alleged that of the Cojuangcos’ P569million tobacco excise-tax shares, P503.7 million was appropriated for farm-to-market roads, palay-and-corn drying fa-

BusinessMirror

cility, repair and construction of small bridges, solar dryers, irrigation canals and purchase of farm equipment, among others, in the towns of Alcala, Santo Tomas, Sison and Villasis.

A portion of the tax shares from native- and burley-tobacco growing was also used in putting up a big dairy farm in Laoac,

Pangasinan, which closed shop recently after a year in operation, the complainants said.

Close to P1 billion was spent in the milk-farm project with other budgetary outlays the Cojuangco couple reportedly sourced from their Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), the National Dairy Authority and the Department of Agriculture.

Lagmay said the dairy farm was mismanaged by officials of a farmer’s cooperative that the Cojuangcos helped organize, composed mostly of business traders resulting in nonpayment of farmworkers and depletion of the stock of milking cows imported from Australia.

With no more milking cows in the barn, the farm was abandoned and is now a “white elephant,” Lagmay said.

Most of the projects transacted by the Cojuangco couple out of their shares from the tobaccoexcise tax were in violation of the provisions of the tobacco law, the complainants said in their affidavit submitted to the Ombudsman.

Under the law, projects funded by tobacco excise-tax shares are those engaged by farmers’ cooperatives that will enhance better quality of agricultural products and increase the productivity and income of farmers.

Also qualified for funding are livelihood projects, particularly the development of an alternative farming system to enhance farmers’ income, and agro-industrial initiatives that will enable tobacco farmers to manage or own business ventures, like cigarette manufacturing and by-product utilization.

The law on tobacco-excise tax mandates an 80-percent share for congressmen, and 10-percent share for governors and mayors.

In 2009, when he was a congressman, Cojuangco chaired the Congressional Oversight Committee on Comprehensive Tax Reform Program, a body that sponsored a measure empowering members of the House of Representatives to propose “relevant projects” in tobacco-producing towns within their respective congressional districts to be funded by the tobacco excise-tax shares.

Cojuangco was also behind the monetization scheme of the tobacco excise-tax shares to allow beneficiaries to use the fund, instead of waiting for the annual schedule of releases by the Department of Budget and Management.

Cojuangco is running for governor, while his wife is a reelectionist in the May elections.

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Albay…

C  

De Vera said Apec has yet to perfect its billing system as there are consumers complaining of erroneous billings and not receiving their bills for a year. A resident said during the past two years, the electric copperative issued billings that were months delayed, lumped together for two to three months, which he was forced to pay in full.

De Vera said that part of the privatization contract of Aleco was for SMC to settle Aleco’s close to P4-billion debts, which remain unsettled by SMC, and are earning a monthly interest of P50 million.

Apec collection efficiency remains below 50 percent, the Aleco union official said.

Apec General Manager Manuel Imperial said Apec had given much time for consumers to settle their bills on an easy installment basis during its first year of operation. He admitted difficulty by the concessioner because of allegations of sabotage on its database.

He said though that the billing system has improved tremendously as the operation is nearing perfection. He said Apec is now concerned about its more than P1billion power-supply obligations to San Miguel Energy Corp. because SMC has seemingly bowed out of its corporate mission to redeem Aleco from bankruptcy. Apec is also no longer experiencing the frequent brownouts and disconnections that consumers suffer under Aleco.

Imperial said the SMC is not running away from its obligations under the concession contract, but appealed to consumers to distance themselves from the “boycott Apec movement.” Apec needs to improve its collection efficiency to pay for its power supply that almost reached P1 billion since its acquisition by Aleco.

In endorsing the immediate privatization of Aleco in 2013, Albay Gov. Joey S. Salceda described the ailing Aleco as a “problem cooperative.” He said that unless privatized soonest, Albay’s power service would expire all the more.

In an effort to strengthen its operation against allegations of sabotage, Apec hired retired police officials, including police Col. Ely Bron, the deputy regional commander of Philippine National Police Bicol.

Also serving as Apec spokesman, Bron warned consumers supporting other agencies acting as operator of the present power firm that only Apec has the legal personality to operate the defunct Aleco.

He said payment of bills should be done in all Apec official collection offices and not at the alleged resurrected Aleco being run by the dismissed Aleco Union members.

In his two hours of daily radio program paid by Apec, Bron would counterattack any propaganda being waged by Apec detractors. The resurrected Aleco has been doing its duty of reconnecting power lines disconnected by Apec for unpaid bills upon the request of consumers involved, de Vera said.

De Vera added that the dismissed Aleco employees continue extending their support to consumers alleging “harassment” by Apec. He asked consumers to continue supporting the resurrected Aleco by paying their bills on time at Aleco’s collection centers. The new Aleco is headed by lawyer Bartolome Rayco, who defended the resurfaced Aleco with the legal personality to operate in lieu of the Aleco consumers assembly held early last year, which elected a new set of board of directors. Rayco is also the president of the Aleco Multi-Sectoral Stakeholders Organization, who led in filing a case against the privatization of Aleco.

Bron dismissed the insinuations of the Aleco Union saying the National Electrification Administration has given its official stand that only Apec has the legal personality to operate the already privatized Aleco.

Income gap…

C  

part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 10 which aims to reduce inequality within and among countries by 2030.

SDG 10 aims to “progressively achieve and sustain income growth of the bottom 40 percent of the population at a rate higher than the national average.”

In the Philippines the disparity ratio of the income of the top 10 percent and the bottom 10 percent, however, declined by 0.72 percentage points from 12.07 percent posted in the first semester of 2012.

Poverty reduction may have been faster under the previous administration since the decline in the ratio of the income of the top 10 percent and bottom 10 percent in the first semester of 2009 was larger at 1.05 percentage points.

The ratio of income disparity between the top 10 percent and bottom 10 percent declined to 12.06 in 2009, from 13.12 in 2006.

“We are seeing improvements in income distribution. Per-capita income of the bottom 30 percent of households grew much faster.

In fact, it was over 20 percent from 2012 to 2015 than the average income of all households, which grew by 15.3 percent,” Economic Planning Secretary Emmanuel F. Esguerra said.

“Certainly, a lot more needs to be done and we cannot be content with these achievements. Despite these improved numbers, the decline in poverty could have been more,” he said.

The Aquino administration said improvements in poverty incidence nationwide to 26.3 percent in the first semester of 2015, from 27.9 percent in the same period of 2012, was largely due to the expansion of its social-service spending, most notably the Conditional Cash-Transfer (CCT) Program.

The CCT Program, locally known as the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), has grown in budget by more than 500 percent since 2010, and now covers more than 4 million beneficiary households from only 630,000 in 2009.

The government noted that it has scaled up its real per-capita spending for social services by 13 percent on a year-on-year basis.

This is significant, the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) said, since public spending on social services between 2000 and 2003 contracted on an annual basis.

Between 2004 and 2010, the government’s social spending only increased 1.1 percent in real percapita terms.

Last week Esguerra said poverty incidence in the first semester of 2015 could have been lower had it not been for the high prices of basic food items, natural calamities, such as Supertyphoon Yolanda (international code name Haiyan) and the Bohol earthquake, and armed conflict, such as the Zamboanga siege.

Esguerra said food items, such as rice, remained high. He said that, while rice prices were lower compared to 2014, it remained 20 percent higher than its price in 2012.

The impact of Yolanda and other shocks on poverty incidence was most felt in Region 8 or Eastern Visayas, where poverty incidence has been on the rise since 2006.

Poverty incidence in Region 8 increased to 47.3 percent in the first semester of 2015, from 45.4 percent in 2012; 43.8 percent in 2009; and 41.4 percent in 2006.

The highest poverty-incidence rate in the region is Northern Samar where poverty increased to 61.6 percent in 2015, from 53.1 percent in 2012.

A6 Sunday, March 27, 2016 • Editor: Angel R. Calso

Opinion BusinessMirror

editorial

Internet provider failings and e-banking safeguards

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T this time, we feel extremely in need of relief from two developments in our technological environment: One in the electronic communications sector and the other in the banking sector.

In the e-communications sector, we thought all along that we were among nations advanced in the field, only to discover that we are, in fact, among the most backward. It took the possible entry of the Australian e-firm Telstra to expose this uncomfortable fact. It turns out that our so-called Internet service providers—the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., Globe Telecom, Bayantel Inc. and Sky Cable Corp.—have been taking advantage of their oligopolistic position at our expense.

Lately, these telecom companies, tested by the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) as to their rate of compliance with their commitments, were found to be 50-percent to 78-percent compliant. That they seemed satisfied with such dismal performance is confirmatory of their technological mediocrity, if you ask us. That NTC seems to be impressed by this performance seems to us truly baffling, to say the least.

In the banking sector, $81 million can apparently enter Rizal Commercial Banking Corp.’s (RCBC) financial stream, with only one lowly branch manager being aware of it. We are not underplaying hackers’ criminal genius, but how can a bank that claims first-class technological savvy be so backward as to become the recipient and distributor of a huge amount of stolen money without its knowledge? If this thievery gives the bank an unsavory reputation, so be it.

But the problem is that this electronic theft will also disgrace the entire country in the eyes of the world’s banking community. Already, we understand that we are being described as the money-laundering haven in this part of the world.

What are we to do in the face of these disgraceful developments? We can punish the Internet service providers by withdrawing patronage from them and deal with RCBC in a similar fashion. For the sake of our social cohesion and international standing, we can refrain from such an act. Instead, we can call upon the newly created Competition Commission to bring into our Internet industry additional competition, if not from Australia, from elsewhere. This should break the comfortable indifference of our Internet service providers.

As to the bank in question, we can leave it to the tender mercies of its customers and focus, instead, on the larger picture.

As became obvious in the Senate hearings, we need to liberalize, if not abolish, the bank-secrecy law, to remove the hiding places of unscrupulous depositors and possible internal partners in crime. This should also give us the opportunity of unmasking the opponents of such action in Congress and meting out to them appropriate political punishments. We also need to expand the coverage of the Anti-Money Laundering Act, by including the casinos in its ambit.

Right now, we are in psychological stress. Isn’t there any good news coming from anywhere to relieve us of this breath-choking predicament?

Since 2005

BusinessMirror A broader look at today’s business

Presidential debates on Comelec format were just a waste of time

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OR example, the four presidentiables (VP Binay, Poe, Roxas and Duterte) in last Sunday’s debate were trapped in a confrontational action-reaction cycle, and a thoughtless and bigoted bantering on themselves in a useless Comelec format that merely wasted the time of millions of television viewers.

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D

By Cecilio T. Arillo

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Gospel

S, M , 

Like many others who watched the debate, I was really glad Luchi Cruz-Valdez, TV 5 anchorwoman, did not suffer a heart attack or a stroke. For me, it was just a big joke, and nothing more.

Mind you, a real honest-to-goodness presidential debate is a serious matter that should be designed to test a candidate’s ability in governance or statecraft, in specific details, such issues as laws, politics, economics, sociology, foreign affairs, national security and public order.

This is so, because in the order of precedence established by the 1987 Constitution, the most important, compelling and exciting position is the presidency.

The coveted job is actually a mixture of several factors: How to deal with Congress, the Judiciary and the people; how to strike a balance between hypocritical acts in dealing with corrupt officials, politicians and businessmen; and how to apply moral and ethical standards on other people in a situation where convincing, cajoling and hustling are needed, requiring the exercise of flexibility, creativity, understanding and competitive intelligence to survive the day.

This is not just a simple case of governance and propaganda mileage.

Think of it: The information flowing into the inner circles of Malacañang is astounding in its volume and com-

N

How does a President remain in command of the State (and its four elements: people, government, territory and sovereignty), so that he can move from one issue to another in an orderly manner, ask the right questions in advance and be responsive to public expectation?

No President can do the job alone.

He must be guided with the right combination of policies and be able to call upon a talented pool of men and women in the civilian bureaucracy, supported by the members of the police and military organizations.

plexity, and the potential for blunder is always lurking there to trap the President and aggravate his problem.

For instance, the President may, on days or weeks, have to cope with difficult problems on the economy, energy; the size of the defense budget; types of tactical and strategic plans to stifle insurgency and criminality; how to deal with anxious businessmen; the media and the public that are always looking at what the Chief Executive or Commander in Chief is doing on various issues.

Where and when does the President find time to deal with all these problems, to say nothing of other issues, themselves not so easy to meet and master?

And how does a President remain in command of the State (and its four elements: people, government, territory and sovereignty), so that he can move from one issue to another in an orderly manner, ask the right questions in advance and be responsive to public expectation?

No President can do the job alone.

He must be guided with the right combination of policies and be able to call upon a talented pool of men and

OW, on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. So she ran, and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid Him.” Peter then came out with the other disciple, and they went toward the tomb. They both ran, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first;

women in the civilian bureaucracy, supported by the members of the police and military organizations.

In the final analysis, the President can bring them together as a team, combining all their talents to produce a cohesive and responsive bureaucracy, certainly not the kind of bureacracy that increases in number of temporary committees, commissions or task forces every time there is a crisis and, thus, inordinately expand the size of the government and the budget.

Looking back in history, some presidents had merely wasted the country’s time and resources, creating and managing crises, instead of shaping the future and the attendant ills of plunder, corruption, insurgencies, tax evasion, smuggling, carnapping, kidnapping, killing of journalists and the breakdown of morality, peace and order compound the problem.

Whether personalities come to overshadow policies or are submerged beneath them and whether the inevitable tensions and squabbles among contending officials, all claiming dedication to the nation’s service, but with different views on how to achieve them that may lead only to paralysis at the top, is partly a matter of strong leadership. But it is also essentially a matter of organization and strategy.

We should bear in mind that the President has a covenant with the people, and this is clearly written in his oath of office: “…obey and defend the Constitution, execute the laws and do justice to everyone.”

A President, therefore, must be judged daily based on his oath of office, and not on the basis of looks, wallets and popularity surveys.

To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@ gmail.com

and stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in.

Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; he saw the linen cloths lying, and the napkin, which had been on His head, not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not know the scripture, that He must rise from the dead.— JOHN 20:1-9

Opinion BusinessMirror

opinion@businessmirror.com.ph

@Final unbelievable

F

ILIPINOS are scourging themselves over the international crime committed in—get this—New York, not Makati. The crime could have been aborted right there in New York, but it was not.

F F

By Teddy Locsin Jr.

Following a key principle of crime detection—that in homicide, the butler did it, and in fraud, the victim most likely perpetrated it—the well-educated know that the victim here probably did it or was in on it, an inside job. The US banking system did nothing to stop it. The European system fast-tracked it.

Neither the New York Fed— from which the funds were taken —nor the Bank of New York Mellon—to which the Fed wired the funds, and which wired the funds forward to the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) and a Sri Lankan “ faandation”—neither could be bothered to make a phone call when the Bangladesh central bank computers shut down on the day of the robbery. And so allegedly vanished—or not (we have only their word for it)—$100 million of

Bangladeshi funds, held in a New York Federal bank account.

Access to that bank account is impossible without Bangladeshi user IDs. Stories of malware are just stories to cover up the weaknesses of the US banks.

The discovery of those user IDs by a cybercrime expert led to his kidnapping in broad daylight.

Bangladeshi police refuse to look for him. After the funds in the US Fed were wired to the Bank of New York Mellon, the Brussels-based fund-transfer system called SWIFT kicked in to wire the funds at light speed to RCBC and a Sri Lankan “faandation.” Indeed, swift is how you must be if the hand is to be faster than the eye can see. SWIFT is composed of international bankers, which says it all. Eeeeewwww. It is not compliant with antimoneylaundering requirements. Indeed, the Brussels sprouted SWIFT is a tool for money laundering. SWIFT is a virtual getaway car designed by a Europe awash with Russian cash.

The money wired to a Sri Lankan “faandation” was caught in time.

Sri Lankans know English more than they are compelled to speak only Tamil—or Tagalog, as the case

Coming to know Christ

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B O R. B | TNS Forum

ATHOLICS notoriously know nothing about Bibles, and I was a good Catholic.

I’d heard little snippets at Mass, but I never read anything out of an actual Bible until, at age 18, I decided to try it.

I did realize that the stuff about Jesus was in the New Testament, so I flipped through the preliminary material and eventually got to the Four Gospels. Great. I would read one of those. I saw right away that Matthew and Luke were out of the question—too long. Mark was shorter than John, so I made my choice: I’d read Mark’s Gospel.

I received the shock of my life.

This was not a series of “passages” or quotable quotes you slip into Sunday Mass and call “the Gospel.” This was a story. In fact, my first impression was that it was very much an adventure story. I was reading the tale of the one I called Son of God. I barely knew the guy.

Mark did not begin with babies, mangers or singing angels, just a dirty, insect-eating wild man named John knee-deep in a river screaming that it was time everybody wised up.

I soon learned that one of Mark’s favorite themes was screaming. Everybody screams—townsfolk, possessed people, demons, pigs, even Jesus, and more often than you’d guess.

So, after the wild man, John, makes clear that something big is on the way, there He is, no fanfare, walking right into the Jordan. John says, “He’s the man,” and the clouds part and Jesus is sort of forcibly nudged out into the desert for 40 days, Moses-like. Then He is off from town to town, grabbing disciples along the way. They and Jesus hit a town, head right to the synagogue, and Jesus goes up to the pulpit. (You’ll have to bear with me; I was picturing a Catholic Church here. I even imagined a crucifix behind Jesus. I now see that this would likely have startled him.) So, he begins preaching and, yes, just as I warned you, a man starts screaming. The man is possessed by more than one demon and they are loud.

Jesus says, “Be silent and come out.” The second part they do; silent, not so much. Turns out the demons all know Jesus is the Son of God; later, we find out the people are all scratching their heads saying, “Hey, who is this fellow?”

It struck me funny. I think Mark meant this to be funny. People and

may be. That is why they could tell that “foundation” is not spelled with an “a.”

Thanks to SWIFT, the wired loot ended up swiftly in RCBC, a bank branch to be specific. The branch credited it to bank accounts opened just a year before by the branch manager. Thence, the money went to a Philippine moneychanger and to Philippine corporations that happen to own casinos. Being corporations, doing other things than just dealing cards, one would think they are covered by the Anti-Money Laundering Act (Amla), especially since one is publicly listed. If they are not covered, that is not the fault of Congress but of a corrupt Department of Finance, which wrote the rules and regulations that implement Amla. The law itself, crafted by the likes of Jimmy Lopez (the workhorse), Tony Roman, Celso Lobregat (who put in the prohibition against using Amla for political persecution) and myself (punishing media at the drop of a hat—I love doing that), was described by the US Treasury observer as the best of its kind.

But now an illiterate wants to amend it. Therefore, a demand to

include Philippine casinos in Amla must be sponsored by the Las Vegas and the Macau casinos taking a beating from ours.

The wired funds were encashed and finally disbursed by the RCBC bank branch to various individuals whose identities are fake and who have vanished. And yet, her testimony in executive session was described

by Tito Sotto as totally accurate. That means, he compared her testimony to what only a co-conspirator could know—meaning Sotto.

The money was hauled away, not in armored cars, but in the back of a Lexus or a pickup or maybe even a sports car to which one bank executive is partial. I don’t know what it is about sports cars and ugly men, but there it is.

For all this, the Filipino people are expected to feel remorse: By the New York Fed, which won’t admit liability for a system so easily hacked;

by Brussels, which is big time into money laundering; and by Dhaka, capital of the poorest country with the “crookedest” officials on the planet. And yet, after all this, it is only we Filipinos who are to blame.

It is only we Filipinos who must reform our banking system; even if it

was only Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor Amando M. Tetangco, the greatest central banker in the solar system, who took the call of the Bangladesh central bank governor because the latter had no one else to turn to; New York was not taking his calls.

This investigation has been inaccurately reported by native media, which tries to portray the branch manager as another “victim.” It is only Dax Lucas of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, who broke the story, who’s gotten it right; even as it is only the Financial Times that’s told the whole story. The foreigner who gives me a different story will catch something else from me.

Or maybe this is just how Filipinos observe Holy Week by selfcrucifixion. But do not let me catch a foreigner holding the nails and the hammer, because he will be speared in the side by me. As for RCBC, it laid out the welcome mat for this sort of shenanigan—but I will save that for another day. For now, suffice it to say that in a very big room, crammed with very white guys and very dark men in the earth color suits to which they are partial, it is the little yellow guy who is the least guilty.

demons both see Jesus fulfill all the scriptures with amazing healings, food multiplications, water walking, tsunami taming, and the demons say, “Son of God, check!” The people say, “What manner of man is this?”

Like with the pigs. Jesus sees a man have a perfectly described epileptic seizure. I knew this because my brother had epilepsy. To people of that time, it would seem like possession by a legion of demons. So Jesus casts out the legion, and the people ask Him politely to send them into the nearby pigs. Jesus obliges. But not really. The pigs—2,000 of them —scramble down a hill and drown in the river. Screaming.

Have you ever seen 2,000 pigs careen down a hill and drown? Me neither, but we are certainly talking major ruckus. I laughed, but the townsfolk, who always seem to be loitering around, come up, tap Jesus on the shoulder, and say, “Um, would You mind kind of getting out of our town?” For some reason, the 2,000 squealing, drowning pigs made them nervous. Not to mention, the formerly possessed guy they had chained up was now calm as a cucumber.

It was like that everywhere. Jesus enters a nice little village probably during siesta time and starts some commotion or other. Most

often, he is healing sick people.

Jesus raised another kind of commotion. The religious leaders got leery of Him because He looked like competition and He wasn’t one of them. He broke rules and then said He was actually keeping the rules better than they were. He acted as if the Sabbath was for taking time off from hard work, not one more day when you had to watch your every move. The Sabbath thing seemed like a way bigger deal than I would have figured if I had any basis for figuring such things.

Later on, I discovered that Jesus was reforming Sabbath observance, not abolishing it. In an era when laborers were near slaves, the Sabbath, one day a week to rest, was all that stood between them and death by work. But even during that first shocking read, I realized that Jesus saw Himself as the champion of the weak, the vulnerable, the hungry and those with only a mite to give.

Basically, it seemed to me that Jesus was cleaning up—exorcising demons and chasing thieves from the temple—and making things whole by healing people of leprosy, hemophilia, epilepsy, glaucoma, birth defects. He was cleaning house, our house, our planet. He was cleansing us, too, and then He turned to those

who wanted to follow Him and said: “What are you standing around for?

Grab an apron and rubber gloves, and get to work.” That’s not a quote, but it’s what I heard.

In the last half century I’ve caught glimpses of His gentle hand here and there. On a horrible night when I thought my baby daughter was going to die, I did think it was His tunic passing me, and the night got a little less frightening. Mostly, though, I hear Him in the distance asking my help in His massive cleanup operation. I wish I could say I’ve done better than average.

The cross haunts me, our everpresent impulse to kill that which might make us clean, just because we like being unclean or we have a competing notion of what clean is.

Whatever He was doing for us, He surely was no quitter. His closest friends believed that even death didn’t stop Him; there were plenty of aprons for everyone.

I am very much part of the adventure now, and it is a joy. Still, I am insistently left with a single question, one I know I’ll never tire of asking and striving to answer. I turn to the villager beside me, elbow him gently, furrow my brow a bit, and wonder once again, “What manner of man is this?”

and classroom practice.

“Our mission as adults is to protect our children from politicians,” one Finnish childhood education professor told me. “We also have an ethical and moral responsibility to tell businesspeople to stay out of our building.”

In fact, any Finnish citizen is free to visit any school whenever they like, but her message was clear: Educators are the ultimate authorities on education, not bureaucrats, and not technology vendors. Skeptics might claim that the Finnish model would never work in America’s inner-city schools, which instead need boot-camp drilling and discipline, Stakhanovite workloads, relentless standardized test prep and screen-delivered testing.

But what if the opposite is true? What if high-poverty students are the children most urgently in need of the benefits that, for example, American parents of means obtain for their children in private schools, things that Finland delivers on a national public scale—highly qualified, highly respected and highly professionalized teachers who conduct personalized one-on-one instruction; manageable

class sizes; a rich, developmentally correct curriculum; regular physical activity; little or no low-quality standardized tests and the toxic stress and wasted time and energy that accompanies them; daily assessments by teachers; and a classroom atmosphere of safety, collaboration, warmth and respect for children as cherished individuals?

Why should high-poverty students deserve anything less? One day last November, when the first snow came to my part of Finland, I heard a commotion outside my university faculty office window, which is close to the teacher training school’s outdoor play area. I walked over to investigate. The field was filled with children savoring the first taste of winter amid the pine trees. My son was out there somewhere, but the children were so buried in winter clothes and moving so fast that I couldn’t spot him.

The noise of children laughing, shouting and singing as they tumbled in the fresh snow was close to deafening. “Do you hear that?” asked the recess monitor, a special-education teacher wearing a yellow safety smock. “That,” she said proudly, “is the voice of happiness.”

Why Finland has the best schools

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B W D | Los Angeles Times/TNS Forum

HE Harvard education professor Howard Gardner once advised Americans, “Learn from Finland, which has the most effective schools and which does just about the opposite of what we are doing in the United States.”

Following his recommendation, I enrolled my 7-year-old son in a primary school in Joensuu, Finland, which is about as far east as you can go in the European Union before you hit the guard towers of the Russian border. Okay, I wasn’t just blindly following Gardner—I had a position as a lecturer at the University of Eastern Finland for a semester.

But the point is that, for five months, my wife, my son and I experienced a stunningly stress-free, and stunningly good, school system. Finland has a history of producing the highest global test scores in the Western world, as well as a trophy case full

of other recent No. 1 global rankings, including most literate nation.

In Finland, children don’t receive formal academic training until the age of 7. Until then, many are in day care and learn through play, songs, games and conversation. Most children walk or bike to school, even the youngest.

School hours are short and homework is generally light. Unlike in the United States, where many schools are slashing recess, schoolchildren in Finland have a mandatory 15-minute outdoor free-play break every hour of every day.

Fresh air, nature and regular physical activity breaks are considered engines of learning. According to one Finnish maxim, “There is no bad weather. Only inadequate clothing.”

One evening I asked my son what he did for gym that day. “They sent us into the woods with a map and compass and we had to find our way out,” he said.

Finland doesn’t waste time or money on low-quality mass standardized testing.

Instead, children are assessed every day, through direct observation, checkins and quizzes by the highest-quality “personalized learning device” ever

Sunday, March 27, 2016 A7

created—flesh-and-blood teachers. In class, children are allowed to have fun, giggle and daydream from time to time.

Finns put into practice the cultural mantras I heard over and over: “Let children be children,” “The work of a child is to play,” and “Children learn best through play.”

The emotional climate of the typical classroom is warm, safe, respectful and highly supportive. There are no scripted lessons and no quasi-martial requirements to walk in straight lines or sit up straight. As one Chinese student-teacher studying in Finland marveled to me, “In Chinese schools, you feel like you’re in the military. Here, you feel like you’re part of a really nice family.” She is trying to figure out how she can stay in Finland permanently.

In the United States, teachers are routinely degraded by politicians, and thousands of teacher slots are filled by temps with six or seven weeks of summer training. In Finland teachers are the most trusted and admired professionals next to doctors, in part because they are required to have master’s degrees in education with specialization in research

Sports

MANILA Polo Club’s Tommy Bitong (left) and Brunei’s Prince Abdul Qawi battle it out on the field.

BusinessMirror

A8 | S

UNDAY A , MARCH 27, 2016 AY mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph sports@businessmirror.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao Asst. Editor: Joel Orellana

Friendly showdown

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HE Philippines and Brunei engaged in a friendly polo match, dubbed the Mabuhay Cup 2016, at the Manila Polo Club’s (MPC) Enrique Zobel Field in Makati City, with MPC and the Royal Family of Brunei splitting their two matches.

MPC, behind Iñigo Zobel, won the first game, 6-3, but yielded the second match to the Princess Azemah Ni’matul Bolkiah-led team, 3-5, of the event sponsored by Dockers.

“Dockers Philippines is so happy to be part of an important event like this.

It’s such an honor for us to be able to welcome the Royal Family of Brunei and be instrumental in strengthening the two countries’ friendship by sponsoring this friendly polo match,” Kaths Laudit, Dockers Philippines marketing head, said.

As a support, Dockers Philippines gave an exclusive offer to all MPC members, which entitles them to a 30-percent discount on all items from March 1 to April 6 at any Dockers store nationwide. The event celebrate was part of Dockers’s 30th anniversary celebration.

The Mabuhay Cup 2016, which celebrates tradition and heritage of the two Southeast Asian countries and their good relationship in different fields, was attended by MPC board of directors, members, top polo players and Brunei’s Royal Family and their entourage.

SPIETH

B R B The Associated Press

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Exciting pairs in Match Play

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USTIN, Texas—Defending champion Rory McIlroy will face a player he knows very little about in the Dell Match Play.

Jordan Spieth knows one of his opponents all too well.

Spieth, the former Texas Longhorn and crowd favorite at Austin Country Club, wound up in the same group as longtime friend Justin Thomas.

Both are 22 and they have been friends since 2007, when they were selected to represent the US in the Evian Junior Masters. Spieth beat him in a high-profile match in the National Colliegiate Athletic Association Championship at Riviera in 2012, which the Longhorns won, and has gone on to two majors and reach the No. 1 world ranking.

The 64 players were broken into four groups based on this week’s ranking, and one player was chosen by lottery to fill out the 16 four-man grou ps. The draw was held at the Paramount Theater, and Ben Crenshaw picked the names out of the bowl for Spieth’s group.

“Jordan probably won’t talk to me the rest of the week,” Crenshaw said. “They’ve played a lot of golf together. Obviously, they know each other very well. They’re admirers of each other.”

Spieth and Thomas already have played together three times this year—the opening two rounds at Riviera, and the third round at Doral.

They won’t play each other at the Match Play until Friday. Also in their group are Victor Dubuisson of France and Jamie Donaldson of Wales.

McIlroy won last year at Harding Park with three close calls before beating Gary Woodland in the championship match. He is the only player among the top 6 in the world who has yet to win this year, and hopes this week will spark him in his final tournament before the Masters.

In his group is Smylie Kaufman, who won his first Progessional Golfers’ Association Tour event in Las Vegas in just his second start as a member.

McIlroy also has Kevin Na and Thorbjorn Olesen.

“Thorbjorn is a good friend of mine. The first time I played with Thorbjorn was in Egypt in 2010. We’ve got a little bit of history,” McIlroy said.

“Smylie, I really don’t know that much about. I know that he got off to a great start in his PGA Tour career. As I said, no matter who you draw in this event, you know you’re going to get a tough match.”

The 18-hole match play switched to group last year, moving away from the singleelimination format that made this event aggravating to those who lost early, and difficult on the sponsors because top players often were gone by the weekend.

This year, however, matches during group play can end in a draw. AP

AJOR league teams steeply increased the money spent on young players last year, when several Cuban prospects got big-money deals. Still, the overall percentage of revenue devoted to players has remained relatively stable for a decade.

Financial data released by Major League Baseball (MLB) to The Associated Press showed the big leaguers’ share of net revenue was between 48.5 percent and 51.7 percent each year since 2006.

Dollars spent on amateur players and minor leaguers rose by 29 percent last year—four times the increase in big league compensation.

Counting signing bonuses for amateurs and minor league salaries, revenue devoted to players has ranged from 53.7 percent in 2012 to 57.5 percent last year.

“The data shows that the percentage of our revenue that has been paid to players has been fairly consistent,” said Dan Halem, MLB’s chief legal officer. “Obviously, it’s a free market and clubs can spend however much they choose. We’ve seen an uptick in spending on the amateur side, and on the major league side it fluctuates slightly up and down but it has stayed within a range.”

Scott Boras, the most prominent player agent, said at the general managers’ meetings in November that the players’ share of revenue had dropped to 43 percent. Boras is including gross revenue from MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM), which formed in 2000, and the MLB Network, which launched in 2009 and is two-thirds owned by MLB. The expenses of running those companies are deducted to determine their net revenue.

During his final season as baseball commissioner, Bud Selig said revenue would exceed

$9 billion in 2014, but that was the gross figure.

“We believe that using net income for MLBAM and the network is appropriate for assessing the percentage of revenue that owners pay to players,” Halem said. “Owners only can spend the net profits of those businesses, not gross revenues which they never receive.”

MLB said net revenue rose from $7.16

billion in 2013 to $7.79 billion in 2014, and to $8.15 billion last year.

Dollars devoted to big leaguers climbed from $3.59 billion in 2013 to $3.87 billion in 2014, and to $4.15 million last year; the amount on amateurs and minor leaguers was $420 million annually in 2013 and 2014, then jumped to $540 million last year, when several Cuban defectors and young

Dominicans received large signing bonuses.

Boston agreed to pay $31.5 million alone to Yoan Moncada, a 19-year-old Cuban second baseman. Three other Cuban prospects agreed to bonuses of $8 million or more: Arizona pitcher Yoan Lopez, Los Angeles Angels shortstop Roberto Baldoquin and Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Pablo Fernandez.

RELATIVELY STABLE

NFL mulls over regular-season fame in China in ‘18 season

The MLB Players Association has access to MLB’s figures, and union head Tony Clark described the percentage devoted to players as “fairly constant.”

“Two or three percentage points one way or the other is always room for improvement,” he said of the fluctuations.

Boras did not want to comment on MLB’s figures, but did say he thought gross revenue should be used to determine increases in teams’ signing bonus pools for amateur players. The draft figures to be a key discussion matter in talks for a collective bargaining agreement to succeed the labor deal that expires on December 1. Under the 2012-2016 agreement, the pools increase annually at the rate of the rise in total industry revenue—defined as MLB did in these figures.

“I trust in negotiations of the draft itself, and this is a union matter, that attention is paid to outside sources and expenses affecting the amount of money that teams can spend on drafted players pursuant to a calculation of net versus gross revenues,”Boras said.

In other sports, the players’ percentage is defined as part of salary caps. National Football League players are guaranteed 47 percent of defined revenue, while National Basketball Association players receive 49 percent to 51 percent of basketball related income and National Hockey League players get 50 percent of hockey related revenues.

Despite the lack of a cap, MLB teams appear to be able to successfully match their player spending with predicted revenue.

“They have a pretty good sense depending on team performance of what their revenue streams are going to be over the next three to four years,” Halem said, “and they budget accordingly.”

THE overall percentage of revenue »devoted to players has remained relatively stable for a decade. AP

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OCA RATON, Florida—The National Football League (NFL) could be headed to China in a couple of years. For a regularseason game, no less.

The league is looking into playing a game in China as early as the 2018 season. A detailed analysis of how much interest there would be in such a game in the world’s most populous country is under way, and is being discussed this week at the owners’ meetings. But few details, including which Chinese city the league will target, have been settled.

Quietly, several teams have expressed a willingness to be involved in a game in China,

though the logistics would be more challenging than participating in annual regular-season series in London.

For one, heading to China after playing a Sunday game and then suiting up again the following Sunday could be problematic considering the hefty time difference and travel involved.

This year the NFL will stage three games in London and return to Mexico for a regular-season game last November. The London matches will feature Washington against Cincinnati and Indianapolis facing Jacksonville at Wembley Stadium, the usual venue for NFL games, with the Bengals and Jaguars as hosts. The Giants face the

Rams at Twickenham Stadium, a rugby ground being used for the first time with the Rams as host.

On November 21 Oakland will host Houston at Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, the first NFL game there since 2005, when Arizona beat San Francisco 31-14 before 103,467 fans.

The NFL had planned to play a preseason game in China once before, in 2007 in Beijing, but it was canceled. A trip to China would be the longest for the NFL, which has staged exhibition games in Japan and Australia. Preseason games were played in Tokyo in 1976, 1989 to 1996, 1998, 2000, 2003 and 2005. One match was played in Osaka in 2002. AP

‘Magnifico’ eyes breakout win

B STREET BASEBALL

Two kids play their own version of baseball—one-on-one and with an unconventional board (not a bat) and a tennis ball. The shot was taken by BUSINESSMIRROR chief photographer Nonilon Reyes just outside the walls of the historic Rizal Memorial Baseball Stadium at the corner of Adriatico and Pablo Ocampo Streets in Manila over the weekend.

OHOL pride Mark “Magnifico” Magsayo is hoping to wield the upset ax when he fights a more experienced American in the undercard of the Nonito Donaire Jr.-Zsolt Bedak title fight on April 23 at the Cebu City Sports Center.

Magsayo, parading a perfect 13-win record with 10 knockouts, will be staking his unblemished record to climb the featherweight ladder against Chris Avalos (26-4, 19 knockouts), who lost in a title fight for the International

Boxing Federation super-bantamweight belt against Carl Frampton in February last year.

“Focus lang ako sa training ngayon. Hard training talaga ang ginagawa namin para sa laban na ito,” Magsayo told the BUSINESSMIRROR in a phone interview.

Magsayo will be facing Avalos who had mixed fortunes in his last two fights. He booked a unanimous-decision win against Rey Perez but absorbed a technical knockout loss to unbeaten Oscar Valdez of Mexico.

The 20-year-old Magsayo beat Eduard Montoya of Mexico via unanimous decision only last month in Cebu. He dropped the Mexican in the seventh round, but Montoya managed to finish the 10-round bout for the vacant World Boxing Organization Youth featherweight crown.

The ALA Boxing Gym standout Magsayo said he is confident to deliver another impressive win in front of Filipino fans.

“Nasa kundisyon ako at hindi tumaas naman ang timbang ko,” he said. Ramon Rafael Bonilla