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thursday - august 8, 2013
Persistence pays
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THINK
hink a minute…You know that overnight success A Minute usually takes at least 10 years? By Jhan Tiafau Hurst One ma n sa id , “My overnight success was the longest night of my life. I spent many days and nights just getting there!” Remember, “Rome was not built in a day.” Many people are waiting for their ship to come in…when they’ve not even sent it out of the harbor. You see, winners simply do what losers don’t want to do. And they keep doing it until they get the success they want. Success is mostly just hanging on after others have let go! Or as one guy put it: “Big shots are just little shots who kept on shooting.” So the most important trip you’ll ever make is when you go the extra mile. Many people who failed did not know how close they were to success when they gave up. People don’t actually fail, they just quit too easily. One guy said: “The secret to success is to start from scratch—and to keep on scratching.” So don’t quit trying just because your trying times are hard. The great inventor, Thomas Edison, tried a certain experiment hundreds of times, but it still did not work. So his assistant said to him: “It’s too bad that we did all that work without any results. But Edison replied: “Oh, we have lots of results! We now know 700 things that won’t work!” Never forget, delay does not always mean denial. If we hold out and hold on, we can accomplish almost anything. The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said: “Never, never, never, never give up!” A nd t he A mer ica n President Ca lv i n C ool idge made this statement: “Nothing can bring success like persistence. Talent cannot, for there are many talented people hurst/PAGE 7
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Making it harder for whistleblowers in RP
IFE’S INSPIRATIONS: “… Just as it pleased the Lord to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you…” (Deuteronomy 28:63, the Holy Bible). -ooo IT DOES NOT PAY TO EXPOSE OIL SMUGGLING? I agree with lawyer Dante Vargas, a former Ombudsman prosecutor, that it would have been a lot better if his client, Felicito Mejorado, cooperated with oil smugglers, instead of reporting their smuggling activities to the government, considering the refusal of Budget Secretary Florencio Abad and Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima to pay the reward money due Mejorado. Mejorado was supposed to receive some P272 million as a reward from the government for information that led to the busting of an oil smuggling syndicate, but, up to now, he has been paid only about P68 million. Abad, in particular, is said to be refusing to release the rest of the reward money to Mejorado, even if the money was already released by the National Treasury to the Department of Budget. The point of Vargas is therefore well-taken: if Mejorado did not squeal on the oil smuggling, and instead cooperated with the smugglers, he would have earned much more than the P272 million that he is to be paid with. Now, the question is: why are Abad and the Finance Department refusing to pay? They want to give the message that it does not pay to expose oil smuggling under the Aquino
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government? akampi -oooMo A ng Batas MAKING IT HARDER By Atty. Batas Mauricio FOR WHISTLEBLOWERS IN RP: Because of what is happ en i ng to Mejor ado, who else will dare expose s mu g g l i n g a c t i v i t i e s i n the Philippines if the very government officials who are supposed to fight smuggling themselves are acting against whistleblowers, unjustifiably at t hat, pa r t icu la rly in w it h hold i ng t he re w a rd money due them, which has already been made available anyway? It would have been alright if there was a valid reason for refusing to pay the whistleblowers. But then, in the case of Mejorado, his right to be paid was already recognized by this government earlier, since he had been given an initial payment of about P68 million. T he sudden ref u sa l of Abad a nd t he Fi na nce Department to effect further payment raises suspicions t hat t hey are merely tr y ing to ma ke it harder for Mejorado, in particular, and for all whistleblowers, in general. The impression one gets from what Abad and batas/PAGE 7
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Two sectors watched by BSP
wo sectors very closely watched by the Bangko Sentral, as it performs its price stability mandate, are the equities market and the real estate sector. For good reason. Historically, these two sectors have experienced major swings in prices, causing economic and financial imbalance. For t h is pu r pose, t he B SP per iod ic a l ly hold s Environmental Scanning Exercises (ESE) with key players from the public and private sectors to discuss trends in these important areas. One such ESE was conducted early this month with Atty. Roel Refran of the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE), David Young of Colliers International Philippines, and Prof. Enrique Soriano III of the Ateneo Graduate School of Business, as resource speakers. Invited as reactors were Mr. Claro G. Cordero, Head of Research, Consulting, and Valuation Advisory Ser vices Department, Jones Lang LaSalle; Ms. Ma. Theresa M. Javier, Head of BPI’s Asset Management and Trust Group, and Mr. Justino Juan R. Ocampo, SVP of the Investment Banking Group of First Metro Investment Corporation. The forum was held against a backdrop of rapidly rising stock prices, fueled mainly by foreign portfolio investments, and higher value rates for land, capital,
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SPEAKING
and rent during t he f irst quarter. These developments O ut were beginning to be a source By Ignacio Bunye of concern. Why worry, one may ask, if all seems to be going well. The short answer is that t hese ma rket s a re rea l ly unpredictable. Gains now may become losses tomorrow. T he t ra nsitor y nat u re of t he foreig n p or t fol io invest ments made in t he stock market, for instance, ma kes t he equit y market vulnerable to reversal of f lows as what is happening now as we write. It is not without good reason that such investments are also referred to as “hot money.” Lessons should also be learned from the 2007 US property market meltdown. Here are some of the insights shared during the recent ESE, which was attended by BSP Gov. Amando M. Tetangco Jr., Monetary Board Members (MBM) Alfredo C. Antonio, Peter B. Favila, Dr. Felipe M. Medalla, and Atty. Armando L. Suratos, BSP Deputy bunye/PAGE 7
Big and beyond
HILE we need to be properly engaged with our daily routine of work, usually the ordinary little duties attached to our profession and the other conditions of our life, we should remember that we have to aim also at the real big thing which is our holiness that requires going beyond the prosaic of the here and now. We need to make this reminder because many of us are falling into complacency and confusion, lost in the f low of daily events and unable to connect to the ultimate goal we all are meant to reach. In fact, many now think we just have to live from moment to moment, from day to day, denying any importance to any concern for the future and much less to eternity. Eternal life holds no meaning to many of us. There’s nothing after death. Everything is transitory. Nothing remains forever. The inquisitiveness of that rich young man who asked Christ, “What good must I do to have eternal life?” is all but gone in the mind and heart of modern man. We seem contented and thrilled only with what we have at hand—the new technologies, fashions, etc.—that appear to capture our dreams and fantasies. This time-and-earth-bound mentality is actually dramatized abundantly in the gospel. There’s that parable, for example, of a man who in trying to insure his temporal security decided to build larger barns to store his possessions, and said to himself: “Soul, you have much goods laid up for many years. Take your rest, eat, drink and make merry.” (Lk 12,19) The lesson Christ wanted to impart from this parable
HINTS
is the following: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his and Traces justice, and all these things By Fr. Roy Cimagala (the earthly, temporal and materia l t hings we need) shall be added unto you.” (12,31) Christ wants us to make “ bags which do not grow old, a treasure in heaven that does not fail, where no thief approaches nor moth corrupts.” (12,33) We have to get out of this time-and-earth-bound outlook, and enter into an exciting adventure that God offers us in his providence, in his abiding governance of his whole creation, in his continuing intervention in our life. It’s an adventure that cruises through time and space but also transcends them to bring us to eternal life and joy. We just cannot make our life the way we want it to be. We have to live it with God. In fact, only with God would we be able to live our life to the full. Without him, we would be out on a limb, prone to all sorts of danger and harm, inside and outside us. What this means is that we need to fall in love to be able to connect the material with the spiritual, the temporal with the eternal, the human with the divine. cimagala/PAGE 7