Opinion Law and the greater good TO THE POINT EMIL P. JURADO THE burial of the late strongman Ferdinand E. Marcos continues to divide the nation. But if we have to move forward, we have to have closure on this matter. This is why I admire and respect President Rodrigo Duterte as a leader. We have longed for this kind of leadership in the past and we have been frustrated with those who came before him. I think it is important to remind everyone on who exactly can be buried at the Libingan: AFP Regulations G K61-373, subject: Allocation of Cemetery Plots at the LNMB issued in April 1986 by GHQ AFP under then-AFP Chief of Staff Gen. Fidel V. Ramos and thenPresident Corazon C. Aquino, prescribes who are entitled to be interred: Pursuant to the aforecited AFP Regulations, re-published on 11 September 2000 as AFP Regulations G 161-375, there are 10 categories of deceased persons entitled to be buried at the LNBM, namely: Medal of Valor Awardees; Presidents or Commanders-inChief, AFP; Secretaries of National Defense; Chief of Staff, AFP; General/ Flag Officers of the AFP; Active and retired military personnel of the AFP; Former AFP members who literally entered/joined the PNP and the PCG; Veterans of Philippine Revolution of 1896, WWI, WWII, and recognized guerrillas. Government dignitaries, Statesmen, National Artists and other deceased persons whose internment or reinternment has been approved by the Commanderin-Chief, Congress or the Secretary of National Defense; For Presidents, Secretaries of National Defense, widows of former Presidents, secretaries of National Defense, and as Veteran of World War II. The AFP was very clear about former President Marcos being entitled to be interred at the LNMB on any of the following categories: as Medal of Valor Awardee, as former President, as a soldier, as former Secretary of National Defense, and as veteran of World War II. “In regard disqualifications,” the ruling added, “Marcos was neither dishonorably discharged nor convicted with finality of an offense involving moral turpitude. While he was charged with several offenses, he was not convicted. Thus, he died an innocent man.” The AFP regulation that the LNMB is military cemetery (just like the Arlington Cemetery in the United States) intended primarily for military personnel and veterans. ONE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE A HERO TO QUALIFY TO BE BURIED THERE ...” (caps mine). The fact is that presidential approval is not required for the interment of a person meeting the qualifications. The late Cory Aquino made an exception for Marcos; subsequently, President Ramos also tried to make it appear obligatory. It is only now, with President Duterte, that we have a President who is firm and resolute on the matter. So, what is the beef of Marcos haters? That Marcos was not a hero, nor a medal of valor awardee, nor even a guerilla veteran? Santa Banana, he was a President, a former National Defense Secretary, former Chief of Staff and Commander-in-chief and a soldier. Most of those protesting claim that Marcos is no hero and should not be buried at the cemetery reserved only for heroes. They should be told that
among those buried there was Shadow, the favorite dog of the late President Cory. Just what justified a dog to be buried among those qualified to be buried there is something else for the books. How did Marcos get his Medal of Valor? Records show that he and a band of soldiers refused to surrender to the Japanese Occupation forces when the combined forces of Americans and Filipino soldiers fought in Bataan for three months. My late brother Willie Jurado was also in Bataan as a volunteer soldier and was then with the group of Marcos, who had to swim across a river to make good their escape from Bataan and that dreaded Death March from Bataan to Capas, Tarlac. Willie did not know how to swim and was left behind to surrender, and subsequently was forced to join the Death March on the Capas Concentration Camp where he almost died, because he had caught malaria and dysentery. I know all these because Willie told me so, and because my mother went to Capas from Manila to provide food and clothes for Willie. Willie came home after those who survived the death march were amnestied. This was also the case with my late eldest late brother Desi, who was incarcerated at Fort Santiago for eight months for being a member of the underground movement against the Japanese. It was because of the exploits of Marcos in Bataan that he was later on awarded the Medal of Valor. Marcos later on formed the “Maharlika Guerrilla Movements,” which Marcos haters say never existed. In 1943, Marcos went to the North and joined the 14th Infantry of the guerrilla movement, as did my two elder brothers, Marcos, with the rank of major, was then operating in the guerrilla movement in the Cagayan provinces, in Isabela and Nueva Vizcaya. My recollection of Marcos as a guerrilla veteran was when I saw him at Camp Spencer in Luna, La Union. It was here where my two elder brothers also had their headquarters. After the rape of Manila, when the Americans liberated the city, the Japanese Forces led by General Toshio Yamashita had to retreat to the Cordilleras to make their last stand. And that’s where the crucial Battle of Bessang Pass occurred. Desi led an assault team (he was then a lieutenant of the 3rd Battalion of the 121st Infantry under Col. Russel Volckman, and the late Major Conrado Rigor was battalion commander.) The only hindrance was an uphill pass that must be taken. While he may not have been there in the Battle of Bessang Pass, it was the 14th Infantry led by Marcos that did the “flanking movement” in Nueva Vizcaya to prevent Yamashita was escaping from his Cordillera hideout. These are all my recollections of the last days of the Japanese Occupation. I must have been 17 to 18 years old then, living with my parents in Bangar, La Union. What surprises me is that most of those protesting Marcos’ burial were not even born at that time. How could they know what really happened? They must have been reading and hearing about the martial law days in the Daily Inquirer and ABS-CBN, both Marcos haters and Aquino lovers. I say Marcos truly and finally deserves to be buried at the LNMB. Only the Supreme Court can prevent it now. We must put closure to this lingering controversy. What will we tell our children later on?
Former President Marcos deserves to be buried at the Libingan for more than one reason.
Great... From A4 scale. Looking at changes from 1900 to 2005 in the watersheds of 309 large cities, all with populations larger than 750,000, it finds that more than 90 percent have suffered degradation, and that nearly one third experienced a significant rise in treatment costs—many by more than 50 percent. The study confirms what environmental economists previously only suspected: The loss of natural water purification capacity is systematically increasing the cost of treatment around the globe. The best estimate puts the added expense at more than $5 billion per year. And it's set to get worse: Watershed degradation is expected to become more severe in the next decade or so, as cropland continues to expand. By 2030, global fertilizer use is projected to rise by nearly 60 percent. The lesson is that our cities will require concerted investment in watershed preservation. The good news is that it need not
be terribly expensive: Targeted projects can make a big difference. Since 1997, for example, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection has moved to protect more than 130,000 acres of valuable watershed, and the city now has very low water treatment costs relative to other U.S. cities. New York's forward thinking can and should be replicated globally. McDonald and others estimate that roughly one in four cities—home to about 800 million people—could reap a positive return on investment aimed at conserving watersheds. In other words, it’s worth doing, and it would be an important step toward securing the kind of environment we need to survive. Bloomberg
BACK CHANNEL ALEJANDRO DEL ROSARIO Ambassador Del Rosario’s column will resume Friday.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 17, 2016
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Manila Mayor Estrada VIRTUAL REALITY TONY LOPEZ THE Yellow-leaning Social Weather Stations has an interesting study of public satisfaction ratings of five Philippine presidents of the last 30 years—Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, Fidel V. Ramos, Joseph Estrada, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III. Benigno Aquino III had the highest satisfaction rating. The next highest is, surprise, Joseph Estrada. In overall performance, BS Aquino had an average net satisfaction rating of +47, equivalent to good. Second best was Estrada, with +15. Both presidents nosed out Ramos +14, Cory Aquino +5, and Arroyo who had -2. Between BS Aquino and Estrada, the latter has had a much longer and more awesome public service, 47 years, reckoned from the time he gained the mayorship of San Juan town in 1969. BS Aquino had been in public office in only less than half that time, 21 years. Estrada is the more experienced leader, and many now say, the better president. The veteran actorturned-statesman had, after all, been mayor for 17 years, senator for six years, vice president for six years, and president for 30 months. His wife, the first lady
Dr. Loi Ejercito became senator while he was incarcerated on politically motivated corruption charges. Two sons are senators— Jinggoy Estrada and JV Ejercito. Estrada brings 47 years of savvy political management, incredible leadership, and enduring charisma to what he now calls his last hurrah—being mayor of the Philippines’ capital and premier city. His aim is to make Manila the No. 1 city in competitiveness and No. 1 as a place for doing business and for living in. That was achieved, back in 2015. Does that make Erap the best mayor? He demurs. He says the honor belongs to the legendary Arsenio H. Lacson, mayor from 1952 to 1962. Estrada is now on his fourth year as mayor of Manila. During that time, he made the city “completely debt-free,” by paying P5.5 billion in city obligations. That fiscal balance is no mean a feat. When he took over in July 2013, Manila was bankrupt with no viable sources of revenue. Erap’s strategy was simple enough—make the city an enviable place for doing business and a premium place for residence by focusing in infrastructure, education, public safety, anti-crime, health, and cultural revival. He also raised city property taxes, by an average of 60 percent. The last measure, tax hike, made the city cash-rich. But it also made Estrada hugely unpopular, among the city’s propertied class and Chinese-Filipino businessmen who went for his longtime rival, Alfredo
Lim. “It was a choice between letting Manila sink further into bankruptcy, and rescuing the city from certain disaster,” he winced. Taxes almost cost Erap his reelection in May this year; he won by just 2,600 votes, instead of by a landslide as he did in 2013, when he had done nothing yet as mayor. Estrada, however, is not one to run away from a challenge, no matter how humbling the consequences. “It’s called political will,” he says. He demonstrated political will when he vowed to crush the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front with an all-out war. He did. His army captured 46 MILF camps, including Camp Abubakar. It was the first time the government had overrun the main MILF camp in troubled Mindanao. The feat angered the bishops and displeased the Americans. The bishops accused him of human rights violations. Washington sent the American secretary of defense who hand-carried the letter of President Clinton pleading with him to stop the all-out war. Erap refused. He even vowed that after crushing the MILF, he would break the backbone of the Communist Party. Having defeated the both the MILF and the NPA, he would have redeployed the 150,000-strong army—half for infrastructure building, the other half for agriculture, using free skilled but armed labor marching to the command of the commander-in-chief. It was an out-of-the-box formula for poverty alleviation.
However, by January 2001, a US-inspired military uprising, backed by the Catholic Church and civil society, had ousted Erap. After a few months, he was convicted, of plunder, for money which did not belong to the government and which he did not touch, because it was parked all the time in a scholarship fund for Muslims. The bishops later apologized for their mistake. So did President Cory Aquino, BS Aquino’s mother. “We are all humans to make mistake,” she said in public. In May 2010, Estrada ran for president. He almost won, (he placed a decent No. 2 to BS Aquino), were it not for two things—the beloved Cory had died in August 2009; and Ka Erdie Manalo, the charismatic leader of the powerful Iglesia ni Cristo (which reckons with some three million voters) died, also in August 2009. INC had always supported Estrada’s electoral bids. BS Aquino garnered 15-million votes in 2010; Estrada 9.8 million. If the three-million swing vote of INC had not shifted to Aquino and gone instead to Estrada, the latter would have won handily. These days, Estrada’s mission, he says, is to bring back the old glory of Manila and to render the greatest good for the greatest number. It is a mission many no doubt he will accomplish. Performance, after all, is the best legacy a politician or a statesman can leave his people and to keep him forever in his people’s heart — and their satisfaction.
‘Matapang na solusyon; mabilis na aksyon’ SO I SEE LITO BANAYO SEGUEING from our “Tapang at Malasakit ” article on then-candidate Duterte in 2015, a tandem television ad when Duterte had already announced a teamup with Senator Alan Peter Cayetano. This time, the tagline, reinforced in tarpaulins and stickers, was “Matapang na Solusyon; Mabilis na Aksyon.” The main competition, this time narrowed down to Mar Roxas, Grace Poe, Jojo Binay and Miriam Santiago, seemed unable to capture the mood of the voting public at the starting line. Mar Roxas and his yellow brigade kept touting “continuity” and the old “tuwid na daan” promise that had seen better times, washed off the public consciousness by six years of less-than-satisfactory governance. VP Binay kept repeating the once-saleable narrative about being born poor, this time by acting poor —in boodle fights, in commercials about sensitivity to the plight of the poor. It only served to reinforce the argument of those who had questioned him for more than a year on unexplained wealth close to being “Imeldific.” Senator Grace Poe on the other hand, rode on the legend that was her adoptive father, FPJ, but people’s memories are short, and we seriously doubted if the millennials still remember watching FPJ movies, vainly propagandized by ABS-CBN through their remake of “Ang Probinsyano” starring the new telenovela hero Coco Martin, ably supported by no less than the gracious Susan Roces. That worried us enough, but constant tracking in internal surveys and qualitative research told
The hatchet... From A4 ed Filipinos will be given, whether they retur n home or f ind jobs in other companies in the Middle Easter n state. Bello told me how he has been given blanket authority to aid the stricken Filipinos, many of whom don’t even know how to find their next meal or a roof over their heads at night. And Duterte has ordered the release
us that the “instant magic” could, and would wear off. Senadora Miriam was hobbled from the very beginning by health problems. Sure, the competition tried to attach similar health questions about Duterte, who turned 71 by the time the campaign was midstream. Duterte wisely admitted certain “esoteric” illnesses that the masa did not really comprehend. But standing in hours-long motorcades and delivering hours-long speeches convinced the masa that the candidate was not nearly as sick as some propagandists from the competition claimed. Only he was “matapang” enough. Only he proposed “matapang na solusyon.” Not mincing words about the gravity of the illegal drug menace, he said his solutions would be “bloody.” And he boldly promised a big difference in three to six months. It has been less than 50 days. Now the human rights activists are seeing too much blood, and Bishop Soc winces. Duterte, after all, never promised a picnic in the war on drugs. Yet Duterte was true to his promises to the 16.6 million who voted overwhelmingly for him across the nation and throughout the world in OFWvoting centers. The competition did not read the public pulse well enough. They could not see through the seething and pent-up anger borne by years of frustration about governance so indifferent and so insensitive to their woes. And so unable to solve problems quickly enough. For Duterte showed purpose, grim though some perceived such to be. Duterte showed decisiveness, an element unseen over the past six years, not only from what Binay called the “analysis-paralysis” team, but from the president endorsing the team as well. As for Senator Poe, the main competitor until just weeks before May 9, the “decisiveness” did not show; the long
litany of promises punctuated by so many proposed solutions to myriad problems fell flat. And of course, the citizenship and corollary loyalty issues ran smack against a little perceived, but numbers-demonstrated slow wave of nationalism, particularly among the millennials. Now fast forward to the 50th day of the Duterte presidency, which will be tomorrow. Even before the Davao City mayor was formally installed in Malacanang, the “matapang na aksyon” was operationalized by police officials wanting to impress the new commander-in-chief, or in some cases, perhaps to cover their tracks. But Duterte named a field marshall in his war on drugs, a guy so colorful, but with sincerity brimming from his folksy persona, so very much like his “boss” Digong. From the hick parts of Davao del Sur to quick-on-the-draw poster boy of the fight against crime, Gen. Ronaldo de la Rosa, aptly nicknamed “Bato” has shown both “tapang” and “bilis.” Don’t count the body bags. Focus instead on how many heretofore untouchable drug lords and pushers beneath the radar of the last six years have been brought to the public limelight. At break-neck speed. If you were an ordinary Juan de la Cruz with no links to drugs, and bedeviled in your neighborhood and on your way to work or school by drug-crazed criminals young and old, wouldn’t you say “Wow…finally!” Look at Art Tugade’s proposed solutions to the traffic and mass transport mess that Duterte inherited. Some of them are so simple, so common-sensical, one would ask, “bakit hindi ito naisip ni Abaya, o ni Mar”? So many have wondered why general aviation hogged so much airport terminal space, and took some 12 percent to 15 percent of air traffic away from commercial airlines,
but their lessees were just too “powerful” to be touched. Now Duterte, through Tugade, wants the rich to move out, to Sangley or wherever else, and take their choppers from Makati rooftops to their private planes. Tanim-bala, which became a major election issue—quick solution? Just confiscate the live bullet, let the perpetrator go to wherever. Why bother about a single bullet, unless you want to extort in exchange for non-prosecution? Common sense, di bala? Driving licenses, from three years to five years, and soon car plates as well. Ditto for passports, all so that the hassle (and petty corruption) would bedevil the ordinary Filipino no longer. On a more abstract plane, Speaker Bebot Alvarez pushing for a shift to a federal system, mindful that if left at the back-burner while mundane issues hog the limelight, rewriting the Constitution would be perceived as self-serving. So this early, the wheels of constitutional revision, both to address politico-socio-economic imbalances and festering secessionist issues, are rolling. Sure there will be debatable issues in such a massive and historic endeavor, but the purpose is clear, the solution is courageous, and the action is quick.There are many more fronts where the new administration demonstrated “matapang na solusyon; mabilis na aksyon” in its first 50 days. And clearly more to come. The peace initiatives, both with the leftist insurgents and with our Muslim secessionists, with Jess Dureza and Bebot Bello moving at a pace and resolve heretofore unseen. Tax reform initiatives, many of them unthinkable to the ratings-conscious ancien regime. People get the sense that finally, government is in charge. And in control. Finally, there will be meaningful change. Revolutionary, if you may.
of millions from the President’s social fund to pay for the effort, apart from directing the various agencies involved in helping Filipinos abroad to spend their own funds. Before Bello left, he quietly inaugurated the one-stop service center at the offices of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration at the corner of Edsa and Ortigas Avenue. The center permanently locates satellite offices of practically all the govern-
ment agencies that overseas workers have to transact with and get papers from and has been drawing raves from the people who used to have to go all over Metro Manila just to secure the needed permits to work abroad. Longtime OFW welfare rights advocate Susan “Toots” Ople is amazed at the actions of the silent but very effective new labor secretary, who is also involved in the peace talks initiated by the Duterte
government with rebel groups. “Kaya naman pala gawin e,” an admiring Ople told me, apropos of the Saudi rescue effort and the new one-stop center. As a longtime believer in the lack of empathy of the previous administration and the need for the return of simple common sense in government, I agree wholeheartedly with Ople. All it takes really for a government to succeed is a genuine desire to help our countrymen and the work ethic to get things done.