Opinion
MONDAY, JULY 3, 2017
A5
Legitimacy is power AS THE country marks President Rodrigo Duterte’s first year in power, it is clear that he stands to become—if he isn’t already—one of the most popular figures in Philippine political history. Polarizing, too, yes, but there is no denying the unflinching, almost fanatical support that the former long-time Davao City mayor continues to enjoy. In addition to Duterte’s selffashioning as a political underdog up battling the political giants, many political observers attribute his enduring popularity to the vote that catapulted him to power a year ago, which gave him a rousing, unequivocal mandate. The year 2016 witnessed what was easily the most efficient and credible conduct of the automated elections and, for Duterte, a climactic end to a captivating narrative. In a Pulse Asia survey, a huge majority—89 percent— of the respondents thought that the results of the election were believable. This was in addition to other positive observations, such as on the speed of the release of the results and the orderliness of the conduct of the polls. Thus, while there was a sense of volatility during Duterte’s campaign, the legitimacy that
he received following the 2016 polls is beyond reproach. In a sense, therefore, the oftcited 16-million strong who voted for him—and the broad acceptability of the election results—gave him the crucial power to behave the way he does and espouse the kind of politics that he stands for, no matter how intense the criticisms. And criticize they did. His controversial war on drugs— which some groups say is responsible for up to 12,000 fatalities—has elicited nearwholesale condemnation from the international community. Photos of bloodied corpses sprawled on Manila’s pavements grace the covers and front pages of foreign publications. However, supporters point out that the campaign has also occasioned the surrender of more than a million drug users and pushers and more than a billion pesos worth of shabu taken off the streets. Elsewhere, his foreign policy—the much-vaunted severing of ties with the United States and the warming relationship with Beijing and
Moscow— goes against the sentiment of a majority of Filipinos. He is accused of being soft on the West Philippine Sea row and squandering the moral and legal upper hand in which he began his term after the favorable decision of the International Court of Arbitration. The usual charges of corruption, ineptitude, and political vendetta continue. Department of Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II has been accused of spreading fake news, the always cameraready PNP Chief Ronald Bato dela Rosa has not been immune to televised gaffes, and some believe that Senator Leila De Lima, one of Duterte’s staunchest critics, is in jail for fabricated charges. Even so, Duterte cannot be accused of reneging on his key promises. On the economic front, he is lauded for wisely leveraging on the key gains of the administration of Noynoy Aquino via his 10-point Socioeconomic Agenda, foremost of which is continuing the fiscal, monetary, and other macroeconomic policies of Aquino’s economic managers.
A long-overdue tax reform package is also in the works, geared to make taxation more just and equitable. Millions of Filipino taxpayers are envisioned to pay lower taxes under the proposal, while supposedly imposing higher taxes on the rich. The area of infrastructure is also a rallying call. The administration’s bold and ambitious Build Build Build program is seen to eliminate transportation and trade bottlenecks while creating much-needed jobs. The push toward federalism, or some version of it, has gained the most traction in the last 12 months than the past two decades. Proponents say the structural reform can provide the paradigm shift needed to develop long-ignored regions away from the capital. And so despite the polarizing character of the one-yearold presidency, it seems to be propped up by, among others, the momentum derived from his overwhelming mandate. To a large extent, that legitimacy has shielded Duterte from debilitating censure and allowed him to persist with his unique brand of Dutertismo politics. Whether one is for or against him, there is no denying that the rest of his term is bound to be similarly eventful.
Clean coal will always be a fantasy Bloomberg editorial “CLEAN coal,” always dubious as a concept and never proved as a reality, has now failed as business proposition. Southern Co. has decided to stop work on a process that would have captured carbon dioxide emissions from a coal plant in Mississippi. Giving up on the project, which was nearly $5 billion over budget and three years behind schedule, makes sense for Southern’s customers and shareholders. And giving up on carbon capture makes sense for the energy industry. The technology is too expensive and complicated to be deployed quickly or widely enough to appreciably protect the climate. The better way to cut back on carbon-dioxide emissions is far simpler: Use less coal. Luckily, that change is already under way.
Carbon capture once seemed promising—even as recently as a decade ago, when coal fueled almost half of US electricity generation. Back then, continued dependence on the dirty fuel looked inevitable, and a strategy to deal with its prodigious greenhouse-gas emissions seemed essential. Hence, utilities embarked on model coal plants that would capture the carbon dioxide before it could enter the atmosphere. Only a couple have been built, in addition to Southern’s in Kemper County, Mississippi, and none has established an economic case for carbon capture. The Petra Nova facility, in Texas, was reportedly finished on time and on budget, but its construction required a $190-million federal grant, and the carbon-capture unit requires a separate gas-fired
Gridlock... From A4 understandably opposing. But it is high time we discard ante-diluvian practices and bite the bullet on hard measures. There are far too many buses crowding Edsa and even Taft Avenue, among others. Except during peak hours, you see many of these cruising around looking for passengers to at best half-fill empty passenger seats. And if reports are accurate, many of these are “colorum,” operating without franchises or licenses. Surely a general of Danny Lim’s caliber can do something about this unabated malady and flouting of the law. And do not forget illegally parked vehicles. What would otherwise serve as secondary and alternative routes to the perennially clogged main arteries are instead narrowed by vehicles parked on the streets. The “aspiration” of the middle class (sometimes even the rich) of owning cars when they have no parking spaces inside their property limits must be tamed.
Move... From A4 package favored by Ukrainian businesses, the most likely victims were financial account controllers doing business in the Ukraine. Notable victims include legal firm DLA Piper and shipping and transport firm A.P. Moller-Maersk. It’s worth noting that cloud computing services like Google and Amazon, which control vast amounts of data around the world, have yet to be crippled by a ransomware attack or even suffer a known data breach. Google in particular prevents breakins across a global workforce
power plant. Canada’s Bound- of US energy, and that share ary Dam carbon-capture unit, is shrinking. The rest of the meanwhile, has operated much world’s big economies are also less efficiently than expected, shifting to natural gas, wind, suffering multiple breakdowns solar and nuclear power. and requiring expensive repairs. It would be a mistake to give Unfortunately, such costs and up completely on carbon capture complexities are unlikely to di- technology. It has been used effecminish very much, and few such tively in the chemical and oil infacilities are likely to be built dustries, and it may be able to help worldwide in the next 20 years. reduce emissions from steel plants A new report issued by the Glob- and other industrial sources. But it al Warming Policy Foundation can no longer be viewed as a savior concludes that carbon capture for for coal-fired power plants—or as coal-fired power has “no plausi- a rationale to build new ones. ble economic future.” The good news is that coal use is already falling fast. The shale gas boom and the extraordinary drop in the cost of producing solar panels and wind turbines in recent years has steered power producers away from relatively expenAmbassador Del Rosario’s sive coal. Today, the fuel accolumn will resume soon. counts for only about a third
No parking space, no car. This should in fact spawn new investments in rented parking lots, with so many idle real estate properties dotting the metropolis. Of course these measures can only mitigate the problem, because at the end of the day, Danny and the MMDA’s woes can only be solved big-time if we had an efficient public transport system. Art Tugade’s dreams will, however, take some time before they can be realized. But the gridlock is a NOW thing. Solutions cannot wait, because the toll on public patience, on business down time and its concomitant costs, not to mention fuel costs, is incalculably unbearable. And if comprehensive, even draconian solutions cannot be effected in the time of Duterte and Danny Lim, we may never be able to effect solutions to the gridlock. *** Speaking of number-coding, once erroneously called color-coding, I take note that in Taiwan, there are very few vehicles sporting colors other than black, white or grey. Drab though it may seem, Taiwanese are conservative when it comes to choosing colors, be
by implementing a strict provisioning system, in which every device is presumed to be untrustworthy. Access management is an old-fashioned idea that doesn’t get enough attention in our hyper-connected world. In earlier generations, sensitive information was stored in locked filing cabinets located in separate offices. We’ve since digitized the data without replicating the access management. When organizations migrated from application-specific mainframes to networked personal computers (primarily to cut costs), they turned every single computer into a potential entry point for hackers. It’s like giving every employee a master
they apparel or cars. Just like the Japanese. Think clothing by Muji, and its lack of color choices. A well-known car company launched months before a new model intended for the millennial market. Their showrooms were filled with bright green-colored cars, the same color motif echoed in their TV commercials. Guess what—it didn’t work. Months later, what you see in their showrooms are white and silver-grey cars, no more green. If we stick to coding, how convenient if all our vehicles were black, white or grey. Then we can really color-code, instead of traffic aides looking at passing cars plates to apprehend. But maybe that’s wishful thinking in these “fiesta” islands, where everyone wants to be different rather than to conform. Danny would likely wish he could “command” color choices, being used to the military fold where he was an excellent field marshall. But who would give up fire engine reds, and bright yellows, or neon oranges and electric blues, or even hot pink?
key to the building. Cloud computing has a lot of similarities to mainframe infrastructure. Users access enterprise software through their internet browsers, much as they used to access the mainframe through dumb terminals. Because individual users aren’t in charge of maintaining critical software on their personal machines, it’s much more difficult for malware to get in. This makes the whole enterprise less vulnerable to breaches. Stories of crippling ransomware dominate the news, but ensuing data breaches tend not to surface for years. Such breaches primarily affect end us-
ers in ways that may be difficult to trace, so organizations haven’t been terribly motivated to overhaul their security and dump the universally connected computing paradigm. Perhaps the latest disasters will put more pressure on the industry to get its act together. Bloomberg
Fr. Aquino’s column will resume soon.
The Duterte phenomenon IT WAS my second time to personally see and listen to President Rodrigo Roa Duterte speak when he addressed the directors and officers of the Philippine Charitable Association on its 140th anniversary, held at the Manila Hotel on Wednesday last week. The first time was in 2016 when I, together with the directors and other officers of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce, took my oath as the legal counsel of PCC before the President. I noticed stark differences and strong similarities in these two unconnected occasions. The first time I heard him speak, the President was only a few months into his office. As he is wont to do, he did not read a prepared speech but spoke extemporaneously, cracking jokes and spewing colorful language which made his well-heeled audience burst into laughter every so often. Back then, he seemed boyish, mirthful and energetic. His audience, on the other hand, was somewhat reserved although they laughed as the moment called for it. I sensed hopefulness in them but uncertainty too. In contrast, when I saw the President for the second time last week, after a year in office, he was several notches more serious. And yes, in fact, he look tired, lacking in sleep, and weary. But, when he started addressing the big crowd of Chinese and Chinese-Filipino businessmen, as well as, Filipino elites, he was in his usual energetic and passionate self once again. He set aside his prepared speech and went on to say that he had just come from Clark Air Base to receive the arms and ammunition donated by China to help the Armed Forces in its war against terrorists. This time, his speech was more emotionally charged than the first time I heard him speak. He expressed a wish that he could already end martial law in MindFilipinos anao. The death toll, he said, was breakwant a decisive, ing his heart. Every mother who lost a strong-willed son and every wife leader whose who lost a husband pained him, he said. heart is in the His heart broke, right place. too, for the civilians caught in the war, especially the women and children. He added that although the tragedy was beyond his control as the ISIS-linked Maute terrorists were a bunch of bandits with no conscience and felt no compunction about killing, he shared the guilt for the loss of lives because the situation and his duty to the greater population of Filipinos pushed his hand into declaring martial law. Although he looked and sounded serious and sad for the most part, the President still managed to crack jokes and break into occasional rough talk as he explained that it was the intention of the Islamic State to establish a Caliphate in Southeast Asia, with a base in the Philippines. He has not been making public appearances much, he said, because he was going from camp to camp to boost the morale of the soldiers. The audience could not miss sensing his compassion for the fallen men in uniform and their families; we felt his earnest desire to end the war and bring back Marawi to how it was. Because of this, the audience responded with equal passion by clapping enthusiastically many times during the President’s speech, especially when he lashed out at the people and circumstances causing the country’s sufferings. The crowd cheered even more loudly when he said he was set to fly that same evening to Davao to meet the remains of fallen soldiers, skipping dinner with the celebrating hosts. In both these occasions I witnessed, the crowd applauded, clapped hands vigorously, and laughed as the President made jokes and hurled colorful words at the objects of his disgust. But more than the clapping and cheering for the President, the crowd at the Philippine Charitable Association’s anniversary last week talked about him long after he had left. They said that we, Filipinos, are lucky to have a President as strong and as good-hearted as Duterte at this time when threats to the country’s security and the rate of crime are rising. Some went on to say that if we still had Benigno Aquino III as president when the Maute terrorists attacked Marawi, perhaps the entire Mindanao, or worse, the rest of the country, would now be under the terrorists’ control. They also remembered and talked about how former President Aquino preferred to attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony of a car manufacturing company rather than meet the remains of the fallen SAF 44 who died needlessly—all because of poorly planned operations personally overseen by the former president. *** This country has never before seen a President who did not care about protocols and defied the so-called appropriate behavior. He has broken all norms by behaving and speaking in an unconventional manner. Yet, by all standards, he remains popular, loved and admired. The international media has judged him poorly yet, 78 percent of the Filipino people continue to approve of his leadership. For decades to come—long after President Duterte has completed his term of office as President—social and political scientists will be studying him and the phenomenon he created. To my mind, the explanation is simple. The Filipino people have gotten tired of polished and proper but non-performing political leaders. They have also gotten tired of pretentiously well-mannered but corrupt politicians. They want a decisive, strong-willed leader whose heart is in the right place, one who is simple, human and real. Email: ritalindaj@gmail.com Visit: www.jimenolaw.com.ph