Starting Points: Philippines

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Dec 17, 2009

Tiger Falls from Grace

Tiger Woods's self-imposed exile from golf is the most stunning--and stunningly rapid--fall from grace in the history of sports. Not since Shoeless Joe Jackson was banned from baseball after being dubiously blamed for helping throw the 1919 World Series have we seen such a supersonic transition from heroism to heel. And not since Michael Jordan retired from basketball in 1993, following the murder of his father, has a world-class athlete voluntarily taken himself out of his sport in his prime. Woods's exile may last three months or it may last three years. But one thing is certain: unlike the twenty-four-hour wall-to-wall sleaze that's dominated the airwaves since the initial revelations of Woods's infidelity, this is actual news. After fourteen years of being protected by the press, the Tiger has become carrion. And now, the greatest golfer in history is walking away.

The jury is out on whether Tiger's retreat makes him more sympathetic. But years from now when we look back at this saga, I hope we remember that Mr. Woods didn't choose to leave golf until his sponsors left him. Woods announced his departure on December 11. He hadn't been on a prime time commercial since November 29, three days after the accident, according to the Nielson Company.

The "global consulting company" Accenture dropped him from the homepage of their website. AT&T told him not to call. Gillette said that they could find others to shave for the camera. Every part of Tiger Woods Inc. sized up his moment of desperate need and, instead of offering solidarity and support, ran for cover.

Only a couple of companies decided to stand by Woods. "Tiger has been part of Nike for more than a decade," the company said in a statement. "He is the best golfer in the world and one of the greatest athletes of his era. We look forward to his return to golf. He and his family have Nike's full support." This is hardly surprising. Tiger has made Nike untold treasure--while resisting pressure to say word one about the abhorrent labor practices that define the company's profit margins.

And Mohammad Juma Bu Amin, the chief executive officer of Golf in Dubai said in a direct statement to Tiger: "We are with you in this difficult time and respect your request for family privacy. As and when you decide to return to the circuit, you can always count on us.... We will be more than delighted to welcome you to Dubai. Consider Dubai your second home."

So here is Tiger Woods in 2010: no tour, a busted marriage, and alone with nothing but his sweatshops to keep him warm.

This is what we call chickens roosting. The least attractive part of Woods's persona--including all recent peccadilloes--is his complete absence of conscience when it comes to peddling his billion-dollar brand. As we have been writing for years here at The Nation, Tiger's partnership with the habitual toxic waste dumpers Chevron and the financial criminals in Dubai deserves far more scrutiny from the sports press than it's received (none).

Then there was the Philippines. As detailed in the documentary The Golf War, the Filipino government, in conjunction with the military and developers, attempted in the late nineties to remove thousands of peasants from their land, known as Hacienda Looc, to build a golf course. They resisted and three movement leaders ended up dead. Where was Woods? He was brought in by the government to play in an exhibition match and sell golf (not explicitly the course, wink, wink), all for an undisclosed fee. The government called it "The Day of the Tiger" and followed his--assumedly G-rated--actions for twenty-four hours. The Golf War filmmakers show clips of Woods saying to kids, "I want all of you to learn and grow from this experience. Invariably you're gonna learn life, gonna learn about life because golf is a microcosm of life." Meanwhile the developers of the course were thrilled at the PR boost his appearance gave their project. Macky Maceda, a vice-president for Fil-Estate Land, Incorporated, the golf course developer in Hacienda Looc, commented, "Oh, I think it's going to be a great picker upper for the entire country in general. Everybody's feeling kind of down with this economic crisis. And Tiger is just, I know it, he's going to give everybody a good feeling."

Romy Capulong, legal counsel for the Hacienda Looc farmers, had a different take: "Tiger Woods should be barred from entering this country, I think. If I can do something about it--I'll certainly do that--to bar him from entering this country and propagating golf."

Tiger, with his global ethnic appeal, has been the sport's willing avatar, traveling the global south seeking new acres to conquer. The sports media has for years closed ranks around Tiger, defending his right "to not be political."

But he has been political. It's the politics of using golf as a weapon to reap untold riches and all the other attendant privileges of fame. It's the politics of selling yourself as a trailblazing icon, while rolling your eyes at the struggles that made your ascendance possible. It's the politics of placing your brand above any and all other concerns. It's the politics of turning a blind eye to your corporate partners' malfeasance, when there is a buck to be made. This is the real teachable moment of this whole circus: if you front for the worst of the worst, don't expect anyone to have your back.

About Dave Zirin

Dave Zirin is The Nation's sports editor. He is the author of Welcome to the Terrordome: the Pain Politics and Promise of Sports (Haymarket) and A People's History of Sports in the United States (The New Press). His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Sports Illustrated.com and The Progressive. He is the host of Sirius/XM's Edge of Sports Radio.

Dec 14, 2009

Manila Eases Crackdown

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Martial Law Lifted in Philippines, but Violence Persists

By PATRICK BARTA

Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo lifted martial law in a southern province where 57 people were massacred late last month, but unrest in the southern Philippines continued.

A group of armed men stormed a jail on the southern island of Basilan on Sunday morning, smashing through a wall to free at least 31 inmates, authorities said. One attacker and a guard were killed.

Some of the escapees were believed to be members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and Abu Sayyaf, Muslim rebel groups linked to past violence in the region, police said.

The jailbreak -- which occurred more than 60 miles from last month's massacre -- underscored the lawlessness in a region tormented by bandits, private armies and insurgents, including Communists and al Qaeda-linked Muslim separatists.

There was some good news Sunday: Officials said gunmen released 47 hostages who had been held in a jungle hideout elsewhere in the south. A group of around 15 abducted the hostages from a village on Thursday, but freed them after government negotiators agreed not to arrest the gunmen for the abductions or for past criminal activities, the Associated Press reported.

The decision to lift martial law late Saturday in another zone of the southern Philippines also suggested tensions there may be easing. But the area's problems are far from resolved, and analysts warn there could be further outbreaks of violence in the months ahead.

Mrs. Arroyo declared martial law in Maguindanao province earlier this month to enable the military to disarm suspected militia members after an apparent feud between rival political clans erupted into a massacre on Nov. 23. The move allowed police and soldiers to make arrests without warrants.

Opposition politicians criticized the decision to impose martial law, which they feared could lead to widespread civil-rights violations and hand too much power to Mrs. Arroyo's government ahead of national and local elections next May.

The Philippines Supreme Court had ordered the government to respond by Monday to several petitions challenging the legal basis for the move.

On Sunday, government officials said they felt they had made enough progress to relax their grip after executing several missions in Maguindanao in recent days.

Soldiers raided properties controlled by members of the Ampatuan clan, which is accused of leading the Nov. 23 massacre that killed 30 journalists and others linked to the rival Mangudadatu family. The government also uncovered large supplies of arms, including assault weapons and armored personnel carriers.

Associated Press

Prison guards cover a hole after armed men knocked down a concrete wall and barged into a jail, freeing at least 31 inmates.

In the past several weeks, authorities have replaced the province's entire 1,000-person police force, and have arrested as many as 600 suspected militants, including some the government said may have been plotting a rebellion.

Prosecutors have filed multiple murder charges against Andal Ampatuan Jr., a local mayor, for allegedly leading the massacre. His father, former Gov. Andal Ampatuan Sr., and other clan members have also been arrested and charged with rebellion.

The family maintains its innocence.

"We set specific objectives and we felt we had accomplished those objectives," said Cerge Remonde, a spokesman for Mrs. Arroyo, of lifting martial law.

He said a state of emergency, which allows security forces to set up road checkpoints and seize weapons from civilians, would remain in place in the zone.

The region remains restive. Officials have been targeting as many as 2,400 armed Ampatuan loyalists, many of whom may still be at large.

Analysts have said it could take months, if not years, to pacify a region where the government has long supplied weapons to family-based militias to help them hem in Communist and Muslim insurgencies.

Write to Patrick Barta at patrick.barta@wsj.com

Dec 11, 2009

Gunmen Hold Dozens at School in Philippines

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By CARLOS H. CONDE

MANILA — Gunmen took 75 people hostage at an elementary school in the southern Philippines on Thursday, later releasing 27, including all the children, officials said.

The standoff, about 500 miles south of Manila in a restive region that has been the scene of recent violence, began when 15 to 20 assailants took the hostages after police officials tried to serve an arrest warrant on one of their leaders, said Maj. Randolph Cabangbang, an army spokesman.

The leader, identified as Ondo Perez, is suspected of heading a criminal organization called the Perez Group and is wanted for the murder of a resident of the town of Prosperidad, in Agusan del Sur Province on the southeastern island of Mindanao.

Senior Superintendent Nestor Fajura, operations chief of the Philippine police in the region, told ABS-CBN television that Mr. Perez and his group took the hostages at a school in Prosperidad to prevent his arrest. Mr. Fajura said that the abductors were demanding the withdrawal of the murder charge against Mr. Perez and a halt to police and military operations against the group.

The hostage takers initially released 17 children and an older woman, Major Cabangbang said. Also among the hostages were a teacher and two employees of a logging company, he said. Police officials have not yet established the identities or the conditions of the remaining hostages, he said.

Early Friday, The Associated Press reported the release of nine more hostages, eight women and one man, reducing the number of captives to 48.

Major Cabangbang said negotiators had been sent to the village to try to persuade the men to surrender. “The situation remains fluid at this point,” he said by telephone.

Mr. Perez is a former member of a paramilitary group that the military armed and trained to help in counterinsurgency operations, police officials said.

Such groups have often been accused of criminality and human rights violations.

A recent massacre on Maguindanao Province, also in Mindanao, of 57 people — most of them journalists and media workers — was attributed to militiamen who the authorities say were under the command of Andal Ampatuan Jr., a scion of the province’s most influential family.

Cambodian Monarch Pardons Thai Held as Spy

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

By CARLOS H. CONDE

Two things may help to explain the violent power politics in this impoverished part of the southern Philippines: the red-roofed and high-walled mansions that have long dominated the center of this town, and the men in uniform carrying automatic weapons who guarded them.

The opulent mansions, the only ones here in the capital of Maguindanao Province, are owned by the family of Andal Ampatuan Sr., the patriarch of the political dynasty that has ruled this part of the island of Mindanao for much of this decade.

Today, the mansions are surrounded by soldiers and police officers, while family members face multiple charges of murder for alleged involvement in a massacre that shocked a country seemingly inured to political violence.

On Nov. 23, a convoy of vehicles — carrying the wife, three sisters and an aunt of Esmael Mangudadatu, the vice mayor of a small town nearby, as well as supporters, journalists and lawyers — was stopped by dozens of armed men at a checkpoint outside Shariff Aguak. At gunpoint, the vehicles, along with another car that had happened to be behind them, were forced down a dirt road to a windblown hilltop.

The armed men — who the authorities say were working for the Ampatuans — then shot and hacked 57 people to death. Some of the women, investigators say, were raped and sexually mutilated.

“They were so confident with their power that they carried out something like this and believed they could get away with it,” said Kim Bagundang, a Maguindanao resident and president of the Liguasan Youth Association for Sustainable Development, a nonprofit organization.

The reason for the massacre was clear, the authorities said. Mr. Mangudadatu’s relatives and supporters had been on their way to file his candidacy papers for governor of Maguindanao in elections next year — a direct challenge to the Ampatuans, who have ruled virtually unchallenged.

The Ampatuans’ control of Maguindanao is almost absolute. Most of the province’s 36 towns are run by mayors and deputy mayors who are either sons, grandsons, cousins, nephews, in-laws or close allies of the senior Mr. Ampatuan, according to a study by the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.

Since he became governor in 1998, Mr. Ampatuan has carved out at least eight towns from existing ones and named all of them after his sons and other relatives. The entire Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, which is composed of five predominantly Muslim provinces, including Maguindanao, is run by Governor Zaldy Ampatuan, one of his sons.

The Ampatuans’ control of Maguindanao was enforced with guns and a culture of fear in towns governed by the family, residents and the authorities said. Many residents are afraid to talk at all about the Ampatuans. “No, no, no,” a resident in the town of Datu Unsay said when asked to comment on the massacre.

“People here live in fear,” a driver who lives in nearby Cotabato City, said of Shariff Aguak. “No one will dare go against the Ampatuans.”

One factor in what experts have called the “culture of impunity” that the Ampatuans have enjoyed in Maguindanao may be suggested by the enormous billboards erected at infrastructure projects around the province lauding the accomplishments of the family. Almost all of them also thank President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for her help in making the projects possible — highlighting the political connection between the Ampatuans and the central government in Manila.

“The Ampatuan family dynasty has backed President Arroyo since 2001, and its rise to power is likewise attributed to Mrs. Arroyo’s support,” said Bobby Tuazon, an analyst at the Center for People Empowerment in Governance, a Manila nonprofit organization that has studied the political dynamics of the provinces. The Ampatuans, he said, were “an extension of Arroyo’s political base.”

In the 2004 elections, Mrs. Arroyo won resounding victories in Maguindanao; in at least three towns, her opponent, the late actor Fernando Poe Jr., got no votes at all, according to the official results. An independent election monitor found widespread fraud in the election that year.

For the Ampatuans, as well as for the chiefs of other impoverished provinces, there are very lucrative reasons for chasing political patronage in Manila.

Maguindanao is the second-poorest province in the Philippines, according to government statistics. It is mainly agricultural and has no industry to speak of. What it does have, however, is a lot of voters who can be delivered to national candidates in return for tax revenues and political patronage that can keep local politicians firmly in power.

Francisco Lara, at the Development Studies Institute of the London School of Economics, says the potential for making money from politics has given rise to a class of “ruthless political entrepreneurs” in the Philippines.

“Political office has become more attractive due to the billions of pesos in I.R.A. remittances that electoral victory provides,” Mr. Lara said, referring to the internal revenue allotment, the share of national taxes for local governments. “The ‘winner-takes-all’ nature of local electoral struggles in Muslim Mindanao also means that competition is costlier and bloodier.”

And often more corrupt, according to Mr. Tuazon and other experts.

Figures from the Department of Budget and Management show that Maguindanao’s overall revenue in 2006 was 603 million pesos, or about $13 million — of which 570 million pesos came from national taxes. At least a third of these funds went to personnel and operating expenses. According to the Philippine Center of Investigative Journalism, which has closely examined the issue, such funds are a major source of corruption within the Philippine bureaucracy.

The Commission on Audit’s annual reports on Maguindanao have consistently highlighted deficiencies in bookkeeping. For instance, in its 2008 audit report, the commission found that it could not ascertain the validity of the provincial accountant’s claim that the province had more than 107 million pesos deposited in banks. It also could not verify the existence of properties and assets worth 345 million pesos that the province said it had.

In 2006, the position of the Ampatuans was strengthened by Mrs. Arroyo’s decision to allow local government chiefs to set up armed militias to support the police and the military in their fight against criminals and insurgents.

Abhoud Syed Lingga, executive director of the Institute for Bangsamoro Studies in Cotabato City, who has studied the rise of the militias, said local chiefs across the country had used the order to create their own private armies.

The Ampatuans, he said, did so with more enthusiasm than anyone else. The police and military estimate that the Ampatuans employ between 400 and 600 of these armed men.

Up to now, the military has been supportive of the Ampatuans, Mr. Lingga said, because the clan actively fought the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the insurgent rebels fighting for a Muslim homeland in Mindanao.

All that changed on Nov. 23, when the armed men who the authorities say were working for the Ampatuans — among them police officers and militiamen — killed the 57 people on the hillside.

When soldiers, who had been alerted about the abduction, arrived at the mass graves — at a site overlooking the town of Ampatuan — several bodies remained unburied. Some were still in vehicles; in one van the driver was slumped, dead, on the steering wheel.

The backhoe used to dig the graves, its claw stuck in the ground, was still running — a “mute witness to this atrocity,” as Felicisimo Khu, the police superintendent who oversaw the recovery of the bodies, put it. Printed in black ink on the side of the backhoe, as on most of the equipment at infrastructure projects around Maguindanao, was the name of Andal Ampatuan Sr.

According to Chief Superintendent Leonardo Espina of the Manila police, who serves as spokesman for the investigation, the primary suspect in the massacre, Andal Ampatuan Jr., was present when the armed men stopped the convoy. According to the Justice Department, he ordered his men to carry out the slaughter. He did this, investigators said, in full view of witnesses, some of whom have agreed to testify.

Mr. Ampatuan Jr., who is in custody and has been charged with 25 counts of murder, has denied the allegations. This week, the authorities said they had filed rebellion charges against more members of the Ampatuans, days after the government put the whole of Maguindanao Province under martial law. Raids have been conducted by the police and the military in which at least 1,500 firearms and more than half a million rounds of ammunition have been found. On Wednesday, the police said they had named 161 suspects in the massacre.

Andal Ampatuan Sr., his family members and lawyers for the family did not respond to requests for interviews.

With the Ampatuans on the ropes, power in this province appears likely to shift to the family of Mr. Mangudadatu, the Buluan mayor — which has controlled the neighboring province of Sultan Kudarat for years.

Mr. Mangudadatu, 41, has brothers and uncles and cousins holding local positions in Maguindanao and in Sultan Kudarat Province. Unlike Andal Ampatuan Sr., however, not one of his eight children is in power, Mr. Mangudadatu said in an interview.

That may change next year. “I want my eldest son,” he said, “to run as vice mayor to replace me.”

Just days after the massacre, Mr. Mangudadatu filed his candidacy papers for Maguindanao governor and said that only death could stop him from running. At this point, he seems certain to win.

On the day he filed his papers, he was accompanied by Gilberto Teodoro, who will be Mrs. Arroyo’s candidate for president in the election next year. Mr. Mangudadatu will run as a candidate of Mrs. Arroyo’s party, Lakas-Kampi, the same party that helped nurture the Ampatuans for years.

Philippine troops moved in on the southern strongholds of about 4,000 government-armed militiamen loyal to the Ampatuans, the military said Thursday, The Associated Press reported from Manila.

Lt. Col. Romeo Brawner, a spokesman for the armed forces, said the possibility of clashes with the militiamen had risen since a deadline for them to surrender passed and troops headed to their hide-outs in at least seven townships of southern Maguindanao Province.

“We have started moving in and positioning our troops, but there is no actual firefight yet,” Colonel Brawner said, adding that the operation was meant to pressure the militiamen to surrender.

The operation was started after the militiamen failed to heed the warning on thousands of leaflets dropped by helicopters Tuesday for them to surrender in 24 hours.

More leaflets were dropped Thursday, Colonel Brawner said.

Nov 18, 2009

The Meaning and Mythos of Manny Pacquiao - TIME

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By Howard Chua-Eoan and Ishaan Tharoor

Manny Pacquiao is going through his throwing motion at Yankee Stadium. With easy deliberation, he shows off the form he says he perfected playing elementary school baseball in the dirt-poor southern Philippines before boxing took him over completely. His shoulder slips back, his torso pitches smoothly forward, left hand and arm torquing an imaginary ball into the depths of the air-conditioned players' cafeteria, where he is waiting to take the field for an announcement. The diamond stud in his ear catches the light.

The baseball pose has a balletic grace at odds with the savage power that the best pound-for-pound professional boxer on earth exhibits in the ring. "Best pound-for-pound" is the mantra intoned with every story about Pacquiao. It sounds strange because he has never been bound by the laws of physics. In the past eight years, he has risen through six weight divisions to win just as many world championships. At the stadium, his promoters have arranged for the Filipino to make official his plan to fight Puerto Rico's Miguel Cotto for a seventh title, the welterweight, which has a maximum limit of 147 lb. (67 kg). That is a 40-lb. swing up from the 106 lb. Pacquiao weighed at the start of his career. (See pictures of the rise of Manny Pacquiao.)

He carried increased poundage through his past two jaw-droppingly awesome victories: demolishing Oscar De La Hoya in December 2008 and knocking out Ricky Hatton in two rounds in May. This is how Pacquiao's coach Freddie Roach describes his skill: "He'll throw a combination at you. You'll think he's done, but then he'll keep pounding you. And there's not a dense hardness to his punch. It just jumps on you. It explodes." Roach, who has worked with boxing luminaries such as De La Hoya and Mike Tyson, offers a little poetry when he recalls the time in 2001 when Pacquiao first came into his gym. "I just did one round with mitts with him, and I thought, 'Man, can this motherf______ fight.'" (Watch TIME's video "A Free Boxing Lesson with Oscar De La Hoya.")

At Yankee Stadium on this September day, the Puerto Ricans who have come out to cheer Cotto are jeering Pacquiao, but for all that physics matters, the Filipino is the favorite for the Nov. 14 Las Vegas bout. His payday, it is said, will be about $18 million. Back in the Philippines, you can pun on Pacquiao with pakyaw — a verb, pronounced the same way, that means "to monopolize, to corner the market, to take everything at wholesale in order to maximize profit." Pacquiao knows he wants more than he has, more than boxing can give. At the stadium, he retails anecdotes from his life to a couple of Filipinos and repeats what seems to be both an assertion and a lesson learned. "'Di ako bobo," he says in Tagalog. "'Di ako bobo." "I'm not stupid."

A Face for the Selfless
Manny Pacquiao, now 30, is the latest savior of boxing, a fighter with enough charisma, intelligence and backstory to help rescue a sport lost in the labyrinth of pay-per-view. Global brands like Nike want him in their ads. He made the TIME 100 list this year. West Coast baseball teams invite him to throw out the first pitch in order to attract the Filipino-American community. He has even become an object of desire: ESPN the Magazine has his naked torso in its Body Issue, which explores the engineering of several athletic physiques.

In the Philippines, Pacquiao is a demigod. The claim goes that when his fights are broadcast live, the crime rate plummets because everyone in the country is glued to a screen. His private life as well as the ins and outs and ups and downs of his training regimen are tabloid fodder; his much brooded political ambitions are a dilemma many Filipinos feel as existentially as Hamlet's soliloquy: To be or not to be ... a Congressman?

See sports pictures taken by Walter Iooss.

See the top 10 sports moments of 2008.

Pacquiao has a myth of origin equal to that of any Greek or Roman hero. Aban-doned by his father and brought up by a tough-as-nails mother, the poor boy who loves to box is rejected by a local squad but then journeys many islands away, to the country's metropolis, Manila, to make it big. Then he leaves the Philippines to make it even bigger, conquering the world again and again to bring back riches to share with his family and friends. Now, in his hometown of General Santos City on the island of Mindanao, he and his family own commercial buildings, a convenience store, cafés and a souvenir shop that sells everything from DVDs of his fights to T-shirts to bobblehead dolls. In Manila, his children attend one of the most exclusive and expensive private schools. He is generous to a fault, spending thousands of dollars a day feeding and entertaining guests. For his last fight, he distributed $800,000 in tickets to friends.

The broad outlines of his history — his legend — have made the boxer a projection of the migrant dreams of the many Filipinos who leave home and country for work. About 10% of the Philippines' GDP is money remitted from overseas Filipinos: nurses, nannies, sailors, singers, doctors, cooks, X-ray technicians, mail-order brides, construction workers, prostitutes, priests, nuns. Some spend decades abroad, away from the ones they love, for the sake of the ones they love. Everyone in the Philippines knows a person who has made the sacrifice or is making it. Pacquiao gives that multitude a champion's face of selflessness: the winner who takes all and gives to all. "To live in the Philippines is to live in a world of uncertainty and hardship," says Nick Giongco, who covers Pacquiao for the daily Manila Bulletin. "Filipinos are dreamers. They like fantasy. And what is more of a fantasy than Manny Pacquiao?" (Read a 2004 story about Pacquiao.)

A movie has been made of his life. But Pacquiao says the full details of that life couldn't possibly fit into just one film. There are things to clear up. For one, he did not leave ramshackle General Santos City, a camp of tin and thatch, to pursue boxing, even though he did love the sport. He left home at 14 because his mother Dionisia, who did odd jobs and factory work and hawked vegetables by roadsides, wasn't really making enough to feed her six children. He had to go off and earn money elsewhere, doing anything to relieve the burden on his mother — even if she wanted him by her side. As it was, he was often absent from school because the family needed him to help sell snacks and trinkets on the potholed lanes where nearly naked children with matted hair still chase rusting bicycle wheels for fun. Pacquiao liked school, correcting and grading his classmates' homework. He "never cheated during a quiz — he wouldn't try to look sideways, this way or that," says one of his schoolteachers from the Saavedra Saway Elementary School. A decent education, however, requires several years and a lot of money. The Pacquiaos had trouble accumulating even a little.

And so young Manny plotted his trip in secret. Dionisia Pacquiao is slender and slight, like her son, and has his easy smile. "Manny has a strong mind and a strong body," she says. "Just like his mother. Except I am stronger." But she was heartbroken when he left for Manila. Dionisia recalls receiving a letter from him "saying how sorry he was [for leaving home] ... I was very, very sad. But after a while, I accepted his destiny."

From Zero to Hero
Pacquiao was not one to pick quarrels. But he did not shy away when friends got into free-for-alls: what he calls, with an almost pop-eyed relish, bukbukan — unrestrained fistfighting. He loved boxing. Dionisia recalls an 8-year-old Manny wrapping towels around his hands to mimic gloves. Rey Golingan, a General Santos City businessman, remembers the young Pacquiao attending the weekly bouts in the main plaza. "Manny was always there at the fights, waiting to be paired with someone," says Golingan. But his consistency wasn't matched by any obvious talent. "Honestly, I didn't see any potential in Manny. He was just another kid who knew if he won a few fights he might get 100 pesos [less than $3]," says Golingan. "He was always very courageous and had natural speed and power. But he wasn't a clever boxer ... He was [always] flailing around."

See TIME's photo-essay "Boxing Out of Poverty and Prison in Thailand."

See pictures of runners-up.

When he got to Manila, Pacquiao first worked as a laborer. His enthusiasm for boxing, however, had him returning to the ring, fighting in run-for-cover, barely legal matches pulled together in one of Manila's cramped suburbs. He lingers over the names of boxers he knew who died after such fights, then moves on. The death of a friend reportedly spurred Pacquiao to turn professional.

His 1995 pro debut on a boxing show — which he won by decision — made him a local star. After that, energy alone seemed to carry him through six inconsistent years, a period in which he still managed to win two world titles in fights in Southeast Asia. Finally, a Cinderella-like twist got him noticed in the U.S. market. In June 2001, Pacquiao stepped in as a last-minute replacement at a fight in Las Vegas to win the IBF super-bantamweight title by TKO. Soon after, he walked into the Wild Card Gym in Hollywood and met the owner, Freddie Roach, who would transform the way Pacquiao fought. (See more about boxing.)

Roach makes a powerful impression when you meet him, because something is clearly wrong. His movements are a beat or two off-sync; the occasional phrase or sentence is interrupted by an abrupt pause, then a slurring. Roach, who is not yet 50, has Parkinson's disease, most likely the result of his own boxing career. But it has not stopped him from taking Pacquiao's energy and giving it strategy. Their partnership has created one of the most riveting fighters in boxing history. Roach seems prouder of Pacquiao than of almost any of his other famous trainees. He sometimes talks as if the fighter has already reached his peak. Manny, he says, "has nothing more to prove." He predicts a first-round knockout of Cotto but, even as people are already talking about the fight after that (Floyd Mayweather Jr. is the dream matchup), Roach says Pacquiao may have just two more fights in him and then ought to call it quits.

Pacquiao is certainly thinking of the day after boxing. In 2007 he ran for a congressional seat in General Santos City but was beaten by the incumbent, Darlene Antonino-Custodio, who hails from a wealthy family long rooted in the politics of the region. But he is almost sure to run again in the 2010 national elections, though not in the same district. (Pacquiao has his own political organization — the People's Champ Movement — but has been aligning himself with President Gloria Arroyo, who needs his popularity.) Most people say they'd rather he stay a boxer and win more accolades for the nation, that his need to help lift people up can be better served elsewhere. But politics as his second act may be a strategy born of a deeper survival instinct — from knowing the limitations of a boxer's life, particularly after the fighting is done. "'Di ako bobo," he might say.

You see, Manny Pacquiao is not the first famous boxer produced by General Santos City. The previous Filipino world champion, Rolando Navarrete, came from the same streets. Navarrete now lives in embittered obscurity on the city's outskirts, often falling afoul of the law. "Most boxers start with nothing and end up with nothing," says Pedro Acharon, the mayor of General Santos City. "Manny wants to end that story. He knows there's more to explore in life."

Will His Kingdom Come?
Pacquiao crosses himself before digging into dinner amid the Corinthian columns of Capitale, an old bank turned party space, just about where Chinatown starts in Manhattan. It is early June, and he is there to receive his second Fighter of the Year award from The Ring magazine. Even as old palookas cuss up a storm, he prays before his meal. His mother says he was always "very disciplined and God-fearing" — taking after her, of course. Her front garden features a coral-lined altar to the Virgin Mary, and an entire shelf in her living room is filled with icons and bric-a-brac in honor of Christ's mother. Dionisia wanted Manny to be a priest. Prayer reigns in his gym. "After each workout," says Giongco, "he requests a moment of silence where he prays, and then everything goes back to normal."

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Being a good Catholic is a plus for a would-be politician in the very pious Philippines. But so is knowing how to handle a constituency. Pacquiao doesn't have one so much as he has a royal court. Roach is famous enough to have his own table at the Capitale extravaganza. Beside Pacquiao sits his wife Jinkee. Filipino tabloids have published her purported ultimatums against Manny's "playboy" ways, but tonight she says only a couple of sentences and even those guardedly. She speaks mostly to the other man seated next to her, Mike Koncz, a Canadian who takes care of the little details that matter to Pacquiao and his wife. The fighter, for example, must have white rice with his meals (a hard habit to break for all Filipinos), so Koncz goes scampering for a plate of it. The slightly fusiony menu lists a side of wild rice with the entrée. That will not do for the Pacquiaos.

If Roach is the most popular foreigner in the Philippines, Koncz, who has become a gatekeeper for the Pacquiaos, is the most loathed. And not just by Filipinos. In mid-October, Alex Ariza, a Colombian boxer who is Pacquiao's fitness coach, fought with the Canadian. Koncz, says Ariza, "is so condescending, so passive-aggressive, and just doesn't care if he's being unreasonable. He crossed a line, and I just bitch-slapped him." Roach shrugs off Koncz's influence. "I'm the only one who can really talk to Manny," he says. Still, he says introducing Koncz to the Pacquiao team was "the worst f______ mistake of my life." For his part, Pacquiao tries to remain above the fray. (Read "Live Boxing at the Movies: Can It Beat the Chick Flicks?")

The fighter appears anxious as the evening wears on. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out sheets of paper — his acceptance speech, in English. While Pacquiao has no problem understanding English, which is widely used in the Philippines, he is much more comfortable speaking Tagalog, the national language, and Cebuano, the dialect he grew up with. But he is a hit with the New York City audience. All he really has to do is grin, and they are in his hands. A Filipino listening to the speech, however, senses the trouble Pacquiao will face if he decides to run for office in the Philippines. His English is heavily accented, sounding provincial to anyone used to the softly musical English of the entrenched upper classes of Manila. What would they think of someone who pronounces everything as eebreeting? Snobbery is the unvoiced rationale behind some of the opposition to Pacquiao's political ambitions: He's not really one of us.

Even one of his closest advisers isn't sure he's right for politics. Governor Chavit Singson, 68, of the province of Ilocos Sur, in the northern part of the archipelago, hangs out with Pacquiao all the time. He styles himself a kingmaker but is unclear whether Manny can be a king. "He is so humble," Singson says. "He's a simple person." Singson, however, may be a role model for Pacquiao. The governor amassed his fortune as a tobacco-plantation owner and travels in a private plane and in a bulletproof Hummer. He is an epitome of Philippine politics, where power grows out of barrels of patronage. Political reformers worry that that is the style Pacquiao has been learning during his decade of kingdom-building and distributing wealth to family friends and allies. Ramon Casiple, a prominent political analyst and reform advocate, says Filipinos know that model too well to want it from their hero. "They don't want him to run, to dirty himself and open himself to charges of corruption."

Manny's sister Isidra, however, says her brother is too strong-minded to be dissuaded from politics. "Whatever Manny does, we'll support," she says. During the huge floods in Manila in September, he took a motorcade from the mountain resort where he was training to help distribute relief to victims. "He wants to be giving service," his sister says. "He has big potential. He is caring, thoughtful and generous." Dionisia is quieter about her son's career after boxing. "I will support and pray for him," she says. But she worries. "There's a lot of trouble in politics." Can Manny Pacquiao continue to be the most loved man in the Philippines when he quits the ring and enters the cockpit of politics? That is going to be the fight of his life.

Nov 6, 2009

US holds military aid due to human rights issues - Manila Times

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By Frank Lloyd Tiongson, Reporter

The United States government reportedly withheld $2-million worth of military aid to the Philippines in 2009 due to concerns raised by human rights groups and churches in the US on the human rights record of the government. Rep. Neri Colmenares of Bayan Muna said the conditional aid was not released because of the failure of the administration of President Gloria Arroyo to account for the spate of human rights violations in the country.

Colmenares said officials from the US Department of State confirmed in a meeting with him in Washington, D.C. on October 27 that the conditioned amount has in fact been withheld.

However, the State Department officials, whose responsibility includes US policy toward the Philippines, admitted they were unable to report to the US Congress that the Philippine government had met the human rights conditions required for the release of the military aid. As such, the final $2 million in military assistance appropriated by the US Congress for the Philippine Government was not released.

The conditions include the (1) implementation of the recommendations of Professor Philip Alston, (2) the investigation and prosecution of military officials credibly alleged to be responsible for human rights violations, and (3) that violence and intimidation of legal organizations should not form part of the (Philippine military’s) policy.

Consequently, the US House of Representatives approved HR 3081 withholding the same military aid for the Philippines in 2010 on the basis of the same three conditions. The US Senate has approved the House spending bill, which shall form part of the 2010 Budget.

Colmenares said members of the US Congress took the cue from the recommendations of the UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston that “the Philippine government must address the long-standing impunity for the killings, enforced disappearances, and other forms of human rights violations, and that extra-judicial executions and other human rights abuses do not form part of the policy of the military and the government.”

In 2008, following a hearing in the United States Senate on the human rights situation in the Philippines convened by Sen. Barabara Boxer (D), the US Congress voted to release the full amount of 2009 military aid to on the condition that the Philippine government was meeting the cited human rights conditions.

“Instead of heeding the conditions,” said Colmenares, “the Philippine government merely launched high-level lobbying efforts of the US Congress, led by Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, President Arroyo’s Special Envoy Patricia Ann Paez and the Philippine Legislative Affairs Officer Ariel Penaranda. The failure of President Arroyo to investigate and prosecute Gen. Jovito Palparan defeated all their lobbying efforts,” said Colmenares.

The Filipino-American community and the US-based National Alliance on Filipino Concerns (NAFCON), who also met with US congressional officials, have similarly expressed outrage over the spending of their taxes to arm a repressive government.

Besides the UN report, Col-menares said that members of the US Congress are aware of the Supreme Court decision in. Sec. Gilbert Teodoro vs Manalo and the Melo Commission report implicating Gen. Palparan and other military officials in various human rights violations.

Colmenares also raised concerns with US State Department officials about progress on the US-Philippines Defense Reform Program, a large US funding for the modernization and reform of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, citing the on-going impunity for human rights abuses. He called for the end to the funding considering the human rights record of the Armed Forces and its cover up of the perpetrators of human rights abuses.

The Philippines Defense Reform Program began in 2003 in cooperation with the US military and is funded, in part, by the US Congress. The State Department committed to inquire about the said funding from the Pentagon. The Pentagon has been criticized in the US for implementing aid projects, a purely civilian function.

Colmenares was invited to the US to give a talk at the National Convention of the National Lawyers Guild.

He also met with representatives from the office of influential Democrats Sen. Barbara Boxer from California, Congresswoman Nita Lowey, head of the House Appropriation Sub-committee on Foreign Operations, Rep. Howard Berman, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and other offices of the US House of Representatives and Senate to express concern over the $30-million military aid to the Philippines.

He also raised the same concerns to Sen. Harry Reid, the Majority Leader of the US Senate, through his representative during a meeting in his office in the US Capitol.

Nov 1, 2009

Estrada Begins Unlikely Comeback in Philippines - NYTimes.com

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By CARLOS H. CONDE

QUEZON CITY, PHILIPPINES — It was an improbable sight: a slightly hunched man, with a gait that suggested either his age (72) or infirmity (a bad back and knees that required replacement surgery), beating up a taller opponent no older than 30.

The older man ducked as the younger one tried to bang him with a piece of wood. He cut him down with a right to the abdomen and a left hook to the face, sending his adversary stumbling to the ground. Then another opponent got smacked in the face and kicked in the midsection with one of those bad knees. Yet another came along, and he, too, went down, crashing into a table.

“I missed doing this,” the older man, Joseph Estrada — longtime actor and onetime president of the Philippines — said moments after the director cried “Cut!” Mr. Estrada then walked toward the gate of the bus terminal where the movie was being shot and waved at the gawking crowd, which delightedly waved back. He moved closer to his fans, who giggled, hugged and kissed him, some whipping out cellphone cameras.

“Don’t forget me, okay? We will take back Malacanang!” he hollered as he clambered up the hood of a jeepney, the ubiquitous Philippine minibus. The crowd responded by chanting his moniker: “Erap! Erap! Erap!”

Malacanang is the presidential palace, and Mr. Estrada managed to stay there for less than half of his six-year term. He was driven from office in 2001, during what is now known as People Power 2, after a Senate impeachment trial on allegations of corruption — including accusations he took kickbacks from gambling lords — was cut short by attempts by Mr. Estrada’s allies to suppress evidence, sending Filipinos to the streets in protest.

Last week, Mr. Estrada announced during his party’s convention that he would run again for president in the election next year, calling it his “final, final performance.” The announcement, needless to say, flummoxed his political opponents and upset the Philippines’ already rambunctious politics.

Mr. Estrada, returning to movies after a break of more than two decades — which includes the six years he spent in prison for plunder and corruption — satisfies a lifelong passion. “I love making movies. Without the movies, there would not be a Joseph Estrada,” he said in between takes on the set of the comedy “One and Only Family.”

And returning to politics — despite his promise to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo when she pardoned him in 2007 that he would never again seek elective office — is a chance to take care of unfinished political business. In an interview on the movie set, Mr. Estrada said his decision to run again was important to him “so I can clean up my name and prove to those who removed me that they were wrong.”

Whether he can accomplish this is not clear. The Philippine Constitution prohibits a president from seeking another term. Mr. Estrada insists, however, that he was never given a chance to finish his term, so this doesn’t apply.

“I am not running for re-election,” he said. “I am running for election.”

His opponents, particularly within the Arroyo administration, vow to take the issue to the Supreme Court.

More than settling old scores, however, Mr. Estrada insists that he is acting in the interests of the nation. “I want to continue what I started,” he said.

He promised, for instance, to resume his “all-out war” against Islamic separatists and Communist insurgents. And, he added, with no hint of irony, “There is so much corruption going on now that we have to have change.”

Saddled with the corruption charges, which he continues to deny, and a legacy of misrule, which he continues to challenge, Mr. Estrada hopes to endear himself once again to Filipinos — through the movies, at least for now.

Many still adore him, but many, too, are offended not just by his audacity but also by his insistence that what happened in 2001 was an illegal coup staged by the country’s elite.

“It is only in the Philippines where a disgraced president who was ousted by a people’s uprising would dare run for the presidency again, without atoning for his past mistakes and even insisting that he did nothing wrong,” wrote Benjie Oliveros, a political columnist.

Indeed, Mr. Estrada’s assistants have been distributing a flier featuring some of the world’s most influential publications criticizing People Power 2.

“Gloria Macapagal Arroyo took over the presidency in constitutional circumstances that do not stand up well to scrutiny,” says The Economist. “People Power has become an acceptable term for a troubling phenomenon, one that used to be known as mob rule,” says Time magazine.

“They hated me so much that they never stopped demonizing me,” Mr. Estrada said, puffing on a cigarette that he tried to hide each time a photographer snapped his picture. (“I don’t want young people to see me smoking,” he said.) “They threw at me not just the kitchen sink but also the toilet bowl,” he said, chuckling, evidently pleased with his play of words. “But I never stopped being the president of this country.”

That appears true, at least on this movie set in Quezon City. He arrived with the trappings of power: in a shiny, black Lincoln Navigator, escorted by two police officers on motorcycles. The umbrella his assistant held over him bore the presidential seal. People addressed him as “presidente.” The set was Mr. Estrada’s domain, just as Malacanang had been.

In the 1950s, show business provided an escape for Mr. Estrada, who had dropped out of an engineering course. Of the 10 children in the family, Joseph Marcelo Ejercito — as he was known before he adopted the screen name Joseph Estrada — was the only one who did not graduate from college.

But, he says, he made up for it by excelling in the movies. He made more than 100 films in a career spanning three decades and won countless acting awards.

In many of these films, Mr. Estrada portrayed poor men seeking justice. Although he was never really poor, he said he “identified with these roles” and tried to plumb the depths of his characters. “I researched my roles so I understand how it is to be poor,” he said. “I have been a jeepney driver, a labor leader, a Communist guerrilla.”

These roles endeared him to Filipino voters, Mr. Estrada said, enough for them to elect him first as mayor — for 17 years — of San Juan, a suburb in Metro Manila, then as senator, vice president and finally president. He impressed nationalists when he produced and starred in “In the Claws of the Eagle,” a 1991 film that was highly critical of U.S. military bases. “I am proud to say that that movie helped in kicking out the bases,” he said.

That the movie he is making now is a comedy about a jeepney driver who gives his daughter’s boyfriend a hard time — in other words, a movie with no obvious political significance — is hardly an issue with Mr. Estrada. “I enjoy doing this, and I missed doing this,” he said. Besides, the movie, with its use of the iconic jeepney, could advance his political agenda; a movement he created, “Jeep ni Erap,” continues to recruit supporters.

After a makeup artist retouched his face, Mr. Estrada stood up and positioned himself beside a jeepney to rehearse another fight scene. With a brio that seemed somewhat at odds with his hunched figure and sagging features, he lunged at a thug, grabbed his head and slammed it on the hood of the vehicle. The director yelled “Cut!” — and Mr. Estrada, ever so slightly, pumped his fist.

Oil and Gas Price Increases Meet Opposition in Philippines - NYTimes.com

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By CARLOS CONDE

MANILA — When the three largest oil companies in the Philippines increased the pump prices of diesel, gasoline and kerosene on Oct. 20, they set off more than the usual grumbling from consumers and transport groups. With millions of Filipinos still reeling from the effects of successive typhoons, the corporations were criticized as greedy, insensitive, callous and predatory.

The companies — Royal Dutch Shell, Petron and Chevron (known here under the brand Caltex) — increased the per-liter prices of diesel by 2 pesos, or 4 cents, an increase of about 6.7 percent. Gasoline prices went up 1.25 pesos a liter, or a 4.74 pesos a gallon, and kerosene by 1.50 pesos. According to the Ibon Foundation, an independent economic research group, the increases were the biggest of the year. The companies insist the increases reflect world oil prices; crude has risen from as low as $32.40 in December to about $79 this week.

Changes in the price of fuel have been a touchy subject here since 1998, when the government passed the Oil Deregulation Law. In addition to taking away government control of pricing and opening the industry to foreign investment, the law removed longstanding government subsidies of oil products. Although the deregulation has been unpopular with voters, the government has not backtracked — until now.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo issued Executive Order 839 in the past week, demanding that the oil companies reduce their prices on the main island, Luzon, or face penalties.

Many consumers praised the decision and her “political will” and said the decree could help millions of Filipinos recover from the recent calamities. But economists, business groups and industry analysts said the unprecedented intervention could scare investors away from the country, and create fuel shortages and a new black market.

“This government seems to have lost its sense of what it should be doing,” said Peter Wallace, founder of the Wallace Business Forum, a consulting group that advises some of the largest multinational companies in the Philippines. The country, he said, “is attracting the lowest level of foreign investments among major countries in Asia. So you have to ask the question why it issued the executive order.”

Mr. Wallace said if the government wanted to reduce the cost of fuel for consumers, it could have given out discount coupons to those directly affected by the typhoons. As it is, he said, “those with S.U.V.’s are the ones that will benefit from the price controls, not the poor people.”

Except for Shell and Petron, which refine oil in the Philippines, all oil companies here import their finished products. Because the prices of these refined products are tied to world markets, the companies now might think twice about importing more, given the possibility of losses, said Benjamin Diokno, an economist and former budget secretary.

“The wisdom of E.O. 839 will come to its severest test once oil product supply is disrupted,” Mr. Diokno wrote in BusinessWorld, a Manila newspaper. “For the oil firms who were enticed by the downstream oil industry deregulation law, this recent E.O. is a nightmare.”

The oil companies have complied with the order, and rolled back prices. But they warned that the order might have grave consequences, among them “supply disruptions and negative impact on the investment climate in our country,” according to Roberto Kanapi, a Shell spokesman.

Even now, just days after the order was announced, the oil companies are saying that their losses stemming from the directive will be large, with Petron alone estimating a 1.5 billion-peso loss in the fourth quarter. The government has not indicated when it might lift the executive order.

Oil consumers, meanwhile, have welcomed the decree. Raul Concepcion, a Filipino industrialist who heads the nonprofit Consumer and Oil Price Watch, said the oil companies had it coming. The companies’ “predatory pricing” in the years since the Oil Deregulation Law was passed created the conditions that prompted the reimposition of price controls, he said.

“If there was total transparency in the pricing of oil products, then the oil companies would not be suspected of predatory pricing,” Mr. Concepcion said. Ralph Recto, Ms. Arroyo’s economic planning secretary, had accused the oil companies of overpricing by as much as 8 pesos per liter of gasoline, a charge the companies denied.

The companies have insisted, now and in the past, that their prices are dictated by the market. None have been prosecuted for predatory pricing, despite allegations from groups including Mr. Concepcion’s. But because prices at the pump tend to move all at once, and because the companies have refused to open their books to scrutiny, suspicion has grown among the public.

Some people are urging the government to expand the price freezes nationwide. “Why impose the price controls only in Luzon? The other islands should also be covered, especially because the price of oil in the Visayas and Mindanao are 5 to 7 pesos more expensive compared to Luzon,” said George San Mateo, secretary general of Piston, the country’s largest group of public-transport operators and drivers. Visayas and Mindanao are the two other main island groups in the archipelago.

Mr. San Mateo said he was worried that the oil companies would try to offset their losses in Luzon by overpricing in other areas — a concern shared by Mr. Recto, who recently resigned as Ms. Arroyo’s economic adviser. He said the order would “penalize” consumers in other places.

The executive order may have helped shift the political atmosphere and opened up new opportunities for opponents of deregulation. Already, there are resolutions pending in Congress seeking to repeal the 1998 law.

Satur Ocampo, a congressman, said the law “is a mistake and a burden to poor Filipinos.” It has made the oil companies abusive, he said.

“Even without the administration admitting it, and despite its adherence to deregulation, the recent price hikes have shown that the deregulation policy is a failure,” said Renato Reyes Jr., secretary general of the New Patriotic Alliance, an umbrella group of grass-roots organizations that has pushed for the repeal. “An alternative to deregulation is now in order,” he said.

Oct 26, 2009

Rebel soldiers back ‘Chiz’ - Manila Times

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Military troops accused of plotting coups against President Gloria Arroyo endorsed the candidacy for president in the 2010 elections of opposition Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero. Escudero himself has not officially declared that he will join the race to Malacañang next year although his party, the Nationalist People’s Coalition, picked him weeks ago as its standard-bearer.

“We are supporting the presidential bid of Sen. Escu-dero. The decision of the group to back the senator is a product of a thorough and comprehensive consultation among our members nationwide,” Francisco Ashley Acedillo, the Magdalo Party’s secretary general, said over the weekend.

According to Acedillo, the Magdalo Party chose to support Escudero over other presidential candidates because he possesses the character, vision and leadership ability that the group is looking for.

Reacting to the endorsement, the senator, in a statement, said, “I am honored by the overwhelming support I have received from [Magdalo], a group I consider to have consistently represented the people’s burning desire for change in our country.”

“To me, they are patriots. Their love for this country is only paralleled by their passion for fighting for genuine reforms in government,” Escudero added.

Magdalo was also the name bannered by the rebel soldiers, including officers, in at least three attempts to unseat President Arroyo since she became president in 2001.

The soldiers’ party, Acedillo said, will also back the 2010 senatorial bids of Army Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim and Marine Col. Ariel Querubin, both Magdalo members accused of plotting the coups.

Querubin was detained after figuring in a standoff at Marines headquarters in Fort Bonifacio in Taguig City (Metro Manila) in February 2006.

The Magdalo Party claims to have more than 40,000 members nationwide representing 375 chapters at the provincial, city and municipal levels.

Four other members of the rebel military group would also enjoy the backing of the party in their bids for public office in next year’s balloting.

Three of them are seeking a seat at the House of Representatives and they are Air Force 1st Lt. Acedillo for the Second District of Cebu City, Navy Lt. Senior Grade James Layug for the Second District of Taguig City and Army Capt. Dante Langkit for the Lone District of Kalinga province.

Marine Capt. Gary Alejano will be running for mayor of the city of Sipalay in Negros Occidental province.

Once their party is accredited, Acedillo said, they might run under the party-list system. In which case, he added, the party members would have to run as independents, not under the Magdalo Party.

He announced that the party would hold a national convention next month to decide on the party-list option and possible nominees, and who among the members will run under the party.

Acedillo said that they are talking with the political opposition for possible alliances.

Sen. Antonio Trillanes 4th from the Philipine Navy and a leader of the Magdalo group that took over the Oakwood Hotel in July 2003 to press their demand for reform in the Armed Forces of the Philippines, was the first rebel soldier to win a slot in the Senate.

Significantly, Trillanes pulled off the feat while he was under detention, his cell serving as campaign headquarters.

Despite his victory, the senator has not been allowed to sit in the Senate because of charges he is facing in connection with the Oakwood siege and the more recent Manila Peninsula standoff in November 2007 that he and Lim led.

Lim is detained at Camp Crame, the police headquarters in Quezon City, for rebellion charges in connection with the Manila Peninsula siege.

The endorsement of Escudero was made through a resolution letter that was signed by Trillanes, also the chairman of the Magdalo Party.

“Now therefore be it resolved, that the Magdalo Party, together with its entire membership and its network of supporting individuals and organizations, hereby endorses the candidacy of Sen. Francis Escudero for President of the Republic of the Philippines in the May 2010 elections,” the resolution read.

In thanking the Magdalo group for supporting his presidential bid, Escudero reciprocated by declaring his “unqualified support for [the group], its leaders and the ideals and principles the group stands for.”

“We are no different from each other as I, too, advocate change. With our new-found unity, it is my fervent hope that we will usher in a new brand of leadership in the country. One that will be more responsive to the needs of the people. One that will put an end to a cycle of corruption and exploitation,” he said.

Jefferson Antiporda and Michael D. Tanaotanao

Oct 25, 2009

Birth Control Bill Has Enemies in Philippines - NYTimes.com

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By CARLOS H. CONDE

MANILA — Gina Judilla already had three children the first time she tried to terminate a pregnancy. “I jumped down the stairs, hoping that would cause a miscarriage,” she said. The fetus survived and is now an 8-year-old boy.

Three years later, pregnant again, she drank an herbal concoction that was supposed to induce abortion. That, too, failed.

Three years ago, in another unsuccessful attempt to end a pregnancy, she took Cytotec, a drug to treat gastric ulcers that is widely known in the Philippines as an “abortion pill.”

What drove Ms. Judilla, a 37-year-old manicurist, to such extreme measures is a story familiar to many Filipino women. She and her unemployed husband are very poor, barely able to buy vitamins for their youngest child or to send more than two of their older children to school.

“When I had my third child, I swore to myself that I will never get pregnant again because I know we could not afford to have another one,” Ms. Judilla said in a recent interview inside her home in Pasig City, on the eastern outskirts of Manila.

Abortion is illegal in the Philippines, though birth control and related health services have long been available to those who can afford to pay for them through the private medical system. But 70 percent of the population is too poor and depends on heavily subsidized care through the public health system. In 1991, prime responsibility for delivering public health services shifted from the central government to the local authorities, who have broad discretion over which services are dispensed. Many communities responded by making birth control unavailable.

More recently, however, family planning advocates have been making headway in their campaign to change this. Legislation before the Philippine Congress, called the Reproductive Health and Population Development Act, would require governments down to the local level to provide free or low-cost reproductive health services — from condoms and birth control pills to tubal ligation and vasectomy. It would also mandate sex education in all schools, public and private, from fifth grade through high school.

Supporters of the bill cite urgent public health needs. A 2006 government survey found that between 2000 and 2006, only half of Filipino women of reproductive age used birth control of any kind.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit organization based in the United States that works to advance reproductive health, 54 percent of the 3.4 million pregnancies in the Philippines in 2008 were unintended. Most of these unintended pregnancies — 92 percent — resulted from not using birth control, the institute said, and the rest from birth control that failed.

These unintended pregnancies, the institute says, contributed to an estimated half-million abortions that same year, despite the ban on the procedure. Most of these abortions are done clandestinely and in unsanitary conditions. Many women resort to crude methods like those Ms. Judilla attempted.

Moreover, maternal deaths in the Philippines are among the highest in the region: 230 for every 100,000 live births, compared with 110 deaths in Thailand, 62 in Malaysia and 14 in Singapore, according to the United Nations Population Fund.

The bill’s main proponent in Congress, Representative Edcel C. Lagman, also argues the need for a check on population growth in the interest of national welfare. The Philippine population is estimated at 92 million and is growing at more than 2 percent annually, one of the highest rates in Asia. “Unbridled population growth stunts socioeconomic development and aggravates poverty,” Mr. Lagman wrote in an op-ed column in The Philippine Daily Inquirer.

But attempts to make reproductive services more broadly available met stiff resistance, leading to the defeat of several earlier bills over the past decade.

The main opposition in this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country has come from the church and affiliated lay organizations, which say the proposed law would legalize abortion.

One organization, the Catholic Alumni United for Life, said in a position paper that the legislation would promote abortion by financing abortion-inducing drugs, and therefore “violates explicit Catholic teaching.” Bill supporters counter that the legislation says birth control pills should be made available but that these do not constitute abortion-inducing drugs.

The Rev. Melvin Castro of the Episcopal Commission on Family and Life of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines said the Catholic Church and the laity would fight the bill, if passed into law, up to the Supreme Court.

“The Constitution is very clear that the state should protect life from conception up to its natural end,” Father Castro said in an interview. “Regardless of their religion, Filipinos are God-fearing and family-loving. This bill will change that culture.”

Still, proponents of the bill are optimistic, noting that this is the first time such legislation has won the support of the House committee on health. They also cite opinion surveys that show support for the bill and hope it can be passed before Congress adjourns in June.

It seems certain that debate over the legislation will heat up with the approach of the May national elections. Father Castro said the church wanted the bill to be an election issue.

“The more time is given to all the parties concerned to debate the bill, everybody will come to realize that there is no need for it,” he said.

Already, the church has issued statements calling on Senator Benigno Aquino III, expected to be the opposition’s presidential candidate, to oppose the bill. Mr. Aquino, the son of the late president Corazon Aquino, who was extremely close to the church, has said he would not do this.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who is barred from running for another term, has been sending mixed signals of late about her position. In previous statements, however, has said she would let her Catholic faith guide her. “My faith has a very, very strong influence on me,” she said in a speech last year.

Other politicians, particularly those on the local level, have chosen to side with the church. In 2000, Jose Lito Atienza, who was mayor of Manila at the time, issued an executive order ending government-financed birth control in the capital. Condoms and other contraceptives were removed from government clinics and hospitals. Patients who asked for them were turned away.

Mr. Atienza, who is now the environment secretary, defends his order as “the right thing to do.”

“Contrary to what many are saying, that policy was meant to protect women, to protect their wombs from those who want to take away life,” he said.

Passage of the reproductive health bill would automatically nullify Mr. Atienza’s order, said Clara Rita A. Padilla, executive director of EnGendeRights, a nonprofit group that supports the bill. “The poor women of this country need this law to protect them,” she said.

Some communities have taken a different approach. In 2005, Rodrigo Duterte, mayor of the southern city of Davao, offered 5,000 pesos, or roughly $100, to anyone who would undergo a vasectomy or tubal ligation. The church authorities responded by saying they would remove women’s IUDs for free.

Ms. Judilla’s community did not have the same restrictive policy as Manila — there were simply no contraceptives available when she visited the public clinic, a situation the legislation promises to change. She said she had decided against tubal ligation when she was told that she would not be able to work for a week after the surgery.