Will the truth set DepEd officials free?

Panay News Editorial

Dated: Sept. 13, 2014

Will the truth set DepEd officials free?

THE Department of Education’s Iloilo division superintendent, Dr. Myrna Castillo, has spoken in a press conference, “My conscience is clear.”

She was clearing herself of any anomaly committed by her office’s direct involvement in the Little League Softball World Series, where high school and elementary school girls from Zarraga, Iloilo competed in the major league softball in Portland, Oregon (August 7-13, 2014) and junior league in Kirkland, Washington (August 10-16), respectively.

Well, whether her conscience is good enough to “clear” her is one thing. Whether the investigating bodies — the DepEd regional office and the Sangguniang Panglunsod — agree with her is another matter.

Let us take her word at face value: Despite the help of Gov. Arthur Defensor Sr., she and other delegation officials had not raised enough millions of pesos demanded by their USA trip, and so they had to pick their own pockets.

If they are that rich, we hope they would not be liable for unexplained wealth punishable under the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act. No doubt any ordinary DepEd employee would not waste more or less $2,000 for a round-trip fare.

Let us also take Dr. Castillo’s word at face value: Only her son Nonie Mark, not her daughter Marian Grace, went with her as “comforting coach.” Has Marky, a college student, ever played a game of softball?

We now agree that Marian Grace Castillo–Suiza was not able to join the trip for whatever reason, but we don’t agree that she had no participation in soliciting funds. The letterhead of their solicitation letter listed her as “finance officer.”

She must have given way to Ruby Theresa Palmaira, a DepEd supervisor detailed in the division office who made it to Kirkland, Washington as “assistant team manager.”

A school principal (name withheld upon request) said Ruby had worked hard in reminding 180 school principals and 52 district supervisors to send in their donations. It remains to be proven, however, whether each of them was really forced to cough up public funds ranging from P5,000 to P20,000, unless they eventually “sing” at the risk of being implicated.

In the list of donors that Castillo gave to the media, no name of supplier or contractor appeared. But these suppliers and contractors were the biggest “pressured” donors.

In fairness to the division superintendent, she is not the only “nepotistic” official in the junior league delegation. Lina Dordas, principal of Zarraga National High School, had her daughter, Arvek Clydel Dordas, listed as player in the junior league.

As regards the claim of team manager Antonio Oquindo that the Iloilo team had defaulted only one game in Oregon, the Little League website shows that they had defaulted two — against Northern California on Aug. 7 and against New Jersey on Aug. 8. They lost all of their games against Canada, Louisiana and the Czech Republic. True, they placed 5th in the pool of five teams in pool B. Therefore, after losing to the 5th placer of pool A (Czech Republic), our team was as good as 10th placer.

Demoralization could have devastated our “coach-less” team in Portland, Oregon. Believe it or not, the “comforting coach” was no real coach. If it was any consolation, our team in Kirkland, Washington won one game. As to why Castillo did not even announce what team they had defeated, we don’t know why.

We agree with Novie Guazo and Regan Arlos of RMN Radio: the delegation officials were primarily motivated by their quest for a US visa, not for a medal for the 24 Ilongga players. Jun-Jun Sornito of Aksyon Radyo, on the other hand, echoed the ruling of the Civil Service Commission that public funds could not be used for private activities.

Bombo Radyo and Super Radyo likewise questioned her “fund-raising.”

The Commission on Audit was right in disapproving the Division Office’s request for a million-peso donation to be sourced from the school board fund. As we have noted in a past editorial, the Little League World Series is a private US-based sports organization with no formal DepEd linkage. It should have coordinated with the Philippine Sports Commission.

Incidentally, sports are no longer within the domain of DepEd, which used to be known as Department of Education, Culture and Sports, or DECS. DepEd has bigger problems to attend to, such as dilapidated and unrepaired schools.

PEOPLE POWWOW: A misleading indicator of productivity

As Published in Panay News

Dated: Sept. 12, 2014

PEOPLE POWWOW: A misleading indicator of productivity

By HERBERT VEGO

EACH time President Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Aquino III paints a glowing picture of the country’s “prosperity” because of tuwid na daan, the poor can only shake their heads, wondering whether he is referring to New Zealand.

Well, how can we argue against the Philippines’ 7.8 percent gross domestic product (GDP) growth? GDP refers to the annual domestic output of a country, including exports. The climbing percentage is therefore measured against the previous year’s output, hence not indicative of the general population’s economic productivity.

In fact, nine of the top 10 GDP performers in the latest list of the Economic Intelligence Unity of the United States are “poor nations” by world standard.

As published in a recent issue of the Washington Post, here are the 10 countries that are expected to have the most economic growth in 2014, ranked from first to last by percentage of GDP growth:

(1) Mongolia, 15.3 percent;

(2) Sierra Leone, 11.2 percent;

(3) Turkmenistan, 9.2 percent;

(4-5) Two-way tie: Bhutan, 8.8 percent; Libya, 8.8 percent;

(6-8) Three-way tie: Iraq, 8.5 percent; Laos, 8.5 percent; Timor-Leste, 8.5 percent;

(9) Eritrea, 8.0 percent;

(10) Zambia, 7.9 percent

You will note that all of these countries, with the exception of Libya, are very poor. In most of them, economic growth is driven by oil or any other natural resources. Many of the booms come from the sale of those natural resources to developing countries.

A very poor country growing rich because of a single natural resource is nothing new, to cite Saudi Arabia as the best example, which has been transformed by a half-century of selling oil to Western countries.

Top-ranked Mongolia has been the world’s fastest-growing economy since 2012, resulting from the massive sale of its mineral resources to China. The country’s families that have been nomadic for centuries have now homes of their own.

But on the local front, as far Juan dela Cruz who does not feel the trickles of prosperity is concerned, the President’s glowing boast sounds Greek.

We have heard enough of broken promises from PNoy.  We have seen enough of graft and corruption, but not a stretch of tuwid na daan.

I wonder how many of us remember the words he said when he ran for President against his cousin Gilberto “Gibo” Teodoro in 2010. He said, “This will be a fight of good versus evil.”

The allusion to “evil” was in the sense that Teodoro was the candidate of the then outgoing President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Gibo, were he not a gentleman, could have reminded PNoy that the battle between good and evil only refers to the battle between God and Satan.

Has PNoy vanquished Satan in four years of his administration?

Considering the current population of the country which is a hundred million people occupying an archipelago of 115,830 square miles, the fact is that with more mouths to feed than we can afford, our average per-person income or gross national product (GNP) – that is, value of all goods produced annually divided by number of people – is only around US $1,000 or P44,000 per year or P3,666 per month. Oh no!

Worse, since 90 percent of the country’s wealth is in the hands of only 10 percent of the population, the poorest of the poor cannot eat three square meals a day.

Compare our GNP to that of Denmark, a smaller nation with a population of only seven million people, and you will gasp in awe. Denmark has a towering GNP of US $27,000. That’s 27 times of our own!/PN

PEOPLE POWWOW: Raul Gonzalez Sr. was also a journalist

As Published in Panay News

September 10, 2014

PEOPLE POWWOW: Raul Gonzalez Sr. was also a journalist

By HERBERT VEGO

IN the wake of the death of former Justice secretary Raul Gonzalez Sr. Sunday night, we heard Ilonggos from all walks of life reminiscing the “good old days” with him. Even his political allies-turned-enemies could only count the ways – as private citizen, congressman and Justice secretary – the old man had helped them.

I was no longer close to the man when he ascended the political ladder. But I would like to share with you readers how we had crossed path in the past because of our common passion for journalism. I am sure most Filipinos do not yet know that, aside from being lawyer, politician and Cabinet official, Gonzalez used to be an active newspaper columnist.

The first time I saw his byline was sometime in the early 1970s when he was writing a column for the now defunct “We-Forum”, at that time a hot weekly critical of martial law and President Ferdinand Marcos. Being also a Manila-based journalist, I knew then the bigger risk he had undergone when he stood as lawyer to then Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. who was facing subversion charges before the Marcos-controlled military tribunal.

The first time I saw Raul Gonzalez Sr., he was at the check-in counter of the Manila domestic airport. I sidled up to him and introduced myself as a fellow journalist.

“I’m going home to Iloilo City to deliver a speech before a civic organization,” he said while giving me his calling card.

It would take many more years before I saw him again. I contented myself reading his columns and reading about him.

It came as no surprise when the next President – Ninoy’s widow, Cory Cojuangco Aquino – handpicked him as the tanodbayan in her revolutionary government in 1986. The said new position was the equivalent of today’s ombudsman.

Sometime in 1992 or 1993 while I was holding office as editor of the weekly Visayan Tribune at the Iloilo-YMCA Building, a surprise visitor came in. He was Raul Gonzalez Sr. who had gone back to private life.

He offered an idea I could not refuse. He would write a column for the paper for free.

From then on, he paid me a weekly visit to submit his typewritten column.

More often than not, he was tackling local, rather than national issues, in his columns. He would often criticize the congressman at that time, Rafael Lopez-Vito.

One afternoon, he asked me to list down the names of all the 180 barangay captains in Iloilo City. This done, he issued a check for a year’s subscription of each of them to our weekly newspaper.

Later, he also wrote columns for Panay News, which was still a weekly.

Of course, most of the barangay leaders at that time were identified with the incumbent congressman. But Gonzalez saw this not as a handicap but as a challenge to hurdle.

As president of the Iloilo Press Club at that time, I proposed that he sponsor a bowling tournament to be participated in by the print, broadcast and TV media. That should endear him to the most important people who would boost his image as upcoming public servant.

He agreed to sponsor. In fact, he personally attended our bowling tournament at Saint Elizabeth Center. He footed all the bills and left cash prizes for individual and group winners.

That single act of camaraderie endeared him to the Iloilo media. The news that he would run for congressman against Lopez-Vito in 1995 had gone “viral” in the tri-media.

The late Rodolfo Legaspi, an incumbent provincial board member at that time, predicted that Gonzalez would win.

“If Raul becomes congressman,” he told this writer, “he would be flooded with invitations he couldn’t accept. Now that he is not yet a candidate, please relay my invitation to him to visit Marina Beach Resort.”

Marina, owned by Legaspi, was then a popular tourist resort in Miag-ao town.

When I told Gonzalez that the invitation had come from the owner of Marina, he snapped, “Okay, I will be there on Sunday. I have to find out if the resort would be an ideal place to gather together my political leaders and followers.”

To cut the long story short, he ran for congressman and unseated Lopez-Vito in 1995, in effect sealing his colorful political future.

From then on, he ceased to be a journalist in order to be a newsmaker.

Happy trip to the more wonderful world, Sir!/PN