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New Issue Of OpinYon – Sept.23 – 29, 2013
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People Win vs. Corporatist Greed
by: Mentong Laurel
ON September 15, 2013 newspapers front-paged the MWSS (Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System) order for water concessionaires In Metro-Manila to cut their water rates for the next five years. Manila Water for the east zone is to reduce its rate by P 7.24/cubic meter and Maynilad Water in the west zone by P 1.46/cubic meter. The two privatized and corporatized water service utilities said they will dispute the MWSS order and submit it to arbitration proceedings. Manila Water claimed the tariff reduction would compromise its ability to serve its customers fully while Maynilad said it was “unjustified”.
The two water companies applied for rate hikes. But various consumer activist groups, individual and media advocates questioned the propriety of the companies passing off its income taxes to consumers. The debate raged since June with the public weighing heavily against the water companies and its apologists on the fairness and legality of passing off income taxes to consumers. The MWSS and the advocates stood strongly on the ground provided by the Puno Supreme Court in a 2003 decision, supported by COA (Commission on Audit) findings that disallowed Meralco’s passing on income tax to consumers and granting a P 30-B refund to its five million customers. #OpinYon #opinion
read cont | http://bit.ly/1fa7vMn
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SINS OF CORY
BY MIGUEL RAYMUNDO
PRESIDENT Benigno S. Aquino III is surely feeling the heat with some of the country’s top technocrats forming an alliance to make him answerable for the billions of pesos in government funds under his control.
Former national treasurer Leonor Briones says the legislators’ pork barrel is just a “coin purse” while Malacañang, that is PNoy, holds the” power of the purse”.
According to the group of Briones, the President has control of over PhP1 trillion in government funds. The national wrath over the lost PhP10 billion in pork is a small percentage to what Malacañang could be liable of with those trillions.
The question is can we trust PNoy to use that money for the good of the country?
Many think PNoy cannot be trusted. Everyday more Filipinos are added to those who do not think PNoy can be trusted in his office. And there is a reason for the growing distrust.
Blasted in Social Media
In the social media, blogs and posts denounce PNoy’s inappropriate interest in protecting the country’s most hated “queen of the pork barrel” Janet Lim-Napoles.
His apparent coddling of Napoles sent signals to the public that something was cooking. This sparked suspicions that PNoy was “too frightened” of Napoles. This also generated some angry questions that got even angrier answers.
And the anger against the un-presidential caring of and protection given to Napoles, “queen” of ten-billion robbery of the countryside development funds entrusted to legislators and bureaucrats, grew louder as stories of the past are brought back to life.
The people are reminded of the sins of the mother of PNoy, the former President Cory Aquino, who has been sold to the Filipino people as saint and martyr.
OpinYon finds it fit to run some of these reminders to the Filipino people. In this issue we pick from the controversialfiles.net.
Scandals of the Cory Era
One of the biggest urban legends of recent times in the Philippines, is the story that the Cory Administration was supposedly the “cleanest” among the Administrations in the last three decades.
Thanks to Nostalgia, and the fact that her Administration was at the dawn of the internet age, much of the negativities of that Administration has been largely forgotten, and people tend to remember only the “good” things about that Administration.
Well, thanks to Noynoy Aquino’s “holier-than-thou” campaign strategy, much of the “unpleasantries” during Cory’s time are being brought back to the surface slowly, but surely. Here are some that we have managed to dig out:
Continue: http://bit.ly/18xAFUA
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EDITORIAL: No Killing the Pork
WHISTLEBLOWER Benhur Luy is the man of the hour.
Not a few were impressed—if not shocked—by the apparent casualness of Luy’s testimony as he described details of how Napoles managed to get her dirty little hands on the millions of pesos in government funds.
Luy’s lurid tales of forgery and collusion with lawmakers comes as a direct affront to the millions of Filipinos mired in poverty. A slap in the face of the jobless, the underpaid workers and, most of all, to the taxpayer who religiously pay their duties only to have the likes of Napoles steal it away.
While most of us are busy with the daily struggle of making ends meet, Napoles and her cohorts in Congress splurge on public funds and lead lives of unimaginable wealth and luxury. And to think that Napoles is just one of many involved in this decades-old scam, is enough to make you sick–sick of all the rotten, dirty scumbags who run our government.
Calls have been made to scrap the pork barrel system. Well and good. Even if there is nothing wrong with the system in the first place. But, considering the perks of being in power and how politicians spend, cheat (even kill) in this country to win an election, it is very hard to imagine a Congress without its pork. Napoles’ cohorts in government may be cringing in fear of impending implication—but the horror of being without the PDAF to a crooked lawmaker is a hundredfold greater.
(Image source: http://everyoneisstupidbutme.com)
Everything was roses until Luy had a falling out with his employer Napoles, who also happens to be his relative. Like whistleblowers before him, Luy is now state witness, a mob insider-turned-squealer. Like all whistleblowers before him, his courage to spill the beans on the pork barrel scandal is admirable. But killing the pork will be easier said than done. Its fate, after all, rests in the hands of people who are in the same club as those accused of abusing it. #OpinYon #Editorial #Philippines
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Indonesia Ambassador to the Philippines Yohanes Kristiarto Soeryo Legowo: A MAN AHEAD OF HIS TIME
DIPLOMATS are—usually—strict about time. When they don’t arrive in time for their appointments, they come early.
This is literally the case of Yohanes Kristiarto Soeryo Legowo, Indonesia’s Ambassador to the Philippines. Born on the 27th of December in 1962, about a week earlier than his mother’s due date, you could say that it is in his providence to become an ambassador.
Known as Kris to fellow diplomats, friends and associates—his arrival to the family came as a big relief (hence the name Legowo—meaning “big relief” in Javanese). His mother fainted and fell while in church two days before he was born and the accident required stitches on her neck and triggered the contractions.
The youngest in a brood of 10, Legowo became the hands-down favorite in the family.
“I could not deny that everybody was always trying to spoil me.… But doesn’t make me a spoiled child,” Legowo said in a magazine interview last year. But while he has had his share of being pinched in the ear for being naughty, he admitted that he did not really enjoy the overprotectiveness of his parents, brothers and sisters. “But in the end, I put it in a very positive perspective. They did it because they love me,” he said.
His father, Soeryo, was a teacher who imparted to them the value of education. So despite the bouts of teenage rebellion and other misbehaviors—Legowo grew up a decent young man.
“All the values of life I learned it from the family. My father taught us how to pursue dream,” Kris said. “But he always emphasized also that the way we pursue our dream is also important…being Christian, process is very important.” #OpinYon#Indonesia #Foreign
cont | http://bit.ly/17IqauD
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BCDA President and CEO: ARNEL PACIANO D. CASANOVA, ESQ. “Top Caliber Executive”
THE name alone grabs attention, but it is the story of Arnel Paciano D. Casanova that is more enthralling.
The current President and Chief Executive Officer of the Bases Conversion Development Authority (BCDA)—the Government-Owned and-Controlled Corporation mandated to transform former US military bases into alternative productive civilian use—Casanova has a demeanor that radiates authority and a simplicity that reveals his humble roots as a farmer’s son who grew up in Batangas province.
From his modest origins, Casanova sent himself through school through scholarships and by working odd jobs which include being a farm hand, baker, ice cream peddler, fast-food restaurant helper, English tutor, and researcher.
At the University of the Philippines, he earned degrees in Law, English Studies, and Urban Planning. The proof of his brilliance is a Master’s degree in Public Administration—with concentration on finance and leadership—from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
Starting from the bottom of the ladder, Casanova’s his rise to the top is phenomenal, a classic rags-to-riches tale but nevertheless a story uniquely his own.
“One of my greatest accomplishments is that my family has been lifted from poverty. Our life is very different now,” Casanova said in a newspaper interview last year. #OpinYon #BCDA #Feature
cont | http://bit.ly/1f3EeCZ
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New Issue of OpinYon, Out Now! Vol.4 No.4
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False Flag Wars, Now Syria
by: Mentong Tiu Laurel
THE website 9/11Review.com provides us a historical summary of U.S. “False Flag” operations. As Wiki defines: “False flag operations are covert operations which are designed to deceive the public in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is, flying the flag of a country other than one’s own.” #OpinYon #Syria
(photo: telegraph.co.uk)
continue here: http://bit.ly/16gxVIn
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Editorial: The Ugly Truth
SURVEYS are a common tool to get a feel of the public pulse.
If conducted scientifically, the data collected by surveys could provide a fairly accurate assessment of the public sentiment toward a certain issue, person or object.
,
(photo source: http://aptmeaning.com)
But surveys are not an exact science and could be easily manipulated to suit the need of the one who commissioned the polls or twist the public perception.
Here in the Philippines, the season is again ripe for surveys.
With our government rocked by yet another scandal courtesy of one Janet Lim-Napoles, polls could serve as a fresh coat of paint over the ugly picture painted by the present scenario.
Two weeks ago, a survey conducted by the American Chamber of Commerce of US firms operating in the region painted a rosy picture of the business climate here in the Philippines. Then on Friday, the country scored “pogi points” anew in the latest Global Competitiveness Report filed by the World Economic Forum (WEF). #OpinYon #Editorial
cont | http://bit.ly/19CJeuu
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Demeaning the Presidency
by: Atty. Salvador S. Panelo
THERE is universal condemnation and outrage against President Benigno Aquino III, for the latter’s personally accepting the surrender of Janet Lim-Napoles in the seat of political power that is Malacañang, and worse, for escorting, the fugitive from justice to the Philippine National Police Headquarters in Camp Crame.
As if the gigantic and monstrous presidential faux pas was not enough, the highest official of the land, sworn to uphold and enforcing the law, had to inspect the room to check if it was airconditioned enough and sufficiently comfortable for the woman charged with seriously illegally detaining another and believed, if not reputed, to be responsible for – and the mastermind of that 10B pork barrel fund scam that has shocked the entire nation, triggering a social media blast protest by netizens that led to the so-called 1 Million March protest for the abolition of the pork barrel. #OpinYon #Pnoy #Opinion
cont | http://bit.ly/17msaZg
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