ECONOMIC RECOVERY REMAINS DISTANT BECAUSE OF LACK OF PUBLIC TRANSPORT

By Ba Ipe 

“MOBILITY is not a human need. It is a basic right.” Nikki Coseteng, a former senator and street parliamentarian, uttered these words in her opening statement in a recent media forum to stress the constitutional right to travel for every person.

Coseteng could not help but feel indignant at the current transport mess that springs from the abject lack of public transport. The public transport sector appears to have collapsed due to public policies that prohibit legitimate bus firms from fielding their bus fleets.

Economic recovery is a function of mobility. The freer movement of goods and services (people) ensures and hastens economic recovery. With lessened mobility, recovery is inconceivable. Mobility requires public transport services, which should be made available in the spirit of competition, where the most efficient is obtained at the least cost.

The Covid-19 pandemic is the convenient excuse for the government to stop legitimate bus firms from fielding their buses in the routes between Metro Manila and provinces, triggering the rise of illegal vehicles and limiting the movements of most citizens.

The erratic public policies on public transport have contributed to the slowdown, enabling the national economy to post the sharpest postwar economic decline in 2020 and 2021. While recovery is on sight, it has been dismally slow because of lack of public transport.

Coseteng was quick to lay the blame squarely on the Duterte government, which has come out with policies that effectively deprive the people of legitimate public transport. According to her, the government legitimate bus firms to use the government-sponsored central bus terminals for buses traversing between Metro Manila and the provinces.

But the central terminals in Bocaue, Bulacan and Sta. Rosa, Laguna have been inaccessible for passengers, who want to go to the provinces in Luzon. They do not have the facilities for waiting passengers and for tired bus drivers, who want to rest in between their trips.

Going from any point in Metro Manila to the central bus terminals has been most inconvenient for provincial bus passengers. They have to travel first for 30 kilometers to the bus terminals just to catch a bus that goes to Pampanga, Laguna, or elsewhere.

This is simply insane, according to Coseteng. It does not make sense, she said with an air of condescension on the quality of public policies the Department of Transportation has been coming out. Moreover, this situation is being compounded by the subsequent arrests of provincial buses that do not use the central terminals. According to Coseteng, the owner of each provincial bus is being asked to pay a fine of P1 million for entering Metro Manila.

She has put a P2 million bet on Arturo Tugade and other transport officials to take daily public transport for 30 days to see for themselves the current public transport woes. Tugade has remained silent.

The emergence of illegal vehicles, or the so-called “colorums,” has been a bane. Illegal vans and cars have replaced the public provincial buses on the streets. Since they are unregulated and form part of the underground economy, the colorums charge as much as triple the usual regulated of the provincial buses.

They do not register and ergo do not pay taxes and other state fees, do not issue receipts in their operations, and are not totally known to the government. They are said to be owned by local officials, their relatives, and their dummies. Military and police generals were said to be owners of those illegal vans.

The people have to rely on public transport because 90 percent of all households nationwide do not own cars or any other vehicles. Transport specialists argued on the necessity to enhance the public, rich or poor, to take public transport. But this is easier than done.

For her part, Coseteng, an advocate of a more liberal approach on public transport, argued that economic recovery would remain difficult because of lack of public transport. “We have not learned our lessons. We have remained difficult,” she said with an air of frustration.

THEY DON'T WRITE, DO THEY?

 By Ba Ipe

FAMOUS American broadcast journalists like Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Tom Brokaw, Barbara Walters, Dan Rather, and a host of others wrote books during the span of their careers, and even in their retirement. Their books contain interesting details, enabling them to preserve them in their written works. In brief, they have respect for writing. Incidentally, many broadcast journalist were writers before they made the transition to broadcast journalism, which is more lucrative than working and writing as reporters in newspapers or news agencies.

Walter Cronkite, a revered name in U.S. journalism since he was once proclaimed “the most trusted man” in the U.S., wrote three books. I have a copy of his book, which I bought for a song in a sidewalk book sale some years ago. His book “A Reporter’s Life” contains interesting details, which included his transition to a broadcast journalist from a wire service reporter stationed in the old Soviet Union. Later, he established a venerated name in CBS and the whole U.S. broadcast journalism. He made a successful transition when television was a nascent technology.

Cronkite’s book contain some sidelights of his major coverage including the 1945 Nuremberg Trials, Vietnam War, Apollo 11’s landing on the moon, among others. He witnessed how Chief Prosecutor Robert Jackson fumbled in his cross-examination of Hermann Goehring, the second highest German Nazi official, during the Nuremberg Trials.

I also bought a copy of Brinkley’s book “Beat: People, Places, and Events That Shaped My Time,” which contains his memoirs of the major events he covered in his career in NBC and ABC. His humor was wry and dry but profound and poignant to a large extent. Brinkley interviewed Ferdinand Marcos during his dictatorial years. He was a tough interviewer, who was never afraid of raising the most intimidating questions to the late dictator.

Brokaw’s book” Boom: Voices in the 1960s,” likewise brings memories of the major events that took place in the tumultuous decade. They included the Vietnam War, the rise of the Hippie culture, the Civil Rights Movement, the emergence of SDS, among others. I have noticed the profundity of many Brokaw’s views on these episodes of American history.

Barbara Walters’s book “Audition” details her competition with other broadcast titans like Cronkite, among others, to bring out the best in the coverage of many world events. I found it most interesting and profound to read because she even wrote how she lost her virginity and how Cuban dictator Fidel Castro took a liking on her, putting her ahead in the competition. Her narrative on her daughter’s rebellious ways and reformation to become an NGO leader is also most telling.

Maria Ressa, a Filipino journalist and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, wrote two interesting books on the rise of terrorism in Southeast Asia: “Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of Al-Qaeda's Newest Center (2003) and From Bin Laden to Facebook: 10 Days of Abduction, 10 Years of Terrorism (2013).” She worked for CNN for two decades before forming rappler.com.

But Maria Ressa is an exception of the host of Filipino broadcast journalists, who hardly have the appreciation, much less the passion to write and leave something to posterity and history. Knowing that Filipinos are not a reading people, they too have developed the abhorrence to put their thoughts into writing.

The late Rafael Yabut, Johnny de Leon, and Rod Navarro once dominated the airwaves for three or four decades, but are now half-forgotten because they have left no memoirs. This is not good for journalism and the country as well. I could not stand those pseudo-journalists like Boy Abunda, who are all talk but no ideas. I wonder if he reads, or writes. Well, that's too much to ask for a semi-literate guy, who specializes in gossips. 

SARA DUTERTE'S IGNORANCE

 BY BA IPE

SARA Duterte's proposal to require mandatory military service for every Filipino citizen of training age is laudable but not feasible. She favors the creation of a huge standing army, which is unsustainable given the current fiscal position. The outstanding debt of the national government could reach between P13 to P14 trillion, when his father ends his term on June 30. The heavy borrowings will trigger economic issues, which make her suggestion unrealistic to pursue.

Since current fiscal policy favors debt repayment over delivery of services to our people, thanks to Presidential Decree 1177, a marcosian creation, the priority is pay the huge public debt of the national government, lessening the public funds for mandatory social services like education, public health, and disaster mitigation. This situation further lessens additional services like mandatory military service. Where will Sara get the money to finance the mandatory military service? That is the question.

The Philippines is rich in guerilla traditions. Since the Spanish colonial era, those recalcitrant leaders used guerilla tactics to face the Spanish armed brigades. The likes of Sumuroy, Tamblot, Dagohoy, Silang, among others resorted to form guerilla groups, which used guerilla tactics against the Spanish forces..

Even the millenarian groups of Apo Ipe, Papa Isio, the Colorums, or even the Sakdalistas, had guerilla groups to harass the American colonial forces and the paramilitary Philippine Constabulary. When the Japanese invading forces came, we had the various guerilla groups – HMB, Marking Guerillas, among others, which cleaned the country to the Japanese forces when the American forces led Gen. Douglas McArthur arrived in 1944.

Now, we have the NPA, which employs guerilla tactics to face AFP. They have been unconquered since its creation in 1969.

We had standing armies during Emilio Aguinaldo's time and when the Japanese invaded us in 1941, but they lost miserably to enemies. Aguinaldo's army lost to invading American forces, while the USAFFE forces surrendered in Bataan in 1942.

Because of the richness of our guerilla traditions, then Defense Secretary Renato de Villa, in an interview I had for the Philippines Free Press in 1991 (it was our cover story during those days), said the country’s defense strategy has to be recast to acknowledge the use of guerilla tactics to fight potential enemy.

I remember de Villa telling me that the standing army does not have to be very big because we don’t have enough resources to support a big army. It should approximate the size that it could deliver lethal blows to the enemy when they attack us and come over to our country.

But we should have strong militia fores that could be used automatically to become guerilla units that would use guerilla tactics, de Villa said. Our terrain favors this approach, he said.

Although Sara is listed to have obtained some courses and training at the National Defense College and she is registered as a reserve officer, she hardly knows our defense requirements.

Apparently, her statement is her way to ingratiate herself to the defense and military establishment. Its election time and she needs their support by hook or by crook, even by half-truths and lies.

PUBLIC TRANSPORT POLICY UNDER QUESTION

By Philip M. Lustre Jr.

DURING the pre-pandemic days, it was normal for a passenger to pay less than P500 for a ride from Quezon City to the idyllic town of San Felipe in Zambales, a distance of 175 kilometers. He took the ride in a bus belonging to Victory Liner, a 70-year old legitimate bus firm whose bus fleet traverses almost the whole expanse of northern and central Luzon. Victory Liner is reputedly a progressive firm that issued insurance for passengers to cover accidents and unforeseen incidents, while riding in its buses.

Nowadays, passengers have to take private vans, cars and other modes of land transport and pay at least triple the pre-pandemic fares of pubic transport. This is simply because public buses are not easily accessible. These private owned vans and cars have taken over the provincial routes. But they are not registered as public transport firms. Ergo, they do not pay taxes to the government or issue receipts to passengers.

Since they are part of the so-called “underground economy,” owners of these private vehicles do not assume responsibility if ever accidents happen along the road. Moreover, they hardly follow health protocols. In case of contamination of the dreaded Covid-19 virus, their owners could not be forced or counted to be responsible to their passengers.

The bus industry providing public transport now suffers the worst crisis since the postwar era. Most public buses literally came to a complete halt, when the government imposed what could be regarded one of the worst lockdown in the community of nations at the onset of the pandemic in 2020.

When it was time to revive the economy after months of complete lockdown, the government did not immediately order the bus firms to resume their operations put their buses on the road. Instead, it ordered the use of face shields, which was not even necessary.

It also formed the Inter-Agency Task Force Against Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF), whose members were mostly retired military generals, who have no medical training, and other public officials, who have established a notoriety for official incompetence and lack of sensitivity to public demands.

The IATF responded to the public clamor for a revived public transport, when on February 26, 2021, it has issued Resolution 101 , requiring provincial buses to load and unload passengers on designated ITXs. This resolution has named three terminals: Sta Rosa Integrated Terminal (SRIT) in Sta. Rosa, Laguna; Parañaque Integrated Terminal Exchange (PITX) in Paranaque City; and the North Luzon Exchange Terminal (NLET) in Bocaue, Bulacan adjacent the Iglesia ni Kristo’s Philippine Arena compound.

The SRIT and PITX have been chosen and required to serve as the hub of the provincial buses traversing the south and southwest of Luzon. The NLET has been assigned to serve buses traveling northern Luzon. But going to these terminals is inconvenient for passengers. They are far from passengers, who have to go first to the towns of Sta. Rosa in Laguna and Bocaue in Bulacan, take tricycles rides from there to go to the two terminals, and get a bus to go the provinces. The terminal in Paranaque City is in a location, which requires passengers to walk great distance, an inconvenient situation for them. 

Moreover,  all buses bound for provinces would be required under the IATF resolution to use the integrated terminal exchanges as the central hubs for public transport. No bus company or public transport would be allowed use of their private terminals.

The resolution has unintended unfavorable consequences, as it has promoted the use of the so-called “colorum” vehicles, which  taken advantage of problems of legitimate bus firms. Their vans and cars do not follow loading capacity. They charge exorbitant fees and fail to comply with minimum health standards thus causing more danger to passengers given the pandemic.

Meanwhile, provincial buses have been suspended for almost 2 years already. Despite this, bus operators continue to meet fees to renew bus registration and business permits, and pay insurance premiums and workers’ compensation. Incidentally, the bus industry has been a steady source of income for employees, transport workers, and their families. Most small and medium enterprises depend on bus operations for their daily existence.

Legitimate bus operators and their representatives have repeated talks with the Cabinet, the Department of Transportation, LFTRB, and IATF people, but their efforts have resulted only in these functionaries pointing fingers at each other. Instead, government officials repeatedly claimed that it is the bus operators who are remiss in getting the special permits.

How about rescinding that Resolution and allow bus firms to use their private terminals? They are still useful and could be easily revived for use.

BBM ENGAGES IN ‘DEEP FAKE’ TO WIN IN 2022

 By Ba Ipe

IT is no coincidence that 95% of the photographs, news and feature articles, and other texts that were checked and declared “fake” in big bold letters by fact check agencies have come from the BBM camp. It could be said it is the policy of the BBM camp to engage in lies, deception and what could be described as “deep fake.” No buts and if about it.

BBM is an underachiever. He has no sterling record to show off. He is lazy and, except for the public offices he occupied, he did not work in his entire life. Being the mediocre son of the infamous dictator bearing the same name, this underperformer wants to be the next president when the truth is he is unqualified.

Meanwhile, modern digital technology has improved dramatically, i.e. by leaps and bounds. Where before pictures don’t lie, now, they lie instead. They can be altered and manipulated to deceive people. Smartphones and other modern gadgets have modern applications that allow every conceivable fakery. The age of deception and big lies has dawned on us.

This is the era of the so-called “deep fake.”

Before the onset of digital technology, news and information usually come at specific hours of the day. Now, they come on the 24/7 cycle. The Information Revolution is churning fast, giving all kinds of information at any time of the day. There is hardly time for respite to examine closely the information that come before us. There is no time for reflection.

 We are all victims of the Information Revolution and its negative effects.

The BBM camp takes advantage of this negative side of the Information Revolution. Because it has wherewithal, largely stolen from the Filipino people, to spend and finance these insidious underground operations, it has come to engage in the deep fake mainly to deodorize the stinking  image of the late strongman and improve the his underachieving son’s.

His camp has photoshopped old and new pictures to present they have popular support. Public gatherings that have thin crowds have been altered to show big crowds instead. In instances, where the lazy BBM could not attend and was not around, they have changes to show BBM materializing from nowhere. What they know is to engage in despicable big-time deception of the most wicked kind. The BBM camp has no moral compunction to deceive and mislead the Filipino people. There is no nothing new about their operations.

Lately, the BBM camp has been floating the so–called "Tallano gold," which the Marcoses intend to give to the Filipino people. The reason the Marcoses are filthy rich is because they allegedly "found" the Tallano gold. This is fraud and fiction combined because the actual reason is that they stole between $5 billion to $10 billion in people’s money.

There is no end to the strings of deep fakes they have resorted and engaged. The BBM camp is a factory of fake news and everything fake. There is absolutely no basis to support his presidential bid unless we’re masochists and engaged in national and collective suicide.   

ANYBODY BUT BONGBONG MOVEMENT

 By Ba Ipe

IN the run-up for the 1995 midterm elections, intrepid political forces joined hand to launch what it was known the ABB Movement. No, it did not stand for the Alex Boncayao Brigade, a band of urban guerillas of the New People’s Army (NPA), the military arm of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). This group of guerillas was formed to honor Alex Boncayao, the labor leader who joined the New People’s Army (NPA) to pursue armed struggle.

The ABB in the 1995 elections was the Anybody But Bongbong Movement, or ABB for short, which was launch to derail the senatorial candidacy of BBM. It launched several negative campaigns against BBM and they were largely successful. BBM lost miserably in 1995, forcing him to go local for a while.

It was easy to derail his bid. The 1995 elections was only nine years away from the 1986 “snap” presidential elections, where the Marcoses did all tricks in the book to defeat Cory Aquino in the Comelec official count. Those days, many voters still remembered the fraudulent ways of dictator Ferdinand Marcos like ballot box snatching and switching, massive vote-buying, delisting of many voters in the official list of voters, triggering disenfranchisement of more than three million voters, and the presence of goons and guns that resulted in intimidation, fear, and failure to vote of many voters in areas where the opposition was strong.

Of course, nobody forgot the fateful 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution, where the people revolted to protest the election fraud and topple the misrule of the Marcos dictatorship. BBM learned that many people knew and understood the misdeeds of the Marcos dictatorship, resulting in their misfortune.

 The Marcos dictatorship was characterized by three major points:

1.     Centralized corruption, where fat under-the-table commissions were given directly to Marcos in exchange for big state projects and it has been estimated officially that Marcos earned between $5 billion to $10 billion, an amount that was stashed mostly abroad by his trusted lieutenants;

2.    Crony capitalism, where Marcos and his stable of cronies and friends cornered a big chunk of the Philippine economy by creating agricultural monopolies in sugar and coconut and waterfront services, among others, and fat contracts with the government; and

3.    Massive human rights violations, where tens of thousands of student activists, labor leaders, Church and civil society workers, peasant leaders, among others were arrested and jailed without charges, tortured, and fell victims to involuntary disappearances, making Marcos a global name in human rights violation.     

BBM was closely associated with these abuses in power. He did nothing to counteract those unsavory recollections on what his father's martial law did to the Filipino people. He did nothing to explain the Marcos’s side of the overall misery, suffering, and difficulties the people  experienced under his father’s infamous regime. He did not have the heart to face those political realities.

Instead, BBM focused on local politics in the home province of his father-dictator in Ilocos Norte. Even though BBM is notorious for his poor command of the Ilocano dialect,he did not lose. He run again for senator in 2010 and he won as landed 8th. His six-year term in the Senate was described as mediocre and uneventful. He did not have a single enacted bill to be proud. His Senate seat was almost vacant.

He won in 2010 senatorial elections because the nation’s demographics had changed drastically. The voters’ profile showed an increased number of young voters, who hardly knew and understood what took place in 1986. The BBM camp merely took advantage of the overall ignorance of many voters of the Marcos dictatorship.

Knowing the voters’ profile would further change due to the influx of many young voters, who either possess do not have recollections of the  martial law years, or distorted views for those who have knowledge (some young people even think we had our “golden era” under Marcos, which is just bull), BBM took his chances in 2016 by running for vice president.

BBM lost to Leni Robredo, who was a political newcomer those days. He lodged at least two electoral protests before Presidential Electoral Tribunal but lost miserably, as Leni was declared the true winner.

This mediocre underachiever son of the infamous dictator, with nothing to show except the Marcos loot, is running for president in 2022. He is seeking the country’s top political post even though has no coherent political platform or program of government, no political ideology or belief system , or any alternative to offer to the Filipino people.

He has nothing but motherhood statements to which nobody would deny or oppose. He has nothing but his exaggerated estimate of himself and limited understanding of the many global and local issues which a president has to address.

(More to follow tomorrow, including details of the campaign of the ABB Movement)

THE MARCOSES HAVEN'T CHANGED; THEY ALWAYS GO FOR AN OVERKILL

WHAT happened yesterday at Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City showed that the Marcoses have not changed a bit and are still basically the same. They like to go for the dramatic or even for an overkill just to stress a point even if it violates basic human decency and reveals nothing but their callousness and insensitivity.

The huge traffic jam created by their callous supporters, who occupied the entire 10-lane “killer highway” on the one side, reminds me of what the Marcoses did during the political campaign of the 1986 “snap” presidential elections that pitted dictator Ferdinand Marcos against Cory Aquino, widow of the martyr Ninoy Aquino Jr.

We took the early morning flight of the PAL plane to go to San Jose City in Occidental Mindoro. I was employed in a Japanese news agency; it was job to cover either candidates on any given day of the political campaign. It was normal for me to swing from part of the country to another to cover their campaign sorties in different parts of the country.

On that day sometime in January, 1986, I was assigned to cover the KBL rally in San Jose City, Occidental Mindoro. It took place in the morning and lasted until noontime. I was in a group of journalists happily taking our lunch in a restaurant there when somebody from the KBL campaign team told us that we could not possibly go back to Manila on the same day because Imelda Marcos diverted the PAL plane for her use. There was no further explanation on the diversion.

What compounded the injury was that we were told that the next flight would be three days after the political event. In brief, we had to stay for three more days to go back to Manila. This was unacceptable because we did not want to get marooned in Mindoro doing nothing. Moreover, ours was a paid trip. We booked officially our flight to go to San Jose City and return trip on the same day. The diversion was a violation of our contracted flight. But the KBL people would not care of any contractual obligation.

We talked to the people there, who told that if we wanted to go back to Manila on the same day, we could take the late afternoon flight in Mamburao, the capital town of Occidental Mindoro. Going there was a problem, they told us because San Jose City is about 80 kilometers away from Mamburao. To make the long story short, our group composed of the late Mark Finemann of the Philadelphia Inquirer, JP Fenix of the nascent Phil. Daily Inquirer, Cecil Morella of Agence France Press and me, decided to take the matter on our hands. We hirer a jeepney for a special trip to Mamburao. We all shared the cost.

We caught the late afternoon and returned to Manila but the experience was worth recalling. During those days, the road between San Jose City and Mamburao was not well developed. It was dirt road, plain and simple. The road was hardly passable and dusty too. Because it was special trip, we reached our destination.

Imelda Marcos did not care if the diversion of the PAL plane to its return flight to Manila would have terrible consequences. Since it was the era of Marcos dictatorship, the conjugal couple could just do what pleased them. Never mind the people.

Yesterday, we saw how unmindful, insensitive, and callous were the Marcoses to the people. The 12.5-kilometer Commonwealth Avenue is the major thoroughfare that serves millions of people in Quezon City, North Caloocan, and even the southern part of Bulacan. They use that stretch to go to their places of work in the Makati City, Manila, or elsewhere and return home.

The horrendous traffic jam caused by the insensitive and callous followers of that mediocre son of the infamous dictator was something very revolting because it reminded us of their unmindful ways and abuses of the Marcoses. They have not changed a bit. They are all irresponsible, callous, and insensitive after all those years they are out of power.