Category Archives: Law and Justice

Qwertyman No. 94: Artificial Intelligence

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Qwertyman for Monday, May 20, 2024

DR. CHICHOY Carabuena had a problem. He wanted the school he owned and ran—the Generoso Carabuena Academy of Pedagogy in Santa Vicenta—to place higher in both national and international rankings, partly so he could raise tuition fees, and also so he could claim bragging rights among his university-president friends and drinking buddies. He had inherited the school from his grandfather; Generoso Carabuena was a banker who had collaborated with the Japanese and stolen the money they left behind to open a school for teachers, which was his wife’s dream, becoming a war hero in the process for outsmarting the enemy. 

The school had done well enough to the point that Chichoy’s dad Ramoncito could buy a Mercury Capri that he regularly drove to Manila to carouse in its nightclubs. Chichoy was the product of one of Ramoncito’s dalliances with the agreeable ladies, and it fell on him to rescue both the business and the family name from ruin and disrepute. He had been managing a carinderia for Pinoy workers in Dubai when the call came, and always wanting to become someone of substance, he returned to Sta. Vicenta to turn the daughters and sons of hog butchers and vegetable growers into teachers, like he imagined himself to be. Surely higher education wasn’t all that different from running a restaurant and coming up with the right menu at the right price for your customers. He had secretly dreamed of becoming a mayor, a congressman, or even governor, but first, he had to make a name for himself and make money.

Somewhere along the way he picked up a “Dr.” from a diploma mill and dressed the part, coming to his office even in the warmest of days in coat and tie. “More than anything else,” he would lecture his new recruits, “first impressions count, so before you even become a teacher, you have to look like a teacher, walk like a teacher, and sound like a teacher!” He had a faux marble statue made of his grandfather to greet visitors at the school entrance, and another one of Jose Rizal standing behind Generoso, as if looking on in approval. 

But lest people think he was beholden to the past, Chichoy Carabuena peppered his speeches with 21st-century mantras like “disruption,” “innovation,” “sustainability,” “customer-centric,” and, yes, “21st-century.” “The great challenge to higher education today,” he would often declaim, “is to produce graduates attuned to a global climate of disruption and innovation, mindful of evolving needs and opportunities in the marketplace of ideas while seeking sustainable and synergistic 21st-century solutions to problems rooted in our feudal and neocolonial history.”

Those speeches were written for him by his former executive assistant named Mildred, a UP graduate whom he had to fire when his wife discovered them smooching in his office—an act he vehemently insisted to be no more than a paternal gesture, much like  former President’s public bequeathal of a kiss on a married woman, a defense that gained no ground. His wife personally chose his next EA, a former SAF commando named Dogbert; making the best of the situation, Chichoy paraded Dogbert around as his bodyguard, spreading the rumor that his life was under threat from unspecified enemies determined to keep the quality of Philippine education down. “We can give them no quarter,” he declared at the last CHED event he attended. “We must resist, with all impunity, those who aim to keep our poor people shackled to the twin pillars of ignorance and idiocy!” He missed Mildred in those moments, but he felt quite pleased with his growing self-sufficiency in speechwriting, thanks to his new discovery, ChatGPT. Of course it never quite came up to his standards, so he tweaked the prose here and there, like that reference to Samson that he hoped would bring the house down.

But now, reading the reports of top Philippine universities slipping in their rankings in the usual Times Higher Education and Quacquarelli-Symonds surveys, Dr. Carabuena saw an opportunity for his modest HEI to rise. “As their mystique diminishes, so our aura will grow,” he informed an indifferent Dogbert. “We just need to come up with sustainable innovations that will disrupt the status quo.” Dogbert handed him a slim folder. “Sir, someone wants to see you, to apply for the position of Academic Vice President.” It was a position that Chichoy himself had held concurrently to save on salaries, but now he felt obliged to pass it on to a real expert. He flipped the folder open and saw the picture of a cute Chinese-looking woman going by the name of “Dr. Alice Kuan.” Chichoy was mesmerized. “Send her in—and get out!”

When Dr. Alice Kuan stepped into Chichoy’s office, he felt himself enveloped in a miasma of jasmine, peonies, and five spices—everything good he remembered from his only visit to China many years ago. Her lips were lotus-pink, her skin ivory-white, and here and there dumplings suggested themselves to his imagination. “Good morning, Dr. Kuan! Please, have a seat! You’re here to apply for the AVP job?”

“Yes, Mr. President,” she said with a quarter-moon smile, “and I come with many ideas for both improving your curriculum and raising revenues through academic innovations.”

“Innovations! I like that! Like what?”

“Why artificial intelligence, of course! We could use AI to teach many of our courses, reducing costs. Also, we could bring in more foreign students from—uhm—friendly neighboring countries, while creating part-time employment opportunities for them in—uhm—online entertainment, for which we could even lease out some of your campus property. It would create a huge economic boost for Sta. Vicenta!” 

Temple bells rang in Chichoy’s mind. Not only was she fetching; she was smart! Suddenly he could see his political future brightening. He wanted to know more about this adorable avatar, and only then did he notice how patchy her resume was. 

“Your birth certificate was filed when you were…. 17?”

“Was it? I don’t remember.”

“Which elementary school did you go to?”

“I don’t remember. Maybe homeschooling?” She threw him an exasperated sigh. “Look, Dr. Carabuena, does it matter? I can have AI do a perfect resume if that’s what you want. If not, I can take my ideas to the Fontebello Institute of Technology in San Bonito just an hour away, and maybe they’ll be more receptive to disruptive innovations—”

“No, no, no! Disruptive, I like disruptive! Please, Dr. Kuan, stay in your seat! I’ll have somebody prepare your contract. Dogbert!”

(Image generated by AI.)

Qwertyman No. 91: 1968 Redux

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Qwertyman for Monday, April 29, 2024

A WAVE of pro-Palestinian protests has been sweeping American college campuses, prompting academic administrators and political leaders to push back and invoke their powers—including calling in the police—to curtail the demonstrations. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson—a Trump ally and staunch supporter of Israel—probably spoke for his ilk when he told protesting students at Columbia to “Go back to class! Stop wasting your parents’ money!” He also called on Columbia University president Minouche Shafik—an Oxford Economics PhD and English baroness who also happens to have been born in Alexandria, Egypt to Muslim parents—to resign for not moving strongly enough against antisemitism on the Columbia campus, despite Shafik’s controversial suspension of pro-Palestine student groups earlier and her resort to police action, resulting in mass arrests.

The protests and the violent response to them threw me back to 1968, when the world’s streets from Chicago to Paris shook from the boots of students and workers marching against the Vietnam War, for civil rights, and for women’s liberation. In the Philippines, student organizations such as the SCAUP and the newly formed SDK took up the same causes, on top of a resurgent nationalism. I was too young to have been part of these great movements then, although we marched in high school for “student power,” whatever that meant. I would get deeply involved as the decade turned, infected by the inescapable ferment in the air; in 1973 I would realize that protest had a price when I spent seven months in martial-law prison.

I’ve tried hard to think what it would be like to be 18 and a student today, what cause would drive me to the streets and to pitch a tent on the campus grass. While we Pinoys have our sympathies, Gaza seems too distant for us to mobilize for, and certainly we don’t lack for domestic issues to be bothered by, although our level of tolerance appears to have risen over time. In 1971, a 10-centavo increase in oil prices was enough for us to trigger the Diliman Commune; today we routinely wait for Tuesday’s inevitable announcement of gas price hikes and sigh.

Perhaps time and age do bring about shifts in perspective; some leftist firebrands of my youth have now become darlings of the right, and I myself have moved much closer to the center, ironically morphing from student activist to university official at the time of my retirement.

As that administrator—at a university where protesting is practically part of the curriculum—I can appreciate the bind Dr. Shafik now finds herself in, hemmed in from both left and right, with the complexity of her thinking and the brilliance of her own achievements reduced to a single issue: how to deal with students who won’t “go back to class and stop wasting their parents’ money,” as Speaker Johnson would have it, and will instead insist on their right to self-expression, whatever the cost. Aggressiveness, audacity, and even insolence will come with the territory. Persons in authority become natural targets of one’s rejection of things as they are; the preceding two generations are to be held immediately responsible for things gone wrong. 

I recalled a time when UP students barged into Quezon Hall to interrupt a meeting of the Board of Regents to plead their cause. Some furniture was scuffed, but the president sat down with the students and discussed their demands. No one left happy, of course, but what had to be said on both sides was said. At another meeting later, someone asked if the students involved should have been sanctioned for what they did. I had to butt in to pour cold water on that notion, knowing that any punitive action would just worsen the problem. Open doors, I said, don’t shut them; this is UP—that kind of protest is what makes us UP, and our kind of engaged response is also what makes us UP.

Some will say that these outbursts are but cyclical, and that young people never learn, in repeating what their now-jaded seniors did way back when. But then the State never learns either, by responding to student protests today the way they did back in 1968, with shields and truncheons, effectively affirming everything the young suspect about elderly authority.

The Israel-Hamas war—now magnified, through many lenses, into an Israeli war on Palestinians—is a particularly thorny issue for American academia and for a public habituated to looking at the Jewish people as biblical heroes and historical victims. Gaza has turned that perception around for many, with the aggrieved now seen as the aggressors. In my column two weeks ago, I agreed with that re-evaluation, although I was careful to take the middle road and to condemn the excesses—committed for whatever reason—on both sides. 

Not surprisingly, I quickly got blowback from both my pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian friends. War is always ugly, one said, and Israel has to do what it must to save itself; the Hamas attack on October 7 was overblown by propaganda, said another, and it was something that Israel had coming. 

I still accept neither extreme; call me naïve and even Pollyannish, but I stand not with Israel nor with Palestine, but for peace and justice, which are not exclusive to one side, and can only be achieved by both working and living together. You can argue all the politics and the history you want, but there is absolutely no humane rationalization for the rape of women, the murder of children, and yes, even the killing of innocent men—not even the prospect of potentially saving more lives, the very argument behind the incineration of 200,000 Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an act of war we all benefited from, but cannot call guiltless.

In a conflict as brutal and as polarizing as this one, “middle” never quite cuts it, and the excess of one will always be justified by the excess of the other. (To complicate my ambivalence, some issues do seem to have no middle, like Ukraine.) There have been no mass protests or demonstrations to advance my kind of moderation, and I don’t expect students, whether in Columbia or UP, to take to the streets flashing “peace” signs. 

And in mentioning that, I think I’ve put a finger on one difference between 1968 and 2024: “peaceniks” were neither pro-Saigon nor pro-Hanoi, although her critics were quick to paint Jane Fonda red; they just wanted America out of a war that was none of its business. There was an innocence to that that seems to have been lost in our hyper-informed and over-analyzed century. We feel compelled to choose with passion and precision, and are defined by our choices, from politics to sneakers.

Qwertyman No. 90: Postscript to Masungi

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Qwertyman for Monday, April 22, 2024

SENATE PRESIDENT Pro Tempore and environmental champion Loren Legarda did the right and necessary thing last week when she called on the Bureau of Corrections to desist from building prisons or offices on land it supposedly owns in the Masungi Georeserve in Tanay, Rizal. 

For unfathomable reasons, former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo awarded BuCor 270 hectares in 2006 for new headquarters and a New Bilibid Prison in the heart of Masungi, a protected area that has become an internationally recognized showcase of nature conservation. Following Legarda’s statement, Bucor officials have assured the public that it will not push through with its plans, and will instead just build facilities for a detachment of forest rangers who will protect Bucor’s lot.

That’s still not the best solution—which would be the revocation of the land grant, given that prisons have no place in Masungi or any protected area for that matter. But even a reprieve is welcome, as it buys time for the national government to take a long, hard look at what’s happening in Masungi, where the threat of new construction pales in comparison to what’s already been built there.

I first wrote about Masungi last January, when I visited the 3,000-hectare georeserve along the border of Tanay and Baras, Rizal. It’s a critical stretch of land that’s not only home to some of the country’s rarest and most threatened species such as the purple jade vine and Masungi microsnail—as well as 72 kinds of birds—but also helps protect Metro Manila from catastrophic flooding because of the watershed it sits on. 

The place has had a long and complicated history, from the time the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) tried to use it for employee housing in the early 1990s to 2017 when its care and supervision was entrusted to the Masungi Georeserve Foundation, Inc. (MGFI) by then DENR Secretary Gina Lopez. Well before and since then, Masungi’s caretakers have battled a host of threats, including landgrabbing by syndicates reportedly backed up by powerful people connected to the government. Aside from the BuCor’s plan to make a prison out of a natural Eden, a wind farm is being built on Masungi by a Singapore-owned company.

But beyond the quarries, resorts, and private houses that have sprung up on the reserve, MGFI president Ben Dumaliang’s main source of worry is the government itself—specifically, the DENR, or what he sees as its inexplicable indifference or even hostility to the foundation and its efforts to preserve and protect Masungi from parties hungry for its land.

I met with Ben recently and he explained to me how many times he had tried to approach DENR officials to get their support for the foundation’s work on the georeserve—an achievement that the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Action Awards recognized in 2022—but how he has been repeatedly rebuffed, and even threatened with the cancellation of their management contract. “The secretary didn’t even congratulate us for our UN award,” he told me in a voice tinged with sadness and dismay. 

It isn’t really the accolades that Ben and his team—which includes his two daughters and a corps of bright, young forest rangers and volunteers—are after. While they can bank on a deep wellspring of support from the public and most of the media—you can’t go to Masungi without being impressed by the extent and the inescapable beauty of the foundation’s reforestation efforts—they need resolute action from the DENR to enforce its own laws and rules. The cold-shoulder treatment he’s been getting has driven Ben to suspect that “rogue DENR officials” are behind the landgrabbing syndicates plaguing the reserve. 

“They see our foundation as the only hindrance to quarries, resorts, real estate, and many other deals in the protected area. Unfortunately for the environment and the public, these deals cause irreparable harm. Our presence, vigilance, and conservation work in the area have stalled, stopped, and derailed countless syndicates from pillaging the frontline forest that is being swallowed up by creeping urbanization and development,” says Ben.

I saw the irrefutable evidence of this massive encroachment myself on my visit there last January. A whole village—Sitio San Roque in Baras—sits and thrives where a forest should have been (and probably was). I saw a pool resort, mansion-like homes, shops, etc., all on land claimed by the residents to have been legally acquired under the Marcos-era PD 324, which granted free patents to land that it designated alienable and disposable. Ben points out that this is fraudulent, because PD 324 had long since been superseded and nullified by PD 705 and Proclamation 1636, which withdrew the land given out under PD 324 and protected it from settlement, disposition, and development. 

“The three big-time quarries totaling some 1,300 hectares misplaced in Masungi trace their roots also to the PD 324 scam,” Ben alleges. “The quarry owners justify their contracts with claims of private rights derived from PD 324. They were also fooled. They brazenly violate the prohibition against mining in protected areas of at least three laws—Proclamation 1636, the NIPAS Law, and the Mining Act.”

Ben wonders why, in the face of these strong legal arguments, the DENR hasn’t moved against the presumptive squatters in Masungi and has instead refused to meet with the foundation and work with it to defend and protect the georeserve. When I saw him recently, he brought up the same question I raised at the end of my previous column, which I’m asking again: “What do they have against us?” I think that deserves a clear, fair, and not incidentally overdue answer.

Qwertyman No. 89: The Country I Wanted to Love

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Qwertyman for Monday, April 15, 2024

FOURTEEN YEARS ago, I received a writing assignment that any journalist would have jumped at: to go with other media representatives on a week-long visit to Israel and to report on our observations. Although the trip was sponsored by the Israeli government, and therefore clearly a PR initiative, we were under no instructions as to what to write about, or how. Of course there were implicit or effective restrictions: our itinerary did not include visits to Gaza, the West Bank, or other Palestinian-controlled areas, and we had no interviews with Palestinians (interestingly, one of our companions, ABS-CBN’s Uma Khouny, was half-Filipino and half Arab-Israeli). 

As expected, we saw the best of Israel, the sites that any “Holy Land” tour would have included: the Temple Mount, the Holy Sepulchre, the Wailing Wall, the Dead Sea, Masada, the bazaars, and so on. We also visited a kibbutz and marveled at how its inhabitants could coax so much life and verdure out of barren desert. We were brought to a state-of-the-art facility where we drove an Israeli-made, 100%-electric car around a track (this was in 2010, mind you). Just outside Tel Aviv, we met children at a hospital where they had heart operations they couldn’t have afforded or gotten otherwise; these children included Palestinians, Angolans, Chinese, and yes, a Filipino. We watched  vibrant performances of contemporary Israeli dance and music. We were moved close to tears by a visit to the Holocaust exhibits at Yad Vashem.

We left deeply impressed by the Israel we had seen and experienced, and I reported as much in two “Penman” columns for the STAR. We were aware that we had not seen everything on our carefully curated tour, and we understood that there were simmering tensions behind the high walls that were rising all over the place to block off zones that the government might have considered unsafe, but there was a time for every story, and this time was our hosts’.

Israel did not even need to invite me to gain my sympathy. Like many Catholic boys in the 1960s, I grew up steeped in the belief that the Jews were God’s chosen people—why else would he have delivered them out of Egypt (a scene replayed over and over again in Technicolor on Holy Week) to the Promised Land? I read Leon Uris’ Exodus and enjoyed the movie version with its memorable theme, “This Land Is Mine.” I learned to sing “Hava Nagila,” and so did you.

Over the next decades I would watch countless documentaries on the Mossad and its exploits in capturing Adolf Eichmann, freeing the hostages at Entebbe, going after the leaders of Black September in the wake of the Munich Olympics massacre, and gathering intelligence leading to the Yom Kippur War. The eye-patched Moshe Dayan and the grandmotherly Golda Meir were both cinematically compelling. More than biblical heroes, Israelis and Jews represented the finest of human qualities—tenacity, ingenuity, resolve, courage, and imagination. Even beyond Israel, who could argue with the brilliance of Isaac Bashevis Singer, Jascha Heifetz, Woody Allen, Barbra Streisand, and Marc Chagall? Never mind the Rothschilds and the Shylocks.

But now much of that luster has tragically vanished, lifted like so much vapor, in the wake of Israel’s invasion of Gaza and its horrific toll on human life. 

Like most onlookers from afar, I was appalled and outraged by Hamas’ attack on Israeli communities and citizens last October 7; subsequent reports of rapes and executions showed these assaults to have been premeditatedly barbaric, calculated to sow fear and terror in the enemy. No matter the history behind them, no matter the grievances that may have led to their unleashing, the violence committed especially against innocent civilians was brutish and repulsive.

Israel may have gained the moral high ground at that point in its pledge to avenge the victims, recover the hostages, and destroy Hamas, but it soon lost that superiority in its disproportionately savage invasion of Gaza. All its claims to sophistication and efficiency in waging war—the kind of surgical operation on display at Entebbe and elsewhere—went out the window in air strikes that have killed thousands of Palestinian civilians, including hapless children; even those who miraculously survive will forever bear the scars and trauma of this assault. To “weed out” Hamas, Netanyahu’s Israel has chosen to flatten and to destroy the whole garden. And as if the world were not watching, an Israeli commander even declared on TV that “There is no famine in Gaza.” 

This has gone far beyond “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” The Israelis have claimed buckets of Palestinian eyes and teeth for every one lost to an Israeli. They have exceeded even the Roman practice of decimation, by which every tenth man in a cohort was executed in punishment for the offenses of the lot; instead, ten Palestinians seem to have suffered for every Hamas member deemed at fault for the October 7 attack (the actual kill ratio has been 30 to 1). The supreme irony of it is that Israel has merely guaranteed that Hamas’ age-old causes and resentments will live on, and even prosper with global sympathy for Palestinian self-determination, as may have been Hamas’ game plan all along.

Of course, the State of Israel does not need our admiration and affection, and we understand that it is engaged in an existential fight for its life on many fronts, as it has been since its inception in varying degrees of intensity; the same can now be said for the Palestinians. My opinion as a distant Filipino commentator will change nothing (except perhaps preclude me from further invitations to deplane at Ben-Gurion airport). I realize that what I am saying here will please neither side of this conflict and their partisans, and I expect to receive mail to insist that I failed to see this and that and to justify the ferocity of their actions. I know that we are no longer watching a movie with a billowing theme song and clear heroes and villains. 

But I suspect I am not alone in expressing my great sadness over the turn taken by a country I wanted to love. I can only take refuge in thinking that not all Israelis are Netanyahus, and not all Palestinians are Hamas. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.” I wonder if that line from Deuteronomy has its equivalent in the Torah, or the Koran for that matter.

Qwertyman No. 88: Wanted: Gentlemen

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Qwertyman for Monday, April 8, 2024

A SHIPLOAD (let’s get that consonant right) of questions has been raised over the “gentleman’s agreement” alleged to have been entered into between former President Rodrigo Duterte and China’s Xi Jing Pin over the disputed Ayungin Shoal in the West Philippine Sea. China has suggested as much, complaining about the present administration’s “inaction” over what it apparently considered a done deal.

According to former Duterte spokesman (should we also call him “former human rights lawyer”?) Harry Roque, Duterte and Xi did pledge between them to “maintain the status quo” in the troubled zone, meaning, there would be no rebuilding or reinforcement of Philippine installations there—specifically referring, I suppose, to the hopelessly decrepit BRP Sierra Madre that has to be the sorriest and loneliest maritime outpost in the world. 

Chinese Coast Guard cutters have routinely tried to block Philippine vessels attempting to resupply the Sierra Madre. A month ago, four Filipino sailors were injured when they were water-cannoned by the Chinese, and their ship rammed. Our resupply ships have been running these Chinese gauntlets to reach the marines on the grounded Sierra Madre, which symbolically enforces our claim to the Spratly Islands, or that portion of it we call the Kalayaan Islands group. This was precisely the kind of situation that Duterte and Xi reportedly tried to avoid with their agreement.

Upon hearing his former colleague’s explosive revelations, former presidential counsel Salvador Panelo quickly went on the air to dismiss them as the fabrications of a publicity-seeker, assuring the public that Digong himself had denied the report. He added that his old boss would never have sold out the country that way. In fact, Panelo claimed, Duterte had brought up the Philippines’ arbitral victory against China at the Hague with Xi—a judgment Duterte had ironically threatened to toss into the wastebasket as nothing more than “a piece of paper.” Roque then went on to explain that the “gentleman’s agreement” covered not just Ayungin Shoal but the entire West Philippine Sea, enlarging its scope exponentially. If it was a lie to begin with, as Panelo suggested, well, the lie got much bigger.

This spectacle of two Duterte mouthpieces not just speaking at cross-purposes but putting each other down would be immensely entertaining if our national territory and patrimony weren’t at stake. It doesn’t really matter who between these two, uhm, gentlemen is right, or whom we end up believing. What’s clear is that either way, beyond token whimpers and some lip service to sovereignty, Duterte and his crew never did much to defend Philippine territorial and maritime rights in the WPS, debating with their local critics on the issue more than with the Chinese, even waging a vain effort to denigrate the Hague ruling and those who had fought so hard for it. 

Given the new administration’s popular pivot toward a more aggressive stance on China, we can understand if Duterte and his boys seem scrambling to be seen as having been patriots all along. Who knows, maybe they were, and maybe we poor kibitzers were just too dumb or too dense to see that. 

Remember when Duterte made that famous “wastebasket” remark in May 2016? Then-spokesman Roque tried to spin that by saying no, no, no, you have to “apply the proper construction” (his exact words) to that statement—meaning (hold your breath), “He really didn’t mean it that way. Instead, go back to his UN speech where he vowed to defend the Philippines against China. When he said ‘I’ll throw this into the wastebasket,’ he wasn’t speaking for himself, he was speaking from the point of view of the Chinese.”

Huh? Forgive me if I can’t wrap my non-lawyerly mind around this “proper construction,” let alone explain why a Philippine president should be expressing the Chinese view.

To help sort this mess out, Sen. Risa Hontiveros has called for a hearing to find out if, indeed, Duterte and Xi had, as the young ones put it, an “MU” over Ayungin and the WPS. Predictably, Panelo thinks this probe will be a “waste of time,” insisting that the reported “gentleman’s agreement” never happened. 

Another newspaper quotes an anonymous Chinese official saying, like Roque, that it did. Under the reported terms of the deal, China would allow the Philippines to resupply the BRP Sierra Madre for as long as it did not reinforce or rebuild the ship. (How the agreement supposedly applies to the entire WPS as Roque claims remains murky.)

One would think that a true, broader, and more meaningful “gentleman’s agreement” in the West Philippine Sea would involve the non-building of offensive structures and bases, the avoidance of violent confrontation, respect for our fishing rights, and freedom of navigation for all nations in international waters—all of which the Chinese have flouted with impunity. Instead—and if true—all our former president did was to ask the Chinese for permission to resupply our own aging and ailing vessel, in exchange for a promise to let it rot. Whether that’s treason or patriotism, you be the judge.

Pending further inquiry, I myself suspect that some kind of bargaining did take place, but I somehow doubt that it was a gentleman’s agreement. For that you’d need at least two gentlemen in the house.

Qwertyman No. 87: A French Sojourn

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Qwertyman for Monday, April 1, 2024

MY WIFE Beng and I were in France last week to give a series of lectures at the invitation of the Paris Institute of Political Studies, better known as SciencesPo. They don’t formally observe Holy Week in France (nor, for that matter, do many Filipinos to whom it’s simply come to mean “long weekend”). So we thought that it was the best time to come over and share some of our insights into Philippine literature, art, and politics with young French students as well as our countrymen in Paris, for whom I and fellow writer Cris Yabes, who’s based in France, gave a special reading at the Philippine embassy.

For those who’ve never heard of it—which won’t be too surprising given our Pinoy fixation on top American and British universities—SciencesPo (pronounced SEE-ansPO) is France’s leading university in the social sciences. It now has 14,000 students spread out over seven campuses across the country. Only 4,000 of those students are undergraduates; the rest are graduate students, including 350 taking their PhD. Unlike our universities, SciencesPo’s undergrads can finish in only three years, with their last year spent abroad. I was told that there are about 20 Filipino students currently enrolled at SciencesPo, and about half of its students come from overseas. As a public research university, SciencesPo is supported by the government through a private foundation, an arrangement that gives it a high degree of autonomy.

Founded in 1872, the university has served as the training ground for France’s political elite, producing five out of France’s eight presidents: Pompidou, Mitterand, Chirac, Hollande, and the incumbent Macron. Marcel Proust studied here for a year, and Christian Dior was a graduate.

With that kind of elite status comes criticism and controversy, and SciencesPo has had its share over the years. Nevertheless, it remains high on the list of desirable universities, especially for students with plans of joining the French civil service, after further studies at the Ecole Nationale d’Administration. (At Inalco, another Fremch university, we were surprised to find eight Filipino-French students studying Filipino for their degree under Prof. Elisabeth Luquin, who studied in UP and speaks Filipino like a local.)

Beng and I gave presentations on the Philippines at SciencePo’s main campus in Paris—a sprawling complex comprising ten buildings in some of Paris’ most precious real estate—and I had an additional three sessions in Le Havre, where SciencePo’s campus focuses on Asian studies. Wherever we went, we could see signs of intellectual and political ferment; like their predecessors at the Sorbonne whom we admired for their militancy 60 years ago, SciencesPo students have protested and rallied over many causes from domestic violence to Gaza.

To be fair, these concerns have occupied much of the rest of France as well. In a country where street protests are a time-honored tradition that have a real bearing on political outcomes, differences of opinion can run deep and long, and controversy stalks nearly every issue, from the wearing of religious headgear to the extension of the retirement age. To “liberté, egalité, fraternité,” we must now add “identité,” the subject of identity so central to political discourse in many countries today, especially those with large and strong immigrant populations like America and France.

“Over the last few years, France has been torn by culture wars—a shift that was less the effect of American concepts imported into French universities, as many on France’s right claim, than of the long-term decline, beginning in the early 1980s, of class politics and alternatives to capitalism. In a post-ideological France, class struggle has been displaced onto the terrain of identity,” noted sociologist Daniel Zamora in an article for Catalyst in 2021. “Despite Macron’s professed disdain for identity politics, his alternative can scarcely be construed as anti-identitarian. Building on what we have in common, Macron argued, meant finding an answer to the question, ‘What does it mean to be French?’”

Identity, at least, was not in question when Cris Yabes and I gave our reading at the Philippine embassy, thanks to the invitation of Ambassador Junever “Jones” Mahilum-West, one of the most amiable, gracious, and artistically inclined ambassadors I’ve ever met. (She was very game as well, happy to hoist an IPA beer with my wife Beng after our talks.) To a fairly sizeable group from the Filipino community in Paris, Cris and I read pieces that had to do with our foreign relations, particularly in my case with our diaspora, which my second novel Soledad’s Sister (which has been published in French by Mercure de France) dealt with. 

In the conversations that followed, I learned that there are around 26,000 documented Filipinos in France, with perhaps just as many existing belowground, most of them domestic helpers. One of them, Zita Cabais, was a victim of human trafficking more than two decades ago, having been enticed to come to Europe with the promise of a visa and a good job. Instead she was brought to Hungary, from where she was led on foot through Europe to finally reach France, whereupon her employer confiscated her passport, effectively holding her hostage. But unlike many other DH’s, Zita fought back, sued her employer, and succeeded. Since legalized, she now works for organizations devoted to fighting human trafficking. (The path to legalization is reportedly shorter in France, but knowing the French language is a prerequisite.)

One unexpected highlight of our visit was running into a group of Filipino seamen in our hotel in Le Havre, prior to my lecture. Beng and I had just come down for breakfast when we heard the familiar chatter of Filipinos at a nearby table. We came up to them and introduced ourselves, and we had a lively conversation during which they explained that they were still waiting for their ship to dock because of the bad weather. I’d met and chatted with seamen like them before in Hamburg and in Christchurch, among other places; as a writer and as a Filipino, I take it as a pleasant obligation.

Competition, they said, was driving them to accept shorter four-month stints at sea. “We barely break even, and it’s a tough life at sea, but we have no choice, since our families depend on us.” Part of my lecture that day was going to be about our Filipino notion of the hero as martyr, of Christ-like sacrifice for the common good. I suddenly realized that it was Good Friday. We had our smiling selfies taken, and they seemed proud to stand with UP professors, but it was Beng and I who felt honored to be there with them.

Qwertyman No. 86: The Real Pasaways

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Qwertyman for Monday, March 25, 2024

THE LOCAL Internet came down hard last week on an anonymous teacher who was caught on livestream giving her students a scorching tongue-lashing for what she claimed was their lack of respect and discipline. Almost hysterical, Teacher X called them good-for-nothings without a future. Predictably, netizens deplored her derogatory language, which they equated with child abuse, and called on the Department of Education to investigate the incident and impose some disciplinary measure on the teacher concerned.

I agree that Ma’am seems to have gone overboard in expressing her displeasure over her students’ misbehavior, and that she could have been more circumspect in her choice of words. I’m certain that DepEd—which happens to be headed by someone who doesn’t mince words herself when it comes to court sheriffs—will use her case to remind teachers of the need for exemplary behavior, if not some sweetness and light, in classroom management. 

At the same time, having been a teacher myself for forty years, I can imagine and understand the exasperation that must have gone into a titanic diatribe like that. I’ve never taught in elementary or high school, where these aggravations come in spades on both sides of the teacher’s table, but I’ve heard and read enough to know what a cauldron of high emotions a Filipino classroom can be in the worst of circumstances. 

Let’s pack a room meant for twenty students with twice that number or even more, with the heat from a tin roof bearing down on everyone (or, in another season, rain leaking down onto desks and textbooks). The teacher recites her lesson in a funereal monotone, expecting her students (who keep themselves awake by sneaking glances at TikTok on their phones) to regurgitate what she has just said: “Class, how do you pronounce a-DO-le-scent?” 

Not that she truly cares what they say, because her mind’s on the box of chocolates she has to buy for the supervisor whose signature she needs for her salary loan. She’ll spend half that loan on a fence around her garden to keep the roaming pigs and pissing drunks away, and the other half on a new cellphone because her arch-rival Mrs. Buenafe has one that can take selfies without the blemishes. Maybe, if she took better pictures of herself, she could win back her husband Temyong from that tramp in Trece Martires.

Just then a fight breaks out at the back of the room because Etoy has dropped a ballpen to sneak a look at Corito’s underwear, in full view of Corito’s alleged boyfriend Mikmik. “Stop that, quiet, gademet, you imbecile a-DO-lescents, I order you to behave or I’ll squeeze your little balls until they pop! You have no future, you worthless pasaways! You’re going to rot in this living hell they call a classroom!”

Now, when Teacher X says “You have no future,” I take it to mean that Ma’am has read the Edcom II report on the sad state of Philippine education, which puts our young learners practically at the cellar of global achievement. Unless some systemic reforms are put in place by the same DepEd that will now trumpet the virtues of better decorum in the classroom, we might as well have cursed those kids that caused Teacher X to blow her top—and by “curse” I don’t mean the use of foul language, but rather a hex such as a witch might put on some unfortunate soul. 

Philippine education is full of pasaways, many of them more than ten or even fifteen years old. Some have been in the system for so long that they have mastered its ways and means (e.g., how to make good money off bad textbooks) to a level of proficiency worthy of a doctorate. Secretaries of Education come and go—some more lamented than others—but these pasaways remain, as they do in certain bureaus dealing with government revenues, because they ensure continuity, which everyone but the occasional and hopelessly naive reformer appreciates. They may even be well-mannered, with the nicest smiles and mildest dispositions you ever saw, because of their contentment with the world as it is and their philosophical acceptance of human frailty.

This brings to mind another kind of pasaway, a certain man of God—no, make that Son of God—who has steadfastly refused to honor a summons by a Senate committee looking into sex trafficking, of which this pastor has been accused, among other crimes and misdemeanors. Let me judged by the proper court, he has argued through his lawyers, although—if he is who he claims to be—then no one but God the Father will qualify for that privilege.

God must have been a prolific babymaker, because this prosperous preacher is but one of many around the world proclaiming themselves to be Sons of God. Nearly all have landed in some kind of trouble with the law, usually in matters of sex and money, paltry and mundane emoluments that Sons of God seem to feel especially entitled to, in partial recompense for the heavy burdens of divinity.

Someone should have assured our good pastor that the Senate is a decorous institution, exceedingly kind to its guests, as a recent hearing involving police officials being questioned by a former police official showed. A senator who walked out of that hearing out of disgust over the “babying” shown the witnesses by their inquisitor now himself stands accused of discourtesy. Notwithstanding the presence of a chairperson known for her intolerance of untruths, our Son of God can surely count on the professed and unshakeable friendship of some of her honorable colleagues to shelter him from the slings and arrows of earthly justice. We are a much kinder people than that apoplectic teacher might suggest.

Qwertyman No. 85: Epilogue to a Novel

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Qwertyman for Monday, March 18, 2024

IT WAS in 1986, shortly after EDSA and my arrival in the US for my graduate studies, that I began thinking about what would eventually become my master’s thesis and my first novel, Killing Time in a Warm Place. It was published by Anvil in 1992 when I came home to resume teaching after completing my PhD. 

For those who’ve never heard of it, the novel is a semi-autobiographical account of coming of age during the Marcos years, from the point of view of a Filipino who makes the traditional journey from island to metropolis to the world at large, becoming, in the process, a kind of political chameleon. 

I had sent the first draft directly to several US publishers—my first try at getting a book published abroad—and one of them, Alfred Knopf, responded. They were interested, they said, but they needed some revisions. I knew very little about the book publishing industry then; I had no agent, wasn’t sure what lay ahead, and was in a hurry to see my book out, so I passed on Knopf—which turned out to be a titan in literary publishing—and went with Anvil, which had barely just opened.

I haven’t regretted that decision, although the Knopf deal, had it pushed through, would have been a tremendous break, not just for myself but for Philippine literature as a whole. I could understand that after EDSA, US publishing was hungry for books from and about the Philippines, so that opportunity was there, but I was also impatient to be read as a novelist by my fellow Filipinos, after having written short stories and plays. 

Anvil published the book in many printings and editions over the next two decades, as it got on the syllabi of college teachers who were looking for a novel in English on martial law, alongside Lualhati Bautista’s iconic Dekada 70. This has been my greatest reward and satisfaction from this book—knowing that somehow, it helped some of my countrymen understand what they went through.

It took a while for the novel to gain some traction overseas. In 2010, it was published in the US by Schaffner Press in a dual edition with my second novel, Soledad’s Sister. In 2012, it was translated into Spanish by Maria Alcaraz and published in Barcelona by Libros del Asteroide under the title Pasando el rato en un pais calido.

A few months ago, I received the happy news from my publisher Anvil that Killing Time was being picked up by the German publisher of Soledad’s Sister, which had apparently been doing well in the German market. So now the book is being translated into German, hopefully for a launch by Transit Verlag in time for the Frankfurt Book Fair this October, leading up to our big Frankfurt Guest of Honor year in 2025.

But I didn’t write this column just to tell you about the story of a book—rather, I wanted to say something about the story of its story.

In a message to Anvil a few days ago, my German publisher requested that I write a short epilogue to the novel, given that it’s been more than 30 years since it first came out, and that many things have happened since to the world and the Philippines—the Internet, Trump, and fake news, among others. 

So I sat down and wrote the short piece below, which I’m sharing with you since it’s highly unlikely that you’ll come across, or understand, the German translation of this epilogue if and when the new edition comes out. Here goes:

I began writing this novel in 1986, shortly after the downfall of the Marcos regime. That happened because of a massive uprising in Manila’s streets that made headlines and became a kind of model for peaceful anti-authoritarian movements worldwide. I proudly took part in that revolt, and felt the euphoria of liberation after more than a decade of martial law. It was a moment I would often return to and savor as the Iron Curtain fell and as various and largely non-violent revolutions took place elsewhere, including the Arab Spring.

I thought then that the best thing I could do was to write a novel that would try and explain how and why people fell under the spell of a dictatorship, as they did under Nazi Germany—not sparing myself, having been complicit in its later actions as an employee of the regime. I wrote it—in English—in America, mainly to fulfill my graduate school requirements, but also to celebrate our hard-won victory and share the good news with the world.

Almost four decades later, the seemingly unthinkable has happened: the right is back in power, not only in the Philippines but in many places we had thought to be reformed democracies. The optimism sweeping the planet toward the end of the 20th century has given way to a darkening horizon, a hardening of hearts, a closing of minds. Our most basic freedoms and values are under stiff and unrelenting assault, from forces we now realize had never really been vanquished but had merely been lying in wait, biding their time, seeking an opportunity for revival amidst the excesses of late capitalism.

And once again I am hearing the siren song of despotism, and see the eyes of people glazing over in the desperate desire for quick relief from their troubles, for quick salvation. I hear the march of boots, to which many young citizens—their ears plugged by loud music—seem indifferent. Even among many of their elders is a renascent yearning for the simple discipline of strongman rule.

I see all these and I wonder if I should write a sequel, an update for the new century, but what would be the point of repetition? My novel was supposed to be about the past. Why is it so suddenly pertinent again?

Qwertyman No. 81: An F for Philippine Education

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Qwertyman for Monday, February 19, 2024

AN IMPORTANT document that’s been showing up in the inboxes and on the desks of both government and private-sector policymakers these past couple of weeks leaves no room in its title for misinterpretation: “Miseducation: The Failed System of Philippine Eduation.” Released last month by the Second Congressional Commission on Education or Edcom II, the report covers just the first year of the commission’s comprehensive review of the state of Philippine education. But the scenario it presents is so grim that, in the words of one of its crafters, “If this were Singapore, they would be declaring a national emergency.”

But then again, that may be the whole point. We are no Singapore—and indeed one of the report’s most damning and embarrassing findings is that “Our best learners are comparable only to the average student in Malaysia, Thailand, Brunei and Vietnam, and correspond to the worst performers in Singapore.”

Edcom II picks up from where its predecessor left off more than three decades ago, when Edcom I was set up under the leadership of then Sen. Edgardo J. Angara to undertake a similar review. In July 2022, RA 11899 created Edcom II to find ways of harnessing the educational sector “with the end in view of making the Philippines globally competitive in both education and labor markets” over the next three years. Edcom II was also charged with drafting the necessary laws to make this happen. It’s just begun its work, with in-depth studies and assessments of our educational system from the ground up, but its early findings already show how difficult the road ahead will be toward the global competitiveness the commission was set up for.

I’ll just quote a few observations from a summary of the highlights of the nearly 400-page full report: 

In terms of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) undertaken by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2018 and 2002, “Grade 10 Filipinos scored lowest among all ASEAN countries in Math, Reading, and Science, besting only Cambodia, with more than 75% of our learners scoring lower than Level 2, or the minimum level of proficiency in Math, Reading, and Science…. Grade 10 Filipinos scored lowest among all ASEAN countries in Math, Reading, and Science, besting only Cambodia, with more than 75% of our learners scoring lower than Level 2, or the minimum level of proficiency in Math, Reading, and Science.” This was the same survey that showed our best learners barely catching up with Singapore’s laggards.

“The proficiency level of our children across social class, rural and urban residence, gender, language at home, type of school, and early childhood center attendance is dismally low.” This means that our deficiencies cut across the social and economic spectrum and can’t be put down to just a question of money.

To underscore the global crisis in education (yes, it isn’t just us), the World Bank and UNESCO have come up with the concept of “learning poverty,” which they define as a child’s inability to read and understand a simple text by age 10. Among some Asian countries recently surveyed for learning poverty, Singapore and South Korea scored the lowest at 3; China came in at 18, India at 56, and the Philippines was highest at 91.

And for those who insistently argue that the problem with our education is that we don’t use English enough, and early enough, Vietnam, which uses Vietnamese as its medium of instruction in the primary grades, has consistently outscored us in nearly all indices, as have Malaysia and other countries that rely on their own languages to move ahead.

A good part of the report dwells on how important it is for government to intervene as early as possible in our children’s growth and development, to prime them for a proper education. Edcom II looked into the problem of “stunting,” a measure of childhood maldevelopment, most easily seen when children are too short for their age, because of malnutrition or poor health. This has implications for the child’s ability to learn.

“The Philippines has one of the highest prevalence of stunting under-five in the world at 26.7%, greater than the global average of 22.3%. Policies are in place, but implementation has been fragmented, coverage remains low, and targeting of interventions has been weak.” (For example, more than 98% or 4.5 million children 2-3 years old are not covered by the DSWD’s supplementary feeding program.)

Here’s another eye-popping revelation: “Since 2012, only 27 textbooks have been procured for Grade 1 to Grade 10, despite  substantial budget allocations. DepEd’s budget utilization data shows that from 2018 to 2022 alone, a total of P12.6 billion has been allocated to textbooks and other instructional materials, but only P4.5 billion (35.3%) has been obligated and P952 million (7.5%) has been disbursed.” Not to mention the fact that many of these textbooks are riddled with errors!

Higher education presents its own host of problems and challenges. “Higher education participation is high given our income level,” the report notes. However, “Access to ‘quality’ higher education narrowed in the last decade…. Most beneficiaries of the tertiary education subsidy were not the poorest…. Between 2018 and 2022, the proportion of the poorest of the poor [in higher education] declined markedly, from 74% to 31%.”

A key part of the problem is the quality of our teachers, who themselves are poorly educated. “Between 2009 and 2023, the average passing rate in the licensure examinations for elementary (33%) and secondary (40%) has been dismally low, when compared to passing rates in other professions. Worse, between 2012 and 2022, 77 HEIs offering BEEd and 105 HEIs offering BSEd continued operations despite having consistently zero passing rates in the LET.”

Our supervisory agencies themselves need to be properly staffed. “The staffing levels in CHED and TESDA have not kept pace with the growing responsibilities of the agencies and the increased investments in education from both the public and private sectors. 

CHED’s budget increased by 633% from 2013 to 2023, but the agency’s staffing complement only increased by 22.7%, from 543 to 666 within the same period.”

The money’s clearly there, but it’s not being spent where it should be. “Budget allocated to education is increasing, but there is a tertiary tilt despite profound gaps in basic education….While government investments have increased substantially, the bulk of the additional resources went to higher education–which is typically regressive. From 2015 to 2019 per capita spending surged from P13,206 to P29,507. Meanwhile profound gaps remain in Early Childhood Care and Development and basic education…. 30–70% of the school MOOE budget is spent on utility bills alone, which leaves meager funds available for improvement projects and initiatives that could address local needs and support better learning.”

We could go on and on—and the full report (downloadable at https://edcom2.gov.ph/) does. But you get the picture: Philippine education gets an F. The question is, will our national leadership recognize this as the national emergency that it clearly is, and respond accordingly?

Qwertyman No. 79: Hymns of Repentance

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Qwertyman for Monday, February 5, 2024

A CERTAIN senator was quoted some time ago as saying that Filipinos supporting the intentions of the International Criminal Court to probe the Duterte administration’s bloody tokhang campaign should be made to sing the national anthem 1,000 times to regain their sense of patriotism. The clear message was that, if you were in favor of an international body looking into local crimes and liabilities, you were being anti-Filipino. 

It wasn’t surprising, of course, given that the good senator was among those prominently mentioned as possible defendants in the case. In jest, he said that if he were found guilty, he would miss his grandchildren if he were incarcerated in the Hague. And just to be sure, he added that not all people in jail are guilty—he certainly wasn’t.

Without commenting on the merits or demerits of a hypothetical ICC case against officials of the previous administration—something we have enough lawyers on both sides to perorate upon—I’ll just observe that the quality of justice the senator and his likely dock mates can expect from the ICC will surely be far better than that received by the victims of summary and extrajudicial executions under the regime of tokhang. In the very least, guilty or not, they will be alive and reasonably comfortable, although they might temporarily miss the company of family and friends, as those bereaved by tokhang have come to experience for all eternity.

I was intrigued by the suggestion that repeated singing of “Lupang Hinirang” would make a better Filipino out of me, or at least make me think of the ICC as some kind of fire-breathing Godzilla threatening to incinerate the Filipino race off the face of the earth.

There are far more effective songs  for instilling love of country. Yoyoy Villame’s “Philippine Geography” will teach us more about the country we say we’re dying for than our anthem, which must have been sung hundreds of times in the halls of Congress without much palpable effect on the patriotism of some occupants. At least I’m assuming it’s regularly sung there; if not, then perhaps our senator can start a little closer to home.

(As for professing one’s innocence, oldtimers will remember Diomedes Maturan’s “Huwag Kang Manalig sa Bulong-Bulungan” (remade by Victor Wood). Even Billy Joel warbled that “Although this is a fight I can lose, the accused is an innocent man!”)

On a more serious tangent, let me swipe a page from a recent talk given by UP President Angelo A. Jimenez, himself a lawyer, at a seminar of police officials on the thorny topic of national security and human rights:

“Our police officers should be commended for the seizure of a total of P6.2 billion worth of illegal drugs in the first half of 2023. The PNP’s Intensified Cleanliness Program, aligned with the Philippine Anti-Illegal Drugs Strategy, has employed a coordinated approach among government agencies to create drug-free communities. This shows that a serious and successful war on drugs can be undertaken without any needless loss of life, for as long as we observe the law, fight corruption, and remember the need for compassion in a just society. Even drug suspects have rights—indeed, even convicted prisoners—and we maintain our moral superiority by respecting those rights, even as we dispense justice. Only then and only thus can we regain our people’s trust.

“Ours is a society that operates on leadership by example. If people see their public officials and law enforcers doing the right thing, they will follow suit. If they see the law being flouted by these very same people—such as unauthorized government SUVs using the bus lanes along EDSA—they feel entitled and emboldened to do wrong themselves. Exemplary behavior at the top will create and strengthen the moral foundation for a responsible and law-abiding citizenry. We cannot demand what we ourselves cannot supply or enforce.”

Frankly, I myself doubt that a full-blown ICC investigation will prosper under the present dispensation, which reportedly promised the senator that not a hair of his (but then, where’s the hair?) would be touched by the ICC, back when the two camps were—just to use an idiomatic expression, and meaning no malice—as thick as thieves.

Now that the knives are out between the erstwhile allies, the ICC card seems to be in play again, teasing us with the possibility of justice being done, but I’m not holding my breath. It’s just too big a risk for those in power to take, too wide a door to open—like Cha-cha for ostensibly just economic provisions. Who knows what other crimes the ICC will unearth, who else they will indict, and how far back they will go? Once you give people a taste of respect for human rights, why, they’d be at it like potato chips—they’ll keep wanting more. There’d be chaos in the streets and no, sir, we can’t have any of that, just when we need law and order.

For this reason alone, I don’t think our good-humored senator has anything to worry about, neither from the Palace nor from the Hague. He can finish his term, retire to his farm in peace, shoot the breeze (or something else) with his old boss, and have his memoirs ghost-written. Unless, of course, a certain lady succeeds in clawing her way to the top, in which case the senator—still fairly young as senior politicos go—can expect a new lease on his public life and serve afresh, perhaps in the Cabinet, where men and women of action belong, rather than in the Senate, where they’re reduced to preening and tweaking their moustaches.

Someone with far greater and indisputable jurisdiction will take over this case and pronounce ultimate judgment; he will need no rapporteur, no investigating party, no authorization, no earthly prison; his verdict will be unappealable. His brand of justice will make the ICC look like talent-show judges by comparison. Those found guilty will be killing lots of time in a very warm place. Some people better start learning and singing hymns of repentance.