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Two Cases of Government Responsiveness

With the bad things that happened with government service delivery these days – from tanim-bala to market fires due to bad cables – it is easy to be swayed to the opinion that this government can never do right, and that everything in the Philippine government, whether local or national, are all wrong.  If facebook posts and tweets are measures of the opinion of the “connected” Filipino nation (which, by the way, comprises only around 40% of the total population), it  seems that the general sentiment is that this country is so badly-governed that entertainment is a happy escape from the current mess we are in.  But often we forget that there are also many good things going on in this country’s government.  I do not want to be an apologist of the government but I want to speak of two experiences where I can say that as a citizen, I have benefitted from government’s willingness to protect the interest of its citizens and from government’s responsiveness to an ordinary citizen’s

Some Questions on Justice

Image courtesy of http://www.sacrecoeur-nsw.org.au/images/SCAImages/People/Social%20Justice/social-justice-300x284.gif The “ twisted ruling ” of the Supreme Court, granting bail to Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile for a non-bailable case, and purportedly finding a constitutional basis to do so, showed once again how justice bends to the will of the powerful and the mighty.  One part of the story is the ability of the rich to engage better lawyers and build a stronger case ( Lopez, 2009 ). Another part of the story is the potential for justices to exhibit partiality in exchange for a sum of money , or in order to side with the powers that be . This brings me to an important question that I think every Boholano needs to answer – What do we mean by just ?  When do we say that something is just ?  How can we say that just ice has been served?  I will not attempt to answer these questions here, but add some more, using recent events in Bohol as a basis for framing the questions. Quest

A Concrete Road to Nowhere

First day of the year 2015, Arlen and I took a walk from our house in San Isidro, Tagbilaran City, Bohol, to the city public market in Dao to exercise and at the same time buy the week’s provision of fish, vegetables and rootcrops.  For quite a time, the road that connects Dao proper and Dao Lanao intersecting the national highway going to Corella has been closed to traffic. We have used this road before when it was still surfaced with asphalt.  We knew that the other half of the road which leads to the city public market in Dao was almost completed that we wondered what took the project so long to be finished and opened for public use. So that we would have answers to our questions, we walked through the road. Apparently that portion near the national highway has not been touched yet, for one primary reason – there is a claimant of the property that has long been used as a public road.  After a well concreted road section, probably completed for months already, a makeshift fe

Analysing Disaster Preparedness in Maribojoc

The destroyed Abatan Bridge that connects Maribojoc to Tagbilaran City Maribojoc is a fourth class municipality in the province of Bohol. Located 30 kilometers southwest of Tagbilaran City, the provincial capital, the municipality is composed of 22 barangays whose residents are primarily engaged in farming and fishing.  The municipality is home to one of the oldest watchtowers in the country and one of the oldest Spanish churches in the province. Maribojoc has a total of 20,491 people with a population density of 2.6 persons per hectare as of 2010.  Urban population consists of 26.61% of the total town population.  The population is predominantly young, with 30% of the total population aged 0-14 years old.  The productive force of the municipality is 60%. Land formation of the municipality ranges from sea-level to very steep slopes. The highest elevation of the  municipality is 304 meters above sea level.  The municipality only has around 18.99% that do not experience ero

Earthquake, SMS, and Social Media

Image courtesy of http://www.sjp.com A seminal work by Elder and others (2013) entitled “Information Lives of the Poor: Fighting Poverty with Technology” discusses in clear prose and through illustrative examples the promise of information and communication technology (ICT) in building the lives of the world’s poor.  It starts with a foreword by Mohammad Yunus , Grameen Bank founder and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, which highlights the Grameen Village Phone program that afforded poor people with access to telecommunication facilities while at the same time providing income for poor village women in Bangladesh. It highlights, among other things, how technology has penetrated society and even poor households.  Use of mobile phones, for example, spiked beginning in 2002, surpassing all other forms of technologies like television, personal computer, and the internet , a fact also pointed out in the paper. Its attendant effects were also highlighted in several studies apart fro

Bohol Will Rise

Image courtesy of Bangon Bohol. I was not in Bohol when the 7.2 earthquake hit the island in the morning of 15 October 2013.  Like most working weeks, and like several Boholanos unable to find job within the province, I was at the RCBC building along Ayala Avenue, preparing for a meeting with my contract manager at AusAID.  Like the Boholanos back home, that morning was the same as all other mornings – people woke up, took breakfast, did some household chores, read the papers, tended to farm animals, took a bath, went to church, reported for work. Then the ground shook.  That brief moment, that fearsome few seconds that has devastated centuries-old churches, destroyed many homes, traumatized children, damaged livelihood and business investments, and made useless several public infrastructure, can only be described by those who were there. While I was able to go home and experience the aftershocks days later, my own feeling of insecurity and fear is nothing compared to those who w

Power and Danger of Discretion: PDAF in the Local Context

Image courtesy of Inquirer.   http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/files/2013/07/cartoon_Jul19.jpg . “One noticeable feature of modern legal systems is the extent to which power is conferred upon government officials and agencies to be exercised at their discretion, according to policy considerations, rather than according to precise legal standards.”   (Galligan, 1990) The past month, after the Priority Development Assistance Fund scandal surfaced in Philippine political debate, considerable media space has been allotted to discuss the value, or conversely and more strongly, the evil of the PDAF.  A congressional inquiry is currently being conducted, purportedly in aid of legislation that oftentimes seemed like some person’s show.  A whistleblower seemed to enjoy the media attention with a kind of sinister smile, sounding like saying “come on; do not act as if you do not know this.” A senator accused of plunder chastised himself by saying nothing else is good in this government

Strength in Numbers

26 August 2013.  Netizens called for a million march against the Priority Development Assistance Fund in Manila.  Commentaries on the Manila march said that the crowd gathered there was short of the million it promised. Elsewhere in the country, similar activities were also held.  Video footages of the activities happening elsewhere, in Cebu, Davao, Iloilo, and other major cities and even in Australia and in the US were shown.  Maybe I missed it, but I did not see Bohol there. I was in the Bohol march, together with my family. Friends and acquaintances from different organizations, ideologies, profession were there - Marianito Luspo of HNU-CCAD, Jean Darunday of BONACONSO, Alvin Acuzar of BUSWACC, Emmie Roslinda of PROCESS, Engr. James Uy of HNU College of Engineering, artists like Ric Ramasola and Sandra dela Serna, women activists as Regina Estorba Macalandag and Doris Dinorog were among those gathered around 10 pm that day. Quite the usual suspects, I should say.  Venue

I am an Election Watcher

Image courtesy of www.ifes.org For the longest time now, I am an election watcher. No, not that one who volunteers to ensure that there is free, clean, and honest elections in the country.  I am an election watcher – and I watch elections come and go from the sidelines. My friends say that I am a sour contradiction and a bad example for the young.  As one of the believers that change is necessary in this world so that people can have better lives, I should also be one of those who believe that elections are opportunities of turning the tables upside down.  As one of those who believe that governance is important in achieving political, economic, and social gains, I should at least be interested in ensuring that people elect the kind of leaders that we need.  And as one of those who think that almost all things are political, I should have been engaged in a political exercise characteristic of modern-day democracies.  But here I am, watching elections come and go, but not real

Civil Resistance and our History as a Country

Photo credit http://goturboegon.deviantart.com Today marks the close of what seemed to be a whirlwind week of learning at the Fletcher Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Non-Violent Conflict at Fletcher School in Tufts University , Massachusetts.  Together with more than 50 participants and speakers – journalists, academics, and activists – various examples of non-violent resistance were discussed and analysed in a course designed and funded by the International Center on Non-Violent Conflict .  The event also afforded me the opportunity to reminisce the activism of my heyday – the activist’s theatre I was a part of when I was 10, the street protests against tuition fee increases, and the tactical planning sessions for farmer’s rights to name a few.  The activist sessions, with the likes of Mkhuseli Jack , Oscar Olivera , and Jenni Williams , made me ask questions again, whether I have done enough, whether how I view my arena of struggle these days is justified, and whet

Helmets were not the only ones lost that day.....

(image courtesy of gearpatrol.com) Last Friday, 22 March 2012, I met a Phd student from Belgium Sebastien and his wife Ally at Holy Name University where Sebastien was temporarily stationed while doing his fieldwork in the Philippines.  Sebastien studies climate change adaptation and participatory planning in the Philippines for his degree at the University of Namur (F.U.N.D. P) and he chose Bohol as the place to conduct his fieldwork though he plans to cover a few other sites in the Visayas.  I met Sebastien through email when he sent me a letter of inquiry after reading a paper I wrote and presented in the Development Studies Association conference in the United Kingdom sometime in 2008.  I explained to him the context of the research he told me his research interests. When they finally decided to come to the Philippines, they went to Bacolod first to explore possibilities of conducting the research there.  We met in Manila a few days after they arrived and still offered