Why you trippin’?

With the Philippines banking so much on tourism, having crowd-sourced travel website TripAdvisor declare the Philippines fourth on a list of top 10 Asian “destinations on the rise” is good news. Or, at the very least, big news, going by these stories on the Philippine Star and on DZMM TeleRadyo.

 

The DZMM story goes, and no translation will be provided:

 

Sinabi pa ng report na ang naturang pagkilala sa Metro Manila ay matapos mailunsad ng Department of Tourism (DOT) ang bago nitong campaign na “It’s More Fun in the Philippines,” kung saan pinapakita na maraming maaaring gawin sa Ka-Maynilaan tulad ng shopping, clubbing, dining at iba pang entertainment at lifestyle offerings.

 

To be fair, the Yahoo news report that both the Philippine Star and DZMM cite did not say that. The story merely said the “recent accolade for Manila comes as the Department of Tourism on Wednesday launched a new international television campaign promoting entertainment and lifestyle offerings in Metro Manila. ” What it also does not say is why inclusion on the TripAdvisor list is an accolade for Manila, or if it is one at all. Neither does it say how TripAdvisor came up with the list.

 

Not, you know, that that’s important or anything. Maybe it’s because we’ve been investing, or promising to invest, in better airports. Maybe it’s because things are looking up for our economy. Maybe it’s because we have two Catholic saints now instead of just one. Maybe tourist volume has been rising. Maybe there’s a huge influx of international flights coming into Ninoy Aquino International. It’s certainly not because Philippine aviation has been upgraded on aviation safety lists.

 

This report on USAToday explains how Manila made it to the list of “destinations on the rise” in Asia. Apparently, winners were chosen based on “an algorithm that took into account factors including traveler feedback quality through reviews and opinions on destination accommodations, restaurants, attractions as well as interest through clicks on TripAdvisor, and ‘want to go’ pins placed by travelers on the TripAdvisor Cities I’ve Visited Facebook app.” That sounds totally legit.

The Do-Nothing Panel

An ethics complaint has been filed against Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III and the Senate Committee on Ethics and Privileges is busy preparing for hearings on it.

 

Unfortunately, those preparations are the same ones the committee was doing more than a year ago: deciding on the rules that it will use in ethics cases.

 

In January 2011, while Senator Panfilo Lacson was in hiding from the law, the committee’s chairman, Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano, set a meeting with the members of his panel. “We will have [an] organizational meeting of the committee on ethics and first agenda will be the rules,” he told reporters then.

 

“The intention is to assure that I will not be bias or prejudice. We will not make rules in accordance with the pending complaints. I will be a mediator rather than advocate,” Cayetano said.

 

And Cayetano was true to his promise. The committee did, indeed, not make rules. At all.

 

The senator said in an interview on DZMM this morning that the committee has to meet again to finalize the rules.

 

Ang naging status po noong magdedesisyon na kami sa finality  ng rules ng komite noong Hunyo ng nakaraang taon, doon na po pumasok ang mabibigat na hearing sa Senado tungkol sa PCSO scam, sa 2004 at 2007 elections, at iba pang mga hearing. Matapos po nito ay pumasok rin po ang impeachment ni CJ Corona. Kaya ang nangyari po noon, hindi na po masyadong maganda ang attendance ng hearing ng Ethics Committee at hindi na bumalik yung consensus sa gagawing rules.

 

The senator says there were “several meetings, technical working groups and hearings that were working on the rules of the committee” before the members basically just lost interest. Who, after all, wants to have a mechanism in place to hold senators accountable, a mechanism that might one day be used against him?

 

Why was there a need to craft new rules for the ethics committee? Cayetano explains in Filipino that, during the 14th Congress, “the Ethics committee became controversial because there were always accusations within the Senate that cases were political in nature, or members of the Senate were using the committee against other members.” He neglects to mention that those accusations came from him and other allies of Senator Manuel Villar Jr., then aspiring for the presidency and facing an ethics probe.

 

Funnily enough, the head of the Ethics committee at the time was Senator Lacson, who was also Villar’s accuser.

 

Given the probe on Villar was partly political in nature (and achieved nothing in terms of accountability), Cayetano was right that better rules were needed when trying senators for disorderly conduct. He was wrong in not pushing for those rules to be finalized and adopted. As committee chairman, he certainly had the power to call for meetings and it should not have been impossible to get two to three members of the seven-member panel to attend.

 

Not shown: The Rules of the Senate Committee on Ethics and Privileges. Because they don’t exist.

 

In his radio interview this morning, Cayetano mentions failed attempts in past Congresses to come up with a Code of Ethics for senators. He does not mention, however, whether he will try to come up with one.

 

And this is what is the most irksome about Cayetano. For all his statements and speeches about transparency and justice and good governance, he has done little in the way of legislation. It is not uncommon for his office to issue statements that sound great but are not backed up by bills or resolutions that will actually make things happen.

 

According to a GMA Network News report in 2011, Cayetano beat only Senator Joker Arroyo in the number of bills and resolutions filed. Considering Arroyo only filed 17 resolutions by then, that is really not saying much.

 

The ethics complaint against Sotto: A good fight that will end in defeat

Senate watchers hoping Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III will get censured by the Senate Committee on Ethics and Privileges for copying from American bloggers and a dead U.S. senator are in for a disappointment.

 

According to reports, professors from the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University, and De La Salle University are getting ready to file an ethics complaint against Sotto. Three U.S.-based writers who say Sotto plagiarized from them for his speeches against the Reproductive Health bill have also said they want Sotto brought before the Senate ethics committee.

 

They will, no doubt, do so as promised, trooping to the Senate in front of photographers and reporters who will record the moment for posterity. And that is where the campaign to have Sotto censured by the Senate will end.

 

Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, Sotto’s party-mate and ally in opposing the Reproductive Health bill, has already defended the senator even before a formal complaint has been filed. The Philippine Daily Inquirer’s Matikas Santos writes,

 

“[Senators] can’t be question [sic] by anybody outside this chamber,” Enrile told reporters Monday.

He said that senators are given immunity under the Constitution to speak on any issues before the Senate.

Under Article Six “The Legislative Department” Section 11 of the Philippine Constitution, “No member shall be questioned nor be held liable in any other place for any speech or debate in the Congress or in any committee thereof.”

 

That is true, but Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago, who has given fiery (and most likely original) privilege speeches at the Senate had this to say about parliamentary immunity after Ilocos Sur Governor Luis Singson sued her for implicating him in jueteng:

 

You know parliamentary immunity is not meant to be abused by the senators and congressmen. It is meant to encourage them to speak the unspeakable without suffering the consequences. Otherwise we’d all be lying dead on the streets or our family would be assassinated.

 

That’s neither here nor there, but that show what parliamentary immunity was meant for.  Notice that there was no mention of passing somebody else’s words as your own as privileged speech.

 

Rule X § 13 (2) in the Rules of the Senate gives the Senate ethics committee jurisdiction over “all matters relating to the conduct, rights, privileges, safety, dignity, integrity and reputation of the Senate and its members.” That, presumably, includes Sotto’s alleged plagiarism and general unsavoriness of character. Under Senate rules, the committee can recommend punishment and “with the concurrence of two-thirds of the entire membership, suspend or expel a Member.”

 

The ethics committee can, but it will not. In the first place, the Senate ethics committee will not be able to reach a quorum of members willing to attend hearings and dignify a complaint against one of their own. This was a problem even when Senator Manuel Villar Jr. was facing an ethics complaint over a more serious charge of corruption and of being Senate president in the run up to an election year.

 

Ethics investigations against Senator Panfilo Lacson, who was accused of not doing his job by virtue of being absent from the Senate because he was a fugitive from justice, also went nowhere.

 

For an offense like plagiarism, which Sotto says is not even a crime even if he did do it which he isn’t saying he did, committee chairman and Minority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano might not even bother booking a room to hold a hearing in. Besides, he’ll be busy preparing for his election campaign and nurturing his deep hatred for Commission on Elections chairman Sixto Brillantes Jr.

 

Should Sotto be held accountable for plagiarism? Certainly, and the bloggers and professors who want him to answer for his intellectual dishonesty should be commended for fighting the good fight. As with many good fights, though, this one is against windmills who haughtily condemn corruption and contemptuous behavior in others but would rather be the laughing stock of the World Legislators’ Club than admit that they can make mistakes.

 

Sorry, rest of the world. I win. #sorrynotsorry

Same Old Story

Here’s a development that surprised few but disappointed many: The Makabayan Coalition, an alliance of progressive party-list organizations promising a new brand of politics, has admitted guest candidates to its slate.

None of them is a new name and Bayan Muna Representative Teddy Casiño’s justification for the team-up is as old as Cebu Representative Pablo Garcia, who, at 86, is the oldest lawmaker in Congress.

Citing the principle of “politics is addition,” Casiño said he and the guest candidates would “mutually” benefit from the alliance.

Makabayan Coalition has thrown its support behind Senators Francis Escudero, Loren Legarda and Aquilino Pimentel III, former Las Piñas representative Cynthia Villar and former Movie and Television Review and Classification Board chair Grace Poe Llamanzares, calling them, along with Casiño, the “Senate Champions.”

Escudero and Legarda are already old hands at the Senate while Pimentel is seeking his second term. Villar is the wife of Senator Manuel Villar Jr. and mother of Las Piñas Representative Mark Villar. Escudero, Pimentel, and Villar are from political families.

Escudero, Legarda, and Llamanzares are common candidates of the two big coalitions fielding candidates in the 2013 elections, the administration’s and the also-administration-but-not-as-much United Nationalist Alliance.

Villar is an official candidate of the administration coalition while Escudero and Pimentel are friendly to Malacañang. Casiño is not and has been critical of the Aquino administration, but that apparently doesn’t matter as long as everybody’s happy.

Casiño, before he officially filed his candidacy, promised an alternative to “basically the same names, faces and vested interests that have dominated Philippine politics for decades.” His challenge then: “Wala na bang iba?” Is there nobody else?

That question has apparently been answered.