A little more honest, but...

MY FORMER City Hall colleague, Jessie Natividad, must have been following my ongoing conversation with Atty. Che Carpio.

When I woke up this morning, I got an email from him containing the link to Carpio's latest column, which Vox Bikol published in its website a day after our face-to-face at the Ateneo when he talked about Kaantabay sa Kauswagan, Naga's urban poor housing project.

I of course obliged him with the following reply:

Dear Attorney Carpio:

This pertains to your latest column entitled “Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang,” which continues to amuse me.

First off, this is an ongoing conversation between us. Since I first emailed you last Jan 17, you will take note that the message came from my email address; and it was my name that appeared as its author. It is only in your mind that it was Mayor Jesse Robredo responding, not I.

Having said that, anyone interested in finding out what I emailed you the second time around can check my weblog. I stand by what I wrote; if your or anybody else’s sensibilities are offended, then I’m sorry for that and the attending hurt or discomfort. But I will never apologize for correcting distortions and data selectivity that would amount to intellectual dishonesty.

Let me now address your clarifications point by point:

1. The only reason why the S&P report is not available in the website is because S&P marked it confidential. That much is clear from my email to Julma when I forwarded it to her per your request.

2. To the contrary, your claim that “intermediate is a dismal 50% rating” and a “failing mark”” is what I will call a spin. Because nowhere in that report did S&P conclude that way. They were your simplistic conclusions that do not do justice at all to the report in its entirety.

Consider, for example, the following snippets from the Financial Management Assessment (FMA) Report’s “Overview of Naga City’s key strengths and weakness” (underscoring mine):

Not withstanding the systemic constraints and institutional weaknesses afflicting Naga City, the strongest areas of financial management which drive the overall score for the city government include annual budgeting at Intermediate, financial reporting and disclosure at Intermediate Plus and debt management at Intermediate Minus.

Despite the lack of budgeting or accounting software, the city has been accurate in its budgeting performance on both revenue and expenditure. And as mentioned, its audited financial statements are free of material qualifications, a rarity among Philippines LGUs. This is a significant driving factor behind the city’s overall score as well. Naga city has also proven to have the capacity to managed debt and demonstrated a relatively high level of quality in its debt monitoring.

…

The city’s financial statements had received clean audit opinions from COA in the last few years. No notable discrepancies appeared on Naga’s audited statements except for the usual inconsistency in the valuation of physical assets, and COA reported that the city is expected to resolve them by end 2008. Naga’s transparency in its reporting of financial performance is also noteworthy, with the comprehensive publishing of its annual budget, interim annual and quarterly financial statements released on a timely basis on the city website. However its financial reporting score is constrained by the lack of accounting software that would potentially reduce paperwork and offer easier access to financial information within the city administration. Nonetheless, Naga has still managed to consistently produce reliable financial statements despite the lack of electronic solutions.

Likewise, despite the absence of any budgeting software, Naga’s annual budgeting performances have been strong and demonstrated relative accuracy on both revenue and expenditure planning. It is conservative on revenue budgeting, with final outcome more often than not exceeding initial budgeted amount. Correspondingly, expenditure outturn has been lower by an average of 1.6% from budgeted amounts in the period 2005-2007 (albeit with some volatility from year to year). Though Naga’s annual budgeting process is still largely characterized by incremental-based, it is one of the few LGUs to have at least adopt some form of programmatic expenditure planning. Currently, around 15%-20% of the city’s budget is estimated to be program-based.

The Naga city government demonstrate adequate capacity in debt management. Unlike most LGUs who have monthly debt repayment automatically deducted from their monthly IRA transfers, the Naga administration keeps good track of its amortization schedule and issue checks on timely basis to directly repay lending banks. Furthermore, all of the city’s loans are negotiated with clauses that allow prepayment without penalties. The city government actively monitors borrowing rates and would seek cheaper refinancing whenever the opportunity arises. However, like most LGUs, Naga’s debt management score is weakened by the lack of a coherent and explicit debt policy. Alleviating this is that the city’s medium-term investment plan (LDIP) has acted as a pseudo-debt policy of the current administration.

Together with the FMA is the Credit Rating Report on Naga, whose section entitled “Comparative Analysis” contains the following:

International peers
The Russian entities of Nizhny Novgorod (BB-/Stable/--) and Tver Oblast (B+/Negative/--), as well as the Ukrainian capital city of Kyiv (CCC+/Watch Neg/--) and the Turkish city of Istanbul (BB-/Negative/--) are suitable international peers for the City of Naga (which is was given a credit rating of BB-/Stable)

…

Like some of its peers, the City of Naga has been able to partially fund aggressive capital expenditure programs in recent years with operating surpluses, which has helped to limit its borrowing requirements. However, the overall average level of capital expenditure relative to total expenditure reported by Naga (18.5%) is still below that for its international peers (30%) from 2005-2007. Although its physical infrastructure is relatively well-maintained by national standards, it is largely inadequate in the international context.

Naga’s direct debt level has been steadily declining, unlike Istanbul’s. Coupled with a healthy and fast-rising cash position, the city’s overall debt profile is favourable and compares well to that of Nizhny Novgorod. Likewise, Naga’s strong budgetary performance stands out among its peer group. However, this is in part a function of the city’s weaker capacity to administer capital projects (stemming from lack of benefits of scale), and also a function of the systemic borrowing constraints faced by Philippine local governments.

Local peers
Unlike its domestic peers who are located in Metro Manila like Quezon City, Taguig and Mandaluyong, who have relatively more diversified service-base economies, Naga is predominately engaged in the agrarian sector. The lack of a distinct geographic or industrial advantage has resulted in lower property value and smaller-scale businesses operating in Naga, which in turn limits the city’s real property and business tax collection. In mitigation, its local economy has been relatively more insulated than Metro Manila peers in this current global downturn. In addition, outside the capital region, Naga’s tax base and per capita income would compare more favorably than those of Iligan and Tacloban.

…

The city’s budgetary performance is nevertheless stronger than all rated Philippines cities, despite the fact that other cities have far more revenue streams at their disposal. This reflects to some extent the more advanced financial management practices of the Naga city government than its peers. Likewise, despite its more limited resources, Naga has been able to maintain robust liquidity coverage and a direct debt burden better than the average for its peer group.

This is hardly the picture of a “failing” city and its local government.

This is precisely why I challenged Vox Bikol to publish it wholly and let its readers decide. To me, it is an unadulterated take on the strengths and weaknesses of the city’s economy and the city government’s stewardship of its financial resources.

I will have to check if our point person in this credit rating project has already secured the needed clearance from S&P to publish the report in the city website. If yes, rest assured that we will make it available. Nonetheless, I am uploading the report in my blog, albeit unofficially, because I believe that its potential to educate us clearly outweighs its confidential nature.

3. I am happy that you have now acknowledged Naga’s score relative to its peers, the glaring omission that actually prompted that “intellectual dishonesty” remark in my previous email. Consequently, I will now gladly reconsider that assertion.

4. I will concede your point on the scope of that World Bank-funded pilot project, which is only limited to eight cities thus far. But I am confident that this inference is in order for the following reasons:

• To have been considered, and more importantly, included in a pilot project on the credit rating of Philippine cities (out of the 120, because the League of Cities of the Philippines is still contesting the controversial SC decision affirming the cityhood of the other 16) already says enough about Naga. The mayor’s SOCR already covered this. But clearly, there is something about Naga that merited the Bank’s attention.
• Quezon City, the richest LGU in the Philippines today, is among the pilot cities. So are Marikina, incidentally the most innovative and most awarded city in Metro Manila; Mandaluyong, Malabon and Taguig. But as you yourself acknowledged, albeit grudgingly, Naga more than held its own compared to these richer localities and their much more diversified economies. Unlike you, I therefore like our chances.
  
• Your asides about transparency notwithstanding, the report clearly recognized, and it bears repeating here, that “Naga City is the only city assessed so far to have consistently received a clean opinion from COA on its financial statements, which placed the quality of its financial reporting considerably above domestic peers.” I have every reason to believe we will continue to be so, even if credit rating covers the entire universe of Philippine LGUs.
  
• My experience with Philippine local governments -- and my work on public education has brought me to a number -- is that for the most part, they have continuing difficulty with disclosure and openness in regard to their finances. (For instance, I will be very interested to see whether the CWC is making money or not. By the way, I have written COA twice, requesting that it put online its 2008 Audit Reports for the Bicol cities and provinces; thus far, they have only obliged us with Masbate province and city.) To my knowledge, and of course I will be happy to be corrected on this matter, only Naga publishes its proposed and approved annual budget, as well as its quarterly financial statements.

5. Finally, that “consuelo de bobo” thing again highlights the fundamental difference in our respective positions: you may have become a little more honest in laying down the facts, but the “half-empty” perspective continues to color your opinion.

In your static world view, that condescending put-down (that Naga merely topped the class of Philippine failures) is consistent with your negative perspective; if one reads closely, it smugly implies that Philippine cities do not have what it takes to be world-class -- simply because their best started out with a measly “Intermediate” rating when S&P first came to local shores, courtesy of the World Bank.

In that world view, its credit rating of BB-/Stable for foreign currencies -- mind you, better than the capital cities of Ukraine and Turkey; BB+/Stable for local currencies; and AA+ in the national rating system -- only a shade lower than AAA, S&P’s top investment grade given to “the best quality borrowers, reliable and stable” -- it proposes for Philippine local governments do not matter at all.

Unfortunately for you, the Naga city government not only looks at the glass half-full, but believes it is our responsibility to fill it up the brim. Instead of sulking and fault-finding, we celebrate affirmations that come our way, like that S&P report, because they tell us we must have doing some things well and right all along. Thankfully, its FMA points out precisely where and what we need to do make the system better. I am confident that our current and next leaders are as bullish about the future and have the same positive, can-do attitude.

Again, I will not take it against you: you are entitled to your beliefs, in the same manner that I am entitled to a vigorous defense of the city’s position against continuing distortions that mask reality.

And I don’t have be a Mayor Robredo to be able to do it.:)

Those interested in the S&P report can go check the following:

Credit Analysis of Naga City

Financial Management Assessment (FMA) Report on Naga City

Appendix - Overview of the Philippine Inter-Government System

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Choosing to see the glass half-empty

THROUGH my Newswires widget. I came across this Vox Bikol column by Atty. Jose Maria "Che" Carpio. The article is taking issue with the 2009 State of the City Report of the Robredo administration, which can be accessed here.

To set the records straight, I sent him the following email:

"Dear Attorney Carpio,

"I just read your Vox Bikol column, which raises the question: "Is 'Intermediate' the 'Best'?”

"I cannot fault you for taking a negative stance on the matter. It's the classic hall-full glass: in your effort to find fault with the city government, you have chosen to ignore the obvious, which I am quoting below. Funny how you can miss this when it is found on the very same page quoted in your column.

The overall FMA score of ‘Intermediate’ for Naga City reflects its moderately developed level of financial reporting and fairly high level of disclosure, adequate performance in annual budgeting and debt management skills which are more sophisticated than most local peers. On the other hand, the score takes into account the basic practices of Naga in elements of FMA like expenditure management and medium-term planning.

Notably, Naga City’s overall FMA score is the highest among assessed Philippines LGUs to date, reflecting the city’s more balanced developments in its FMA practices for most key areas, as opposed to some local peers who may demonstrate sound practices in certain elements such as revenue management, but at the same time scoring poorly in other areas like debt management, budgeting etc. Nevertheless, the Naga city government’s lack of computerization in most aspects of financial management such as annual budgeting, financial reporting, tax collection and disbursement have emerged as a constraint on these respective scores. A comprehensive computerization of the city’s system could potentially see improvement in Naga’s overall FMA and individual element scores. (Underscoring mine)

"So, to answer your question, an "Intermediate" score is the best among Philippine LGUs according to that S&P report. But you opted not to see that, and would not accept it, because you chose to see the glass half-empty, as you always have with the city government."

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Home to heroes

MONDAY I found myself in Libmanan on invitation of its youthful Councilor Alexander James Jaucian, chair of the town's sanggunian education committee.

Jaucian wants to bring Synergeia's Reading program -- ongoing in Iriga City and Libon and hopefully soon in Rapu-Rapu, Albay -- to Camarines Sur's biggest town, and I explained before the sangguniang bayan what the foundation is, what we do, and how communities like Libmanan can improve the quality of education if only its local leaders will commit themselves to it.

The journey, my first ever to the town, was nostalgic in some ways. Many years back, I fell in love with a lass from the place but alas it was not meant to be. Then there's the legendary Handiong, the first king of Ibalon who is said to have built his capital in the Libmanan delta, laying the foundation for the first Bikolano civilization, in partnership with former nemesis and lover, the snake goddess Oryol.

It is also the main theatre of the guerilla warfare documented in the World War II book written by historian Jose Barrameda, Jr. on the Tancong Vaca Guerilla Unit (TVGU), which I wrote about in a column last month. Incidentally, it is also a highlight of an ongoing exhibit on the local guerilla movement -- whose title eludes me -- at the Ateneo de Naga university library. JoeBar would later email me a kind note with the following clarification:

"One, my father joined the resistance movement in Baao, Camarines Sur (for which reason I also dedicated the book to him) but he survived the war. Two, there was another big accomplishment that the TVGU chalked up, so that there were three of them in all. This was the second liberation of Naga in April 1944. The TVGU actually headed the liberation force through Major Juan Q. Miranda who was elected the overall commander the force. Moreover, the liberation was done by Bicolano guerrillas alone. The U.S. Army reached Naga some two weeks after it had been wrested by the sons of Handiong from the Japanese."

In that quick visit, I saw a town that seemed to be as ordinary as any other in Bicol, at least the ones I've been to. The streets are narrow and some stretches of the concrete road leading to the poblacion have seen better days, but who would ever imagine that it would bring forth mythical and real heroes that would define the Bikolano at his very best?

As Edwin Aspra, our office driver, and I negotiated the 35-km trip back home along the national highway, I told him during the war, Libmanan's link to Naga was via the snaking Bicol River and the railways, which played a prominent role in JoeBar's opus. The road we are traversing has yet to see the light of day. Unfortunately, both have been sidelined by the emergence of cars, buses and trucks as the primary medium of transport.

More unfortunate is the fact that Libmanan appears to have fallen for the siren song of the politician's empty promises that have driven them to desperation. That in the last elections they have reposed their trust on a stranger, who happens to be a son of the President, to represent them in Congress is a clear indictment of his predecessors.

Will their fortune change this time? I want to be hopeful, but the odds are stacked against it. For one, President Arroyo has just appointed Albay Gov. Jose Clemente "Joey" Salceda as new chair of the Bicol Regional Development Council, replacing Camarines Sur's Luis Raymund "L-Ray" Villafuerte, Jr., notwithstanding the latter's 38-6 advantage in the August 14, 2007 voting. In fact, in last Friday's (Dec. 14) RDC meeting, many governors -- who all voted for L-Ray -- were shocked to see Joey presiding. That renders the promised international airport in Libmanan to nothing less than a snake oil salesman's pitch.

The restoration of Philippine National Railways (PNR) service, a casualty of Supertyphoon Reming a year ago, would have been a more realistic and logical advocacy. But there are indications funding is not being prioritized in the national budget.

In the national convention of the Personnel Officer Association of the Philippines (POAP) I attended a week back, a PNR representative expressed his fears about it, and asked me if the Naga city government will support an effort to secure more funds for the PNR. I said restoring PNR services is always in the best interest of any Bikolano, and we will therefore do our part, but people like Dato Arroyo and Ower Andal are better positioned to make it happen.

I hope Libmanan once again rediscovers its inner strength and pride, and remembers its lineage as home to Bikol heroes. Because at the end of the day, nobody else will help it reclaim its glory but its own.

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JoeBar does us a great service

IN MY column during the Independence Day week last June, I mentioned the generation and information gaps behind our weak sense of local history. The former stems from the fact that only around 2% of the city population as of 2000 had a clear recollection of World War II. The latter refers to our “skewed, if not lack of total, appreciation of what happened during those fateful years” -- arising from the absence of information magnified by a dumbing down of local history in the DepEd curriculum.

Historian Jose V. Barrameda, Jr., popularly known hereabouts as JoeBar, performed the city and Bikolanos in general a tremendous service with the recent publication, under a grant from the National Historical Institute, of his opus entitled In the crucible of an asymmetrical war in Camarines Sur 1942-1945 – The story of the Tancong Vaca Guerilla Unit. My friend and colleague Joe Perez of the Bicol Mail lent me his copy for two days and it proved to be a gripping well researched read.

Focusing on the exploits of the Tancong Vaca guerillas (named after a watershed in Libmanan and Pasacao, also known as Mt. Bernacci in U.S. maps) against the Japanese invaders, Barrameda -- whose father fought and died during the war -- debunks the conventional belief that Bicol had the least organized resistance movement against the invaders.

To the contrary, what stands out from the entire account is a tough, stubborn, durable and well organized force that refused to lay down their arms like other guerilla units in the aftermath of General Wainwright's surrender on May 6, 1942; survived the best shots unleashed by the Japanese Imperial Forces and their local cohorts; and outlasted them during the four-year period notwithstanding losses it sustained along the way.

Moreover, the guerillas -- led by the triumvirate of Juan Miranda, commanding officer, who would later become a congressman of the 2nd District after the war; Leon Aureus, executive officer, who would later become Naga's first postwar city mayor and Bicol Mail founder; and Elias Madrid, finance officer who actually founded the unit -- can lay claim to two key victories over the Japs.

One is the successful assault on Naga City in partnership with other guerilla units and Agta bowmen in Camarines Sur and Norte in May 1942, two months after the invaders arrived in Bicol. It led to the short-lived recapture of the provincial capital and the release of American prisoners, a feat emblazoned in the book cover itself.

The other is the ambush at Taguilid Pass in Pasacao, which is said to have netted a Japanese general and hero from the just concluded Bataan campaign that ultimately led to Wainwright's surrender.

Along the way, it also sheds light on a key controversy that hounds Nagueños up to this day: the brutal death of then Gov. Mariano Villafuerte and companions, who fled Naga in the aftermath of the May 1942 attack in the company of Japanese forces. Belying Aureus's account, which Barrameda dismissed as propaganda, he attributed the murder of Villafuerte, his wife and son and a Japanese officer to remnants of the Camarines Norte-based Traveling Vinzons Guerillas (TVG) headed by Francisco “Turko” Boayes.

The Boayes partisans were in Vito, Siruma during that fateful day arranging a sanctuary for their compatriots who have also launched a failed attack on Daet, Camarines Norte, which took place simultaneous with the one on Naga. The Notes to the main text, which could have been improved with better chaptering, actually reveal far more details about the tragic incident, which Barrameda categorized as a war crime given its context.

Boayes himself would later figure in many other sordid episodes, including a conflict with Miranda over the latter's bride Constancia Estrada that stretched from the camp of guerilla leader Teofilo Padua in Mt. Isarog -- Miranda was there for a unification talk, only to be wounded after a surprise Japanese attack -- to the coastal towns of Lagonoy and Parubcan (now Presentacion), where he withdrew to recuperate. It culminated with a potentially bloody confrontation between Miranda and Boayes in the shores of Catanduanes that was only averted by the former's quick hands, enabling him and his two other companions to disarm their opponents.

Heroism. Betrayal. Tragedy. Love. Self-sacrifice. JoeBar's Tancong Vaca account has it all -- elements of a movie, or even a TV series, that can surpass Cesar Montano's The Great Raid.

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A first-timer's travails with Ubuntu

My column for this week's issue of Vox Bikol.

ABOUT a month ago, my aging notebook PC was waylaid by a worm called Brontok that skipped past the defenses of my otherwise reliable antivirus AVG. To make the story short, I had to move all my data files to a secondary drive, reformat my primary drive where Windows XP is installed to snuff out Brontok, and install a new copy of the operating system.

I wrote an entry about that experience in my weblog, and it attracted a number of comments. Some suggested a superior antivirus software, which I eventually did; Maryanne Moll and Dominique Cimafranca, alumni of the prestigious Silliman writers conference, on the other hand suggested something else -- abandoning the virus-prone Windows for Apple and Ubuntu, respectively.

Now, a Mac -- which I understand is the preferred weapon of choice by artists -- would be fantastic, except that a new laptop is out of the question these days. Much of my salary have already been “obligated” -- to borrow the language of a budget guy like City Administrator Frank Mendoza who doubles as acting budget officer of the Naga City government.

That left me with Ubuntu -- which claims to be “the Linux for humans -- as the other fallback. Which is not exactly a hard choice to make, as I happen to believe in the open-source paradigm.

Taking away the part which had me backing up my files into another hard drive, and clearing enough space to allow a dual-boot system on a my 40-GB hard disk, installing Ubuntu actually was quite seamless and painless. Well, I have to qualify that “painless” part: it was so with my laptop but not the office desktop which I used as guinea pig the first time around last Thursday.
The relatively old desktop, powered by a first-generation AMD Sempron processor, appeared to have hit a blank wall when the installation progress bar hit 84%. So I cancelled the entire thing, and ended messing it up -- and the Windows XP system already in place. So I had to reinstall XP, and Ubuntu after that, and a little patience eventually paid dividends because for one reason or another, it is able to read even the partitions containing the Windows system.

The version I had working right now is the so-called “Dapper Drake,” and its interface and stability certainly gives Windows XP -- and come to think of it, even Apple -- a run for its money. And it had everything the office needs mostly to get its job done: the OpenOffice suite that handles its Microsoft counterpart with aplomb, and more because of its capability to save documents in PDF format; as well as the Firefox browser, which is superior to the Apple Safari for Windows Beta that I have also been trying.

Unfortunately, Ubuntu remains hampered by Windows' tremendous edge in third-party support. For instance, the Konica Minolta laser printer I am using is unsupported. And so is the onboard Conexant-made modem of my laptop. (I will have to shell out $20 to download a fully functional driver file.) Which is why on my first day of using Ubuntu, I am writing this piece in OpenOffice Writer and will save it on my flash drive. But once done, I switch it off and go back to my good old virus-prone Windows XP so that I will be able to log on to the internet and email it to May France, who is already laying out this issue.

I guess this dual-boot scheme will be staying on with me for quite some time.

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Daily lesson planning, anyone?

My column for last week's issue of Vox Bikol.

OCTOBER is the month when public school students go into a week-long break ending the first semester of the school year. The break also allows their teachers to attend training arranged by their respective division or district offices.

I was reminded of this after my wife, who teaches geometry at Camarines Sur National High School, was extra-busy last week -- as Math club president, she had to oversee their departmental in-service training and aside from that prepare something to share to fellow math teachers.

There was something in one of our conversations last week that grabbed my attention, and I took mental note of it. It had something to do with a sharing by a fellow teacher on the new Cyber Education Project (CEP)-compliant lesson plan format, for which a week-long training was recently arranged by the DepEd.

From a simple format that requires only five sections, the new lesson plan now has 13, ostensibly in preparation for CEP’s eventual implementation. The sharing drew sharp reactions from the audience: instead of simplifying matters, lesson planning has just become more complicated if this P26.4 billion project really pushes through!

This reminded me of the Rapu-Rapu Education summit we facilitated last August 25 under the auspices of the Synergeia Foundation. If there is a search for the most unpopular task ordinary Filipino teachers must grapple with, preparing lesson plans day in and day out will be the hands-down winner.

In that Rapu-Rapu event, the dynamics between the teachers and their supervisors again came to the fore, mirroring all other events I have previously attended where the issue came up: is there really a need for these daily lesson plans in the task of educating the Filipino child?

On one hand, supervisors argue lesson planning is part of the job description, as teachers are given only six loads daily, with the two others allocated precisely for that task. Further, they are essential tools for the monitoring function of supervisors.

Teachers, on the other hand, argue they will be most thankful to DepEd if ready-made lessons can be provided them, or other alternative schemes are implemented, and these two hours be devoted instead to efforts to improve their delivery of the lessons.

Well, being a non-teacher, I scoured the net and ended up with an item on “lesson plan” from Wikipedia, part of which says

“In today's constructivist teaching style, the individual lesson plan is often inappropriate. Specific objectives and timelines may be included in the unit plan, but lesson plans are more fluid as they cater to student needs and learning styles. As students are asked to engage in problem or inquiry learning, rigid lesson planning with title, behavioral objectives, and specific outcomes within certain time constraints often no longer fit within modern effective pedagogy. Today, formal lesson plans are often required only of student teachers, who must be demonstrably familiar with the components of a lesson, or teachers new to the field, who have not yet internalized the flow of a lesson.”

Now, you tell me: Is there really a need for these daily lesson plans in the task of educating the Filipino child?

For five days, I am running a poll on the above question until Sunday. Feel free to join or better still post a comment, especially if you happen to believe that there is a better way.

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It’s a generational thing

My column for last week's issue of Vox Bikol.

DURING weekends, it has become a family tradition to motor to my hometown in Sagrada, Pili for our weekly worship and a visit at the old folks.

For about three months, the trips became an ordeal as the electronics of our 10-year old car that survived Reming’s wrath, though bruised and battered by flying purlins that twisted in the winds, suddenly conked out. But everything is back to normal now, our weekly pilgrimage even made better by the rediscovered versatility of the car CD player.

You see, that three-year old CD player can play MP3 tracks. If you can’t grasp the difference, think about this: while traditional CDs can only have 20 singles -- my Ultraelectromagneticjam for instance had 17 -- a blank CD can have around 140 MP3s on them. That’s more or less seven music albums in one serving.

Since I started burning MP3 songs and playing them the past three weeks, with all my seven kids on board, with their mom and grandma to boot, I noticed that if there is one other thing that binds our family together, it is our common love for music.

Last Sunday, for instance, we sang our heart out to the booming beat of Spongecola’s Bitiw and the mesmerizing Tuliro. The former is one of the reasons why I believe the original version of Pedro Penduko (starring Matt Evans) is much better than that forgettable urban sequel that featured the so-called Engkantaos against the evil Calagua.

Our tastes are rather eclectic. My eldest daughter Sophie, for instance, shares my passion for Santana’s Smooth, for which she now scores 100 in our aging Magic Sing, something she previously did for Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On, John Denver’s Annie’s Song and Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive. (She keeps a notebook where the codes of these “signature songs” are readily available.)

But they are also generational: she couldn’t relate to Maria! Maria!, another cut from Santana’s Grammy Award-winning Supernatural album. And while I also sing myself hoarse to My Chemical Romance’s Welcome to the Black Parade in unison with them -- an MTV in Divx format is conveniently tucked among some movies in my now Brontok-free laptop -- I find myself crooning by my lonesome to Matt Monro’s haunting version of If You Go Away (at least the parts in English) that includes most passages from the French original.

The immortal love songs that sustained me through melancholic lovelorn episodes of my youth, they call ancient. Her grandchildren will probably call them fossils, my wife quipped heartily.

These trips are both educational -- they recently discovered, for instance, the greatness of the Eraserheads, the band their father grew up in college with -- and edifying. In these days of quiet desperation, when all seemed lost and hopeless, the power of music is a soothing salve to a weary heart.

We'll carry on / We'll carry on / And though you're dead and gone believe me / Your memory will carry on / We'll carry on / And though you're broken and defeated / Your weary widow marches on / Do or die / You’ll never make me / Because the world will never take my heart / Come and try; you’ll never break me / We want it all, we want to play this part / Do or die / You'll never make me / Because the world will never take my heart / Go and try; you'll never break me. / We want it all, we want to play this part./ We'll carry on!

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An outsider looking in

My column for this week's issue of Vox Bikol.

WHEN Kristian Cordero approached me to do a review of Fr. Andrew Recepcion’s “God’s Global Household -- A Theology of Mission in the Context of Globalization,” I hesitated initially, considering that I belong to a different faith: I am a Jehovah’s Witness.

Kristian, however, said the author wouldn’t mind having a non-Catholic do it; after all, we are neighbors at the Vox Bikol opinion page. (Come to think of it, the book launch is practically a get-together of the paper’s staff.) Having said that, let me proceed to my main task this afternoon.

One, as can be expected of most published dissertations, the book is not an easy read. In this age of infotainment -- which is how some senators characterized, for instance, the recent hearings on the ZTE broadband deal -- the generation who grew up with Harry Potter will find it “heavy” stuff.

Nonetheless, if you are that Harry Potter fan who found great relief in the fact that -- after Book Seven -- the young wizard and his friends survived Voldemort and his minions, and good ultimately triumphed over evil, there is a strong likelihood that you must already be in college and will be asked to research into the phenomenon called “globalization.”

Well, have no fear: the first third of Recepcion’s book neatly summarizes the various aspects of the debates on globalization, something that Wikipedia does not offer. In 50 or so pages, he will tour you around the critical issues attending the debate, including Huntington’s now famous clash of civilizations thesis; the theories that attempt to explain it; as well as the paradigms that help clarify our present understanding of the phenomenon.

The bottomline, if I’m not mistaken, is represented by that ancient Indian fable about the six blind men of Hindustan -- better understanding can only be made possible by looking at an issue from multiple dimensions. Or better still, the synergistic concept that the whole is greater than sum total of its parts, especially when informed by knowledge from the Divine.

Of course, the book will certainly be a most useful guide for most mainline Christian churches insofar as modern missionary work is concerned. But it is precisely with the rest of the book that I am ambivalent about, mainly because of the reason I pointed out at the outset.

On the one hand, I find it remarkable that the Catholic Church has rediscovered “missionary theology” only in recent times, when smaller denominations in the margins have been doing so, driven by the mandate to “preach the good news of the kingdom in all the inhabited earth for a witness to all the nations.” (Mat 24:14)

On the other, the theology of mission it proposes -- built around the doctrine of the Trinity -- is quite alien to us inhabiting the fringes, unitarians as we are whose beliefs are more akin with those advanced by Arius of Alexandria. In a big way, therefore, if the objective is to promote dialog across various global divides, this approach is rather exclusive.

Nonetheless, notwithstanding the absence of a long tradition of catholic scholarly work -- to which Recepcion’s opus properly belongs -- we outsiders looking in find great comfort in the following passage from Mark’s account of the Gospel:

One of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating. Noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"

"The most important one," Jesus answered, "is this: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these." (Mark 12:28-31)

Come to think of it, living out these commandments can bring about at least two probable outcomes: (1) at the very least, the same global household envisioned by Recepcion in an increasingly globalized world, and (2) beyond that, for us who believe differently -- if rewarded by the risk we took on taking the road less traveled, to borrow from Frost -- the scriptural promise of everlasting life in an earthly paradise.

Remarks during the God’s Global Household book launch held at the Madrigal Center Amphitheater, Ateneo de Naga University, on October 6, 2007.

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Pogs and an object lesson on power

My column for this week's issue of Vox Bikol.

LAST Saturday, I had to motor to the city center to attend two meetings, one with the University of Nueva Caceres General Alumni Association (UNCGAA) headed by Engr. Elmer Francisco, and a personal mission -- to buy my kids additional pogs.

My task would have been infinitely easier if Hong’s -- that popular store along Calle Caceres where chinese-made goods can be had for sometimes obscenely low prices that will probably make Alex Lacson (of the Twelve Little Things fame) unhappy -- still carried pogs with a diameter of more or less two inches. Unfortunately, when I inquired, what they had are the ones twice bigger.

So I ended up scouring practically the entire CBD, and that on a limping rheumatic right foot. From Hong’s, I went to Novo, another similar store beside Aristocrat Hotel, went through Divisoria Mall beneath the Bichara Complex, and then Master Square: but all for naught. At Master, I chanced on Erning Elcamel and family buying school supplies; “sa mga bangketa, igwa kayan,” Mrs. Elcamel said when I told them of my quest.

So, off I went to the Naga City Public Market, at one time the single biggest of its kind in Southeast Asia before the advent of the malls. I checked practically all sidewalk stalls from one end up to where Calle Caceres pierces through the market to join Jaime Hernandez Avenue, again to no avail. And practically all of them carried yoyos made in China, of all shapes and sizes and all colors and designs. But no pogs. Until one lady volunteered: “Probaran mo sir duman sa 2nd floor, sa may hagdan. Yaon duman an mga wholesaler.”

To cut the story short, my journey on foot looking for pogs one lazy weekend that started at Hong’s, bringing me through most of CBD in the process, ended at the public market, up the stairs along Prieto Street that I already passed by.

In an ideal market condition, I would have been spared all the hassles if information about the wholesaler had been made available right at the outset. But life in reality is never ideal: information asymmetry exists and sellers are not always rewarded handsomely as economic theory says.

In another place and time, that wholesaler would have sold me a sheet containing 88 pieces of pogs at P50 -- twice than what I got them at Hong’s -- and I still would have bought them lest I want to face again brooding, sulking kids who have been promised many times over. But then again, as yoyos have displaced pogs as the toys of the season, he was only too happy to give it to me at P20.

Now, compare that with how the Arroyo regime has gone about conducting its business on the now infamous NBN and CEP deals and you will see the irony of it all -- under an economist, who is supposed to know how markets work better than most, they were conducted in secrecy and the absence of competition. Which should be making her economics professors weep and peers gnashing their teeth. And worse, Bikolanos are part and parcel of the cabal now trying to either deodorize the whole thievery and now prevent the stink from reaching the palace, thwarting truth’s unraveling at every turn and making the state of information more asymmetric than ever before.

That, I think, is an object lesson on how power corrupts -- the change does not happen overnight; rather, it chips away incessantly at moral fortitude of even the best of men like steady waterdrops weathering the hardest of rocks.

On the other hand, that unnamed lady sidewalk vendor, trying to make ends meet in a public market that has seen better days, is infinitely better than all of them in many respects: with no eye towards personal gain, she singlehandedly eliminated information asymmetry in one fell swoop, in the process helping a father vainly searching for pogs and affirming his faith in the both the market and the inherent humanity and goodness of the Nagueño.

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Para sa satong mga kaakian

Kolum ko para sa isyu kan Vox Bikol ngonyan na semana.

KAN nakaaging Miercoles, nagtiripon sa kaenot-enoteng pagkakataon an mga alkalde kan pitong ciudades igdi sa Kabikolan para sa sarong sharing workshop. An tiripon na idto ipinaapod ni Legazpi City Mayor Noel Rosal, pamayo kan League of Cities of the Philippines igdi sa Bikol, asin ginibo sa Villa Caceres Hotel.

Inda kun tano ta naisip kong ponan an programa sa lenguaheng Bikolnon, alagad sa heling ko, tama an desisyon na idto. Siempre, dai nalikayan an paggamit nin Ingles durante kan okasyon, alagad nagin mas sabot an paghiras kan mga programa asin eksperyensya kan pitong alkalde sa sadiri nindang tataramon.

An mayor na pagkukulang ko iyo an pagtagama sana nin 15 minutos kada alkalde duman sa ipinadarang imbitasyon: kulang na marhay palan iyan sa sarong pulitikong ginaganahan.

Pigsambit ko an pangyayaring ini tanganing idoon an duang punto.

Enot, an lenguaheng Bikolnon sarong pusog na basihan nin pagkasararo. Igwang naiibang birtud an pagtaram asin pagkomunikar sa kinagimatan na tatataramon -- mahalnas an bulos kan mga ideya huling dai na kaipuhan pang itradusir hali sa ibang lenguahe. Asin sarong kangangalasan an labi karikas na reaksyon kan mga nagdadangog -- automatiko an pagkasinarabotan, haros mate mo an pagtadom sa puso asin isip huli sa kawaran kan mga kudal na dara kan estrangherong dila.

Ikadua, kun garo palyado an satong lenguahe, arog kan saboot ni Tito Valiente, iyan huli ta tinotogotan ta ining magdanay na siring.

Habo kong tawadan an dakulang naginibohan kan satong mga parasurat, nangorogna an mga miembro kan grupong Kabulig. An totoo, orog na nagkusog an sakong pagtubod na nagbabalik na an buhay asin bagsik kan literaturang Bikolnon huli sa panibagong onrang inako kan satong mga parasurat, kaiba na diyan sinda Alvin Yapan asin Marne Kilates. Yaon man an Premio Arejola, na nasa ikalimang taon na nin sigidong pagtulod asin pagrokyaw kan lokal na talento sa pagsurat.

Saro ining peryodo nin ‘renaissance,’ kun haen pinapanoan an kakulangan kan satong mga pulitikong pangenotan an paghawas kan ronang Bikol sa dalnak nin pagtios.

Alagad an mga ini elemento sana kan production side; an mayor na problema yaon sa distribution side -- an pagsierto na an mga obrang nahahaman kan satong mga parasurat makakaabot asin pakikinabangan kan lambing ciudadano asin kan satong sosyedad.

Sa saiyang weblog, pigtuyaw ni Dean Jorge Bocobo an propuesto ni Senador Aquilino Pimentel na gamiton man bilang medium of instruction an mga lenguahe rehiyonal kan nasyon sa elementarya. Balido an nagkakapirang rason ni Bocobo, nangorogna an kawaran nin mga babasahon asin autoridad sa mga tataramon na ini.

Alagad para sako, dakulang oportunidad an propuestong ini na atubangon an isyu asin simbagan an mga kakulangan sa presente. Ano an sakong naheheling? Nagkakapira, alagad gabos nakasentro sa satong mga kaakian: Pagprodusir nin literatura asin babasahon na pan-aki, nangorogna idtong matabang sa saindang makanood magbasa (kaiba an binikol na mga fairy tales); asin nin mga instructional materials sa Bikol para magamit kan mga paratukdo (arog baga kan caton na pig-iimprenta kan Cecilio Press sa Sabang). Asin tanganing masusteniran an saindang interes, pagsa-pelikula kan mga ini, gamit an teknolohiyang 2-D asin 3-D animation -- bilang alternatibo sa mga animeng Hapon na haros iyo na sanang maheheling sa telebisyon.

Kun oogkoron, gabos na kaipuhan nganing magibo ini yaon na sa Naga.

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Will history again repeat itself?

My column for this week's issue of Vox Bikol.

AT THE height of the abaca trade in the late 1800s until around the turn of the 20th century – which is about 100 years ago – Albay was the richest province in the entire Philippines, Ateneo professor Danny Gerona, Bicol's foremost historian, said in a recent lecture.

But as Norman Owen's seminal work on the subject showed, it was by and large prosperity without progress as the industry built around that key commodity enriched the traders but not the local communities that hosted the vast abaca plantations feeding it.

By the 1920s, when the Americans started promoting the establishment of abaca plantations outside Bicol and in Latin America for security reasons (abaca being a Philippine monopoly at the time), Albay's fall from its preeminent position as an economic powerhouse began. When synthetic fibers supplanted abaca-made cordage by the mid-50's, the industry's almost total collapse became inevitable.

Today, with the comeback of large-scale mining as a priority investment area in the country, Albay gets another stab at economic prosperity. This was evident from last Saturday's visit to Rapu-Rapu, the new mining capital of the province.

The port of Legazpi is now more vibrant: a cargo ship is anchored, waiting to be filled up by the precious metals mined and processed in Rapu-Rapu; a seafront property development is in full swing, said to be a hotel being put up by a local investor; the port area is now well lighted, attracting evening promenaders, and clearly looks better, helped by a high wall that fenced off adjacent informal settlements. A fastcraft now services the route daily, cutting the usual 2-3 hour boatride from Legazpi to the main island to around 1 hour 45 minutes.

On our way back to Legazpi, Emma Bolaños, the town councilor who chairs the education committee of the sangguniang bayan, wondered why majority of Rapu-Rapu's 30,000 inhabitants remain poor notwithstanding its rich mineral resources.

For instance, the town has the second highest malnutrition rate in the province, better only than that of Oas. In recent national achievement tests administered by the DepEd, its school children scored less than 30%, lower than the provincial average of about 50%.

During our workshop, the participants affirmed one of their modest dreams: to ensure that at least 10% of the population will graduate from college. Fixing the physical plant of the town's community college is probably a good place to start, to ensure access to higher education for most residents whose only other alternative are the Legazpi universities and colleges.

But a lot more needs to be done with basic education, from elementary up to high school. Statistics show that only around 7 out every 10 get to enter Grade 1. And mirroring the national situation, only around 5 of them eventually graduate from elementary.

So for most of that Saturday, our Naga-based team from the Synergeia Southern Luzon helped about 150 stakeholders, a good number coming from schools comprising Rapu-Rapu's two school districts, plan together in addressing these concerns in an education summit. In all, they identified nine strategies to make it happen.

These, however, are no quick-fix magic-wand solutions. Of greater urgency is ensuring that ongoing mining activities in the island will redound to the benefit of Rapu-Rapu residents, especially now that the national and provincial governments have welcomed Lafayette's investment with open arms, notwithstanding its documented lapses that led to mine tailing spills in October 2005.

This will require civil society organizations closely watching over government's resolve to ensure that 'responsible mining' indeed takes place, guided by the International Council on Mining and Metals' (ICMM) 10 principles of sustainable development. For instance, the call for revenue transparency – a clear accounting of government revenues from natural resources, especially how they are spent to benefit local communities – is most timely, especially now that Lafayette has paid P180 million in direct and indirect taxes for the first half of the year.

Otherwise, we will see history simply repeating itself in the province of Albay.

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It's also about accountability

My column for this week's issue of Vox Bikol.

THE ISSUE OF accountability, I think, is one of key important ingredients missing in the renewed debate on the state of education in the country.

This three-part series of the Inquirer here, here and here laid down all the numbers, capped by today's editorial that takes to task the DepEd bureaucracy for not getting the basics right. In the same breath, it called for a return to the basics, addressing the usual shortages in classrooms and teachers among them.

Sen. Edgardo Angara and the Inquirer editorial however failed to explore a crucial question: 15 years after the Angara-chaired EdCom released its findings, why can't the bureaucracy get its basics right? Or to borrow Angara's language, what prevents us from extracting "more efficiency and more productivity from both our education budget and our education department"?

Accountability, or the lack of it, I will submit is one of the answer.

Come to think of it, to whom is DepEd really accountable for its continuing failure to deliver the minimum education outcomes? The easy answer, of course, is the Filipino people. But HOW? Let us examine the options:

One probable answer is through the president: after all, the DepEd belongs to the Executive department which she or he heads. But has there been a case where an education secretary was fired for failing to deliver the required access and quality outcomes?

How about the Legislature? After all, they authorize the annual budget, including DepEd's, and the power of oversight necessarily goes along with it. But have there been instances where a sitting Education secretary was ever called to account for failing to deliver the same outcomes? Truth of the matter is, our legislators can't -- simply because they know they are equally guilty of scrimping on the education budget.

How about the Filipino people themselves? In theory, our electoral process allows them to directly exact accountability from an incumbent administration, especially a sitting president. But six years is too long a wait and to waste. Further, Philippine presidents cannot be reelected under our current system of government. And finally, the last presidential candidate to run on a solid education platform was the late Sen. Raul Roco and he failed in both attempts.

Clearly, it is very difficult to exact accountability on education outcomes at the national level alone. How much more if we do the same down the line -- from the bureau directors at the DepEd central office in Pasig, to the various regional directors all throughout the 17 or so administrative regions in the country, to the 187 provincial and city division superintendents, to the various district supervisors under them, and finally from each and every one of 40,000 or so school heads at the grassroots level?

Under a centrally managed system which is what we currently have, that is next to impossible. Why? Because the bureaucracy is so structured that they are only accountable to their superiors up the totem pole. The idea of a school head or a superintendent for that matter being accountable to the direct community they serve does not exist within the DepEd bureaucracy.

For instance, has there been a case where a school head was reassigned for failing to ensure that their students would get the 75% minimum proficiency level in national, regional or division tests? Or a superintendent being made to explain why his or her division failed to do the same?

The answer, of course, is no, there's none. Because the centralized structure and the insular attitudes within the department do not allow it or provide the incentive for doing so.

In this light, I believe it is about time that we bring the issue of accountability into the radar screen, and explore mechanisms of how local communities can be involved more meaningfully in exacting it from the various levels of the DepEd bureaucracy.

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Ang paradigm shift at ang mga erehe ng KWF

Ang kolum ko para sa isyu ng Vox Bikol ngayong linggo.

LABIS ang kasiyahan ko matapos basahin ang keynote address ni Ricardo Ma. Nolasco, chairman ng Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino (KWF) sa 2007 Nakem conference na isinagawa sa Mariano Marcos State University noong Mayo 23, 2007. It made my day, ika nga.

Una, dahil kinilala rin sa wakas ng pamahalaang nasyunal ang pagiging multilinggwal at multikultural ng mga Pilipino. Sa talumpati ni Dr. Nolasco -- ang pinakamalinaw na policy statement ng gobyerno, sa aking palagay, ukol sa paglinang ng ating mga wika -- binigyang diin na hindi kahinaan, kundi lakas, ng bansa ang mahigit nitong 170ng wika. Pangsampu tayo sa buong daigdig na may pinakamaraming wika, aniya.

Ang ikalawang dahilan ay maaaring ma-misinterpret ng iba nating kababayan, gaya ng walang kwentang away sa pagitan ng ilang tinatawag na A-list Pinoy bloggers, na umani ng maanghang na reaksyon ni Gibbs Cadiz; sana naman ay hindi. Pero natutuwa akong nangyayari ang pagbabagong ito sa pananaw ng Komisyon sa pangunguna ng isang Bikolano, na tulad ni Gibbs ay tubong-Sorsogon.

At pangatlo, salig sa pagkilala ng ating pagka multilinggwal at multikultural, ang bagong bisyon at misyon ng KWF ay nagbibigay-sigla sa mga kagaya ko na nais ding payabungin at pagyamanin ang sarili naming wika -- ang Bikol na ayon kay Irvin Sto. Tomas "ay may 2.5 milyong neytiv ispiker (1990 sensus) ... at sinasalita sa malaking bahagi ng Camarines Sur at Albay, bahagi ng Camarines Norte, Catanduanes at Sorsogon at Burias Island ng Masbate."

Isa sa mga natutunan ko nang bumalik ako sa paaralan noong 2004 ay ang konsepto ng "paradigm shift." Inimbento ni Thomas Kuhn, isang Amerikanong intelektwal, ang ideyang ito upang ipaliwanag ang mga mga pagbabagong nagaganap ("scientific revolutions") sa larangan ng siyensya.

Halimbawa, nuong unang panahon, naniniwala ang mga tao na ang daigdig ang sentro ng uniberso; kilala ito bilang ang geocentric model ni Ptolemy. Kahit ang Simbahang Katoliko ay nanghawakan dito hanggang sa Middle Ages, anupat napilitan ang sikat na astronomong si Galileo na talikuran ang kanyang unang paninindigan na umiikot ang daigdig sa araw, kasuwato ng heliocentric model ni Copernicus.

Subalit naglaon, napatunayang mali si Ptolemy at tama si Copernicus, anupat si Pope John Paul II mismo ay nagsabi noong 1992 na tama pala si Galileo at nagkamali ang simbahan, although in good faith. Isang paradigm shift ang binuong modelo ni Copernicus, at malawakang binago nito ang pananaw ng tao ukol sa uniberso.

Maituturing din na isang paradigm shift ang bagong bisyon at misyon ng KWF sa pangunguna ni Nolasco. Sa mga puristang makikitid ang utak, isang erehe lang ang makapagsasabing, "Gusto naming isipin na lipas na ang panahon na ang mga gawain ng komisyon -- sa katotohanan o sa karaniwang pagkakaalam -- ay eksklusibong nakatuon sa wikang pambansa, sa kapabayaan ng mahigit na 170ng wika ng ating bansa at nang walang makatotohanang pagsasaalang-alang sa isa pang opisyal na wika ng bansa, ang Ingles, o sa mas eksaktong pormulasyon, ang Philippine English."

Pero ayon sa Pranses na si Victor Hugo, "There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come." Naniniwala akong tama at napapanahon ang landas na tinatahak ng mga erehe sa KWF. Ito rin ang landas na tinatahak ng mga Bikolanong manunulat, kabilang na ang tumutula, umaawit, nagkukwento, nagsasadula at nakikipagtalakayan sa wikang Bikol, na naniniwalang tapos na ang panahon ng mga tawong lipod sa literaturang Bikolnon.

An sabi ngani kaiyan ni Frank Peñones: "Sa panahon na ini 'dai na maninigo an metapora kan mga taong lipod sa mga parasurat na Bikolano huli ta igwa nang pag-uswag, pagdakol kan mga parasurat asin pagdugang man kan saindang produksyon.'" Sa saiyang rebyu kan libro ni Peñones, si Kristian Cordero nagsumpay: "An koleksyon na ini sarong dakulang dugang sa nagtatambo tang literatura na haloy bago nakabutas sa imahe kan mga tawong lipod na ngonyan luhay-luhay nang namamansayan, namamatian kadungan kan naglalawig na terasa kan literaturang Bikol."

Bilang tugon sa layunin ng Komisyon, pinagtibay kahapon sa planning workshop ng pamahalaang panlungsod ng Naga ang pagbuo ng isang lokal na institute bago matapos ang taon; ito ang mangunguna sa pag-stardardize ng Bicol-Naga, sa tulong ng isang modernong Bicol-English dictionary.

Hindi ba mas mainam na makita ang bawat Pilipino na mahusay sa tatlong wikang kailangan para sa matatag na kinabukasan ng bansa -- ang wikang kinamulatan, ang wikang Filipino at ang Ingles -- upang ang Buwan ng Wika bawat Agosto ay maging pagdiriwang ng kanyang kakayahang harapin ang matinding hamon ng bukas?

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A way forward for the Cyber Ed Project

My column for this week's issue of Vox Bikol. Last in a series.

SO, HOW can we make the Cyber Education Project (CEP) more attuned to Philippine realities on the ground? I already discussed opposing views on the CEP, its upsides and downsides, and the institutional requirements to make it work. Let me outline how we can move it forward.

Its core should focus on high school. The technology is best suited to high school students. At that level, having the country’s top scientists, mathematicians and educators as resource persons will make sense. And by doing so, it will dramatically bring down the cost, probably in the neighborhood of its original P5-billion price tag.

It should go hand in hand with the Dynamic Learning Program (DLP). If the DLP can work in a small peripheral school like the Jagna, Bohol-based Central Visayas Institute of the Bernido couple, it can work in most other rural high school outside the 1st and 2nd-class cities of the country. But the DepEd must reengineer its policies around the DLP.

It should be made optional for the elementary level. As it stands, the CEP is the wrong response to the wrong problem. This has two dimensions:

One, from the DepEd slides on CEP, among its premises is the poor holding power of the public school system -- that only 7 out of every 10 who enters Grade I will finish Grade VI (which I already discussed here).

If access is a problem, the proper response should be to address the factors that prevent parents from maintaining their kids in school, not a enormously costly multimedia project like the P24.6-billion CEP. It requires engaging local communities -- the parents especially -- to own the problem and help minimize dropouts.

And two, if a modern ICT-based distance education project were to work well at the high school level, one needs elementary graduates proficient in basic literacy and numeracy skills. And this requires going back to the basics -- the hands-on in-your-face effort to teach the child how to read, write and do ‘rithmetic. Nothing beats a classroom teacher, and parental involvement at home, in this respect.

But, if a local community -- say, a city like Naga -- were to demand to have the CEP serve its elementary schools, particularly the upper grades, because it can provide counterpart funding and its school heads are committed to make it work, then by all means DepEd should make the project available. This is the demand-driven criterion I was talking about.

It should work closely with barangay councils. The CEP to be thoroughly useful should have an alternative learning option, a strong ALS component to borrow the educator’s language. Hence, it should also provide for community, instead of school-based, delivery system that will capture all those that drop out of formal schooling.

And what better way than to work with the barangays, which are mandated under the 1991 Local Government Code (specifically Section 17.b.1) to provide information and reading centers. Jointly, the DepEd and the barangay council can put up a multipurpose ALS center that will both provide traditional (books, magazines, and newspapers) and modern (electronic reading materials) library services, with ALS modules to boot, powered by the CEP! In doing so, the cost of its upkeep can be shared because ownership over the project is shared.

The CEP, in its present configuration, will waste a huge amount of money because it tries to scale up nationally a modern solution in a haphazard manner. It lacks effective targeting and ignores fundamental realities on the ground, assuming -- wrongly, I submit -- that once built up, utilization will naturally follow.

But conceptually, the idea is sound. And fortunately, its deficiencies can be corrected. The problem is whether the DepEd, infamous for its insularity, will even consider opposing viewpoints and suggestions, especially constructive ones.

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A way out of the margins

My column for this week's issue of Vox Bikol.

FOR about five days now, I've been running a survey on the following question: "Are you in favor of changing the name of Plaza Quezon to Plaza Arejola?"

Polls like these are unscientific, with my mostly anonymous readers being the universe of respondents, and actual respondents being equally unknown, except for those who explained their votes, like Bikolano writer Maryanne Moll and Irvin Sto. Tomas, a masteral student specializing on the Filipino language who I believe runs the most popular blog hereabouts.

Nonetheless, the verdict is loud and clear: as I write this with two days to go, only three of the 27 respondents (11%) agreed with the proposition; the rest thumbed it down.

Let me offer two reasons as to why this is so, after conversations with people like neophyte Councilor Nathan Sergio, Inquirer correspondent Johnny Escandor, his Bicol Mail editor Joe Perez and Ben Barrameda: One, Gen. Ludovico Arejola, a native son of Naga who led the resistance movement against the American invaders more than 100 years ago, remains a largely unknown figure in this city; and two, some people know him too well to believe he is not worthy enough to displace the late President Quezon from one of Naga's most important seat of honor.

The first reason is sad, reflecting a weak sense of local history which I discussed in a previous column. While blog-hopping, I chanced on this quote from Luis Bunuel, a Spanish filmmaker considered one of the masters of 20th-century cinema. It appears in Sonny Pulgar's weblog, which I think is most apt to our situation:

"Memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all. Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it we are nothing."

"As time goes by, we don't give a second thought to all the memories unconsciously accumulate until suddenly one day we can't think of the name of a good friend or relation -- it's simply gone, we've forgotten it. In vain we search furiously to think of a commonplace work -- it's on the tip of our tongues but refuses to go further. Once this happens, this and other lapses, only then do we understand the importance of memory. Our imagination and our dreams are forever intruding our memory. And since we're all out to believe in the reality of our fantasies, we end up transforming our lies into truths."

The second is understandable, but debatable. My conversation with Ben in particular brought to the fore certain unwritten accounts surrounding Naga's liberation from the Spaniards, which seem to diminish the bravery shown by our local heroes. That century-old urban legend probably explains why Felix Plazo was honored with a peripheral street -- that only gained significance lately when the LCC Group put up its mall in the area -- much unlike his colleague Elias Angeles.

But I don't think it detracts from the heroic role they played in securing our freedom from Spain and in trying to protect it from the new foreign invaders who were just as vicious, if not more. And it distracts us from the bigger issue of who should really occupy the highest seats in our local pantheon.

With the Sanggunian recently thumbing it down, on the heels of the National Historical Institute's (NHI) take on the matter, the name-change issue is already moot and academic. But I happen to believe in this marginal position, like Nathan who failed to convince his Sanggunian colleagues to force the issue if only to test the limits of our autonomy, that we should begin to value local heroism by rescuing it from the backseat.

If many influential people have discovered that the hope of our country is in the countrysides, in what Manolo Quezon called the New Philippines, we should believe no less. We should start believing that our own heroes, most probably flawed in the same manner that Rizal and Quezon were imperfect, were capable of the same heroism they showed and of the same greatness, albeit on a smaller context.

There may be sense in the basic unfairness of imposing the opinion of one generation over another. And consequently our original CBD, the city center of our three plazas, may have been taken for all intents and purposes. The new Central Business District might provide the way out, and a General Arejola Coliseum does not sound bad at all.

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The real state of Philippine education

My column for this week's issue of Vox Bikol.

ONE of the more popular computing terms while I was in college 20 years ago was GIGO, shorthand for "Garbage In, Garbage Out."

Not sure if it is still being used, I googled and found out that this aphorism "has fallen out of use as (computer) programs have become more sophisticated and now usually have checks built in to reject improper input."

This once-popular term came to mind when I reflected some more on President Arroyo's State of the Nation Address (SONA) last Monday, especially the parts that concerned education. In my previous post, I tackled how a policy reversal on teacher hiring instituted by Education Secretary Jesli Lapus negates the president's claim that her administration has been investing on better teachers.

This demonstrates that policies are equally powerful inputs into the learning process, very much like Ms. Arroyo's penchant for the billions of pesos invested on "social safety nets" that include public education. But unlike modern computer programs, there are no such checks in place that would automatically reject garbage policies like what Lapus has instituted.

This presidential predilection for impressive numbers in the SONA however masks the real state of public education in the Philippines. And the feel-good reference to recent outstanding performance by Filipino students in international contests, while uplifting to the spirit and national pride, is actually a devious speechwriting device that dishonestly drumbeats the exception as if it were the norm.

Just what is the real state of Philippine education today, six years into Ms. Arroyo's administration? Well, it has been there in the Department of Education website all along, buried in some outcome statistics, both for access and quality, that the administration would rather not discuss.

Participation. As of School Year 2006-07, the proportion of enrolled Grade I pupils to the total Grade I population has went down to 84%, six percentage points lower that her first full year in office. Stated simply, when the late Raul Roco was still education secretary, 90 of every 100 six and seven year olds who should be in Grade I have actually enrolled; now, it is down to 84.

It is a little better in high school. Six years ago, 57 of every 100 Filipino students who should be in First Year high school are actually enrolled; as of last school year, it inched up to 58 (although it went up to 60 in 2003-04). This means however that high school education remains a dream for 4 out of every 10 Filipino children.

Completion. Four years ago (the earliest data available), only 67 of every 100 pupils that enrolled in Grade I managed to finish Grade VI; as of last school year, it went down to 57. Which means only around 6 of every 10 children entering our elementary schools manage to graduate.

The situation is much worse in high school. Six years ago, 71 of every 100 First Year students were able to secure a high school diploma; as of last school year, it went down to 54.

And here is the rub: remember that only 60% of our children are able to complete elementary and eligible to move on to high school. If we factor this in, the real completion rate all the way from Grade I is this: for every 100 pupils who enter Grade I, only 30 will eventually finish high school. The DepEd used to compute this particularly damning statistic, but it stopped doing so starting in 2005.

To summarize: of every 100 six or seven year olds that are supposed to enter Grade I, only 84 are able to do so; of these 84 only 57 are able to finish Grade VI and move on to First Year; and of these 57, only 30 will be able to graduate with a high school diploma.

Achievement. How about the quality of education? Well, we have not moved beyond being a nation of fifty percenters at the elementary, with a marked slippage at the high school level.

Six years ago, our elementary mean percentage score (MPS) in national tests stood at around 52%; last year, it went up to 55%. In high school, the 53% MPS in 2001 went down to 44% last year. Who do they mean? Simply, that our elementary pupils are only able to correctly answer a little over half (55) in a 100-item test, and our high school students less than half (44).

And how do we stack up internationally? This year, the 2007 Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) is being conducted, and it could have given us an idea where we stand right now. But two years ago, the Philippines suddenly decided to drop out, finding the P10 million or so participation fee in this quadriennial survey expensive. It is a drop in the bucket of the megabucks this input-obsessive administration is spending for infra to make those in Ms. Arroyo's Friendster list happy. But it would have none of unpleasant outcome indicators that hurt.

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'Simpleng buhay'

My column for this week's issue of Vox Bikol.

UPON invitation by DILG Regional Director Blandino Maceda, I made a quick trip to Legazpi last Wednesday to attend a meeting of city and provincial planning officers in the Bicol region in preparation for the rollout and eventual implementation of the JMC.

For those working in the Philippine local government sector, JMC is shorthand for Joint Memorandum Circular No. 1 series of 2007 issued last March 8 that rationalizes planning, investment programming, revenue administration and expenditure management among LGUs – your provinces, cities, municipalities and barangays.

This effort is long overdue. One tidbit of info: before this new policy, Philippine local governments are actually required to produce 22 different plans – from the standard land use and local development plans to sectoral plans for coconut zone development, nutrition, culture and arts, food security, shelter and so on.

This is the product of many agencies working independently of one another, trying to push their own mandates and institutional agenda. It is not too different from the so-called 24 independent republics that comprise the Philippine Senate. Or the fondness of congressmen for “unfunded mandates” -- laws that are nice to hear but costly to implement, as Palawan Rep. Abraham Mitra complained about. But I digress and just reserve the topic for another entry.

Under the new Philippine planning machinery defined under the JMC, these 22 will be reduced to four basic planning documents. These are:

1. The Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP), the policy guide for the regulation of land uses embracing the LGU’s entire territorial jurisdiction. This document, which has a 10 to 15-year timeline, will define local settlements, protected areas, production areas, and infrastructure.

2. The six-year Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP), the multi-sectoral plan to promote the general welfare of the LGU. It will define the sectoral goals, objectives, strategies, programs, projects and legislative measures of the locality.

3. The three-year Executive-Legislative Agenda (ELA), the term-based component of the CDP that coincides with the three-year terms of elected local officials, and

4. The three-year Local Development Investment Plan (LDIP) and its annual iteration, the Annual Investment Plan (AIP). Comprising of prioritized programs, projects and activities (PPAs) programmed for financing, these two documents are the principal instruments that will implement the CDP, the ELA and to some extent, certain aspects of the CLUP, under the new planning system.

Of course, the 15 or so sectors for which separate planning documents used to be prepared will be incorporated in either the CLUP and the CDC, make no mistake about it. But clearly, this new planning regime greatly simplifies the process, and our lives as local staff mandated to coordinate it.

And implementing it is the least of our concerns right now. Why? Because the Naga planning staff has a one-year headstart than most, having carefully studied the June 14, 2005 paper produced by the UP School of Urban and Regional Planning (SURP) that provided the main input in the JMC's crafting. And in our own effort to update local plans, we have adjusted our moves, approaches and strategies accordingly.

The SURP paper (input) and the JMC (output) is a good example of how policy can evolve in the Philippines without Congress getting into the picture. Planning of course is not a sexy (like, say Daya Na aka "Migz" Zubiri's jologs factor), lucrative (like the Commission on Appointments brouhaha) or controversial (like the Human Security Act) topic that will get you in primetime news or in the frontpages of our papers. But just imagine for a second if it did: I would say the outcome would be different, catastrophic even, like the fate suffered by the Cheap Medicines bill.

In the light of the most unproductive Congress in Philippine history, this should easily justify doing away with the legislature altogether. But then there's the urgent need for oversight, especially with an administration whose capacity for wrongdoing is practically boundless -- which is just about the only argument remaining for its continued existence.

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