An ICT Visionary for U.P. President

The leadership of the University of the Philippines will be decided soon and one of the contenders is Dr. Patrick Azanza, an ICT luminary.

Dr. Patrick Azanza

Since 2008, the University of the Philippines (UP), the country’s one and only national university,  has been overtaken by the Ateneo de Manila University in the Times Higher Education – Quacquarelli Symonds (THE-QS) world university ranking survey. In fact, in the recent 2010 Asian universities ranking, Ateneo ranked 58th while UP ranked only 78^th among 200 Asian universities. There are comments from inside and outside of the academic halls that the quality of UP education has declined through the years. The present UP administration insists that the university did not participate in the said surveys but some quarters are not impressed with what they termed as a lame excuse for not being able to live up to the university’s tradition of academic excellence.

However, some UP student leaders even publicly acknowledge the declining quality of UP education. Despite the congressional approval of the UP Charter of 2008 which aims to modernize UP, the present administration has yet to make concrete steps to upgrade the salaries of its faculty and staff, and improve the university’s instructional and laboratory facilities. The serious consequences of the university’s inability to address its management and financial woes is summed up in the tally of the 2010 board topnotchers where out of 25 licensure examinations, UP only topped in four disciplines, namely: architecture, teacher education (elementary level), geodetic engineering, and nutritionist-dietician. This is a stark contrast to the performance of UP in the past decades when it used to dominate almost all of the country’s professional board examinations.

It is under this condition that the members of the UP Board of Regents will soon choose the next President of the country’s premiere university. Several groups of faculty members, academic leaders, administrative staff, students, and alumni of UP have already been echoing their demand for change in the way the university is being managed. They could not bear seeing UP further slide down as it confronts the challenges of the 21^st century. Obviously, the university needs someone who has both the vision and the proven ability to modernize our institution.

As announced by the UP Board of Regents, there are eleven contenders for the top post of UP and the youngest of them is 42-year old Harvard-trained educator and nationalist businessman, Dr. Patrick Alain Azanza. He is the former Chief Operations Officer (COO) of Asia’s pioneer and largest computer university and president of the Philippine National e-Learning Association (PNEA). At present, he serves as President/CEO of Winsource Business Solutions-Epicor (WBSIE), and Chairman of the Board of the Cosmotec Call Centre Inc. (CCCI); Raining Pesos, Inc. (RPI), and the Center for Community Preparedness and Development Inc. (CCPDI).

Among the eleven candidates for UP President, Dr. Azanza is considered one of the front-runners considering that he has wide support from various sectors such as big student organizations led by the Sigma Rho Fraternity, alumni, academic leaders, faculty, and administrative staff.

Dr. Azanza enjoyed a straight UP scholarship for his AB, MA and PhD from a grant established by Senator Edgardo J. Angara. He is also a graduate of the Asian Institute of Management (AIM), and the University of California. He is an author of seven (7) books and more than fifty academic researchers and articles. His most recent research and publication output on the 400-year old Alamat ng Mandaluyong earned him the Most Outstanding Folklore Researcher Award from the Philippine Folklore Society, and another citation from the Linangan ng Literatura sa Pilipinas.

AIM President Bobby De Ocampo with Dr. Sonny Coloma in the background.

Dr. Azanza served as the youngest Director of the UP Human Resources Development Office and was awarded by then President Fidel V. Ramos the prestigious  Lingkod Bayan Award, the highest award given to civil servants, for his outstanding performance and innovative programs as head of the government unit which resulted in the establishment of the one-stop clearance system, computerization of personnel records, and the streamlining of HRD process that reduced the number of days of processing time by 50%. The Lingkod Bayan selection committee was chaired by former Prime Minister Cesar Virata and co-chaired by Senator Jovito Salonga with Ombudsman Aniano Desierto, Civil Service Chairperson Cora Alma De Leon, and Metrobank Foundation President Aniceto Sobrepena as members. During the same year, Dr. Azanza at age 26, was also conferred as the youngest recipient of the UP Distinguished Alumnus Award.

For more than ten years, Dr. Azanza served as Vice President for HRD, and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, and as the Chief Operations Officer (COO) of AMA University, Asia’s pioneer and largest computer university with 41 branches nationwide and 5 international campuses. He was the chairman of the University Conversion Committee that was responsible for the transformation of AMA Computer College   into AMA University. He was also the Chief Operations Officer (COO) responsible for putting up the eighteen branches of St. Augustine School of Nursing; the AMA School of Medicine in the Philippines and Bahrain; and the Norwegian Maritime Academy (NMA).

In 2008, he served as an international consultant/team leader for an Asian Development Bank (ADB) project  that formed Transyulquirilish, a US$ 75 million road equipment pool company in Central Asia responsible for the rehabilitation of the traditional Silk Road that bridged Asia to Europe during ancient times. Aside from these, Dr. Azanza served as a member of the Board of Directors of the British Alumni Association, and was a training and management consultant at DOH, NEA, NAPOCOR and PEZA.

UP must deserve the title of national university

Dr. Azanza wants to define the role of UP as a global research university in the fast-paced, borderless milieu of the Third Millennium.  He says that UP has been left out and could not compete with reputable universities worldwide mainly because of its failure to keep abreast with the latest trends in curriculum development, instructional methodologies, laboratory facilities, and research technologies.

A national university must focus on the promotion and development of the country’s economy, social conditions, technologies, industries, language and culture. It has to think for our nation. UP has to mobilize its resources for the genuine service of the FIlipino people.  Dr. Azanza cites National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) of  Taiwan, as an example of an outstanding public university which has gained a reputation of being a global research university after it successfully established the foundations of Hsinchu Science Park, the recognized  “Silicon Valley of Asia”. NCTU’s rigid training and research orientation gave birth to, Acer, the largest manufacturer of notebook computer in the world; as well as the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s biggest semi-conductor manufacturer. Both companies were able to generate thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of revenues for Taiwan. NCTU presently collaborates and have joint technology researches with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Dr. Azanza said that UP has to work hard to deserve the national university title granted to it by virtue of Republic Act No. 9500, otherwise known as the UP Charter of 2008. According to him, “UP has to create or at the very least support industries that will promote our country’s economic and social development. It has to be able to provide practical solutions to our country’s social problems and issues. UP has to mobilize its resources to serve the needs of the nation. Thus, UP has to define its International Research Agenda in the context of recent developments in the global economies to make our country globally competitive.  The present academic undertakings of modern universities abroad already focus on virtual economies, four-dimensional digital arts and music, nano engineering, light-emitting diodes (LED) technology, mechatronics, mechanobiology, stem cell, climate change adaptation, and outer space tourism. We have to leapfrog and move shoulder to shoulder with the world-class universities as we address the demands of the times.”

Promoting ICT-based programs and services of UP

Dr. Azanza brings with him fresh and innovative ideas especially in the field of information and communications technology (ICT) which is the underlying rubric of most developments and institutional transformations in the 21^st century. His vision for UP as the country’s national university focuses on enabling the university to empower the people and the whole nation through ICT-based academic, research and extension systems and services. With Dr. Azanza at the helm of UP, we could expect not just fast student registration and enrollment process  but even online extension services and professional assistance to farmers, health service centers, social service institutions, industries, local government units (LGUs),  and national agencies requiring the expertise of UP faculty, researchers and extension workers – something that has long been done by national universities of neighboring Asian countries but has never been done successfully by UP.

Generating funds for UP’s modernization

Meanwhile, having inherited a cash-strapped government, the P-Noy administration has adopted “zero-based budgeting” and the result is a further reduction of UP’s budget from P6.9 billion in 2010 to the proposed P5.5 billion in 2011. UP’s budget in 2009 was at P8.2 billion. The next UP President who will assume in February 2011 will therefore be faced with a very tight budget which is most likely insufficient for the university to be able to sustain its role as the country’s only national university.

According to Dr. Azanza, “It is in this context that the managerial expertise and financial creativity of a candidate for UP President is being challenged. When UP solves its fiscal problems it will have more institutional autonomy and can further promote genuine academic freedom.” How does he intend to resolve the budget deficiency problem of UP?

The good news to UP students and their parents is that Dr. Azanza, who is a former Chairman of the UPLB Student Council and the KASAMA SA UP,  says that he will definitely not resort to tuition and other fee increases. Without abandoning the possibility of getting additional budgetary support from alumni and friends in Congress through their pork barrel, he said he would immediately embark on a massive and creative fund generation program that will ensure UP’s sustainability. According to him, UP has around 30,000 hectares of idle lands and a vast potential of intellectual properties that could very well serve as valuable sources of funds. Just like what ivy-league universities are doing, there are untapped network of alumni, businesses, and industries that can be mobilized to either donate funds or finance mutually beneficial research and development projects.

Also, Dr. Azanza emphasized that there are successful models that would show how universities abroad used Public Private Partnerships (PPP) to generate funds for the modernization of their respective institutions.  However, Dr. Azanza cautioned that UP needs to be very careful and must make sure that as it enters into these PPPs, the public character of the university will not be diminished and the same will not result to the commercialization of UP education, much less end up to be onerous transactions with UP at the losing end. Stakeholders and members of civil society of known integrity must be made part of the review committees that will evaluate the viability of the projects and contracts that will be entered into.

If properly utilized, these PPPs can facilitate the upgrading of compensation and benefits package of faculty and employees, improvement of instructional facilities, laboratories, libraries and even construction of solar-powered buildings and classrooms, student dormitories, staff housing, educational centers, alumni hostels, arts and sciences museums, research and technology incubation facilities, modern processing plants, service centers, and environmental parks. We must carefully determine the revenue streams and make sure that once an acceptable level of investment recovery is met by our private partners,  UP will get additional percentage of the income generated on top of whatever rent we will be paid for our leased properties. Technology transfer must also be ensured and the educational aspect of turning our private partners as field laboratories for our students must be in place.

Ensuring transparency and accountability

In any fund generation efforts, transparency and accountability to the public is important. Along this line, Dr. Azanza raised the following serious concerns: “When was the last time the incumbent UP administration made a public report and accounting of all funds generated including the proceeds of previous tuition fee increases as well as the earnings of the techno-hub and other similar projects? Were we efficient in utilizing the funds we generated? Was there proper allocation and prioritization of budget to programs and units? How did we utilize the funds generated through the UP Foundation and the various foundations of our colleges? Are we equitably sharing the generated resources to all our constituents including the ordinary faculty and  students, or are they just serving the interest of a chosen few? Do we have interlocking directors who are acting like executives of government owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs) enjoying fat bonuses and honoraria?” He said these are very important concerns in order for us to maximize the impact and benefits of whatever resources we generate. There should be a trickle-down effect.

Making UP relevant to Philippine society

Dr. Azanza cited the importance for UP to establish an International Center for Strategic and Advanced Studies that will gather the talents and skills of our nation in order to address strategic issues of our society. According to him, there is a need to enlist every competent and willing faculty and researcher here and abroad to serve as either full-time, part-time or  adjunct professors in order that we may have a wider base of brain power just like what Harvard University does.  He intends to open modern independent laboratories, institutes and centers with a multi-disciplinary approach and fully-funded by industry partners. The Stanford University for example has BioX focusing on bioengineering, biosciences and biomedicine; Human Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research Institute (H-STAR) to study human and technology integration; as well as the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) which serves as a nonpartisan economic policy research organization to provide expert advice to lawmakers, businessmen, and  investors.

Dr. Azanza is pushing for the creation of the National Institute for English and Comparative Literature (NIECL) given the advent of globalization that ushered in a multi-cultural and  multi-lingual social and work environment. On the other hand, he claimed that the Sentro ng Wikang Filipino must be expanded and elevated as a Pambansang Akademiya sa Wikang Filipino in order to widen  the scope in the research and development of our national language, thus, establishing it as the official research and publication arm of the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino with a corresponding budget, building and staff.

Dr. Azanza who has worked for a long time with micro-entrepreneurs said that there is also a need to expand the role of the UP Institute of Small Scale Industries given the fact that 99.64 per cent of registered businesses are micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), with 69.9 per cent of our labor resources falling under the said sector.  Furthermore, given the state of our national education, Dr. Azanza asserts that UP must also establish the National Center for Excellence in Graduate Teacher Education and School Administration in order to address the lack of competent master teachers and school principals especially in the public schools.

Campus security and informal settlers issue

Among the issues confronting UP is the security problem inside its campuses as well as the continued presence of informal settlers in UP-owned lands. Dr. Azanza explains, “We are spending so much for security services and yet UP campuses are not well protected. There are modern security systems that we can adopt without necessarily compromising our individual privacies. We must also learn from the model of Gawad-Kalinga (GK). If you visit a GK community, you would see how households are organized and trained to actively support and secure their community as part of the so-called kapit-bahayan.

Dr. Azanza with GK Founder Tony Meloto

As to the informal settlers inside the UP campuses, Dr. Azanza says, “I believe we must be a model of how the society must address this marginalized sector. For more than 30 years, UP has struggled but was never successful in addressing this problem. We must utilize the expertise of our colleges, particularly the College of Social Work and Community Development (CSWCD), School of Urban and Regional Planning (SURP), School of Economics, School of Labor and Industrial Relations  (SOLAIR), College of Architecture, and the College of Engineering so we can plan a viable solution to the problem.  We must be humane to the legitimate poor but we must not fall into the trap of the syndicates behind professional squatters.”

Community service

Dr. Azanza who once served as an altar boy at UPLB St. Therese Parish Church is a well-known civic leader. He was recognized as an Outstanding Chapter President of Jaycees and was conferred the Best of the Best Community Project Award in the 2008 JCI Asia-Pacific Conference in Busan, Korea for his “Sulong-Dunong” project . He likewise served as executive director and national secretary-general of the Philippine Jaycees. He usually spends his weekends and holidays doing volunteer community service along with his family.

Dr. Azanza served as President of the Mandaluyong Jaycees

and National Secretary-General of JCI Philippines

On being the youngest nominee

Asked if he is not overwhelmed by the idea that he is the youngest nominee for UP President, Dr. Azanza  who holds both a PhD in Educational Administration from UP College of Education and a Juris Doctor  from the UP College of Law, and with two decades of experience as a top academic leader and creative financial manager replied: “Our national hero Dr. Jose Rizal was an accomplished fellow at the age of 35. Alexander the Great who conquered three continents became a successful king of Persia at the age of 25. I think what really matters is not the age but the preparation and experience one has gone through. If you will take a closer look at my educational qualification and managerial experience in both the academic and corporate worlds, at age 42, you would not think I am that young to be UP President.”

Plastic bag tax bill refiled in Philippine Congress

A bill calling for an environmental levy on the use of plastic bags in shops, supermarkets, service stations, stores and sales outlets has been refiled in the Philippine House of Representatives.

The bill authored by Albay Second District Representative Al Francis Bichara filed as HB 127 seeks to levy a tax in the amount of Two Pesos and Fifty Centavos (Php 2.50 or US Dollar .06) for every plastic bag used at the point of sale of goods or products.  The levy will be collected by stores and sales outlets with annual incomes of P100,000 and /or a minimum capitalization of P100,000.

Only plastic bags used as original packaging of products will be (sic) excepted from the proposed tax.”

All sums received shall accrue to the “environmental protection support fund” which will be automatically allocated to the DENR through the Annual General Appropriations bill.

Said fund will be used to:

- contribute to the protection of the environment and to limit the effects of regional and global pollution in the country

- provide technical and financial tools for industries and investments to enhance their environmental protections systems

- improve on-thhe-ground environmental improvement activities for poor communities with emphasis on biodiversity conservation, community environment management, livelihood enhancement and promotion of eco-tourism

- to fund projects that clean up pollution in lakes, ponds, rivers, and streams thereby improving the health of the country’s waterways

- to provide funding to local government units to enhance tehir solid waste recycling efforts

- to develop and enhance the solid waste management plan of our country

- to promote alternative means of solid waste disposal system

- to sponsor efficient waste collection system

Does “tingi” or plastic sachet packaging really benefit the Filipino masses?

(Reposted from my original blog, www.pinoybiz.blogspot.com)

When I was growing up in the seventies, my mother used to ask me to go to the corner store to buy ‘tingi’ or a portion of suka (vinegar), toyo (soy sauce), or paminta (pepper).  These portions were usually sold by ‘takal’ — which can be as large as one glass or as small as an espresso cup.  In order to transport these portions from the store to the house, I usually had to bring a container — which could be an empty bottle of whatever it was I was buying, like an empty vinegar bottle if I was buying vinegar.

These days, you no longer have to bring your own container to the corner store because you can now buy small portions of anything that you need in neat little plastic sachets.

Marketers in the Philippines touted this kind of packaging (tingi packaging) as a commercial success a couple years back.  It earned billions and billions of pesos a year, earning producers of products in tingi packaging huge profits.

It seems like a great deal.

Low income consumers could now buy high quality products, which they previously couldn’t afford.  Plus, big companies like Unilever, Nestle, Procter & Gamble, etcetera could now associate themselves with the ‘masa’ or masses — which is a very lucrative market because of their sheer number.

Now, rather say that they are high quality brands, big multinational companies come up with advertising that present their products as a big help to housewives.  They claim that their products are ‘mas matipid’ (costs less and is more effective), thereby helping housewives budget their money better.

But are sachets really more matipid?

Another blogger tried to figure it out:

http://bruisedleaf.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/you-know-youre-in-the-philippines-if-youre-swimming-in-sachets/

And here’s a mystery for you: When you buy a sachet of this and that, and a sachet of everything else day after day, aren’t you paying more for packaging than the product it contains? Don’t products cost less per unit weight or volume when bought in larger quantities?

Wow. A poor sweatshop laborer, who could only afford small quantities of shampoo, conditioner, toothpaste and whatever, might be spending more money on the same quantity of product that a middle class office worker buys, only because the former buys them in small quantities all the time.

Now, because of the frequency and volume of sales, this type of marketing has inevitably produced tons of plastic waste.

This wouldn’t be a problem if most Filipinos weren’t the litter bugs that they are and if the government’s garbage collection and recycling systems (if there is one) was a paragon of efficiency.

Sadly, most Filipinos are inveterate litterbugs and the garbage collection system (or what passes for it) isn’t at all that effective.

In a previous post, we tried figuring just how much plastic waste “tingi” packaging generates:

http://pinoybiz.blogspot.com/2010/08/tax-to-curb-plastic-sachets-and-plastic.html

Giant consumer goods manufacturer Unilever claims that every day, it sells 160 million products.  Assuming that the sales volume of the other manufacturing giants, Procter & Gamble and Nestle is in the vicinity of Unilever’s, that would be some 500 million products sold daily.

Let’s peg a conservative estimate that 10 percent of all products sold are in plastic sachets, then that’s 50 million.  That’s 50 million plastic sachets and pouches that will eventually find its way to our oceans, waterways, landfills and drainage systems ready to clog the free flow of water and trigger floods or kill marine wildlife.

But it is really reasonable to think that of the 500 million products sold daily by the three giants, only 10 percent of are in tiny plastic sachets?

Another blogger makes a different estimate:

http://pasigriveravenger.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/saw-dingdong-dantes-and-angel-locsin-endorse-a-product-then-picture-this-people/

According to Unilever’s vice president for corporate planning Chito Macapagal, 70% of Unilever Philippines 2007 sales is from the sachet market. That’s 70% of 30 billion pesos, or 21 billion pesos three years ago. That’s nine zeroes following 21. The company was enjoying double digit growth rate from the previous year, so expect that by now those numbers are now not just big, but big big.

Can you picture how many sachets 21 billion pesos’ worth of Unilever products are? Well, let’s see. Which brands of theirs have sachet variants? Sunsilk, Creamsilk, Rexona, Clear, Knorr, Lady’s Choice, Close-Up, Best Foods, and Vaseline come to mind.

Moving on, 21 billion pesos in sachets, if say, the average price for any given sachet were 20 pesos conservatively (I say conservatively because first, most of those mentioned cost less than 20 pesos, and second, 21 billion pesos in Unilever’s sales is at supplier-to-distributor prices, which are lower than retail), would be equivalent to 1,050 million sachets. If a given sachet has 10mL of product inside, it’s like they’re producing- no, selling at least one Olympic size swimming pool’s worth of product every 3 months. That doesn’t sound like much, but you could shampoo all 90 million Filipinos 20 times over with that much shampoo, if it were all shampoo.

What’s difficult to imagine is the sheer quantity of packaging material that went into the making of all those sachets. If 1,050 million sachets were sold, then the waste would be 1,050 million multiplied twice to include front and back of the sachet, times 3 inches by 4 inches (I took an estimate of a Clear shampoo sachet), which equals 25,200 million square inches. This is the equivalent of about 16.26 square kilometers worth of sachet or wrapper material. Now, before you do take the initiative to shoot me for driving you nuts with numbers, picture this: 16.26 square kilometers of sachet is enough to cover all of Ilog Pasig.

Now, with this in mind, can you imagine just how much of this plastic packaging garbage ends up BLOCKING storm drains and flood ways?

Take a look at this picture:

Actually, you don’t have to look at an estero like this to figure out just how much plastic garbage we generate.  If you pass by a flooded street, chances are, there’s plastic garbage blocking the street’s storm drains.

If you remember the Ondoy floods, here’s a picture that shows proof of what partly caused it.

In the Philippines, massive flooding in Metro Manila was partly caused by plastic trash.

Plastic packaging partly to blame for Ondoy floods.

What you see in this picture is a chicken wire fence in Provident Village Marikina that acted like a net.

I had a chance to personally sift through this wall of plastic garbage, and I spotted plastic grocery bags from SM (from SM Marikina and SM Riverbanks), Downy wrappers, Surf wrappers, assorted shampoo sachets, etcetera.

With that said, one way of figuring what sachets really cost the average, masa consumer is to factor in the following:

- lost man hours and income because one cannot get to work because of floods caused by plastic sachets

- lost man hours and income because one got sick of dengue and other diseases caused by floods and stagnant water

- the cost of medicine and hospital treatment

- the cost of damaged property due to floods

- the cost of replacing or repairing damaged property due to floods

- the cost of fuel wasted due to traffic caused by floods

If you add all that up and add it to the cost of products in plastic packaging, you’d probably rack up a figure in the billions of pesos.

Lipton Tea exploits laborers in third world countries

Lipton tea exploits laborers from third world countries.

In the old days, toothpaste was almost always synonymous to Colgate, photography to Kodak and soft drinks to Coke. Let us add to that list tea, which is almost always attached to the world’s biggest tea brand, Unilever’s Lipton.

To many, Lipton is tea, and tea is Lipton, never mind if there are numerous other less popular brands of the world’s favorite brew.

That being the case, one would expect that growing tea leaves is good business, benefitting millions of plantation workers worldwide, especially in vast tea growing estates in Asia and Africa.

Sadly, such appears to be a fantasy, as the old colonial picture of high handed landlords imposing their will and taking advantage of impoverished plantation workers who receive a pittance for back-breaking work is still the norm in many tea estates.

Tea plantation and factory workers who supply the demands of Lipton in Kenya, India, Pakistan and Indonesia, have, for years, been complaining of poor working conditions, low monthly wages, discrimination and harassment even as Unilever cultivates what others describe as a “growing regime of disposable jobs.”

“Your small cup of tea makes a big difference” says the Lipton tea brand tagline, but what does this really mean?

Viewing it from a good corporate citizenship standpoint, we might see it as a way of helping uplift the lives of tea plantation workers by patronizing their products which would pay them well and provide for the needs of their families.

But developments in the tea plantations in the four aforementioned countries makes us believe that your small cup will make a big difference in further enriching the lords of Lipton and Unilever while sustaining the vicious cycle of abuse endured by the poor workers.

In India’s Nilgiri Hills tea plantations, Lipton, through its suppliers who own the tea estates, committed to pay each worker 115 rupees a month and lessen its environmental impact by decreasing the amount of pesticides used to protect water sources.

Sure enough, Unilever and its suppliers abided by the environmental aspect of their commitment to the Indian people, but failed to honor the monthly remuneration for the workers by bending rules.

Rather than paying them 115 rupees, only 86 was paid each worker, with the remaining 29 rupees paid in the form of daily allowances, which was disallowed by both the Tamil Nadu government and the Indian High Court.

Unilever and its cohorts prop themselves up as the good guys by making it appear that they are giving the workers a 29 rupee allowance when the agreement was that allowances to be extended to the workers must be separate from the 115 rupee monthly pay.

Talk about scheming!

Worse, it was discovered that the employers do not contribute to the pension fund for workers, though they are legally obliged to do so.

Heck, Unilever even had the temerity to claim in its website that its eight tea plantations in India have passed environmental standards and even provided for free housing, healthcare, child care and education for workers in the tea estates.

Big deal.

What they conveniently or curiously missed out was that such an arrangement is part of their legally mandated obligation, that the same facilities are common in all tea plantations of other companies and its operations are partly subsidized by the government of India.

And the issue on the under compensation of workers? Their silence is indeed, deafening.

It’s even worse in Pakistan, where Lipton tea factories have been shut down in two locations and replaced by an obscure, unmarked, unnamed warehouse in Karachi from where Lipton tea is processed, packaged and sent around the world to be savored by you and may anytime of the day.

What’s bothering about this set up is that because the factory is not officially attached to Lipton, its hundreds of workers are not connected to Lipton but are merely under contract to work in the factory without a name and operated by an unknown entity.

This gives rise to more jobs lacking in security of tenure and pay, elimination of permanent jobs in Lipton-identified facilities and open to harassment and other forms of abuses – all for the sake of producing the world’s favorite brew.

In Kenya, the same horror stories prevail. A report by the Kenyan Human Rights Commission, through interviews of plantation workers, bared numerous abuses and labor law violations committed by Unilever-controlled plantations.

Other than gender and tribal discrimination, many workers are forced to do overtime work, but hardly get paid. Those who refuse ran the risk of getting fired or harassed further.

Likewise, personal protective equipment like masks against pesticides, boots and gloves are hardly made available to them, except when inspection teams are scheduled to visit are such equipment showed off – but only during the inspections.

As we continue enjoying cups of tea each day, there may me a bigger storm brewing in tea plantations, and unless Unilever adequately addresses the serious allegations and concerns of plantation workers, what should be a mere tempest in a teapot could get out of hand, as more of the tea growers grow more desperate with the way they are being treated.

Unilever gives us, consumers the high quality tea we deserve, but shouldn’t it also extend the proper treatment richly deserved by thousands of workers who toil in their tea plantations?

Sipping cups of quality tea grown by exploited, harassed and deceived poor people will surely leave a bad, stinging taste in the mouth.

A fairer and more humane treatment of tea plantation workers is what could really make your small cup of team make a big difference – on a positive note.

Lemmings and the Filipino vote

I spent some part of the night engaging in a political discussion of  sorts and as most political discussions go, there was a bit of an argument over whether there was ‘wisdom’ in the votes cast by over thirteen million Filipino voters.

The common notion about democracy among Filipino masses is that whoever gets the most number of votes wins.

What is often times forgotten is that voting, in more mature democracies, is usually the terminal phase of a longer process wherein true political parties have vetted their respective candidates.

In the Philippines where political parties are mere ‘shell’ corporations, there is almost no vetting and if there were any vetting, it would be limited to those who have a real say in the party — like, for example, the person or persons who actually fund the party.

That isn’t to say that these political parties don’t undergo some kind of selection process, but it is to say that the selection process is premised on choosing the most winnable candidate and not the most capable one.

And I don’t think dissent is encouraged as most parties are organized under the leadership of the most powerful elected official and the body of the party is usually composed of lackeys or stooges.

Anyway,  the standard bearer of a Philippine political party is usually the product of negotiations and bargaining.  This is the reason why, for one reason or another, the person who doesn’t become the party’s standard bearer often joins the opposing party or creates his own.

If you have ever wondered why the program of governance or platform of governance of one party is similar to another party, it is because Philippine political parties are not founded and run based on principles.

All party platforms profess to end poverty, eradicate corruption, deliver speedy justice, provide jobs, end conflict, protect the environment, etcetera.

Better Philippines had once pointed out that this is exactly the reason why he has often demanded that candidates come up with a more detailed platform of governance.  Detailed, in the sense, that candidates should state exactly what they will do to address poverty, corruption, injustice, conflict, environmental degradation, etcetera.  In his figuring, this would be a better subject for debate rather than notions about character, faith, destiny, and almost purely philosophical subjects.

In any case, without principles and debates which test those principles, the voting public (granting that they can absorb anything beyond a familiar name and a good sob story)  has very little information with which to based their decision.  Without enough information, people are reduced to relying on hunches and even worse, instinct.

A philosophy professor I had in college said something about humans being guided by instinct and it was that instinct is primarily what guided animals.

And this leads us to the subject of lemmings and the wisdom of the Filipino vote in 2010.

Faced with the problems of overpopulation and food scarcity, lemmings are triggered by instinct to migrate and it is during this migration that most of them die in the process.

Here’s a little excerpt about lemmings from the Wikipedia:

The behavior of lemmings is much the same as that of many other rodents which have periodic population booms and then disperse in all directions, seeking the food and shelter that their natural habitat cannot provide. Lemmings of northern Norway are one of the few vertebrates who reproduce so quickly that their population fluctuations are chaotic,[1]  rather than following linear growth to a carrying capacity or regular oscillations. It is unknown why lemming populations fluctuate with such variance roughly every four years, before plummeting to near extinction.

Lemmings became notoriously famous because of unsubstantiated myths that they commit mass suicide when they migrate. The myth may exist in more variations. In most forms it does not appear to claim a conscious suicide but rather accidental mass death due to various factors. However in popular culture the alleged behavior is usually referred to as “mass suicide” and hence discussed here as “mass suicide myth”.

Driven by strong biological urges, some species of lemmings may migrate in large groups when population density becomes too great. Lemmings can and do swim and may choose to cross a body of water in search of a new habitat.[7] This fact and the extremely strong unexplained fluctuations in the population of Norwegian lemmings may have contributed to the development of the myth.

Because of their association with this odd behavior, lemming suicide is a frequently used metaphor in reference to people who go along unquestioningly with popular opinion, with potentially dangerous or fatal consequences.

Will Noynoy Aquino be accountable?

I was driving along EDSA just a few minutes ago when this thought just popped inside my head.  How do we hold Noynoy Aquino accountable?

What if he doesn’t end corruption and bring people out of poverty?

Ending corruption in government is a very tall order.  It is what a former boss calls a “Biblical Problem” and leaders since ancient times have been wrestling with the monster called corruption.  Even my favorite ancient civilization (the Spartans) battled with corruption and I don’t think they really won that one.

Ending poverty is YET another “Biblical Problem” and it seems that the only way to bring a swift end to poverty in the Philippines is to KILL ALL THE POOR.  Of course, Noynoy won’t do that.

Then I remembered EDSA Dos.

A lot of people hated the way Erap ran the country and people were saying that if we let him continue to remain as President, he’d drag down the rest of the country along with him.

The whole impeachment process was described as a way by which we, the people, could hold our leaders accountable for their misdeeds.

In Erap’s case, we were holding him accountable for transgressions born out of a commission of a deed.

In Presumptive President Noynoy Aquino’s case, how do we hold him accountable for omission?

Sen. Richard “Dick” Gordon on Automated Elections

(Transcript of Sen. Richard J. Gordon’s extemporaneous address to FOCAP. March 18, 2009)

I welcome the opportunity to address again the foreign correspondents community in our country. And I thank you for your abiding interest in Philippine affairs amidst the giant tsunami engulfing the world today.

Gaby Tabañar told me that I should be prepared to answer questions on a wide range of issues and concerns. I’d be happy to address those issues in the Q and A after my remarks.

Before we do so, however, I would like to place in perspective recent developments and looming challenges before our country today. Beyond the daily headlines that dominate the media, I think there are larger issues at stake here. And this might help you better understand where we Filipinos are coming from and where we are headed.

At this particular period in history, I believe the Philippines presents to the world a somewhat different picture from the one that used to be described by foreign observers as “a jeepney economy”, “a damaged culture” or, most woundingly, as “the sick man of Asia.” We still have a full baggage of problems to confront, but the world no longer sees us only in caricature. Beyond the stories of disasters and scandals, the world is also beginning to read and hear about the difference we make as an emerging economy as key member of ASEAN and as the 13th largest nation in the world.

I would like to discuss here two major efforts and reform that bear on the future of our nation and the contribution that we can make to the world. The first is the automation of elections starting next year, which to us Filipinos, believe it or not, will be like the introduction of a new invention of a new medical cure; and the second concerns eternal efforts to raise the standard of integrity in our public in the face of so many corruption scandals that have blighted the nation’s international reputation.

Automated 2010 Elections

To the foreign journalists among you, it must seem amazing that it is only now – in the closing years of the first decade of the 21st century –that we Filipinos will automate or computerize our election system. It is doubly amazing that we are doing so as the oldest democracy in Asia!

While other countries began to automate their elections as early as the seventies, we have persisted in the manual system of voting and canvassing votes since 1946. For reasons that are truly bewildering, we deferred, we toyed, we blocked every proposal for the automation of our election system through the years. We have preferred the kilometric ballot and the month-long count of election results to the speedy casting and counting of votes enabled by modern technology.

Even after we had passed our first automated election law 12 years ago, some still sought to defer, and succeeded, in delaying the change.

Now, at long last, the system is fated for change.

We are not just talking here about an automated election law – we did that two years ago.

We are talking about implementing the law in national elections in 2010.

We’ve appropriated the money – P11.3 billion to be exact. And the ball is now in hands of the Commission on Elections to press full-court all the way up to the balloting in May next year.

Some of you will ask: Why is this so important to us Filipinos?

If you ever had to wait two months for the result of your national elections, or watch election protests go on until the next elections, you will understand why.

The term may seem extravagant, but to us this is nothing less than a paradigm shift in our electoral processes. It will bring closure to electoral contest in a way that all Filipino generations had not known throughout their lifetimes. For the first time we will hold elections that are truly free, speedy and credible.

If the first step to reinventing government is to ensure the sanctity of the ballot, this system change makes that possible. Remember that every time we hold elections in this country, the President of the Philippines, or the governor, or the mayor will hold a chain around his neck and will be dragging it for the next full term, because the others would say they were cheated or they were robbed. There are only two kinds of people in this country one who won and the other one who was cheated, there are no losers.

In writing our automated election law, we in Congress took care to mandate the following essential features for the new election system: 1. It must have voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) so that voters can see their votes as cast so that they can be recorded accurately. 2. It must be secured against unauthorized access. In fact it will have a source code. 3. It must be accurate in recording and reading the votes, tabulating, consolidating/canvassing, electronically transmitting and storing the results. 4. It must be accessible to illiterates and disabled voters. 5. It must provide for a continuity plan in the event of a systems breakdown. The key benefits and advantages of the system are clear: 1. Automated elections will result to faster election results. What used to take two months will now take, at most, a day. Political contests will not drag on as in the past. Nobody will have time to call anybody while the count is being made.. 2. It will stop wholesale cheating like “Dagdag Bawas”, which has to do with massive changing of election returns. 3. The system is technology neutral. We did not design it for a particular company. We won’t be locked into any technology at present, but rather remain open to more modern technologies as they are developed and tested in future. 4. Only systems with demonstrated capability will be used. 5. It provides for automatic random manual audit. For all these safety measures and benefits, there are nonetheless critics of the automated election system. Some are critical because their own technical and business proposals were not adopted. This is very common in the Philippines, every time somebody wins the bid, somebody was robbed also, they did not win, they say there is cheating. Others are just plain skeptical about entrusting our balloting to machines. And then there are those who clearly see advantages in keeping the old system in place.

The fact is there is no perfect, foolproof automated or electronic election system in the world today. Even the US must still live with less than perfect technology at this point.

You remember the saying, “the best is the enemy of the good.” This is the lesson presented us here, demanding perfection from any automated system only serves to prevent us from achieving something good in our public life.

I, therefore, am truly glad that we finally have the political maturity to effect this change in election management in our country.

Once implemented, the automated election system will be a game-changer in Philippine politics.

It will change the way we vote.

It will change the way we count votes.

It will change the way elections are decided.

It will also change the way our politicians cheat in our elections. At least we will be beating those who already have a PhD in manual voting.

Even the Comelec will experience a welcome change. Instead of being fixated on policing the balloting and canvassing, it can turn part of its attention to the people who were killed and nothing is heard from them afterwards. I think about 127 people were killed in the last elections, you never heard justice for these people afterwards because they are busy conducting protest tallies.

One act of reform, of course, will not transform our electoral system overnight. The important thing, however, is that the reform process will now start. In years to come, we will have the opportunity to continue improving the system.

With this change, public trust in our electoral processes can be nurtured again. And our credibility as a democratic society will be enhanced.

That last point cannot be overemphasized over the past three decades we have met a serious problem of credibility before the world. At the time of the Cold War, our credentials as an independent nation were questioned because of our closeness to the US. In the years of Martial Law, our status as a democratic society was impaired. In the tumultuous years after EDSA, there were questions whether we Filipinos were governable. And at the height of the Asian economic crisis, there were great questions about the viability of our economy. Now we are in the process of regaining our credibility in the world. Through the improved management and performance of our economy and the contribution that our workers are making in the global economy, we are succeeding in establishing economic credibility for the nation. This has been reinforced by the seeming calm and poise with which we are meeting the current global crisis.

This we must match in the area of politics and governance. Ensuring free, speedy and credible elections in 2010 is one test of our political credibility. Meeting the challenge of corruption and transparency in governance is another.

Corruption and Public Integrity As a public servant, I squirm whenever I read about our being ranked among the most corrupt countries in the world by international institutions and risk consultancy agencies. And it is frustrating because we see this seemingly confirmed repeatedly by the parade of scandals in our public life.

To some of us, this means that we are facing a crisis of corruption in our country today. And we either declare war against the menace or we will lose the fight for a dynamic economy, for strong and honest government, and for real modernization and development in our country.

All countries – including the most advanced nations – have lived through their own crises of corruption before they surmounted them and attained full development. All had to battle grafters, tax evaders, mafias, robber barons, dirty politics, corrupt judges and dishonest bureaucracies to achieve modernization.

We, too, must live through this for our own national modernization.

The good news I submit is that this battle against corruption has begun. You can see it in the rising level of public outrage against the many scandals that have wracked our public life – from the NBN-ZTE scandal, to the fertilizer fund mess, or to the rigging of public works bidding, to the billion-peso Legacy scam. You see it in the way public watchdog groups and whistleblowers are emerging to expose misdeeds in government. You see it in the way the media are focusing on corruption cases. You see it in the way international institutions like the World Bank are being drawn into the battle. And you see it in the number of inquiries that the Senate is conducting on various anomalies in our public life. Admittedly, there is much public cynicism about the efficacy of fighting corruption in our country. People believe that it cannot be rooted out. That whoever is in power does it. That every government agency is infested. And that since everybody does it, there’s nothing to be done. But something new is happening now. People are being called to account for their misdeeds in public office. Many are protesting that not everybody does it, and they shouldn’t be lumped together with those who malverse public money or take bribes. Investigations of public misconduct are reaching into the corridors of power – including of all things the offices of public prosecutors and the ombudsman, who are supposed to lead the fight against corruption. To this sense of public empowerment against corruption I believe we in the Senate – particularly the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee – have contributed in no small way through more focused and resolute inquiries into matters of public concern. We have unraveled the tentacles of corruption in some key government departments and agencies. We have tracked down individuals who had eluded the Senate in the past. We have shown the costs of perjured testimony before the chamber. And we have come up with committee reports for public prosecutors to act on and legislators to use as basis for remedial legislation. The Blue Ribbon Committee, which just made a report, has submitted action bills in Congress for the first time in history. For the first time we have filed cases for perjury as well as avoidance to lawful summons. And in the next report that I am going to be making before the end of the month, this will be the same procedure. We are going to come up with the necessary recommendations and perhaps serve the evidence on the silver platter to the ombudsman.

All these developments are just a start, of course. And they are a long way from slaying the dragon of corruption. Realistically, we all know that the dragon’s power and influence reaches much, much deeper into every branch of government – and it will take much, much more before the culture will change. It doesn’t help that the President appointed the classmate of the First Gentleman to the post of ombudsman of our country. It doesn’t help that the wolf packs infesting the bureaucracy are led by individuals who have very strong connections. It doesn’t help when malefactors in government are rewarded with juicy appointments in government in spite of public knowledge of their involvement in corrupt activities. Mr. Bolante was promoted to GSIS. His co-conspirator was also promoted after taking them out from the Department of Agriculture and promoted to high office in GSIS. And the assistant secretary was promoted to undersecretary. And today, you’ve all read in the papers, that the gentleman who was supposed to have given P500,000 to a complete stranger, Mr. Lozada, is now appointed to the SEC. It doesn’t help that our justice department, our equivalent of the attorney general, has become an oxymoron from being too self-serving to partisan ends. We can only fix the problem by relentlessly facing it. What Robert Kennedy said about starting a ripple applies here. He said that each time people stand up for an ideal or strike out against misdeeds, they send forth “a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of resistance.” Our campaign against corruption has started this ripple of hope. This is the way real reform comes to be – in people taking the initiative for change in their respective ways, and then in their joining together to achieve the vision of what can be.

Architecture of Reform

The automation of our election system and the campaign against corruption form part of the larger architecture of reform that we need to truly modernize and move forward. Combined with other reforms that are equally necessary this should help in shoring up to the credibility of our democracy and constitutional government.

Realistically, however, these are just steps toward a larger goal. To place things in perspective, an automated election system sets up the stage for credible elections. It does not guarantee us credible candidates. We should have no illusions that automated elections will have an automatic transformational effect on our politics. When we hear one candidate say that you should have a billion pesos to spend before you should run for President, we know that there is something wrong with our politics, if not in that candidate. When we see opinion surveys being manipulated this early to condition people’s minds and their preferences, we know that democracy is being derailed. When would-be candidates at this time spend millions advertising themselves, violating the spirit of the law to improve their survey ratings, we see our electioneering laws being shamelessly scorned before our very eyes. When little attention is paid to performance, achievements and qualifications for high office, we are reducing our electoral politics to the common denominator of money.

Similarly, we should entertain no illusions that one season of jousting with corruption will suffice to break down the culture of corruption in our country. It has to be sustained. The cancer is deeply entrenched in our government bureaucracy and public life. And the other sectors of society contribute to the problem by playing along with it or even abetting it.

Although graft and corruption is a favorite issue in every electoral campaign in our country, few have the stamina to really grapple with it. Most love to orate about it, to pretend at asking questions in a legislative inquiry..

I can remember the quotation made by Mr. William Howard Taft when he was sent here to ask about the status of Filipinos, what to do with them, because they had just taken over a colony from Spain. And Mr. Taft after going to the country said,

“The Filipinos are ignorant and superstitious. And the very few that had any education that deserves the name are but a few politicians who had nothing but their personal interest to gratify and no moral stamina whatsoever.”

I think we can still say that about our politicians, I think we can still say that about our media, I think we can still say that about the military, about the church, about practically every institution in our country that has gotten tired and had lost their stamina to wrestle to the very powerful in our country. However, I dare say, these people are not unbeatable.

Real reform to root out corruption must install effective oversight and accountability. Batting corruption should not stop at just making the expos . The work does not stop until the grafter is removed from office and goes to jail. It doesn’t help when the President pardons the highest official in the land without even spending a day in formal prison.

To restore our people’s trust in the government, I have always maintained we need not just a change in laws but a change in men, in our attitudes, in our own being. Public officials – elected and appointed alike — have to believe that public office is really a public trust. It is not to be discharged freely, without scruples. It is vested with responsibility to the public good. This view will not find ready support from the cynics among us. But I think that there are those of us who believe that something finer is possible in our public life. No one expressed better than Theodore Roosevelt who declared:

“No republic can permanently endure when its politics are corrupt and base…we can afford to differ on the currency, the tariff, and foreign policy, but we cannot afford to differ on the question of honesty. There is a soul in the community, a soul in the nation, just exactly as there is a soul in the individual; and exactly as the individual hopelessly mars himself if he lets his conscience be dulled by the constant repetition of unworthy acts, so the nation will hopelessly blunt the popular conscience if it permits its public men continually to do acts which the nation in its heart of hearts knows are acts which cast discredit upon our whole public life.”

The words could not be more apt for this period of challenge we are facing now. This is a time of soul-searching for nations. The crisis gripping economies is a crisis of governance as well. And the one word that analysts say is missing is TRUST.

When experts say that economies need trust in order to recover their bearings and grow again, we can say the same about governments today. To govern and lead effectively, governments must have the people’s trust. To have trust, the system as a whole needs to be imbued with shared values and shared goals.

In a word, we need to find the soul of our national community – and seek it in the government we elect and the leaders we follow.

Thank you all very much.