Bureaucrat capitalism

Why is it few were truly surprised that Janet Lim Napoles, prime but wily fugitive in the pork barrel scandal, would have not only the cunning but also the ability to arrange her "surrender" to no less than the President of the Republic.  Is this in exchange for much needed “pogi” points for President Benigno Aquino III and the prospect of cooling down the already overcharged and overheated atmosphere?

This suspiciously stage-managed “surrender” in light of the lack of progress in the Aquino government’s investigation into the humongous pork scam and in addition to Mr. Aquino’s continuing defense of the pork barrel system betrays his intent to merely do damage control, minimize and contain the impact of the exposes, and retain the pork system albeit in a disguised and deodorized form.

Malacanang has taken pains to explain that indeed, the pork barrel system has become an indispensable part of the entire political system.  What it does not say is that the pork system is part of, or a manifestation of, what makes this whole political system rotten to the core.

The pork barrel system is the exposed tip of the iceberg of continuing plunder of public funds wrung out of the sweat and blood of hardworking people through taxes and other government exactions and mechanisms. This abomination by which the ruling elite uses the government machinery and resources to further enrich themselves and entrench their families in power at the expense of the people is what activists have long been calling "bureaucrat capitalism".

Each and every occupant of Malacanang without exception, from Manuel Roxas down to BS Aquino, has been the biggest and leading bureaucrat capitalist lording over and benefitting from the system under their watch. 

By means of huge discretionary funds controlled solely by the Chief Executive (and by extension his alter egos in the line agencies) and the members of both houses of Congress through their share in the presidential largesse, hundreds of billions to more than a trillion pesos of the people’s monies are spent by the bureaucrat capitalists with little or no effective oversight.

The latter are the members of the ruling elite who make a lucrative business out of their government positions, who protect and advance their economic interests and privileged positions in society using state power, and who are therefore at the forefront of preserving the rotten political system and the socially unjust status quo.

What has become starkly clear is that all along, those government officials who belong to various factions of the ruling classes have been conniving with each other to appropriate for themselves billions of the people's money, under the guise of providing for the people's needs, without accountability and with full impunity.   It would be interesting to compute how much of the vaunted "economic growth" is in reality corruption-generated representing phantom projects, kickbacks, bribes, etc. The pork expose explains where that "growth" had really gone and who benefited from it.

Last August 26, National Heroes Day, at the massive Luneta protest action, the overwhelming cry that reverberated was this: “Abolish the pork barrel system, punish the guilty in the pork scam, and rechannel the pork funds for the benefit of the people.”

Yet one can discern a spectrum of positions.  On the one hand, the organizations and individuals who marched under the banner of the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, the Pagbabago People’s Movement for Change and the Makabayan Coalition of Party lists in Congress have categorically called for the abolition of both the Congressional and the Presidential pork; that is, the P25 billion, lump-sum, discretionary budgetary allotment for members of Congress called the Priority Development and Assistance Fund  (PDAF) and the hundreds of billions of other lump sum funds named special purpose funds and off-budget items like the Malampaya Fund and the PAGCOR Presidential Social Fund under the exclusive control of the President.

They pinpoint President Aquino to be the main defender and promoter of the pork barrel having not only maintained but tremendously enlarged its total amounts compared to that of his predecessor, Gloria Arroyo.    As a consequence, Mr. Aquino’s Liberal Party together with his alliance with the other pro-administration parties have emerged as the biggest, strongest and most dominant of the reactionary factions of the political ruling elite, its ranks enlarged mostly by turn-coats from the shrunken coalition of parties formerly loyal to Mrs. Arroyo.

They reject Mr. Aquino’s announced “abolition of the pork barrel” as another attempt at a sleight of hand to damage control the volatile political situation sparked by the Napoles pork scam and more exposes of long-standing, unperturbed, complex schemes for stealing the people’s money.

In truth, the 25 billion PDAF is intact in the 2014 proposed national budget albeit now incorporated and hidden in outlays for specific national line agencies. But the legislators’ entitlement to identify projects, channel funds, choose beneficiaries and ensure implementation of their pet projects outside of the normal legislative process of reviewing and approving the General Appropriations Act remains untouched.  Thus the cozy, you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours arrangement is intact.  The purported separation of powers and system of checks and balances is subverted and rendered inutile with Congress meekly and uncritically approving the budget presented by the Chief Executive and all his other priority bills so that they can get the prime cuts of the Presidential pork.

There were many in the Luneta protest whose outrage is still inchoate, mainly fueled by anger at the corrupt members of Congress in connivance with the Napoles-type scammers. Many are still unaware of the overweening role and culpability of President Aquino in keeping this system in place. They are not fully appraised about how the thievery is carried out so that they are vulnerable to being lulled into complacency or even deceived by Aquino’s announcement of the so-called abolition of the PDAF.  But they continue to be incensed about how this has gone on for so long that they are nonetheless wary of again being taken for a ride by the “trapos” exemplified by the implicated members of Congress.  They constituted the mostly unorganized, spontaneous, and least politically experienced sections of the Luneta crowd.

Then there are those who constitute the fifth column. For example the Akbayan Party List, who sport themselves as the “progressive partners in the Aquino coalition”, say they are for abolition but actually merely wish to reform the pork system so that is shielded from public scrutiny and protest.  They were there to ensure that President Aquino appears spotless, escapes blame, and to falsely claim that the hundreds of thousands who marched to Luneta are on Mr. Aquino’s side, still bewitched by his mantra of “tuwid na daan”.

They are noisy in social and the mainstream mass media focusing all the attention, public revulsion and calls for accountability on Napoles, on the thievery that went on under the Arroyo regime and on the members of the Opposition who have been named.

Worse, they question the integrity, consistency and moral high ground of the progressive lawmakers under Makabayan by harping on the non sequitur line that the latter, having accessed the pork barrel for their projects, are prevented from exposing the corrupt system and calling for its abolition.

They maliciously lump progressive party list representatives with the bureaucrat capitalists despite the fact that the former were elected through the small window of opportunity provided by the party list system, through the strength and political grit of their organized mass base, and their ability to mount an effective campaign without becoming beholden to rich sponsors or relying on patronage politics. They engage in red-baiting, Left-bashing, political innuendo and malicious intrigues.

Be that as it may, it is heartening that people from all walks of life have taken the step forward of making their voices and warm bodies count in common protest against the pork barrel system in whatever form. It stands to reason that a lot more discourse and ground work is needed to raise the level of unity, sustain and strengthen the protest actions to ensure that these do not serve as mere outlets for indignation, only to cool down in the face of cosmetic changes and propaganda barrages, gimmicks and maneuvers by Malacanang and the rest of the ruling elite. #

Published in Business World
30-31 August 2013

Lutong makaw

The negotiations between the Philippine and US governments is just on its first round but the results are already predictable since both sides are saying exactly the same thing about the whys and wherefores of this new “framework agreement” to supposedly lay down “general parameters and principles to guide the increased rotational presence” of American troops in the country.

For one, both are agreed that the new agreement is “necessary” in light of China’s belligerence over its territorial claims in the South China Sea and in consonance with the US “pivot” or “shift” of its military might, especially its naval forces and equipment, to the Asia Pacific region in order to better deal with the rise of a potential “peer rival” – China - within the region and beyond.

They both vehemently deny that the objective is to bring back US bases into the Philippines since that is clearly disallowed by the 1987 Philippine Constitution.   A new bases treaty would have to go through the messy process of negotiations, treaty ratification by the Senate and a national referendum while again running the risk of its not being reciprocally ratified by the US Congress, casting doubt on its validity.

And of course both are in complete sync as they roll out the tired-old rhetoric about strengthening the Philippine-US “strategic alliance”, helping to “modernize” the decrepit Armed Forces of the Philippines, joining hands and “enhancing inter-operability for humanitarian assistance and  disaster relief operations”, and bolstering the capability of the Philippines to undertake “maritime security and maritime domain awareness”.

Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) Secretary Alberto del Rosario promises transparency in the negotiations but the government negotiators’ statements are generating more questions than providing answers and spurring even more suspicions and controversies.

DFA Assistant Secretary Carlos Soreta, who heads the Philippine negotiating panel, says that the “increased rotational presence” of US troops and “increased access” to Philippine territory are well within the parameters of the existing agreements, the sixty-year-old Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) and the newer fourteen-year-old Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA).  If so, why the need for a new agreement?

The attempt to package the current "negotiations" as a "new executive agreement" and "not a renegotiation of VFA and MDT" is meant to avoid a resurrection of the objections to the VFA, especially its unconstitutionality (notwithstanding the Supreme Court decision otherwise, considering the track record of the SC of flip-flopping on many issues regarding consitutionality and national sovereignty) and the fact that the subject matter being "negotiated" in fact requires a treaty between the two countries and not just an executive agreement.

Under the VFA (and the oft-forgotten Mutual Logistics and Servicing Agreement or MLSA) the US is already able to maintain a de facto permanent presence.  This is exemplified by the Joint Special Operations Task Force Philippines, a contingent of about 500 members of the United States military based on a Philippine military base in Mindanao, inside an exclusive US facility that is officially declared as “temporary”.  Consequently, the so-called “increased rotational presence" of US troops is actually a mere euphemism for increased de-facto permanent presence.

Also under the VFA and MLSA, the US is already able to use its former naval base in Subic Bay as well as other ports for regular ship visits that have been increasing in number and frequency under the Aquino administration.  According to DND Usec  Pio Lorenzo Batino, a member of the Philippine negotiating panel, under the new “access agreement” US naval and air assets would again be “stationed” in some parts of military facilities such as in Subic.  His statements imply a much longer presence or as a US defense analyst  put it, a “semi-permanent” stay.

One new and significant element in the "negotiations" is the possible use of the pre-stationed armaments (ships and aircraft, including drones) for local purposes.  According to Mr. Batino, the Philippine government is looking to use these “temporarily deployed equipment…for key mission areas such as maritime security, maritime domain awareness and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations.”  This of course can and will include the rest of what the US military calls "stability operations" such as "foreign internal defense” which is just a euphemism for supporting counter-insurgency operations.

More disturbing, under the cover of the VFA, the US has in fact been able to establish secret facilities that it has complete control and sovereignty over.

This was revealed in official investigative reports by the Dutch Police on the case filed versus Prof. Jose Maria Sison for "inciting to murder" (which the Dutch courts subsequently dismissed due to the charges and submitted testimonites  being "politically tainted").  These contained categorical statements that the testimonies of witnesses against Mr. Sison were taken by Dutch police investigators in places not under the Philippine government's authority in order that the witnesses would supposedly be free from any influence or pressure from the Philippine government.

Such identified places were the Dutch embassy, the US embassy and an existing US facility in the former Clark Air Base.  The latter is evidently a secret facility, since there is no public knowledge and no official Philippine acknowledgment or even information on the existence of such a US facility in that area.  No doubt the new agreement being “negotiated” will provide even greater leeway for the US to put up more of such secret and exclusively US facilities.

The US and Philippine governments are trying to pull a fast one over the Filipino people. With all the questions raised over the VFA and continuing US presence and activities - from the drone washed to a Masbate beach to the minesweeper that rammed the Tubattaha coral reefs - any new negotiations should begin with a review of the VFA and MLSA and should lead to their rescinding or abrogation.

Instead the US and Philippine governments have conditioned our minds to believe that the MDT, VFA and MLSA have been good for us but are not good enough to deal with current and foreseeable needs and threats, thus a need for a new executive agreement to allow -- nay, justify -- more US military presence.

The furor over the Chinese incursions into Philippine territory has certainly added to the justification, and suspicion has also arisen that even the recent bombings in Mindanao may somehow be part of that mind-conditoning.

From the outset, the US and Philippine governments have flagrantly used the VFA as a cover and excuse for patently unconstitutional ends, such as US forces conducting combat and combat support operations (eg intelligence operations) under the guise of military exercises, humanitarian missions and civic-military actions.  Aside from so-called military training exercises being conducted against actual live targets (eg Abu Sayyaf) and using live ammunition, cases have been documented of US forces involved in actual combat operations, albeit described as  "defensive operations with the option to fire back when fired upon".

The ongoing "negotiations" smacks of a set-up and a sell- out, a veritable "lutong makaw". #

Aquino and the “pork barrel”

The expose by whistleblowers on the Napoles P10 billion ”pork barrel” scam for ghost projects involving members of Congress, executive agencies, local government units, fake NGOS and a big-time syndicate of influence peddlers and high-flying hustlers could be explosive enough to cause a major shake-up in the way patronage politics operates in this country.  Or it could go the way of so many other similar exposes, full of sound and fury, but ending up as just another dud.

For the avowed progenitor and main sponsor of “daang matuwid” or the much-heralded movement for good governance, President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino, this expose should be a golden opportunity to push the envelope as it were.  It is a big wonder then why, with the Aquino government's penchant for issuing drum and bugle calls for its anti-corruption crusade, it has chosen to take a passive, if not effete and inutile, position on the issue.

On the other hand, the Makabayan Coalition, the alliance of progressive party lists composed of Bayan Muna, Gabriela Women’s Party, Anakpawis, Alliance of Concerned Teachers and Kabataan, has taken the lead in calling for the abolition of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), the legislators’ much-abused and corruption-ridden pork barrel, as well as the much larger and even less transparent lump-sum allocations for the Office of the President.  They demand that these be reallocated instead to the perennially budget-starved health, education, housing, public transport and other socio-economic service sectors of government.  As a corollary, to exact justice and combat impunity for high crimes, Makabayan demands that the guilty parties be properly investigated, charged and meted out just punishment.

The timely, well-researched and no-holds-barred series of investigative articles on the pork barrel system by Malou Mangahas of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) sheds a probing light and provides some answers to the question on many people’s minds, not precluding some true believers of Mr. Aquino’s vaunted anti-corruption crusade, as to why the President has chosen to defend, justify and even enlarge thrice-over the PDAF since he took office.

Quoting Budget Secretary and former Congressman Butch Abad extensively, the following Malaca?ang line emerges:  the pork barrel is a necessary evil because of the bigger reality that Philippine politics operates under a feudal patronage system.  That is, politicians promise to provide jobs, infrastructure, better access to social services, and a host of dole-outs in exchange for being voted into office.  The electorate in turn holds them to that promise by expecting even legislators, not just those elected to executive offices, to deliver these goods and services.

So allegedly the PDAF is the kitty that the legislators rely on for this benevolent purpose.  To deny them access to these funds is to deny the particular constituencies of the members of Congress from benefitting from public resources that national government, through its executive agencies, may otherwise tend to overlook or neglect for one reason or the other.

To conclude, while such a patronage system is entrenched (due to poverty, so goes the argument) the pork barrel is here to stay unless Congress itself abolishes it (albeit quite an impossibility because of the inherent conflict of interest) or the people are miraculously enlightened to the irrationality, corruptibility and utter wastefulness engendered by the system regardless of what their national leaders say.

Mr. Abad could not quite dissemble enough the fact that Malaca?ang has no illusions the pork barrel funds really go to the underserved and deserving sectors of the close to 100 million Filipinos.  In fact, the executive department does not really have any system in place to determine as much.  This in itself is a huge part of the reason why the pork barrel is so untransparent, lacking in accountability and lends itself to all sorts of scams, wholesale and retail, costing mind-boggling sums of money not just in hundreds of millions but tens of billions of pesos.  Estimates reach as much as half of this year’s P27 billion total pork funds going into non-priority, non-productive and even non-existent projects.

Moreover, the “reforms” undertaken by the Executive Department to supposedly narrow down the kinds of projects that the pork barrel can fund and seeing to it that the money does not go directly to the “honorable gentlemen and ladies” of Congress but through the executive agencies or local government units which then turn these over to the “beneficiaries” have obviously not worked.  The main players in the scams involved have already mastered the ins and outs of running off with the money with complete documentation to boot. (The signatures of the various officials on the “official documents” can later on be denied as “fake” when the scam is exposed).

At some point Mr. Abad (the President’s alter ego on such matters) ends up admitting to PCIJ that indeed the “pork” is a matter of “historical justice” vis-a-vis political friends and foes.  Those who are allied to President Aquino receive their allotted pork (70 million pesos each for Congressmen and 200 million pesos each for senators) and more (through such “pork-like” mechanisms as Congressional Allotments) while those in the Opposition or have somehow earned the ire of Malacanang like the Makabayan bloc, get theirs in trickles and in much delayed tranches.

The “pork” serves as the grease to oil the palms of the greedy and, perhaps, “needy” congress persons (i.e. needing to pay off loans incurred in the last elections or already saving up on campaign funds for the next one).

It is therefore abundantly clear that the PDAF serves mainly the purpose of providing President Aquino the leverage for getting his priority legislation passed including the annual budget with its specific allocations, and even, on occasion, to impeach certain officials of Constitutionally-independent bodies such as the Supreme Court and the Ombudsman’s Office who run afoul of the President.

What of the President’s own “pork”?   The PCIJ report draws attention to about P317.5 billion in special purpose funds or SPFs and P117.5 billion in unprogrammed funds proposed in the General Appropriations Act of 2013. According to former Budget Secretary and UP Professor Leonor Magtolis, because these are “not as detailed and specific as the budget proposals of regular agencies”, these “are vulnerable to reductions, transfers, and adjustments” since these are lump-sum funds.

Moreover such lump-sum funds do not include other special purpose funds under the sole discretion and control of the President such as the multibillion-peso Contingency and Calamity Funds. According to PCIJ, “Disbursement records on these funds have hardly been published online or disclosed to the citizens, despite repeated requests.” (We wonder does this have anything to do with Mr. Aquino’s less than lukewarm interest in having the Freedom of Information Bill passed?)

Incongruous as it seems to Mr. Aquino’s “daang matuwid”, PCIJ brings to light the fact that Mr. Aquino retained and increased most of the “highly discretionary” SPFs and lump-sum funds found in the budgets of his predecessor, Ms. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, in the budgets he has been submitting to Congress since 2011.  These include “confidential and intelligence funds” for the Office of the President and 21 other executive agencies amounting to more than a billion pesos that Mr. Aquino strongly opposed when he was still a congressman.

When weighed in terms of substantial, crucial and effective reforms of the system of governance, Mr. Aquino cannot avoid being measured in terms of how he deals with big-time corruption in the form of the pork barrel.  His apologia that the pork barrel system is too ingrained in the present rotten system of politics for a President, with his unprecedented hold on both houses of Congress and his claimed “popular mandate”, to be able to do anything about it smacks of a plain and simple cop-out if not rank opportunism. #

Published in Business World
9-10 August 2013

SONA – a reality check

There we go again.  SONA (State-of-the-Nation-Address) day and activists and ordinary citizens were once more out in the streets for the annual exercise of their right to rain on the ruling regime’s SONA parade by presenting their own version of the national situation.  It seemed at first glance that this year would be no different from the previous years.  But this time there was a big difference:  government had insidiously prepared well to keep the demonstrators from "marring" President “Noynoy” Aquino’s third SONA by presenting an alternative, and more truthful, state-of-the-nation.

This time around, psychological warfare was much more evident, including the glaring overkill of thousands of deployed riot police and layers of container vans and cement and steel barricades reinforced with razor-sharp concertina wire to keep demonstrators from crossing the line that the police had arbitrarily set.  Post SONA, the Aquino regime’s well-oiled propaganda machine attempted to drown out and discredit the demonstrators’ grievances and demands of government with the help of Aquino-friendly mainstream media outlets along with government-deployed pseudo netizens in social media platforms and their “yellow” cheering squads.

To begin with, the demonstrators and the Filipino people as a whole have plenty to be riled about.  Many had already anticipated that this year’s SONA speech would - again - simply not square with reality.  There would be major omissions about issues that really matter to the people as well as a grand cover-up of the country’s true state of affairs.  In this way Mr. Aquino’s SONAs have not been much different from those of his predecessor, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo; that is, at base, these have been self-serving and riddled with falsehoods.

Glowing reports on the economy are meaningless to the majority of Filipinos eking out a living - landless peasants and the army of urban unemployed and underemployed who are hungry, sick, without decent housing and seemingly doomed to suffer a bleak future.  The great divide between the well-entrenched elite and the broad masses of the people (including the sinking so-called middle class) or to borrow parlance from the Occupy Movement, between the 1% and the 99%, has merely been amplified by the healthy profits of the 1000 top corporations and the scandalous lifestyles of the rich and (in)famous.

The Aquino government continues to pursue neoliberal economic policies that benefit foreign investors, the local big landlord-big business interests and their political backers on the top rungs of government while the people suffer landlessness, joblessness, low wages, high prices of basic goods and services and high taxes and other “lawful” exactions.  It perpetuates the backward, agrarian, pre-industrial economy with its laggard implementation of a bogus land reform program.

Mr. Aquino crows about the World Bank-designed, multi-billion peso Conditional Cash Transfer dole-out as the solution to poverty even as his administration scrimps on basic social services, allows these to deteriorate and then puts up a fire sale (such as of government hospitals) so foreign and local big business can take over and run them for profit and not for public service.

Mr. Aquino has only high praises for the Armed Forces of the Philippines and Philippine National Police (PNP), promises them “modernization” (and of course the opportunity for bigger kickbacks) and showcases housing projects and other benefits for the men-in-uniform while window dressing government’s dirty counter-insurgency war codenamed Oplan Bayanihan and its bloody human rights record. 

Mr. Aquino enjoys twitting in public his subalterns in the executive department in order to make a big show about pursuing “daang matuwid” but he turns a blind eye to the ongoing huge scams involving the pork barrel system because, according to his apologists, it is not “pragmatic” politics. (How else is the President to have his priority legislation passed if he doesn’t grease the palms of his allies in Congress?) He also plays deaf and dumb to the clamor for a strong Freedom of Information bill because he just doesn’t want anyone to have the freedom to open the proverbial can of worms in his administration including corruption in and around Malaca?ang.

With more than enough legitimate grievances to justify and propel a big demonstration come SONA day and invoking their basic civil right to peaceably assemble, the People’s SONA rally organizers were flabbergasted that the Aquino government (yes, the same government that Human Rights Commissioner Rosales glowingly claims is cognizant of their rights) would deny their application for a permit to rally.  They correctly construed it as a provocation, a challenge to all the more assert that right.

The PNP’s psywar was on track after the permit denial.  General Garbo, the new police chief for the National Capital Region went on a media blitz saying that the police expected a bigger crowd of protesters due to the ongoing demolition of urban poor communities and therefore security was a major concern.   But he also put on a very agreeable pose, saying that despite the lack of a permit, the police would exercise “maximum tolerance” rather than follow the “no permit, no rally” stricture.  He said rally organizers could “negotiate” with police to be allowed the usual venue near the Ever Gotesco Mall on Commonwealth Avenue that the previous insecure Arroyo regime had fixed as the closest permissible rally site during SONAs.

On the day itself, the PNP put up a big steamer bearing the message "Serenity & Oneness for National Advancement" with the first letters spelling out SONA.  The marching column of thousands of protesters was immediately met by a two-deep phalanx of smiling policewomen bearing flower bouquets and balloons, a cheap ploy to bolster the image of the police as friendly and pacific.  They were ignored and bypassed by the marchers.

Demonstrators undertook a surprise maneuver and broke through island barriers earlier reinforced with concertina wire to occupy both the south and northbound lanes of Commonwealth Avenue in a bid to compel the police to allow the rally to go much farther and closer to the HOR.  Thousands of police rushed to prevent them from proceeding onwards.  Traffic came to a standstill and the rally leaders called for negotiations with the police to break the impasse. But while talks were ongoing, the police treacherously began to push back the demonstrators with their batons and shields causing injuries to hundreds of defenseless protesters.

The police succeeded in cordoning off the demonstrators in the northbound lane of Commonwealth Avenue in front of the Ever Mall.  But they failed to disperse the mass mobilization and to provoke an angry retaliation and frenzied random violence from the demonstrators who maintained their ranks with discipline, pushed the police back defensively as much as they could but eventually retreated in an organized fashion.  

In the immediate aftermath, the police could not paint the rallyists as unruly, violent and deserving of the beating they got from the police.  The rallyists successfully held their People’s SONA.  As Mr. Aquino was giving his SONA speech, they burned the effigy of the US-backed Aquino regime depicting Aquino and his cronies and foreign backers lapping up a feast while tossing the people crumbs, a parody on the oft-invoked “trickle-down effect”.

It is therefore ludicrous how the Aquino regime’s spin doctors pounced on the picture of the cop crying from exhaustion (and perhaps the realization that he was on the wrong side) as well as that of a Dutch human rights activist shouting at the police to stop hurting the demonstrators to create the impression that the latter were the aggressors and had even been reinforced by “foreign interventionists”. 

Still, no amount of deception and coercion will be able to conceal reality and sustain the make-believe world of the Aquino regime despite the self-congratulatory press releases, the fawning media coverage, the engineered popularity surveys and the manufactured social media commentaries. #

Published in Business World
2 – 3 August 2013