Follow

I CERTAINLY hope so, as China’s experience proved that isolating Wuhan City prevented the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) from quickly engulfing the entire nation and from migrating fast to other countries.

But there are about 4 million workers and middle-class people working in Metro Manila (National Capital Region or NCR), who go home each evening to homes outside the metropolis and return the next morning to report to their places of work. This figure may even be bigger because rents in the metropolis have gone up steeply in the past several years. I haven’t met a single rank-and-file employee in Manila in the past few years who didn’t live either in Bulacan or Cavite or a province adjacent to the metropolis.

For the police or whoever checking at rush hours the company IDs of these 4 million going to and from the metropolis — to determine if they work there — could be a nightmare. To implement this would create traffic stretching tens of kilometers from Metro Manila.

Can you imagine how long it would take to stop a provincial bus, for the police to board it and check each and every passenger’s ID to see if he works in Metro Manila? By the time they finish checking the IDs of 4 million, most of them would be late for work or entirely miss work.

And how many — vendors, for instance, informal entrepreneurs, even professionals — don’t have ‘company IDs’? Okay, so they just explain to the police manning the checkpoint. But how long would this take?

Follow

THE Yellows must be gnashing their teeth that, so far, the incidence of the coronavirus disease 2019 (officially called Covid-19 by the World Health Organization) hasn’t been of such a horrible scale in our country as that in South Korea (7,513 cases; 54 deaths) or in countries on the other side of the globe from China — Italy (9,172 cases; 97 deaths) and Iran (7,161 cases; 2,327 deaths).

By contrast, the Philippines, which is geographically closer to China than Italy and Iran, and in the past two years has had an influx of Chinese tourists and online-gaming employee, has had, by the latest report, only 35 cases and one death. While some media will likely report today headlines like “Covid-19 cases jump” or something like that, 35 cases, compared to the thousands in several countries, is still a relatively low figure.

Some cynics claim that this might be due to the fact that those afflicted with Covid-19 had simply not been reporting it to doctors, much less going to a hospital for treatment. This is improbable though.

Follow

THE Philippine Star last March 5 ran a front-page story titled, “SWS: 62% of Pinoys believe AFP can’t defend WPS.”

The Social Weather Stations (SWS) angrily wrote the newspaper’s editors, pointing out that this was the opposite of what its report said, that its survey found that “62 percent of adult Filipinos have much confidence in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in defending the territories of the Philippines in the West Philippine Sea (WPS).”

The Star didn’t even apologize for its mistake, and simply ran a shorter piece the next day – buried in the inside pages – that accurately reported the SWS survey, without mentioning that the same reporter’s piece the previous day was totally false.

Follow

IT was sheer hubris for Sen. Mary Grace Poe to have called a hearing of the Senate Committee on Public Service last Monday that was virtually a propaganda program for ABS-CBN Corp. in its desperate move to have its congressional franchise to operate, which expires on May 4, renewed.

Does she think Filipinos — and include there journalists, but probably exclude several senators — are too stupid not to know her profitable links to ABS-CBN, that the main income of her family is now from that network?

For chrissakes, her mother Susan Roces (Jesusa Sonora) and she herself made, and will continue to make, tons of money from ABS-CBN operations.

Her mother plays the role of a main character (Flora “Lola Kap”) in ABS-CBN’s hugely successful drama “Ang Probinsiyano,” which has been running for over four years, with about 1,136 episodes. Lola Kap is a village captain and the sagacious grandmother of the series’ hero Cardo (played by Coco Martin), who imparts life lessons in most every episode.

Assuming that Roces gets a very conservative P200,000 per episode, that means income for her of over P230 million so far from that ABS-CBN production. That’s a fair estimate, considering that lead actor Martin is known to have become a billionaire from his earnings from “Ang Probinsyano.”

(more…)

Follow

IF you watched the Senate committee hearing the other day on ABS-CBN Corp.’s franchise application that was called by Sen. Mary Grace Poe, you’ll be as convinced as I was that it was a production mounted by the media giant; so expertly done that if it had been a movie, it would have been an award-winner.

It was, however, one of the clearest demonstrations I’ve ever seen of an oligarch at work and why oligarchs are oligarchs: they can expertly use the institutions and leaders of the State, and cloak their agenda of perpetuating their rule as economic elites.

Follow

EUGENIO “Gabby” La’O Lopez 3rd — who has, since, 1987, run media giant ABS-CBN Corp., of which he is a major owner — is a United States citizen.

He travels the world using his American passport, the current one issued by the Los Angeles Passport Agency, sources with access to US and Philippine government records disclosed.

This is a patent violation of our Constitution’s Article XVI, Section 11 (1): “The ownership and management of mass media shall be limited to citizens of the Philippines, or to corporations, cooperatives or associations, wholly-owned and managed by such citizens.”

This means ABS-CBN has been violating the 1995 law to operate broadcast media, whose very first sentence states that the franchise is “subject to the provisions of the Constitution.”

Congress would shame itself if it renews the franchise of a company that has trampled on our Constitution, its owners managing to hide Lopez’s citizenship because of its power over past administrations.

Lopez acquired Philippine citizenship only in 2004, a year after the Dual Citizenship Law took effect. This law allowed natural-born Filipinos who acquired citizenship in another country to acquire Philippine citizenship after a process specified by the law.

(more…)

Follow

WHAT a gullible media we have.

Since 2016, one Jose Antonio Custodio has been interviewed by so many media outlets ranting against President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration and the military. He recently declared that the military would soon topple Duterte, angry at the latter’s termination of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA).

He said that before in 2016, when charges were filed against Sen. Antonio Trillanes 4th.

Mainstream media — among them the Philippine Daily Inquirer, the Philippine Star, GMA 7, ABS-CBN and the Salim-controled network TV5 — describe Custodio as a “military expert,” “military historian” or a “defense analyst.” He’s been such a regular source of media men’s “analysis” that he complained in his Facebook (FB) account that he was starting to dislike early morning calls from the press.

He doesn’t hide his arrogance and odium for the military, writing on FB: “I just love the idiocy in the Philippine military and Defense sector. So, you want to have a status of forces agreement with China to replace the PH-US VFA?”

(more…)

Follow

IT is the height of servility to an oligarch for Sen. Franklin Drilon and other Yellow legislators to be still trying to give ABS-CBN Corp. the franchise to operate in the weeks till March when its current permit, given in 1995 at the height of the Yellow Rule, expires.

For chrissakes, neither the Lopez brothers, who own the media network together with a US fund manager, nor the firm’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Martin “Mark” Lopez — the 42-year-old nephew of its top honcho Eugenio “Gabby” Lopez 3rd — have even appeared in public to argue why the firm should be given a franchise in the first place.

Are Drilon and his gang so afraid of these oligarchs they can’t call them to Congress to argue their case? Have they stooped so low as to be talking only to the network’s lower-ranking minions and, as I was told, female celebrities?

How cowardly — or arrogant — can a firm in deep trouble be? The ABS-CBN statement on the filing of the quo warranto case against it by Solicitor General Jose Calida wasn’t even signed by any of the company’s officials.

(more…)