Arangkada for August 6, 2005

 

                  TAPOLAN

 

Ang politikanhong oposisyon maoy sad-an nganong nagpabilin pa sa puwesto si Presidente Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo hangtod karon. Kay wa silay laing gihimo gawas sa pagtuyok-tuyok pagpangita sa "smoking gun" pagmatuod sa mga pasangil batok sa presidente. Angay silang pukawon sa kamatuoran nga ang presidente nga nakaako paglipat sa katawhan sa iyang pagkawat sa ilang mandato sa niaging eleksiyon di sayon nga palayason.

Human sa sayon kaayong pagdaog sa Edsa 1 ug 2, dako ang tentasyon sa pagpangiyugpos ug pagpaabot lang kanus-a kusion sa iyang konsiyensiya si Presidente Arroyo aron puno sa kauwaw nga manaog sa katungdanan. Ang politikanhong oposisyon, kansang mga panglantaw way kalainan sa mga namunoan nga gusto nilang pulihan, nagtinguha lag kausaban sa mga dagway dili sa pagtugkad sa gamot nga mga hinungdan sa mga problema nga nakapa-unlod ning nasura.

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Way bisan usa ka saksi ug way bisan usa ka dokumento nga ikawara-wara sa politikanhong oposisyon nga makakumbinser sa publiko, kansang pagduda sa gipasanginlan gisagolan sab sa samang pagduda sa motibo sa mga namasangil, nga tinuod ang mga krimen nga gipasangil batok ni Presidente Arroyo.

Ang dakong problema sa mga lider sa politikanhong oposisyon, gawas sa kakuwang nilag kaligdong ug panaghiusa, mao nga padayong gikumbinser ang ilang kaugalingon nga mapalagpot nila si Presidente Arroyo sa Malakanyang pinaagi lang sa pagarpar. Di sila ganahan nga maghago. Way bisan usa nga ganahang motrabaho aron aktuwal nga mangita, magtikad ug mopalambo sa mga ebidensiya batok sa presidente.

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Kon makahimo pa lang unta sila pagtan-aw lapas sa tumoy sa ilang mga ilong, segurong ilang makit-an nga ang Garci tapes ug ang affidavit ni Michael Angelo Zuce maoy labing adunahang mga giya asa pangitaon ang kaliboan ug usa ka ebidensiya sa lapad nga tikas sa niaging eleksiyon ginamit ang minilyon ka pesos nga payola sa jueteng.

Ang Garci tapes ug Zuce affidavit puno sa mga ngan, lugar ug petsa sa sekretong mga tigom pagtikas sa eleksiyon nga mahimong masusi, matultolan, matino ug mapalig-on. Pero lisod ug kapoy ning buhata. Mas sayon ang pagpatawag sa way kinutobang press conferences.

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Sa pikas nga bahin, salamat na lang nga wa dayon molampos ang politikanhong oposisyon pagpalagpot ni Presidente Arroyo. Kay kon mga nawong ra sa mga namunoan ang mausab, sama sa Edsa 1 sa 1986 ug Edsa 2 sa 2001, magdagtom lang gihapon ang kaugmaon ning nasura.

Hinaot nga ang kapakyas sa oposisyon pagtuman sa labing batakang mga gimbuhaton pagpalig-on sa kaso batok sa presidente dunay mas makiangayong resulta: Ang dugang paglaygay sa krisis moseguro nga mas daghang katawhan ang matandog sa eskandalo ug magpakabana pagtingog ug paglihok ug di na itugyan ngadto lang sa mga politiko ang pakigbisog para sa mas malungtarung kausaban. [30]  leo_lastimosa@abs-cbn.com

Comelec Affidavits

Posted by Vinia Datinguinoo
PCIJ

A DAY after Michaelangelo "Louie" Zuce first made public his story, top Comelec officials held their own press conference to defend the organization and refute the former presidential staff officer's claims. Comelec chairman Benjamin Abalos, denying Zuce's allegations, said election officials "were not that subservient." Abalos then issued to the media copies of sworn statements executed by some of the election officials whom Zuce said were among those who were bribed to support President Arroyo's candidacy in 2004.

Read the election officials' affidavits:

Juanito Icaro, Regional Election Director for Region IV
Francisco Pobe , Agusan del Sur Provincial Election Supervisor
Remlane Tambuang, Davao Oriental Provincial Election Supervisor
Renato Magbutay, Asst. Regional Election Director for Region IX
Joseph Hamilton Cuevas, Lanao del Norte Provincial Election Supervisor
Ray Sumalipao, Lanao del Sur Provincial Election Supervisor

Call To Action

Passion For Reason : Analog thinking in a digital world

Raul Pangalangan
Inquirer News Service

WHEN Presidential Spokesman Ignacio Bunye testified before Congress that he couldn't recognize President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's voice in the "Gloriagate" CD, he explained that what he heard was "a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy."

That argument would have worked for cassette tapes, but not for CDs. When it comes to digital records, the data do not "degenerate" with each recopying. In my layman's understanding, digital records are merely arrangements of 0's and 1's, and a copy is as good as the original so long as that binary sequence remains unchanged. I can imagine Bunye's defense. In the pre-MP3 world, the copy was AAD -- originally recorded in Analog, remastered in Analog (poorly, as Bunye would argue), and became Digital only in final form.

However, I must defend Bunye's analog thinking. It's simply a generational thing. Perhaps he recalled the last time he copied his 45 rpm record of Johnny Mathis onto a cassette and which, by the third recopy, started to sound like Diomedes Maturan (or vice-versa, if you are a true nationalist). When my son saw my dad's manual typewriter for the first time, he said: "Lolo's computer is really cool. When he types, it's already printing at the same time."

Indeed, I will confess to my own analog moments. Last year when I was loading up my music on my iPod, I was about to actually start typing by hand each song title in the iTunes list on my computer, good analog dinosaur that I am. Mercifully, my son took pity and clicked a few buttons, and to my delight, all the music information started cascading onto my screen like a flowing river from iPod heaven. But please understand that I belong to the last batch of lawyers who actually typed their court pleadings using a manual Underwood-and anyone who has typed anything in quadruplicate, using fragile "onion skins" and smudgy carbon paper, deserves a medal.

You can sniff out analog instincts everywhere. Secretaries who would rather retype a 20-page document, rather than search for it in their hard drive or use a scanner. Bosses whose e-mail messages look like formal letters because, not knowing how to use the computer, they dictate the message to someone who does. Teachers who make their students memorize lists and do other mind-numbing functions. People who actually read and highlight the manuals of their new software ("If it scrolls out of the screen, it's gone forever!"). Attorneys who always talk like they were conducting a direct examination of a witness, even in normal conversation (if that is at all possible with these types, God save the Republic!).

The analog world's last bastion is the law. We lawyers don't live in no Juristic Park for nuttin'. For instance, Filipino lawyers exalt the "separation of powers" among the legislative, executive and judicial branches as the epitome of legal wisdom. Yet Harvard constitutionalist Lawrence Tribe, a math whiz in his youth, has suggested that such mechanistic check-and-balance is a vestige of the Newtonian imagination. The separation of powers is the lawyers' version of what 18th century scientists knew: To prevent the government from abusing its power, you must design the constitution like "a machine that goes of itself," or in the words of The Federalist Papers, one that "would enable government to control the governed, and in the next place oblige it to control itself."

By 1928, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes already put down our Court's mechanistic thinking. Reviewing Springer v. Philippine Islands, a decision by the Philippine Supreme Court on the election of corporate directors, he said: "The great ordinances of the Constitution do not establish ... fields of black and white ... with mathematical precision [nor] divide the branches into watertight compartments." Instead, law is "a penumbra shading gradually from one extreme to another."

Today 77 years later, Filipinos still talk as if law is so exact, precise and predictable just like a manual Underwood typewriter -- and ignore what Professor Tribe calls the "changing curvature of constitutional space."

Yesterday, at Bocobo Hall of the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, the Internet and Society Program sponsored a forum on Gloriagate Blogging. Prof. JJ Disini, fresh with his LL.M. from the Harvard Law School, convened a very dynamic group of the top Filipino bloggers and discussed the power of this new medium.

I am, though not a blogger, wholly fascinated. Before blogging, all public speech was regulated by media hierarchies and corporate behemoths. With blogging, Holmes' "free marketplace of ideas" has finally begun to operate on a level playing field (though not entirely cost-free, as Disini pointed out, and still shackled in the "prison of words," as Manolo Quezon said in the forum).

We must stamp out the vestiges of analog thinking, in favor of the digital imagination. The analog values the logical, the sequential and the hierarchical. The digital exalts the intuitive, the spontaneous and the democratic. The Xerox and the Betamax paved the way to Edsa People Power I -- the iron fist of martial law would have censored all news of Ninoy Aquino's assassination. "Texters" [SMS senders] mobilized the mammoth crowds at Edsa II within hours of the vote on the second envelope of evidence against Joseph Estrada. Perhaps Edsa III (or IV) will be a blogger's revolution, when the thinking but unorganized Filipino will make his voice heard, without the mediation of government or civil society elites.