Businessmirror december 30, 2015

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Monday 18,December 2014 Vol. 1030, No. 402015

Wednesday, Vol. 11 No. 83

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P25.00 nationwide | 4 sections 20 pages | 7 days a week

Faster global growth, elections to hike imports by10% in 2016

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lection spending and the recovery of the global economy will increase the country’s import payments to at least 10 percent next year, according to the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda).

INSIDE

‘ex machina’ and other top movies of the year Show BusinessMirror

B2-2 Wednesday, December 30, 2015

www.businessmirror.com.ph

‘Ex Machina’ and other top movies of the year ALiciA VikAndEr in Ex Machina.

I

By Colin Covert | Star Tribune

can’t guarantee that my favorite films in 2015 were the best movies of the past 12 months. after all, I missed such gems as San Andreas and Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 by carefully choosing my vacation time. But here are some that I enjoyed hugely, and why. For example, Jurassic World was a better rumbling, roaring dino epic than The Good Dinosaur— but I still didn’t like it enough to award it a place on this partial list of my favorites.

Ex Machina gets my applause because it was the smartest film in ages about the emotional lives of robots, much better than Chappie. Domhnall Gleeson stars as a young programmer researching artificial intelligence by evaluating the human qualities of a stunning female droid played by alicia Vikander. Shrewd, stylish and suspenseful, it is a must-see before the singularity arrives and technology floods the universe with its own intelligence. Me and Earl and the Dying Girl makes the cut because it was a far better romantic tragicomedy than Fifty Shades of Grey. thomas Mann plays an eternal high-school slacker/movie snob tasked by his pushy mom to be an unlikely friend to classmate Olivia cooke, who is diagnosed with cancer. the film is a nonstop absurdist delight full of very intelligent, nontearjerky teenage musings. that is until the finale’s rage against the dying of the light makes it an amazing poem of life, love and what people are left to hang onto.

Mission: Impossible-Rogue Nation was a secretagent sequel that far outclassed Spectre. tom cruise has been playing the spy role longer than Daniel craig, but he seems delighted every time he pulls off some

cockeyed stunt. and so am I. Yes, they both have mystery plots that are almost impossible to decipher, but M:I 5 keeps us engaged by the entire story, not just the star blowin’ stuff up.

Shaun the Sheep made the winners’ circle because this British stop-motion cartoon was better than the heavily animated Pixels (and I liked Pixels, yes, I did, it

The End of the Tour was a cerebral, riveting factbased drama far superior to Stonewall and Woman in Gold, both of which were like watching a house of cards collapse. How do you turn the story of a five-day interview between a Rolling Stone reporter (Jesse Eisenberg) and acclaimed novelist David Foster Wallace (Jason Segel) into a philosophical and moving buddy adventure? With great interplay between your performers, insightful dialogue and exquisite direction.

Mad Max: Fury Road was a bombastic superhero reboot infinitely better than the heinous Fantastic Four.

It’s a favorite because George Miller was the technically staggering action director of the year, if not the decade.

Because tom Hardy kept quiet and let his costar charlize theron score touchdown after touchdown.

Because grisly sight gags are great ways to illustrate mankind’s persistent stupidity.

Sicario was a far better hard-boiled international thriller than Michael Mann’s wreckage-strewn travesty Blackhat. Its cinematography, story, soundtrack and star power are electrifying, with brilliant work by Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin and Benicio del toro as federal agents fighting Mexican drug cartels. the political and moral ambiguities of a long war have never spun in such a pessimistic, intense, vicious circle.

The Nightmare was a far better midnight fright film than Crimson Peak. Documentarian Rodney ascher channels his personal obsession with bad dreams into the horror genre.

His interview subjects are people whose nocturnal terrors cause them to scream themselves awake. this is the only reality film that has ever made me jump and howl in freaked-out horror—twice! n

made me laugh, don’t judge me, I’ve been in bigger cow pastures than that). the creators of Wallace & Gromit follow their title character and his pals on a day away from the farm, visiting a Big city. Deserving of a nobel Prize for hilarious wordless comedy, it’s an irresistible blend of British deadpan wit and Monty Python-esque skit comedy.

By Cai U. Ordinario

‘My Bebe Love: #kiligPaMore’ tops MMFF 2015 opening-day gross AS predicted by countless Filipinos all over the globe, My Bebe Love: #KiligPaMore has clinched the 2015 Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) box-office race by emerging as the runaway festival top grosser on opening day.

Starring unbeatable comedy box-office royalties Vic Sotto and Ai-Ai de las Alas, together with the phenomenal “Aldub” love team of Alden richards and Maine Mendoza, the movie certainly didn’t disappoint and went on to give their legion of followers a fun, wholesome, romantic and thoroughly entertaining movie for the whole family.

Produced jointly by five giant film outfits— OctoArts Films, M-Zet Television Productions inc., APT Entertainment, GMA Films and Meda

THE cast of My Bebe Love are all smiles during the news conference for the movie held earlier this month.

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Production—My Bebe Love: #KiligPaMore is directed by Jose Javier reyes, who also cowrote the script.

Early on, the victory of My Bebe Love: #KiligPaMore was already been sealed as young and old alike, all self-confessed fans and followers of Vic and Ai-Ai, and the millions and millions of Aldub followers, began flooding social media about their excitement to see the film. Observers knew that movie would make a killing at the box office and it certainly did.

The movie is replete with high-spirited excitement, heartwarming romance, wholesome fun and excellent Filipino values.

To add to the excitement, Joey de Leon, the Eat Bulaga lolas comprised of Paolo Ballesteros,

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Today’s Horoscope

By Eugenia Last

CELEBRITIES BORN ON ThIS DAy: Eliza

Dushku, 35; Laila Ali, 38; Tiger Woods, 40; Matt Lauer, 58.

hAPPy BIRThDAy: Don’t let anything stand in

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Lady luck is in your corner. When it comes to money, contracts, negotiations and settlements, the planets favor you. Hesitation will be your downfall and arguments will be a waste of time. When an opportunity arises, give it your best shot. HHH

d

Open up conversations with people who have an inside view of an industry that interests you. Networking and socializing with your peers will lead to a new friendship with a colleague you want to collaborate with. HHHHH

b

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): It’s the festive season, and entertainment, socializing and finding time to be affectionate with someone you love is encouraged. A trip to the spa or to spruce up your image will be just what you need to lift your spirits. HHH

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f

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Don’t make changes just because someone else does. Focus on tradition, family and reconnecting with relatives you don’t get to see very often. The memories will stir up ideas and inspire you to make plans in the new year. HHHH

e

TAURUS (April 20-May 20):

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): You will face

opposition if you aren’t forthright about what your motives are. Do your best to reveal what you want and what you are offering.

It’s better to know where you stand than to live a confused life. HHHH

your way. Recognize opportunities and make a point to forge into the future with confidence and brute force. It’s up to you to make thing happen, so don’t waste time waiting for others to catch up. Don’t let emotional matters deter you from getting ahead. Put things in perspective and don’t look back. Your numbers are 8, 15, 24, 28, 32, 44.

Jose Manalo and Wally Bayola, plus ryzza Mae dizon make special appearances in the movie.

Vic Sotto plays the role of Vito, who finds himself in a bitter professional rivalry with cora, played by Ai-Ai. The two are both in

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): You’ll

face opposition if you share your personal thoughts and plans. Work undercover until you come up with a foolproof plan. A networking function will be a good place to pick up information. HHH

the business of mounting special events and productions, and both have made a successful name in the profession. conflict erupts when their respective wards—Anna (Maine), daughter of Vito, gets romantically involved

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LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): You are running out of time. Make a point to enforce the changes you want to make before the turn of the year. It’s important to enter 2016 with a clean slate. You will have to be secretive to avoid interference. HHH

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SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21):

with cora’s beloved nephew dondi (Alden).

As expected, the “parents” actively reject the budding romance between the star-crossed lovers and willingly strike an unexpected truce to prevent the romance from happening.

The plot thickens when the unexpected alliance of Vito and cora starts blooming into something else. now, it’s the turn of the youngsters to feel disconcerted with the idea of having their folks enter into a different relationship zone. dondi and Anna react to the situation not liking the idea of his auntie and her father falling in love with each other.

My Bebe Love: #KiligPaMore is in theaters nationwide.

j

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Don’t leave anything undone. Avoid arguments or conflicts with someone who doesn’t understand what you are doing. Finish what you start and head in a direction that will allow you to lay down a solid foundation for future negotiations. HHHHH

Share your ideas and plans with someone you love or want to spend more time with. Favors will be granted if you decide to enter into a joint venture. Unusual changes at home will inspire you to be more creative. HHHH

k

i

l

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Look at your options and ponder what you want to achieve next year. You can bring about changes based on past experience and future goals. Take physical steps to ensure you will be ready when the time comes. HHH PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): The disclosure of a personal secret will leave you confused and uncertain about what to do next. Don’t let your emotions take over and lead to a situation you cannot reverse. HHH

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21):

Stick close to home and abide by the rules and regulations. You will face opposition if you are indulgent or try to ignore the assignments that are due before the year comes to a close. Secrets will be revealed. HH

BIRThDAy BABy: You are sensitive, kind and a risk-taker. You are open-minded and persuasive.

‘made in the shade’ By CARLA AzURE The Universal Crossword/Edited by Timothy E. Parker

ACROSS 1 “No ___, no foul” 5 Big game venue 10 Not present or future 14 Involved in a yacht race 15 Buoyed wreckage 16 Reed instrument 17 Move emotionally 18 Like a noble gas 19 Give the cold shoulder 20 Cutters in craft stores 23 Trapshooting 24 Nightingale or Barton 25 Butted 28 David Bowie’s rock type 30 The eye has it 31 Mocking imitation 33 Snake that killed a queen 36 Of royal lineage 40 Ma that says baa 41 TV studio sign 42 Wife of Osiris 43 Oktoberfest quaff 44 Measure of reflected light

46 Gestation stations 49 Meal with bitter herbs 51 Wallflower’s cousin 57 Spontaneous motivation 58 “Too many cooks spoil the broth,” e.g.

59 Brass subordinate 60 Triangle, in a child’s drawing 61 Bus fare 62 Bit of bird food 63 Cat and dog 64 Far from drowsy 65 Casks DOWN 1 Padlock partner 2 ___ spumante (sparkling wine) 3 Horse control 4 Sharpshooter 5 Straight, as wheels 6 Cowboy’s milieu 7 Cast out 8 “Traffic” cop 9 Matter or freeze start 10 Certain marsupial

11 12 13 21 22 25 26 27 28 29 31 32 33 34 35 37 38 39 43 44 45 46 47 48

Despise with a passion Becomes disenchanted In need of a massage Eisenhower, casually Messy situation Hardly a sophisticate State solemnly Type of formality Ending with “church” or “movie” Prune, as a tree branch Dipper part 21st Greek letter Church feature Tried to avoid a tag Banco de Mexico concern Dip one’s ___ the water (test) It’s heard before a liftoff Hearty dinner dish They may compete with boxers Pre-Christmas period Oahu souvenir Take forcibly Severe spasm Rye fungus

49 Charmer’s critter 50 Ham-and-___ (oaf) 52 Martial arts workout 53 Pagan figurine 54 “In ___ of flowers...”

55 Tree of Life site 56 Spreads leaves for drying

Solution to yesterday’s puzzle:

Show

B2-2

pro-friends builds familyfriendly city

Economic Planning Secretary and Neda Director General Arsenio M. Balisacan said imports growth has already been showing encouraging signs that a double-digit hike for next year may be “imminent.”

“The continuing resurgence of imports is a healthy indication of robust investment demand, as it continues to be driven by intermediate and capital goods. The anticipated recovery of the global economy, and brisk election spending will continue to drive imports to double-digit

growth,” Balisacan said.

The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said the growth rate of import payments in October reached 16.8 percent, the highest since July’s 23 percent.

Data also showed that the growth of the country’s import bill has not been in the negative territory since June.

According to PSA figures, import payments contracted in January, March, April and May. The biggest Continued on A2

JOSE RIZAL’S MARTYRDOM Students watch the lights and sounds presentation of Dr. Jose Rizal’s martyrdom at the Rizal Park in Manila.

The nation commemorates the 119th death anniversary of the Philippines’s national hero today. Rizal was sentenced to death after a kangaroo court found him guilty of rebellion, sedition and conspiracy. He was shot at Bagumbayan (now Rizal Park) on December 30, 1896. ALYSA SALEN

BusinessMirror

PHL peso drops for a third year on Fed, stock outflows

C1 | Wednesday, December 30, 2015 Editor: Tet Andolong

ALEXANDRA

Pro-Friends builds Family-Friendly city ALEXANDRA’S kitchen

COMMUNITY church The Holy Family

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ALEXANDRA’S living room

B R R R

FAMILY-FRIENDLY city is currently growing in Mega Manila and it’s unlike any other you’ve seen before. Another quality development by property developer and game changer Property Company of Friends Inc., or simply Pro-Friends, Lancaster New City is a haven of quality, affordable homes in a complete community made and designed for Filipino families.

Deeply rooted in understanding the needs of the Filipino family, Pro-Friends dared to make a difference by delivering a one-of-akind township community near the Metro that would enable the family to completely bond with each other.

Starting with its first phase in 2007, Lancaster New City has quickly evolved into a master-planned community that spans to more than 1,400 hectares that covers Kawit, General Trias, and Imus, Cavite.

Situated near the Manila-Cavite Expressway, families may now have an option to own reasonably priced homes in a unique township near Metro Manila that focuses in providing families with the most

important aspect of their lives…to Live, Learn, Work, Play, and Pray.

Live

LANCASTER New City evolved into a complete community that currently has a selection of two-story townhomes and two-story single attached homes designed for young professionals, start-up families and bigger growing families. Each home is efficiently laid out to have sufficient space for the dwellers to comfortably move around inside the house.

Residents of selected house models have their very own Family Courtyard or Family Enclaves, outdoor spaces either at the back or in

CLUBHOUSE

front of each single attached home where children may safely play or they may have their special private gatherings.

Learn

MORE than just providing homes, Lancaster New City sought to make high quality, affordable education accessible to its residents. St. Edward Schools (SES), an educational institution made for the entire Lancaster New City community, gives families the option to send their children to a school that prides in raising globally competitive students with a strong sense of character. In its fourth year, St. Edward Schools has already reached a population of almost 2,000 students. Its first community school, St. Edward Faith Community School, also began its operations this school year (SY 2015-2016) to address the growing demands of the current

Lancaster New City population.

Soon, more community schools that are designed to be safely near residential areas will be established for the residents’ convenience.

Work

INSIDE Lancaster New City is the pioneer IT Park of Cavite, SuntechiPark. Being Pro-Friends’s first office IT Park development, SuntechiPark is designed to give the residents an option to work close to home, thus, giving them more time to spend with the family.

Lancaster New City also has a transport system that would easily bring the residents from their place of work to their homes in less time. As of 2015, Lancaster New City’s transport system already has a shuttle that brought residents from the Lancaster New City Transport Hub to the South West Integrated Provincial Transport Terminal (Coastal Mall) and vice versa.

ST. Edward School’s laboratory

Play

ACKNOWLEDGING the need for families to constantly bond with each other, Lancaster New City will be building Downtown Lancaster, a 25-hectare commercial-businesslifestyle district that will provide retail and leisure activities to both office workers and its residents.

Within Downtown Lancaster, residents and office workers alike will enjoy the convergence of Suntech iPark with the Square, its commercial area, and Central Greens.

The Square will be a sprawling commercial center that houses several commercial and retail establishments. In 2013, The Square already opened its first commercial building and houses a selection of restaurants, wellness boutiques, and other service centers.

Central Greens will be a place of relaxation amid the commercial

and retail districts with its treeshaded pathways, pocket gardens, and children’s playground.

Pray

A COMMUNITY will never be complete without a place of worship… where parents would teach their children about the importance of faith. At the heart of Lancaster New City is the Church of the Holy Family. Built in 2012, the Church of the Holy Family became a place of worship where families may attend Sunday Mass, hold their wedding vows and ceremonies, or celebrate the Simbang Gabi tradition.

This is Lancaster New City, the Family-Friendly City delivered by the Pro-Friends to be true to its company mission of creating communities and transforming lives. www.lancasternewcity.com.ph

property

C1

stunning upsets Sports BusinessMirror

he Philippine peso headed for its third straight annual loss, as global funds fled local stocks and tightening monetary policy in the US boosted the dollar.

Foreign investors sold $1.2 billion more shares than they bought this year, putting the Philippine Stock Exchange index on course for its first loss since 2008. The peso sank to a six-year low this month as the Federal Reserve (the Fed) raised borrowing costs for the first time in a decade.

Prospects of faster economic growth and robust remittances from overseas workers will support the Southeast Asian nation’s currency in 2016, according to BDO Unibank Inc. The peso has slumped 5.1 percent this year to 47.13 a dollar as of 11:54 a.m. in Manila, prices from the Bankers Association of the Philippines show, set for the longest stretch of annual declines since 2004.

The currency rose 0.1 percent on

DOMESTIC LIQUIDITY GREW 9.2% IN NOV

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By Bianca Cuaresma

oney that is available to you and me, referred to as domestic liquidity or M3 by central bankers, continued to grow at a high single digit in November, indicating that money supply remains ample for the country’s continued expansion this year and beyond.

In a report on Tuesday, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said M3 growth rose to P8 trillion in November, representing growth of 9.2 percent.

This was unchanged from the revised 9.2-percent acceleration reported the previous October.

The still-growing cash supply should prove beneficial for the $285-billion economy, as this

helps fuel the productive sectors and help boost the nation’s capacity to grow.

“The sustained expansion of M3 during the month indicates that money supply remains sufficient to support economic growth,” the central bank said in a statement.

“Going forward, the BSP will continue to monitor domestic liquidity dynamics to ensure that monetary conditions remain in line with price and financial stability,” it added. The central bank attributed the continued expansion of domestic liquidity to sustained demand for credit.

In a separate report, the BSP said the outstanding loans of the banking system slowed down a bit See “Domestic liquidity,” A2

Continued on A2

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| WednesdAy, december 30, 2015 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph sports@businessmirror.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao

‘Bill amending Consumer Act unlikely to pass in 16th Congress’

FOR Serena Williams, losing at the US Open is a nightmare.

STUNNING UPSETS

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By Paul Newberry The Associated Pres

ERENA WILLIAMS had done all the heavy lifting, or so it seemed.

She conquered the grass of Wimbledon, the red clay of Roland Garros, the hard courts of the Australian Open.

All that was left for tennis’s first Grand Slam since 1988 was a victory in the US Open, surely a mere formality when Williams got to the semifinals with a 43rd-ranked Italian standing in her way.

At 33, Williams was poised to put a remarkable capper on a brilliant career.

Roberta Vinci had other ideas.

“Every so often,” Vinci said, “a miracle happens.”

For Williams, it was a nightmare. After cruising through

the first set, 6-2, she finally seemed to feel the weight of history. Her legs got sluggish, her shots spraying all over the court. Vinci evened the match, 6-4, and took the decisive third set by the same score.

“I saw she was nervous,” Vinci said, “and that helped me.”

Williams’s loss will surely go down as one of the biggest upsets in any sport, which was the only way to stand apart in 2015.

Several of these jaw-droppers would’ve been at the top of the list just about any other year:

DOWN GOES ROUSEY!: Ronda Rousey was supposed to be invincible. She won her first 12 mixed-martial arts fights—eight of them in less than a minute—before stepping into the cage against Holly Holm in Melbourne, Australia. Rowdy Ronda finally met her match Down Under, when Holm finished her off with a devastating

kick to the head. “I’ll be back,” Rousey vowed.

PERFECT SEASON CRUMBLES: With a roster full of National Basketball Association (NBA)-quality underclassmen, Kentucky was 38-0 and needed two wins to become the first undefeated men’s hoops team in nearly four decades.

Turns out, the Wildcats weren’t perfect after all. Hard-nosed Wisconsin took down John Calipari’s squad 71-64 at the Final Four. “The season was a waste,” Kentucky’s Tyler Ulis said.

THE BRAVE BLOSSOMS: In rugby, there’s a clear line between the world’s top teams and everyone else. South Africa belongs in the first group. Japan is undoubtedly part of the second. But on the game’s biggest stage, the team known as “The Brave Blossoms” pulled off the greatest upset the sport has ever seen, beating the two-time Rugby World Cup champion Springboks 34-32. “I’m glad we’ve managed to not only surprise our own fans back in Japan,” fullback Ayumu Goromaru said, “but also fans across the world.”

ONE SHOT TOO MANY: Jordan Spieth won the first two major championships on the golfing calendar, and coming down the stretch of the British Open it looked as though he’d make it three in a row. The young Texan shared the lead with two holes to go after sinking a 50-foot birdie putt. But he missed an 8-footer at the 17th and slipped out of a playoff by a single shot, denied in his bid for the first modern Grand Slam. “We gave it a great effort,” Spieth said.

‘GRAVEYARD OF CHAMPIONS’: It was certainly a glorious year for American Pharoah, which became the first horse

in 37 years to capture the Triple Crown. But even he was bitten by the upset bug at Saratoga, a track appropriately known as the “Graveyard of Champions.” Caught in the stretch by 16-1 long shot Keen Ice, American Pharoah lost the Travers by three-quarters of a length. But he’ll always have that Triple Crown.

THE MOUSE THAT ROARED: Bournemouth was toiling in the fourth level of English football in 2010. After climbing to the Premier League for the first time, the Cherries pulled off stunners in back-to-back games this season, knocking off defending champion Chelsea and 20-time champion Manchester United. “Just checking the results again to make certain the last week has actually happened,” Chairman Jeff Mostyn tweeted afterward.

FATHER AND SON: We’ll all remember Kentucky’s loss, but, perhaps, the most compelling image from the National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament was injured Georgia State Coach Ron Hunter tumbling off his stool after his son R.J. hit a three-pointer to cap an improbable upset by the 14th-seeded Panthers over No. 3 Baylor. And let’s not forget UAB prevailing against Iowa State in another 14-beats-three shocker.

By Catherine N. Pillas & Butch Fernandez

victory Florida State, snapping the Seminoles’ 28-game ACC winning streak. Also worthy of mention from college football: Michigan State ending Ohio State’s bid for a second straight national championship, and Texas handing Oklahoma its only loss in the Red River Showdown.

IT’S ALL IN THE NAME: Tyson Fury was born to be a fighter, even though he entered the world three months early weighing just one pound. His father predicted the ailing infant would not only survive, but grow into a heavyweight champion. Doubling down, he named his son after Mike Tyson. That prophecy was fulfilled when Fury, now 6-foot-9, scored a unanimous decision over Wladimir Klitschko, ending his nine-and-a-half-year reign as champion.

If it was any consolation to Klitschko, he had plenty of company in 2015.

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KICK SIX: Georgia Tech went 1-7 in the Atlantic Coast Conference this season.

That lone win won’t soon be forgotten.

Lance Austin returned a blocked field goal 78 yards for a touchdown on the final play to give the Yellow Jackets a 22-16

SOCCER’S DARK YEAR

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ONDON—Dawn had just broken in Zurich when a man was spotted being dragged out of an opulent hotel’s side entrance. Raising a single white sheet, hotel staff made an inadequate attempt to shield the guest being forced to check out early after being arrested in his bedroom.

Eduardo Li was in clear view on the quiet side street as he was bundled into an unmarked police car, one of seven International Football Federation (Fifa) officials arrested as Swiss police swooped on the Baur au Lac hotel at the behest of American authorities.

Years of investigations into soccer corruption burst into public view on the morning of May 27, as the so-called World Cup of fraud was exposed and Fifa would be coerced into cleaning up its act.

Li, the Costa Rican federation president who was in Zurich expecting to join Fifa’s elite executive committee, was a lesserknown target of the US case. But his arrest, which was captured on video by the Associated Press (AP) was the most visible.

By the end of 2015, four Fifa vice presidents had been indicted in the US, including two swept up in a second wave of arrests in December after being chosen to replace those from the Americas indicted in May. A fifth vice president, Michel Platini, was banished by Fifa from soccer until 2023 along with Sepp Blatter—the man he was expected to succeed as president—after their dealings became the subject of a Swiss criminal case.

After 40 years at Fifa, 17 as president, the reign of the seemingly immovable Blatter ended in disgrace in 2015. Few lamented his downfall.

The 79-year-old Blatter did not see it coming in February when he beamed: “Now you see why I am happy,” as he relaxed in a Northern Ireland hotel accompanied by a girlfriend almost 30 years his junior at a Fifa meeting.

And Blatter managed to brush off the anger that greeted

revelations about the scale of bribery and kickbacks— corruption that mostly occurred within confederations rather than involving Fifa headquarters (HQ) in Zurich—to be voted in for a fifth term by federations on May 29.

Blatter subjected himself to a bruising encounter with the media the next day, a Saturday morning, when he was asked whether some of the accusations were indicative of his “incompetence or intentional negligence.”

Blatter was defiant, vowing to see out his four-year term.

The bravado quickly evaporated.

“Then came the different information from the US with this and that,” Blatter aide Walter Gagg told the AP. After being warned in meetings with associates that he could be the next Fifa executive in the prosecutors’ sights, Blatter stunned the world on June 2 by announcing plans to resign, accepting he lacked the game’s backing.

Blatter hoped to hand over power in February, but the Swiss attorney general intervened by raiding Fifa’s HQ in September and questioning the president. Years of suspicions about Blatter’s integrity were confirmed when he was banished by Fifa’s ethics judge for unethical conduct over a financial transaction with Platini, who received the same eight-year ban from soccer.

The Swiss investigation—like the parallel American case— will continue into 2016 as trials begin and more officials fear their illicit profiteering from sportingcontracts is uncovered. At the same time, Fifa will implement reforms designed to clean up the organization and elect a new president on February 26.

Perhaps, what surprised soccer fans in 2015 as much as the arrests was the interest of US Attorney General Loretta Lynch in such sleaze.

But the significant role the world’s most popular sport plays in the US was confirmed not only by Lynch but by Americans at, of all things in this year, a Fifa event. When the US won a third

Women’s World Cup title in July, the victory over Japan was watched by more than 25 million American television viewers.

The wrong side of passion for soccer in the US was also displayed this year when the AP filmed fans from New York rivals City and Red Bulls clashing before their derby in New Jersey in August, hooliganism previously associated with European supporters.

One of the enduring images, though, of a soccer year scarred by wrongdoing was of the game’s ability to provide a powerful platform for unity after becoming a target for Islamic extremists in last month’s Paris attacks.

After France’s match against Germany at the Stade de France was targeted by suicide bombers, who failed to enter the stadium, the French team traveled to England for the friendliest of friendly games. The fixture was overshadowed by a sense of grief, but also of fraternity as the Wembley Stadium arch was lit in the blue, white and red of the French flag and the national anthem was sung by both sets of fans.

But amid the display of friendship was a realization that stadiums were now targets. Security was quickly beefed up across Europe and the heightened state of alert led to highprofile games being called off.

Soccer’s most pressing concern in 2016 will remain ensuring the safety of fans and players, particularly with France hosting the first 24-team European Championship in June and July.

The showpiece event, along with the US-hosted Copa America Centenario, will also offer soccer’s stars a chance to remind people why it’s the world’s favorite game—rather than a source of corruption. AP

SPORTS 40 years at Fifa, 17 as president, the reign »of theAFTERseemingly immovable Sepp Blatter ends in disgrace in 2015. Few lamented his downfall. AP

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Senate bill seeking to amend Republic Act (RA) 7394, or the Consumer Act of the Philippines, may no longer be passed by the 16th Congress, a senior official of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) said on Tuesday.

As time runs out on the Aquino administration and elections will be held in May

PESO exchange rates n US 47.1660

2016, Trade Undersecretary Victorio Mario A. Dimagiba said Senate Bill (SB) 2699 filed

by Sen. Paolo Benigno Aquino IV, may have to wait for the next Congress.

Under SB 2699, the DTI will increase administrative penalties from the present minimum of P500 per violation to P50,000, or 5 percent of the gross value of the consumer product or services subject of the complaint, whichever is higher.

The DTI also wants to be given the power to shut down establishments found selling unsafe products. Dimagiba said a new version of the proposed measure will include measures for consumer safety, in line with the United Nations’ newly adopted revised guidelines for consumer protection.

The revisions were adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 22.

According to a statement released by the DTI

on Tuesday, some of the features of the revised guidelines include measures to address gaps in consumer protection in financial services, privacy, energy, travel and tourism.

Meanwhile, Communications Secretary Herminio B. Coloma Jr. said on Tuesday that Malacañang has tapped Trade Undersecretary Adrian S. Cristobal Jr. as “ad interim secretary” of the DTI. Cristobal will fill up the post to be Continued on A2

n japan 0.3920 n UK 70.1783 n HK 6.0857 n CHINA 7.2697 n singapore 33.5176 n australia 34.2652 n EU 51.7411 n SAUDI arabia 12.5766

Source: BSP (29 December 2015)

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News

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Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Faster global growth, elections to hike imports by 10% in 2016 Continued from A1

cut in the country’s import bill was registered in May at 13.4 percent.

Balisacan said payments for imported goods grew in October on the back of higher inward shipments of raw materials and intermediate goods which grew 40.1 percent, followed by capital goods at 25.4 percent, and consumer goods, 4.1 percent.

“Increasing appetite for capital goods and manufactured goods, such as materials accounting for the manufacture of electrical equipment, signifies an upbeat business sector,” Balisacan said.

Import payments for raw materials and intermediate goods reached $2.79 billion and accounted for 42.8 percent of the country’s total merchandise imports in October.

The value of imported capital goods, meanwhile, reached $2.11 billion in October. It accounted for 32.3 percent of total imports.

The Neda said imports of capital goods have been expanding at

double-digit rates since March. Balisacan said this bodes well for overall investments growth in 2015.

PSA data showed that import payments for consumer goods increased to $1.1 billion, while total import payments for mineral fuels and lubricants declined by 38.5 percent to $524.8 million in October.

The Neda said the decline payments for imported mineral fuels and lubricants was mainly due to the volume purchases and price decline of petroleum crude.

“On the back of a weak global environment, the strong growth in shipments of capital goods and consumer goods points to a resilient domestic economy. Supportive policies for a thriving business sector should be continued,” Balisacan said.

“These include lowering the cost of and reducing the time for starting a business, reducing red tape and transaction costs, and supporting innovation and technological improvements, among others,” he added.

The country’s top 3 import sources in October was China, which

Domestic liquidity. . .

in November when it grew by only 13.6 percent, from 13.9 percent the previous October.

The loan expansion was made possible in part by so-called loans for production activities. Such comprise more than 80 percent of the banks’

cornered 17.2 percent of total import payments, followed by Japan and the US with a share of 11.2 percent and 10.7 percent, respectively.

Imports from China amounted to $1.12 billion in October. This represented an increase of 22.9 percent, from $913.36 million recorded a year ago.

The balance of trade in goods for the Philippines in October registered a deficit of $1.93 billion, higher than the $441.11 million trade deficit in October 2014.

Combined imports for January to October amounted to $56.52 billion, a 3.9-percent increase compared with $54.39 billion in the same period of last year.

Better economic prospects for the country’s major export markets next year have also made the Philippine Exporters Confederation Inc. (Philexport) more optimistic. Philexport said the sector’s revenue could grow by 10 percent to $27.5 billion next year.

Francisco Ferrer, Philexport trustee representing the sector, said shipments in 2016 could increase on the back of the possible relocation of new electronics firms in the country, as well as sustained demand from overseas export markets.

He said the demand for hard disk drives for computers remains robust due to the relocation of at least 20 new Japanese electronics makers from China to the Philippines.

Ferrer said, however, that Philexport’s 10-percent forecast is based on the Philippine Economic Zone Authority’s standard 10-percent annual target on all exports.

The Semiconductor and Electronics Industries in the Philippines Inc. (Seipi) has yet to disclose its forecast for 2016. Seipi earlier said the sector’s revenue could post flat growth this year due to sluggish demand from major markets, such as China.

Data from the PSA showed that electronics accounted for 52 percent of total exports revenue in October. With Catherine N. Pillas

by increased lending to the following sectors: real-estate activities at 21.8 percent; electricity, gas, steam and airconditioning supply at 27.8 percent; wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles at 13.9 percent; financial and

insurance activities at 15.2 percent; and construction at 29.7 percent.

Bank lending to other sectors, likewise, expanded during the month, except for professional, scientific and technical activities, which declined by 27.5 percent.

Higher electronics exports

Continued from A1

aggregate-loan portfolio.

Loans for production activities grew by 14.1 percent in November, slightly slower than the 14.4 percent the previous month. The expansion in production loans, on the other hand, was driven primarily

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‘Bill amending Consumer Act unlikely to pass in 16th Congress’. . .

Continued from A1

vacated by resigned Trade Secretary Gregory L.Domingo by the end of the year.

Quoting Executive Secretary Paquito N. Ochoa Jr., Coloma said President Aquino has appointed Cristobal to take over as interim DTI secretary “effective December 31.”

In September Domingo conveyed to President Aquino his request to be relieved citing health reasons. The President, however, asked him to stay on until after the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting hosted by the Philippines in November.

In an e-mail to Palace reporters, Coloma said a transmittal letter has been sent to the Commission on Appointments for Cristobal’s early confirmation when Congress reconvenes next month.

Cristobal joined the Aquino administration in August 2010, when he was appointed DTI undersecretary for International Trade. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley and his Juris Doctor of Laws at the Ateneo de Manila University.

PHL peso drops for a third year on Fed, stock outflows Continued from A1

Tuesday. A gauge of dollar strength has risen 8.4 percent in 2015.

“The peso reflects the strong dollar,” said Jonathan Ravelas, chief market strategist at BDO Unibank in Manila. “We’ve been seeing higher levels for the dollar, but the peso remains stronger compared to other currencies in the region due to strong fundamentals.”

Any further weakening of the peso will probably be short-lived, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Deputy Governor Diwa C. Guinigundo said in a radio interview over the weekend. President Aquino’s economic

team is counting on consumption and state spending to boost growth to 6.9 percent this quarter, from 6 percent in the July-to-September period, as the outgoing leader seeks to strengthen his infrastructure legacy and boost the resilience of one of Asia’s fastestgrowing economies.

BDO Unibank’s Ravelas expects the peso to trade in a range of 46.50 to 48.50 per dollar in 2016. The presidential elections in May, the extent of US monetary tightening and the response of China’s economy to policy-makers’ stimulus will be the major factors impacting the peso next year, he said.

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Editor: Dionisio L. Pelayo • Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Palace expects OK of pet pending bills in Jan

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side from the controversial Bangsamoro basic law (BBL) creating a new entity for Muslims in Mindanao, President Aquino expects Congress to pass pay adjustments for state workers, along with other pending administration bills when Congress reconvenes after an extended Christmas vacation on January 19.

This was disclosed on Tuesday by Communications Secretary Herminio B. Coloma Jr. over government radio, even as he acknowledged lawmakers’ earlier efforts that led to the timely passage of the

P3-trillion 2016 budget bill before lawmakers adjourned for Christmas vacation on December 19.

Follow ing the year-end holiday break, Coloma indicated that the Aquino

Govt lifts political ad ban on public-utility vehicles

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LECTORAL candidates may now place political ads on public-utility vehicles (PUVs), the chairman of the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) said on Tuesday.

The decision of the agency to lift the ban on political ad placements on public vehicles was in line with the Supreme Court’s decision to declare null and void the 2013 Commission on Elections (Comelec) resolution prohibiting the posting, display and exhibition of election campaign GINEZ materials and propaganda in PUVs. “Upang mabigyan ng karampatang behikulo ang mga official na kandidato sa nalalapit na national election, nagdesisyun ang board na baguhin ang naunang memorandum na nagbabawal ang paglalagay ng political ad sa mga pampublikong sasakyan,” LTFRB Chairman Winston M. Ginez said.

The government official, however, pointed out that while political candidates are allowed to place transit ads on public

vehicles, operators are still bound to strictly comply with the standard requirements and guidelines on how to apply and place their ads.

Under the Standard Requirements and Guidelines in the Processing, Approval and Issuance of Permit on Transit Advertisement memo issued in 2013, parties are required to submit all legal documents for the application for transit advertisements.

It also specifies the exact location and size where the political ads can only be placed and must ensure that it will not impede, limit or obstruct in any way the drivers’ line of sight and will not in any way reduce the size of the required markings.

Political candidates and PUV operators who fail to comply with the standard requirements and guidelines of the said memo will be penalized accordingly.

A fine of P10,000 will be imposed on first offense, and P20,000 for second offense and revocation of the franchise for third offense. Lorenz S. Marasigan

Next administration must capitalize on PHL tourism gains, Marcos says

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en. Ferdinand “Bongbong” R. Marcos Jr. on Tuesday said the next administration must take advantage of the initial gains of the tourism industry to generate more jobs and income opportunities for our people.

Marcos aired the call following the Department of Tourism’s (DOT) report that tourist arrivals in the country hit the 5 million mark this December.

The DOT expressed confidence tourist arrivals in 2016 could reach 6 million.

“Although that is still far from the original target of 10 million tourist arrivals by 2016, these initial projections reflect we are gaining ground in our efforts to promote the Philippines as a top tourist destination,” Marcos, also a vice-presidential front-runner in next year’s elections, said.

He, however, warned that tourist arrivals would not increase unless the next administration vigorously pursues tourism-related infrastructure projects and completes them as soon as possible, especially by opening new airports, upgrading of existing ones, and adding seaports and other related road projects.

“These facilities leave a lasting impression on tourists. How can you expect anybody to recommend that a friend visit the Philippines if his arrival here was delayed because of runway congestion, if he found the airport comfort rooms dirty, or if they got stuck for hours in traffic?” Marcos said.

Apart from ensuring all vital infrastructures are in place, Marcos said the government should also train tourism

MARCOS

industry workers and businesses to make the country more tourist-friendly.

“I don’t think it would be too difficult to achieve given the legendary hospitality of Filipinos, most of whom can also speak English,” Marcos said.

Marcos has been pushing to strengthen the country’s tourism industry, which has contributed a large part in the economic development of Ilocos Norte during his stint as threeterm governor of the province.

He cited a report of the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) showing that Southeast Asia posted the second-fastest growth of travel and tourism in 2015 at 7 percent, next only to South Asia, which posted a 7.7-percent growth.

“The WTTC forecasts that the sector will continue growing and that, by 2025, it will contribute S11.3 trillion in GDP to the world economy and will support 355 million jobs globally.

administration will resume work on unfinished business, including the still-to-be-completed reforms in the bureaucracy. Coloma also explained that Mr. Aquino, who is set to step down after serving his six-year term on June 30, is, likewise, looking to leave a legacy that includes stronger public institutions.

On the administration’s legislative agenda, Coloma confirmed that President Aquino also

awaits approval of the BBL that will replace the soon-to-be-abolished Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

He added that Mr. Aquino is also set on making sure that adequate preparations are in place for the conduct of clean and orderly electoral process when voters go to the polls during the national and local elections on May 9.

At the same time, Coloma said the Palace

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acknowledges the “high-level of optimism” expressed by Filipinos in two year-end surveys.

“The Aquino administration will intensify its efforts in implementing vital programs that would broaden the scope of social welfare and protection, generate employment and livelihood opportunities for our countrymen, and sustain the gains of the economy during the past five years,” Coloma said. Butch Fernandez

A4 Wednesday, December 30, 2015 • Editor: Angel R. Calso

Opinion BusinessMirror

editorial

Looking forward to 2016 and beyond

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N six more months, the current administration will mercifully vanish from the scene to give us a chance to forget the pettiness and incompetence with which it is associated. Let us greet the New Year with charity in our hearts that we may live in harmony with our countrymen and countrywomen, and clarity in our minds that we may know what we want to make of our lives, individually and as a nation.

On the second point, we wrote in this space some five months ago, after the President’s State of the Nation Address, the following: “Let us lay out the vision of a Philippines that we want for ourselves, where prosperity and inclusiveness prevail throughout the land, a vision that we can bring into realization within our lifetime.” Let’s try to concretize that vision here.

From a rule of thumb in computational algebra, we know that if our GDP per capita of $2,760 at end of 2014 is growing at 6 percent per annum, it will double in 12 years, reaching $5,500 by 2026. This is nowhere approaching high income status, but it is high enough to enable us to sit proudly in the company of other people in the concert of nations.

Beginning in July 2016 let us plan on doubling our GDP per capita every 12 years. We can do this by ensuring that, during that period of time, our GDP grows steadily at 7.5 percent per annum and our population grows at no more than 1.5 percent per annum. These are modest targets. Can we achieve them? Of course, we can.

We will have to do better, however, than we have been doing in the last five years. We will have to decisively increase our investment rate. We just have to attract more and more foreign direct investments (FDI). Given the example of our neighbors, multiplying our current levels of FDI by a factor of five will not be a major hurdle.

On the population side, statistics show that our population is currently growing at 1.8 percent per year, approaching what specialists call the demographic transition, that period when couples voluntarily opt for smaller families. A slight decrease in the size of new families will bring the growth rate down to 1.5 percent.

Increased investment will produce another extremely salutary effect: the inclusiveness that we desire for our society. Increased investment will create jobs in the hundreds of thousands for our working people. This will enable us to begin getting rid of the poverty in our midst and start establishing a less unequal society.

Of course, it is not increased investment alone that will enable us to achieve inclusive growth. Industrial policy, foreign trade policy and fiscal policy will have to be brought to bear on the issue to ensure achievement of our goals.

Just six more months and we can begin working for the realization of our vision.

What is a hero?

Susie G. Bugante

All About Social Security

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very 30th of December we commemorate the death of our national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal, and the day is aptly called Rizal Day. On this day, we pay tribute to an extraordinary person who is known to be the pride of the Malayan race. He was considered a genius, a man of incredible intellectual power and artistic abilities. While he was opposed to the use of violence, he wrote and spoke against Spanish tyranny, making him an enemy of the state. His martyrdom on December 29, 1896, spurred the Philippine Revolution until June 12, 1898, when the Philippines declared its independence from Spain.

As the dictionary defines the term, a hero is someone who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities. Rizal had great courage, his achievements were beyond outstanding, and his patriotism and compassion were among his noble qualities. Despite the controversy attending his being declared a

national hero, there is no doubt that Dr. Jose Rizal was a brilliant and exceptional person who deserves to be honored as our national hero.

Aside from honoring our national hero this month of December, we also pay tribute to our modern day heroes, the overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). December has been declared OFW month and, as such,

Why Africa isn’t rising

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By James Gibney | Bloomberg View

n one of Africa’s most celebrated surprises this year, Nigerian voters unseated President Goodluck Jonathan. The election of Muhammadu Buhari defied expectations of electoral fraud and violence, and his anticorruption platform sparked hopes for reform and economic growth.

Yet, progress on both fronts has been slow and uneven. To understand why, pick up Tom Burgis’s The Looting Machine, a bracing look at why a continent blessed with one-third of the world’s hydrocarbon and mineral wealth remains mired in poverty and dysfunction.

A former Africa correspondent for the Financial Times, Burgis goes beyond the tales of spectacular venality among Africa’s “Big Men”—the world’s four longest-serving rulers are in African countries bursting with oil or minerals—to explain how the continent’s “resource curse” is sapping its development.

Nigeria is a case in point. Africa’s biggest oil producer gets more than 90 percent of its foreign earnings and two-thirds of its tax revenue from oil exports. Yet, there are many reasons that hydrocarbon bounty is a mixed blessing.

For starters, it can drive up the value of a nation’s currency, making other exports less competitive and imports more attractive. As Burgis points out, textiles used to be Nigeria’s most important manufacturing industry. But cheaper Chinese imports smuggled in by Nigerian gangs (an illicit trade worth more than $2 billion a year) have devastated the industry—one example of why Africa

produces just 1.5 percent of global manufacturing output, despite its abundance of cheap labor.

Billions of dollars in oil revenues are also a tempting pot of money for bent politicians. One 2012 report said corruption had swallowed up $37 billion worth of Nigeria’s oil money over the last decade. That surpasses the annual economic output of more than half the nations in Africa, as well as Nigeria’s annual federal budget.

Such corruption has other toxic effects. Dirty money from bribes and kickbacks has to be laundered, and because those doing the cleaning don’t care so much about profit or productive investment, their infusions of cash distort the value of assets.

Nigeria’s reliance on oil for tax revenues also creates a perverse political dynamic: As Burgis puts it, “the ability of rulers of Africa’s resource state to govern without recourse to popular consent.” Instead of having to do right by taxpayers to win their votes, politicians focus on controlling and dispensing mineral wealth to bolster their patronage networks.

“Politics becomes a game of mobilizing one’s ethnic brethren,” Burgis notes—a contest with dangerous destabilizing effects in Nigeria’s fractious polity. In fact, as one Nigerian

various agencies of government have lined up several activities to honor our OFWs who usually come home to spend the Christmas holidays with their families.

The Social Security System (SSS) is one of those agencies of government that welcomed our homecoming OFWs. Since 1997 OFWs may be voluntarily covered by SSS. Filipinos working abroad as contractual or resident workers can apply as SSS members, provided they are not yet over 60 years old.

To register as an OFW member, one must accomplish the membership registration form and submit it at the nearest SSS representative office overseas or at the SSS Philippine Overseas Employment Administration branch with any of the following documents: birth certificate, baptismal certificate, driver’s license, Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) card and passport. Monthly contributions will be based on the monthly earnings at the time of registration, computed in Philippine peso, but not lower than P5,000.

To make it more convenient for

overseas workers to remit their contributions, the SSS has partnered with accredited banks and remittance centers with branches or tie-ups in the various host countries where most of our OFWs are posted.

OFWs may pay their whole year’s contribution anytime within the year. Another payment option is to remit contributions on a quarterly basis following the schedule for quarterly payments.

The SSS now has dedicated contact channels for OFWs as follows: E-mail: ofw.relations@sss.gov.ph Hotline: (632) 364-7796; (632) 364-7798

governor explains, if he failed to share the wealth, ill-gotten or, otherwise, “I’ve got a big political enemy.”

Nigeria is far from the exception.

At least 20 African countries are what the International Monetary Fund calls “resource-rich”: that is, their natural resources account for more than one quarter of exports. Risking limb if not life, Burgis gamely takes readers around some of them, from the coltan mines of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Guinea’s rich bauxite and iron ore deposits to the diamond fields of Zimbabwe.

Even as the names and histories of the different predatory leaders blur, one thing is clear: Their looting depends on an all-too-willing cast of outside partners, whether Western mining and oil companies that plunked down bribes and abetted massacres, shady Israeli middlemen or shell companies in the British Virgin Islands.

Particularly disquieting is Burgis’s description of the unsavory role played by the World Bank’s International Finance Corp., which backed visibly corrupt, environmentally destructive, or just plain inequitable oil and mining ventures in Chad, Guinea and Ghana—all countries it was supposed to be helping.

If Burgis’s book were to be made into a movie, though, the star villain would have to be Samuel Pa, the bespectacled, bearded Zelig behind some of the continent’s most dubious recent resource deals. Over the course of several decades, Pa parlayed the connections he made as a Chinese intelligence operative and arms merchant into a sprawling,

secretive consortium based in Hong Kong, known as the 88 Queensway Group, not to mention a spot on the US Treasury’s sanctions list.

Western criticism of China’s growing presence in Africa, Burgis writes, nonetheless, carries a “distinct whiff of hypocrisy” that might make even King Leopold blush.

Moreover, ordinary Africans stand to gain much from the $1 trillion or so that Chinese entities will reportedly plow into their continent by 2025.

That said, the tale of Pa and Queensway, which has its tentacles wrapped around oil holdings in Angola and Nigeria, diamond mines in Zimbabwe and agriculture in Mozambique (to name just a few of its ventures), reeks of sulfur and brimstone. As several seasoned African mining executives told Burgis, the Queensway Group reminded them of Cecil John Rhodes, the forerunner of those who “use the conquest of natural resources to advance political power and vice versa.”

One of the best hopes for curbing this rapacity and corruption may be to impose greater transparency on Africa’s outside business partners.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission, for instance, recently proposed a rule requiring US-listed oil, gas and mining companies to publish details of their payments to governments. Even China may see the writing on the wall. A few months after Burgis’s book came out this year, he reported that Pa had been detained in one of China’s deepening anticorruption probes.

Guess that scotches the prospect of any Pa scholarships in the future.

For more information about the Social Security System (SSS) and its programs, call our 24-hour call center at (632) 920-6446 to 55, Monday to Friday, or send an e-mail to member_ relations@sss.gov.ph.

Susie G. Bugante is the vice president for public affairs and special events of the SSS. Send comments about this column to susiebugante.bmirror@ gmail.com.

Opinion BusinessMirror

opinion@businessmirror.com.ph

Apology isn’t justice for The other pollutants Korea’s ‘comfort women’

By Veerabhadran Ramanathan & Daniel Press |TNS

Noah Feldman

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BLOOMBERG

t long last, Korea’s “comfort women” are getting a real apology from Japan’s government for being forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese army during World War II. But the moment is bittersweet, and not just because it’s taken 70 years.

The apology comes not out of a change in Japanese sentiment, but from a change in geopolitics—namely, the rise of China and the increasing need for Japan and South Korea to cooperate on mutual defense. And it comes at the price of a promise by the South Korean government not to criticize Japan over the issue again—a trade of moral claims for compensation and finality.

The saga of the Japanese nonapology has had many twists and turns, demonstrating that, in the contemporary political cultures of both Japan and Korea, apologies aren’t mere formalities but are laden with symbolic significance. A muted 1993 apology was accompanied by compensation from private donors and marked a refusal by Japan’s government to acknowledge its role in the sexual enslavement. Koreans got the point, and some women refused to take money from the fund.

The question of state responsibility has remained a sore point. A South Korean historian who has written about the role of private entrepreneurs in enslaving women during the war has been condemned by survivors who say she is minimizing the Japanese government’s guilt.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a strong nationalist, isn’t naturally inclined to apologize for Japan’s wartime atrocities. In the past, he’s angered Chinese and Koreans by visiting the controversial Yasukuni shrine, which honors Japan’s war dead, including convicted war criminals. What motivates Abe is the quest to improve Japan’s national security. China’s military expansionism is the main cause. Almost equally important is an accompanying perception that the US may not be the strong protector it has traditionally been. Would the US go to war to defend Taiwan from China? If the answer is no, then why would the US go to war to protect Japan or South Korea? If there’s doubt about the US commitment, Japan and Korea need each other. The Pacific security arrangement is often described as a “hub and spokes” model, with the US at the center. Abe is setting out to strengthen the ties between the spokes—because he recognizes that the hub is not as willing a gravitational force as it once was.

In this increasingly uncertain Cool War environment, the perception of Japanese-Korean solidarity is an important aspect of Abe’s program. It’s why he was willing to pay the political price at home of an apology to the comfort women that accompanies an $8.3-million fund— this time paid by his government.

And as a nationalist, he can afford to draw on his store of right-wing credibility to buy political advantage.

But the apology and the money came with a price attached: South Korea’s promise that the issue of the comfort women would be settled once and for all, and that its government wouldn’t complain about it further. And Abe can tell his constituents that he has bought the Koreans’ silence, removing an argument that always came up when Japan was

accused of being aggressive or nationalist. That’s almost always how reparations, whether legally formal or (as in this case) informal, work in the real world: The wronged party gets compensation and an apology; the party that did the wrong gets a de facto promise that it won’t have to be reminded of what it did. Without this trade, countries wouldn’t voluntarily pay up, so it may seem naïve to criticize the exchange, provided you think compensation is a good thing.

All tort settlements, even those between private parties, have something of this character. Compensation functions as corrective justice, and the injured party is expected to be satisfied by the deal.

But morally speaking, crimes against humanity aren’t the same as car accidents. Those who enslaved women during World War II weren’t being negligent; they raped and dehumanized these women in particular, and the status and fundamental rights of women everywhere.

Promising a form of silence about such crimes in exchange for an apology and compensation seems inadequate to the scope and meaning of the wrongdoing. During negotiations, Japan also sought the removal of a memorial statue in front of its embassy in Seoul. South Korea’s government promised to take up the issue with the survivors—implying a good-faith effort to make the memorial disappear.

Crimes against humanity are the world’s business. They shouldn’t be forgotten, and discussing, as well as memorializing them shouldn’t be suppressed or discouraged.

The interest in keeping the memory of such crimes alive also extends to the victims themselves. Of course they’re entitled to compensation. But it feels wrong if they can only get it because their government has agreed to drop their case and, to a degree, is encouraging them to drop their efforts to shame the perpetrators.

The realities of international practice are inevitable and harsh. Individuals need states to prosecute claims against other states on their behalf.

And once states are in the game, they’ll behave as states usually do: trading values and ideals and honor for advancement of their interests. But that doesn’t mean we always have to like it. The memory of terrible wrongs should be preserved, as a goad to stop them from happening again.

Our horror about the treatment of the comfort women should steel us to act on behalf of women kidnapped into sexual slavery by Islamic State and Boko Haram. No amount of reconciliation with the past should make us reconcile with those crimes of the present.

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mong climate scientists, the consensus is that we must become carbon-neutral by 2050 to avoid catastrophic environmental disruptions. Negotiators at the recent summit in Paris accordingly focused on curbing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

There’s a major problem, however, with a CO2-centric strategy.

Because carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for a century or more, and because we won’t abandon fossil fuels overnight, neutrality by 2050 simply isn’t good enough to keep the Earth from warming 2 degrees Celsius—the generally agreed-upon limit—much less the ambitious goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius that many nations support.

If we’re serious about preventing or at least slowing climate change, we have to broaden our hit list; even as we move toward carbon neutrality, we must also restrict methane, carbon soot, ozone and hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) coolants. These pollutants are about 25 to 4,000 times more

potent warmers than carbon dioxide, but they remain in the atmosphere from mere days in the case of carbon soot to 15 years in the case of HFCs. Curbing the emissions of these short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs), unlike curbing carbon emissions, will have an immediate effect and can dramatically slow global warming within a few decades.

To put real numbers on it: If we reduce our emissions of methane 50 percent, black carbon 90 percent and fully replace HFCs by 2030, then we’ll cut in half projected global warming over the next 35 years. These steps will delay environmental disaster and give us time we desperately need to radically change our energy diet.

Existing technologies, clean

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

alternatives and regulatory mechanisms, such as the 1987 Montreal Protocol, that have proved effective for other climate pollutants can be quickly repurposed to deal with SLCPs. In November the 197 parties to the Montreal Protocol agreed to work toward an HFC amendment in 2016.

Some parts of the world aren’t waiting. India and Pakistan committed to phase down HFCs. Mexico has pledged to cut SLCPs 25 percent by 2030. California has already cut its carbon soot and ozone-forming gases 90 percent and is on its way to curbing all four SLCPs. There’s no downside to this approach. By curbing short-lived pollutants, not only will we obtain shortterm relief from rapid warming, but we will also slow sea-level rise, increase crop yields and score a major victory for public health. Indoor and outdoor pollution today causes more than 7 million premature deaths annually. Curbing SLCPs can benefit us now, saving potentially 40 million lives over the next 20 years.

What we have in front of us isn’t a choice between pulling lever one (carbon dioxide) or lever two (SLCPs); it’s crucial that we pull both levers with all of our collective might. We have a moral imperative to act immediately with everything at our disposal, not only because there’s no Planet B—as environmental activists put it—but because climate change seriously harms human well-being.

Beijing’s air quality index hit 253 this month, registering in the “very unhealthy” zone. The last time Los Angeles County reached that level was in 1991. Many cities around the world have reduced urban air pollution using technologies and rules that have stood the test of time, while constantly evolving. California is already pulling both levers, while its population and its economy are growing and its people are breathing cleaner air.

By acting unilaterally or in small alliances, it’s possible to make real progress on climate change now, above and beyond what the Paris agreement calls for. We have the levers; we just need to pull them.

The capture of Ramadi from the Islamic State

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f you want to identify a recent low point in the war against the Islamic State (IS), go back to May when the ineffectual Iraqi military cut and ran from Ramadi, a Sunni town just 70 miles west of Baghdad. They abandoned their equipment and fled. The Iraqis “showed no will to fight,” US Defense Secretary Ash Carter said.

With that embarrassing defeat, the US strategy for arming and training Iraqi soldiers to defend their country was left exposed as an apparent failure.

Six months later, revived with training, equipment and deadly air support from a US-led coalition, the Iraqi military force found the will and capacity to win. Iraqi troops, bolstered by Sunni tribal fighters, on Monday expelled IS fighters from Ramadi’s government center and appeared to be in control of much of the rest of the city.

Now it’s the enemy that’s falling back, and for the first time, the world can contemplate that the tide may finally be turning against the IS, at least in Iraq.

The significance here, beyond a morale-boosting victory, is that Iraqi security forces did the ground fighting themselves, learning how to take

on the IS’s challenging combination of disciplined fighters and suicide bombers. The US played a big role in support, carrying out more than 630 air strikes in the area in the past six months while providing training, advice and specialized bulldozers and other equipment to clear bombs and booby traps, the Pentagon said.

The Iraqis never should have lost Ramadi, of course, or Fallujah or Mosul, two cities seared in US consciousness as costly battles during the Iraq War. Iraq lost those cities in 2014.

Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city and the IS’s de facto capital in Iraq, will be particularly difficult to reclaim. But Iraq’s military has been bolstered to the point that Mideast experts can envision a fighting force that might be capable of pulling that off.

“I think it will happen,” Michael O’Hanlon, a military expert at the Brookings Institution, told The Wall

Street Journal. “In principle, it’s fairly hard for [the Islamic State] to feel good about its position. It’s not as if it can hold these cities against the Iraqi army with American air power and other coalition air power.”

It’s hard to have great confidence in any predictions about the future in this seething region of the world. But for now, the recapture of Ramadi appears to show a remarkable turnaround for an Iraqi army that not long ago looked like one of the most unreliable militaries ever assembled.

That military, and Iraq at large, still face the enormous challenge of deep-seated sectarian political distrust. A main reason the Iraqi military fell apart is the political and religious divide between majority Shiites and minority Sunni populations. Many Iraqi Sunnis, who controlled the country under Saddam Hussein, saw the Shiitedominated Iraqi army as a bigger threat than the Sunni-led IS. It’s hard to liberate your own country when you aren’t seen as liberators.

For Iraq’s army to keep marching, the country needs to keep its footing.

That’s on Iraqi Prime Minister Haider

A5

al-Abadi, who’s been slowly working to bridge the divide to the Sunnis, who were alienated by Abadi’s predecessor, Nouri al-Maliki.

Ramadi is a significant early test.

Iraq counted on Shiite militias, which have deep ties to Iran, to reclaim Tikrit earlier this year. In Ramadi, some American-trained Sunni tribal fighters joined the Iraqi army to battle the IS. If the Iraqis hold Ramadi, look for Sunni tribes and police to handle security. That’s life in deeply divided Iraq, but potentially a good sign. Iraq’s Sunnis must feel invested in their country’s future for it to succeed.

Meanwhile, there’s Syria, the heart of the IS’s self-declared caliphate, riven by a civil war complicated by Russia’s efforts to prop up the brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Though the UN Security Council this month approved a resolution outlining a peace process for Syria, the US and Russia remain at odds over the future of Assad.

For now, applaud the victory in Ramadi over the IS and hope it holds.

There is a long battle to go against a terrorist force that threatens the civilized world. TNS

News

BusinessMirror

A6 Wednesday, December 30, 2015 • Editor: Dionisio L. Pelayo

news@businessmirror.com.ph

Churchmen slam Duterte’s plan to revive the death penalty

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EMBERS of the clergy have slammed the statement of presidential aspirant and Davao City Mayor Rodrigo R. Duterte regarding his plan to revive the death penalty once he is elected to the highest office in the country.

Duterte

Retired Archbishop Oscar Cruz said he was shocked upon hearing about the plan, noting that reviving the death penalty by public hanging is against human life and not anymore attuned with the times.

“This is very shocking. At this age and time, doing these atrocities, which are against human life, is a pity precisely because civilization has already moved forward.

In short, they seemed to have been

born too late and the times of the barbarians are gone,” said the Catholic prelate in an interview.

He added, “I don’t agree with Mayor Duterte as far as taking human life so cheaply, so likely as if

it is just getting rid of mosquitoes, getting rid of rats and the like. I’m sorry. I hope I’m wrong.”

Cruz said he is saddened that “there will be a candidate of this kind during this century.”

On the other hand, Fr. Jerome Secillano, executive secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines-Public Affairs Committee, opined that the presidential aspirant is misinformed that the death penalty prevents crimes.

“Duterte is misled into thinking that death penalty deters crimes. You do not deter crimes by hanging criminals. You deter crimes by having efficient a nd ef fec t ive l aw en forcers,

incorruptible judges and lawyers and strict and fearless prison administrators,” he said.

He added, “On impulse, it appears that killing criminals is effective. But if criminals believe that they can buy their freedom, of what use then is the death penalty? Reforming our criminal justice system is the ultimate solution to crimes.”

On Sunday Duterte revealed that he is planning to revive the death penalty and the public hanging of convicted criminals in the earlier part of his administration if he is elected president.

He added that he would ask Congress to restore the death penalty by hanging in public. PNA

Albay tourism boom boosted by Cagsawa designation as NCT

By Johnny C. Nuñez Philippines News Agency

D

ARAGA, Albay—The National Museum has recently declared world-famous Cagsawa Ruins here a National Cultural Treasure, the highest designation of cultural property in the country. The designation is expected to further boost Albay’s nowbooming tourism and expanding local economy.

Albay Gov. Joey Salceda said the declaration by National Museum Director Jeremy R. Barns issued on December 23 and published in the Museum’s web site, affirms the Cagsawa Ruins’s landmark role and significance in the richness of the country’s cultural heritage.

Popularly paired with Albay’s crown jewel, near-perfect coneshaped Mayon Volcano in postcards, photographs and selfie shots, the 201-year-old ruins—considered as a symbol of the province’s disaster resiliency—also awaits United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (Unesco) recognition as a World Heritage Site. Mayon, itself, is tentatively listed the same Unesco title. Albay, on the other hand, has been nominated for a Unesco Biosphere Area accreditation.

Salceda said the Cagsawa Ruins, as a National Cultural Treasure, is now a priority for protection,

preservation and promotion by the national government, an important step toward higher level declarations. The declaration, he added, will further boost the historic-cultural offerings of Albay’s tourism industry. The province is now the fastest-growing destination in the country, and recently won the Pacific Asia Travel Association $1-million CEO Challenge, as a “new frontiers” global destination.

Salceda said Cagsawa Ruins is also the symbol of A lbay’s

Govt’s claim of economic growth a mirage, CPP says in statement

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HE Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has slammed President Aquino for allegedly continuing to delude the Filipino people about the socalled inclusive economic growth he had accomplished since 2010.

In a 31-page official message of the CPP on its 47th anniversary on December 26, the party’s central committee said that “from 2010 to 2013, the Philippine ruling system appeared to be exempt from the crisis of world capitalist system, if we were to look at the rise of the GDP. This was growing far beyond the growth rate of the world economy. The Philippine growth rate was being touted as the highest in Asia in 2013.

The content of the growing GDP was obscured.”

CPP said the money flow reflected by the GDP of 7.2 percent consisted of portfolio investments or hot money, 65 percent of which went mainly to the financial markets, reducing to only 6 percent the proportion of money remittances of overseas workers and the income from call-center operations.

“The rest of the total money f low came mainly f rom government spending for bureaucratic operations, debt service and ot her counter productive purposes,” it noted.

The party added that the US deliberately gave the Aquino administration the special privilege

of having the Philippines receive a large flow of money from hedge funds “in order to conjure the illusion of economic growth, sustain the private construction boom and generate government revenues for boosting military operations and appropriating large doleout funds for the conditional cash transfer and Pamana program to make the US-designed Oplan Bayanihan successful.”

Increased government spending, remittances of the overseas contract workers and earnings of business call centers also served to maintain high consumption spending by a small part of the population, CPP noted.

At the same time, the crisis of global capitalism reasserted itself relative to the Philippines. The flow of hot money began to subside in 2014 when the US announced it would slow down quantitative easing and possibly raise interest rates and because of China’s even worse problem of wanton spending and credit for public and private construction, the statement said.

“The much-vaunted Philippine economic growth rate of 7.2 percent has gone down to 6.1 percent in 2014 and is expected to go further down to 5.8 percent by year-end, with the World Bank blaming slow government spending, negative net exports and the initial impact of El Niño for the downturn. Marvyn N. Benaning

“indomitable spirit and resilience, surviving this far,” from some 201 years ago when Mayon Volcano erupted violently, burying a huge Baroque church and the whole settlement around it in a lahar avalanche and the f lashf loods that followed. Over 1,000 residents died in that disaster. Their remains are now only marked by a tumble of bricks and rocks over the layout of a Spanish-era settlement, marked by a world-famous ruins and the top of a church

belfry, with the picture-perfect cone-shaped Mayon Volcano in the background.

The Cagsawa Ruins is presently the focal point of Albay’s new tourist destinations, clustered within a 15-kilometer radius, which have recently become favorite sites among tourists. These destinations include the Naglaus-Milaos Underground River and Sigpit Waterfalls with its jumping cliff in Del Rosario village, Jovellar town; the Quitinday Greenhills and caves in

Camalig; the Guinanayan White Beach and Island Hopping in Galicia Village, Rapurapu; the Nagaso Hot Spring and Inang Maharang Boiling Lake in Manito; and the Lignon Hill Zip Line, among others.

Albay alone can provide fun and adventure equivalent to a small country, so said Tourism Secretary Ramon R. Jimenez, commenting on the province’s tourism wealth, adding that it “may have less than a million visitors a year but its potential is way beyond” that number.

Barns’s announcement said the declaration highlights Cagsawa Ruins’s importance “to the entire world that the ruins are officially recognized as intrinsic part of the patrimony of the Filipino people and…central to the legacy that the present generations should take special care of.”

A National Cultural Treasure designation pertains to “a unique cultural property found locally, possessing outstanding historical, cultural, artistic and/or scientific value which is significant and important to the country and nation.”

The December 23 declaration of 11 national treasures, “were made as a result of the museum’s “own research, recommendations from government agencies or, in the majority of cases for the 2015, petitions made by property owners or concerned parties,” the announcement added.

New brigade commanders named

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WO senior colonels were appointed to command two brigades assigned to the Lucenabased Southern Luzon Command, the unit spokesman said on Tuesday.

Appointed to command the Cavinti, Laguna-based 202nd Infantry Brigade was Col. Glorivine R. Dida, while Col. Fernando T. Trinidad assumed leadership of the 903rd Infantry Brigade in Castilla, Sorsogon.

Dida is a member of the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) Class of 1986, while Trinidad is a member of PMA Class of 1987.

The appointments put the two officers in line for their first stars.

Prior to his current position,

Dida was the director of the Doctrine Center, Training and Doctrine Command based at Camp Servillano Aquino in Tarlac.

As a junior officer, Dida served as platoon leader, company commander and battalion intelligence officer duties in Mindanao. He was also a former commander of the 84th Infantry Battalion in the Visayas.

Dida replaced Col. Rodel Mauro R. Alarcon who is now the assistant commander of the Second Infantry “Jungle Fighter” Division based in Camp Capinpin, Tanay, Rizal.

The 202nd Infantry Brigade provides internal security operations in Rizal and northern part

of Quezon province.

Regarded as one of the military’s top and respected intelligence officers, Trinidad was the former assistant chief of staff for intelligence of the Army prior his appointment to 903rd Infantry Brigade. He was also the former commander of the 31st Infantry Battalion that is deployed in Camarines Sur and Norte.

Trinidad succeeded Col. Cesar M. Idio who is now the new assistant commander of the 8th Infantry “Stormtrooper” Division in the Eastern Visayas. The 903rd Infantry Brigade provides internal-security operations in the provinces of Sorsogon and Masbate. PNA

Marcos: Tighten security measures on anniversary of Dec. 30 bombings

By Recto L. Mercene

S

EN. Ferdinand “Bongbong” R. Marcos Jr. on Tuesday urged authorities to tighten the security of transport hubs, malls and other areas where large numbers of people converge in connection with the 15th anniversary of the tragic Rizal Day bombings perpetrated by Muslim extremists.

Marcos aired this call as he reminded the public that the terrorist group Jema’ah Islamiyah has killed 22 and wounded over a hundred other individuals during their bombing campaign.

He noted that a few days ago the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters and the Abu Sayyaf launched separate attacks against the military forces in Mindanao.

“While these attacks seem to be largely directed against the military forces, we must not be complacent. We must not allow the bombings that occurred 15 years ago to happen again,” Marcos said.

On December 30, 2000, five separate explosions rocked Metro Manila: in Plaza Ferguson in Malate, Manila; in a gasoline station in Makati City; in a bus in Cubao; in a cargo-handling station at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport; and in a light-rail transist coach at the Blumentritt Station, which caused the most number of casualties.

Marcos also cited reports that the BIFF claimed its recent attacks were inspired by Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, which were behind the November terror attacks in Paris that left 129 dead and over 350 people wounded.

Likewise, Marcos pointed out that Malaysian and Indonesian terrorists have linked with Muslim extremists and that a Malaysian bomb expert was killed in an encounter between the Abu Sayyaf and the military in Basilan on December 15.

“We must not allow extremism in any ground to grow,” asserted Marcos, chairman of the Senate Committee on Local Government and sponsor of the Basic Law for Bangsamoro Autonomous Region (BLBar) meant to embody the peace pact between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

With the BLBar passage uncertain in the few remaining session days of Congress, Marcos said efforts to find peace in Muslim Mindanao should not and never be abandoned.

SC amends temporary restraining order on Poe’s DQ case

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HE Supreme Court (SC) on Tuesday amended the temporary restraining order (TRO) against the ruling of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) disqualifying Sen. Grace Poe-Llamanzares in the May 9, 2016, presidential elections.

The SC issued the revised TRO in connection with the two petitions filed by Poe on Monday assailing the Comelec ruling that disqualified her to run for president in the 2016 elections.

The revised TRO says that aside from the Comelec, the four private respondents, who filed the disqualification case before the Comelec against Poe, must file their respective comments. The SC also gave former Sen. Francisco “Kit” Tatad, former Government Service Insurance System (GSIS) legal counsel Estrella Elamparo, former University of the East

(UE) College of Law Dean Amado Valdez and La Salle Prof. Antonio Contreras a period of 10 days from notice within which to submit the same.

On Monday the SC immediately issued a TRO after the camp of Poe filed two separate petitions following her disqualification by the Comelec last week to run for president in the 2016 elections because of the issues of residency and citizenship of the senator.

Pangasinenses, Fil-Ams for Grace laud TROs

“A TRIUMPH for truth, justice, democracy and human rights.”

This was the collective statement of Pangasinenses and Fil-Ams supporting presidential frontrunner Grace Poe following the issuance by the SC of two restraining orders against the Comelec

en banc’s twin decisions to disqualify and delist her from the May 2016 presidential elections.

Leaders of Ang Grasya ng Masang Pilipino Movement (AGMPM) led by Adonis Samson, Rosendo So and Chito Samson hailed Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno for the issuance of the two TROs as she acted upon members-in-charge Associate Justices Mariano del Castillo and Marvic Leonen’s respective recommendations to issue separate TROs on the Comelec’s rulings canceling Poe’s certificate of candidacy. “The Supreme Court upholding the cause of Senator Poe and the cause of the sovereign people is consistent with the democratic precept that favors inclusion rather than exclusion,” said the Pangasinan leaders in a statement.

They added,“the Supreme Court’s timely and prompt decision to issue the TROs all but favor

the right of the people to elect the servant leaders of their choice, and that doubts and resorts to technicalities as done by the Comelec en banc cannot serve to defeat the exercise of popular sovereignty of citizens.”

Likewise, the AGMPM leaders also welcomed the change of heart and position of Comelec Commissioner Luie Tito Guia to the residency issue of Grace Poe stating that after review of the evidences presented, she was able to prove that she has satisfied the 10-year residency qualification required for a president under the Constitution.

“We welcome Commissioner Guia’s change of position not only for its relevance to the case of our presidential bet Grace Poe, but he is also a Pangasinense like us being a native of Binmaley,” Adonis Samson said. PNA with Recto L. Mercene

Sports BusinessMirror

mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph | sports@businessmirror.com.ph

Wednesday, December 30, 2015 A7

TOUGHER, STRONGER

By Joel Orellana

R

AIN OR SHINE had to struggle through two tough games before reaching the semifinals—a road the Elasto Painters have never threaded before.

But for Head Coach Yeng Guiao, the enduring trip more than toughened his wards as they confront No. 2 seed San Miguel Beer in the race-to-four semifinal phase of the 2015 Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) Philippine Cup. Rain or Shine survived Blackwater in the first phase of the quarters, 95-90, and then dominated Talk ‘N Text, 104-89, in a knockout quarterfinal encounter on Monday to return to the semifinal round of the season-opening conference.

“We had a chance to make the semis via a short route, but we had to go through the long route. Probably we are not prepared the first time when we lost to NLEX,” said Guiao, referring to their 106-111 defeat to the Road

Warriors that denied them a top-2 seat and were relegated to the quarterfinals.

“But I think we’re better prepared now than if we have gone the short route. We will not be as ready as we are right now. It’s a blessing in disguise to go the hard way. This will just toughen us going to the semifinals,” he added.

Rain or Shine, which lost to Alaska in the semifinals of the same tournament last season in six games, unleashed its dreaded running game against the Tropang Texters resulting to eight players scoring at least eight points led by Raymund Almazan’s 15 points.

“That [balanced scoring] has been our strength. The more people scoring for us, the better for us, the higher chance of winning,” Guiao quipped.

Interestingly, the Elasto Painters managed to penetrate the top 4 minus their top player Paul Lee, who has yet

to play in the Philippine Cup because of a knee injury. Lee was in uniform against Talk ‘N Text, but Guiao opted to sit him out again.

But Guiao said the former University of the East star will be ready for Game One on January 5, but he would most likely see limited minutes as he does not want to disrupt the team’s current chemistry. Besides, the 6-foot-1 guard is not yet in his best game shape.

“Paul is aching to play because he wants to contribute. But he’s not going to be 100 percent

by January 5 but he is going to be there. He’s very talented and it won’t take too much time.”

Without Lee, rookie Maverick Ahanmisi, Chris Tiu and Gabe Norwood are alternating in running the plays for Rain or Shine.

Guiao added his bigs (JR Quinahan, Beau Belga, Almazan and Jewel Ponferrada) need to step up in their semifinal series as they face a daunting task of limiting the production of

P

By Dave Coros

IDO JARENCIO, the portly coach of GlobalPort, readily concedes his team is no match for Alaska’s playoff experience. In the same breath, he believes it won’t be a factor when the Batang Pier and the Aces meet in the semifinals of the Philippine Basketball Associastion (PBA) Philippine Cup. “Alaska is a veteran team, they are always in the semis and championship,” noted Jarencio of the battlescarred Aces.

In contrast, GlobalPort is making its first semifinal appearance after eliminating Barangay Ginebra San Miguel, 84-83, in a thrilling finish in overtime of their knockout

THE tough trek to the semifinals gives Rain or Shine Head Coach Yeng Guiao more confidence. PBA IMAGE

T

HE Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) suspended referees Edward Aquino and Rommel Gruta for the rest of the Philippine Cup for failure to call two important infractions in the final eight seconds of the GlobalPort-Barangay Ginebra San Miguel semifinal match on Sunday night.

In a statement, the league said Aquino missed calling a backing violation by Stanley Pringle, while Gruta erred in not calling a fivesecond hogging violation, also on GlobalPort’s Pringle, which denied Ginebra the final possesion. Batang Pier won that game, 84-83, to reach its first semifinals stint. Joel Orellana

quarterfinal game on Sunday.

As usual, Stanley Pringle and Terrence Romeo took charge on offense while their bigs—Doug Kramer, Billy Mamaril, Jay Washington and Rico Maierhoffer— preserved their efforts with outstanding performances at the defensive end.

Jarencio believes his chargers deserve to be in the semifinals considering their hard work and willingness to sacrifice even their personal undertaking. He cited the case of Kramer, who exemplified the true meaning of professionalism. The power forward decided against attending his sisters’ wedding on the day played the Gin Kings on the prodding of his coach.

“That was a very big sacrifice. All his siblings look up to him. What he did is really something.

A wedding happens only once, but Doug didn’t

LYSSA VALDEZ will be playing her last season with Ateneo in the University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP). So, where’s she headed after that?

Valdez, who led Ateneo to back-to-back UAAP championships, is being wooed by numerous teams in the Philippine Superliga

Prima honors athletes

hesitate when I told him we need him [against Ginebra]. I’m glad his teammates did not disappoint,” Jarecio said.

The Aces and the Batang Pier start their series on January 4.

Jarencio knows well the best-of-seven series is all about game plan.

“That’s why we have to prepare for each and every game. We are also hungry and that’s more than enough motivation,” said Jarencio, convinced his chargers can match up with the Aces “speed for speed, quickness for quickness.”

While he believes the Batang Pier can match up with the Aces man-for-man, Jarencio admitted Alaska power forward Calvin Abueva will be tough to handle.

“We have to match Abueva’s energy,” Jarencio said.

(PSL), an interclub semiprofessional league for women. But PSL President Ramon “Tats” Suzara said these are all rumors.

“Frankly speaking, the PSL was accused in spreading these rumors [that bordered on Valdez playing in the PSL], and the team owners were shocked,” Suzara said. “But who doesn’t want Alyssa Valdez.”

Suzara, however, stressed that for Valdez to enter the PSL, she has to go through its Rookie Draft which is set in May next year.

“I’m sure Alyssa is most welcome in the PSL she could definitely become the first pick,” Suzara said.

If ever Valdez applies for the PSL Draft, she would most likely end up with Meralco, which owns the No. 1 spot in the exercise. The Power Spikers finished second to last ahead of sixth-placer RC Cola Air Force, but they own the first pick because they are a rookie team in the league.

Besides the UAAP, Valdez plays in the Shakey’s V-League. Lance Agcaoili

Superliga organizers look to more innovations in 2016

N

T

HE Philippine Superliga (PSL) vowed to come up with more innovations and make the league a more wholesome family-entertainment vehicle when it enters its fourth season next year.

PSL President Ramon Suzara said on Tuesday that the interclub women’s

volleyball league is geared to surpass its achievements in 2015 where it adopted several innovations, including the introduction of the video challenge system.

Used in major tournaments worldwide, the video challenge system is a cutting-edge technology that gives coaches the chance to review a call using 25 high-definition cameras

installed in strategic locations in the venue. The PSL is the first club league in Asia to use the P3-million technology.

Besides the video challenge system, the PSL also implemented the “skort” uniform. The skort is a combination of shorts and skirt that are worn by players in top flight leagues in Europe.

“We will pick up where we left off,” said Suzara, also the chairman of development and marketing committee chairman of the Asian Volleyball Confederation. “We will continue to innovate in terms of uniforms, officiating and branding to further increase the level of volleyball in the country.”

AKLAND, Calififornia—Stephen Curry overcame a slow start to score 23 points as part of his sixth career triple-double, and Golden State beat Sacramento, 122-103, on Monday for its 29th victory in 30 games this season in the National Basketball Association.

Curry added a career-high 14 rebounds and 10 assists, Klay Thompson scored 29 and Draymond Green had 25 points for the Warriors, who have won 33 straight regular-season home games.

Omri Casspi scored a career-high 36 points, tying Mike Bibby’s team record with nine threepointers for Sacramento. But the Kings still lost their 11th straight against their Northern California rivals.

The Kings were excited to have a healthy DeMarcus Cousins for the first time in three meetings with the Warriors this season. But the All-Star big man played less than 13 foul-plagued minutes.

In Phoenix Kyrie Irving sank a three-pointer as the shot clock expired with 21.9 seconds to play and the Cleveland Cavaliers held on to hand the Phoenix Suns their fifth loss in a row, 101-97.

Brandon Knight’s three-pointer cut Cleveland’s lead to 96-95 with one minute and 27 seconds to go and, after LeBron James missed a jumper, Knight hit another triple but it was waved off because of an offensive foul against the Suns’ Tyson Chandler.

The Cavs almost turned it over on their next possession but got the ball to Irving, who made a jumper from beyond the top of the key.

Elsewhere, it was Indiana 93, Atlanta 87; Orlando 104, New Orleans 89; LA Clippers 108, Washington 91; Charlotte 108, LA Lakers 98; Brooklyn 111, Miami 105; Chicago 104, Toronto 97; San Antonio 101, Minnesota 95; Dallas 103, Milwaukee 93; and Utah 95, Philadelphia 91. AP

Carlos-Iñigo duo bags doubles title

J

OBIM CARLOS came through with a superb approach shot to set up a 3-footer for birdie for Iñigo Raymundo, then the duo watched Aidric Chan and Ira Alido crack under pressure and flub a par putt from 2 feet to rule the National Golf Association of the Philippines’s (NGAP) fifth National Doubles Amateur Golf Championship at Camp Aguinaldo Golf Club in Quezon City on Tuesday.

That birdie-bogey swing on the closing par-5 of the par-68 layout completed Carlos and Raymundo’s come-from-behind victory in a thrilling ending to the duo’s title quest but a horrible finish for the Chan-Alido tandem in the centerpiece Group I of the NGAP’s final event of the season.

The closing birdie gave Raymundo and Carlos a two-over 70 in the deciding alternate shot format for a 274 aggregate, including a 64 in the opening best ball and a 140 in the aggregate Monday, while the final-hole mishap gave Chan and Alido a 71 for a 275.

Jama Reyes and Tom King turned in a 74 to place third at 285, Ryan Monsalve and Lanz Uy hobbled with a 77 for a 286, while Raymart Tolentino and Carlo Villaroman rallied with a 72 for a 288 to snatch fifth place.

NETFEST PRESENTOR

Palawan Pawnshop CEO/President Bobby Castro (second from right) and Asiatraders Corp. Vice President John Christopher Tan (second from left) sign the contract making Asiatraders Corp. the presentor of the 2016 Palawan Pawnshop-Palawan Express Pera Padala (PPS-PEPP) regional age group tennis and Festival Open, the country’s longest-running tour firing off from January 7 to 11 in Roxas City. With them are (from left) Asiatraders Corp. Marketing Manager Hector Aquino and Rebecca Badayos, PPS-PEPP head market development.

ALYSSA VALDEZ is a blue-chip commodity in women’s volleyball.

Al Mendoza alsol47@yahoo.com

THAT’S ALL

Letts I USED to write sports stories for Letty JimenezMagsanoc—LJM to many—when she was my editor at Panorama, the Sunday magazine of martial law Bulletin Today. Boxing. Tour of Luzon bikathon. Chess. My piece on the World Chess Championship between Russian Anatoly

HEAD Coach Pido Jarencio and the Batang Pier are in the semifinals for the first time. PBA IMAGE

VALDEZ’S ‘LIGA’ STINT IN HORIZON A

2 PBA REFEREES SUSPENDED

ATIONAL athletes Kenneth Chua and Krizziah Tabora captured the 2015 Prima Pasta Bowler of the Year trophies to lead the awardees in Team Prima’s annual athletes recognition night held recently at the V Corporate Centre in Makati City.

Chua, 24, bagged his second male Bowler of the Year award after winning his first in 2013. He was unanimously chosen for topping seven bowling this year.

“I felt really happy, fulfilled and proud with my award because all the effort and hard work that I gave in my training paid off again,” said Chua, who rolled four perfect games during the year.

Chua thanked his Japanese Coach Madoka Amano for helping him win the PTBA Mixed Open Masters, SLETBA Open Masters and Philippine National Open. He placed second in the World Cup National Finals and SCTBA Open, and was third in the Henrich Cup Open Masters and TBAM Easter Open Masters.

Tabora, meanwhile, hoisted the Female Bowler of the Year trophy for the second-straight year. She topped the TBAM Open and was a member of the team that bagged bronze in in June’s Singapore Southeast Asian Games.

Bea and Enzo Hernandez grabbed their second-straight Junior Bowler of the Year awards. Bea rolled her first perfect game in the Asian Schools Bowling Championships in Hong Kong.

Eboy Farr, on the other hand, took his two consecutive Cyclist of the Year award.

O

reigning Most Valuable Player June Mar Fajardo.

The other semifinal duel pits No. 1 seed Alaska against GlobalPort, which shocked Barangay Ginebra San Miguel in their knockout quarterfinal on Sunday. Their series start on January 4.

HUNGRIER THAN EVER

Curry, Warriors storm past Kings

Karpov and Russian-turned-Swiss Viktor Korchnoi in Baguio City was a cover story for the magazine (was it 1978?).

Not many know it but LJM—I called her Letts—was an ardent sports fan. I should know. Long before she was appointed

Panorama editor, Letts was my next-desk neighbor at Bulletin editorial, when the Bulletin was still renting a space at Shurdutt Building in Muralla, Intramuros, where the old Department of Labor used to hold court. I took so much pride in that: Letts was the newspaper’s No. 1 feature writer; I was a newspaper rookie (1974). Although Letts was older than me, we were on a first-name basis. She didn’t want me to address her “Ma’am.”

“Do you think Crispa would win the championship again over Toyota?” she would ask me days before the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA) season could begin in the mid-1970s.

Letts loved gift-giving. She would always find a way, a reason, to hand me presents: a reporter’s notebook, fruits of the season, T-shirt, desktop calendar and, yes, a ballpoint pen. But never would she give a

green ballpoint pen, favorite color that she would later use to edit—mangle might be the more appropriate word?—my stories at Panorama, and all other manuscripts of her staff at Panorama. The same green ballpoint pen she would employ when she became editor in chief of Sunday Inquirer Magazine in 1987 (Recah Trinidad and I were her associate editors), and then chief editor of the Philippine Daily Inquirer from 1991 up to the day she breathed her last on this year’s fateful Christmas Eve. As the Inquirer’s top gun, Letts continued to hover over me when I was the paper’s motoring editor (1991-1997) and sports editor (1997-2003)—as though shepherding me every step of the way and for which I had a grand time savoring it. When I left the Inquirer in 2006, there was no goodbye—as when she had left us herself at Bulletin in

1981. Parting is such sweet sorrow that…

A moment that I will cherish forever was when—before Letts had reluctantly accepted the position of editor in chief of the Inquirer in 1991—Inquirer founding Chairman Eggie Apostol and I had lunch with Letts at Kamayan Edsa for this abundantly significant single subject: Convince Letts to succeed Dick Pascual as editor in chief of Inquirer. Letts never knew of our plan—conspiracy?—that day.

“Let us just tell her when we get there [at Kamayan],” Tita Eggie said to me.

Letty vehemently refused.

“I just want to write my column [Leavings],” she said, firmly. “Could you please leave me alone?”

But eventually, Tita Eggie’s vintage, vaunted, convincing powers prevailed.

And so it was that after Letts became Inquirer editor in 1991, the newspaper was

never quite the same again. Thank you, Dear God, for giving us Letts.

THAT’S IT Another unforgettable for me about Letts was when, after having informed her about the assassination of John Lennon the Chief Beatle in 1980, she immediately fired back: “Why don’t you write about him? You are a Beatlemaniac, right?” I did. Even as I was nursing a fever, I managed to beat the deadline. And it became Panorama’s cover story—the article so long that it was virtually from cover to cover. Letts titled it: “I saw John waving in the sky”—a quote from Yoko Ono, Lennon’s widow. It drew quite a huge fan mail. After the article came out, just days before Christmas of 1980, Letts had a gift for me: John Lennon’s comeback LP record in 33-1/3 vinyl, “Double Fantasy.” Easily, it was my most memorable Christmas present that year. Of course, I still have it. Happy New Year!

Sports BusinessMirror

A8 | W

ednesday, December 30, 2015 mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph sports@businessmirror.com.ph Editor: Jun Lomibao

FOR Serena Williams, losing at the US Open is a nightmare.

STUNNING UPSETS

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By Paul Newberry The Associated Pres

ERENA WILLIAMS had done all the heavy lifting, or so it seemed.

She conquered the grass of Wimbledon, the red clay of Roland Garros, the hard courts of the Australian Open.

All that was left for tennis’s first Grand Slam since 1988 was a victory in the US Open, surely a mere formality when Williams got to the semifinals with a 43rd-ranked Italian standing in her way.

At 33, Williams was poised to put a remarkable capper on a brilliant career.

Roberta Vinci had other ideas.

“Every so often,” Vinci said, “a miracle happens.”

For Williams, it was a nightmare. After cruising through

the first set, 6-2, she finally seemed to feel the weight of history. Her legs got sluggish, her shots spraying all over the court. Vinci evened the match, 6-4, and took the decisive third set by the same score.

“I saw she was nervous,” Vinci said, “and that helped me.”

Williams’s loss will surely go down as one of the biggest upsets in any sport, which was the only way to stand apart in 2015.

Several of these jaw-droppers would’ve been at the top of the list just about any other year:

DOWN GOES ROUSEY!: Ronda Rousey was supposed to be invincible. She won her first 12 mixed-martial arts fights—eight of them in less than a minute—before stepping into the cage against Holly Holm in Melbourne, Australia. Rowdy Ronda finally met her match Down Under, when Holm finished her off with a devastating

kick to the head. “I’ll be back,” Rousey vowed.

PERFECT SEASON CRUMBLES: With a roster full of National Basketball Association (NBA)-quality underclassmen, Kentucky was 38-0 and needed two wins to become the first undefeated men’s hoops team in nearly four decades.

Turns out, the Wildcats weren’t perfect after all. Hard-nosed Wisconsin took down John Calipari’s squad 71-64 at the Final Four. “The season was a waste,” Kentucky’s Tyler Ulis said.

THE BRAVE BLOSSOMS: In rugby, there’s a clear line between the world’s top teams and everyone else. South Africa belongs in the first group. Japan is undoubtedly part of the second. But on the game’s biggest stage, the team known as “The Brave Blossoms” pulled off the greatest upset the sport has ever seen, beating the two-time Rugby World Cup champion Springboks 34-32. “I’m glad we’ve managed to not only surprise our own fans back in Japan,” fullback Ayumu Goromaru said, “but also fans across the world.”

ONE SHOT TOO MANY: Jordan Spieth won the first two major championships on the golfing calendar, and coming down the stretch of the British Open it looked as though he’d make it three in a row. The young Texan shared the lead with two holes to go after sinking a 50-foot birdie putt. But he missed an 8-footer at the 17th and slipped out of a playoff by a single shot, denied in his bid for the first modern Grand Slam. “We gave it a great effort,” Spieth said.

‘GRAVEYARD OF CHAMPIONS’: It was certainly a glorious year for American Pharoah, which became the first horse

in 37 years to capture the Triple Crown. But even he was bitten by the upset bug at Saratoga, a track appropriately known as the “Graveyard of Champions.” Caught in the stretch by 16-1 long shot Keen Ice, American Pharoah lost the Travers by three-quarters of a length. But he’ll always have that Triple Crown.

THE MOUSE THAT ROARED: Bournemouth was toiling in the fourth level of English football in 2010. After climbing to the Premier League for the first time, the Cherries pulled off stunners in back-to-back games this season, knocking off defending champion Chelsea and 20-time champion Manchester United. “Just checking the results again to make certain the last week has actually happened,” Chairman Jeff Mostyn tweeted afterward.

FATHER AND SON: We’ll all remember Kentucky’s loss, but, perhaps, the most compelling image from the National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament was injured Georgia State Coach Ron Hunter tumbling off his stool after his son R.J. hit a three-pointer to cap an improbable upset by the 14th-seeded Panthers over No. 3 Baylor. And let’s not forget UAB prevailing against Iowa State in another 14-beats-three shocker.

victory Florida State, snapping the Seminoles’ 28-game ACC winning streak. Also worthy of mention from college football: Michigan State ending Ohio State’s bid for a second straight national championship, and Texas handing Oklahoma its only loss in the Red River Showdown.

IT’S ALL IN THE NAME: Tyson Fury was born to be a fighter, even though he entered the world three months early weighing just one pound. His father predicted the ailing infant would not only survive, but grow into a heavyweight champion. Doubling down, he named his son after Mike Tyson. That prophecy was fulfilled when Fury, now 6-foot-9, scored a unanimous decision over Wladimir Klitschko, ending his nine-and-a-half-year reign as champion.

If it was any consolation to Klitschko, he had plenty of company in 2015.

KICK SIX: Georgia Tech went 1-7 in the Atlantic Coast Conference this season.

That lone win won’t soon be forgotten.

Lance Austin returned a blocked field goal 78 yards for a touchdown on the final play to give the Yellow Jackets a 22-16

SOCCER’S DARK YEAR

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ONDON—Dawn had just broken in Zurich when a man was spotted being dragged out of an opulent hotel’s side entrance. Raising a single white sheet, hotel staff made an inadequate attempt to shield the guest being forced to check out early after being arrested in his bedroom.

Eduardo Li was in clear view on the quiet side street as he was bundled into an unmarked police car, one of seven International Football Federation (Fifa) officials arrested as Swiss police swooped on the Baur au Lac hotel at the behest of American authorities.

Years of investigations into soccer corruption burst into public view on the morning of May 27, as the so-called World Cup of fraud was exposed and Fifa would be coerced into cleaning up its act.

Li, the Costa Rican federation president who was in Zurich expecting to join Fifa’s elite executive committee, was a lesserknown target of the US case. But his arrest, which was captured on video by the Associated Press (AP) was the most visible.

By the end of 2015, four Fifa vice presidents had been indicted in the US, including two swept up in a second wave of arrests in December after being chosen to replace those from the Americas indicted in May. A fifth vice president, Michel Platini, was banished by Fifa from soccer until 2023 along with Sepp Blatter—the man he was expected to succeed as president—after their dealings became the subject of a Swiss criminal case.

After 40 years at Fifa, 17 as president, the reign of the seemingly immovable Blatter ended in disgrace in 2015. Few lamented his downfall.

The 79-year-old Blatter did not see it coming in February when he beamed: “Now you see why I am happy,” as he relaxed in a Northern Ireland hotel accompanied by a girlfriend almost 30 years his junior at a Fifa meeting.

And Blatter managed to brush off the anger that greeted

revelations about the scale of bribery and kickbacks— corruption that mostly occurred within confederations rather than involving Fifa headquarters (HQ) in Zurich—to be voted in for a fifth term by federations on May 29.

Blatter subjected himself to a bruising encounter with the media the next day, a Saturday morning, when he was asked whether some of the accusations were indicative of his “incompetence or intentional negligence.”

Blatter was defiant, vowing to see out his four-year term.

The bravado quickly evaporated.

“Then came the different information from the US with this and that,” Blatter aide Walter Gagg told the AP. After being warned in meetings with associates that he could be the next Fifa executive in the prosecutors’ sights, Blatter stunned the world on June 2 by announcing plans to resign, accepting he lacked the game’s backing.

Blatter hoped to hand over power in February, but the Swiss attorney general intervened by raiding Fifa’s HQ in September and questioning the president. Years of suspicions about Blatter’s integrity were confirmed when he was banished by Fifa’s ethics judge for unethical conduct over a financial transaction with Platini, who received the same eight-year ban from soccer.

The Swiss investigation—like the parallel American case— will continue into 2016 as trials begin and more officials fear their illicit profiteering from sportingcontracts is uncovered. At the same time, Fifa will implement reforms designed to clean up the organization and elect a new president on February 26.

Perhaps, what surprised soccer fans in 2015 as much as the arrests was the interest of US Attorney General Loretta Lynch in such sleaze.

But the significant role the world’s most popular sport plays in the US was confirmed not only by Lynch but by Americans at, of all things in this year, a Fifa event. When the US won a third

Women’s World Cup title in July, the victory over Japan was watched by more than 25 million American television viewers.

The wrong side of passion for soccer in the US was also displayed this year when the AP filmed fans from New York rivals City and Red Bulls clashing before their derby in New Jersey in August, hooliganism previously associated with European supporters.

One of the enduring images, though, of a soccer year scarred by wrongdoing was of the game’s ability to provide a powerful platform for unity after becoming a target for Islamic extremists in last month’s Paris attacks.

After France’s match against Germany at the Stade de France was targeted by suicide bombers, who failed to enter the stadium, the French team traveled to England for the friendliest of friendly games. The fixture was overshadowed by a sense of grief, but also of fraternity as the Wembley Stadium arch was lit in the blue, white and red of the French flag and the national anthem was sung by both sets of fans.

But amid the display of friendship was a realization that stadiums were now targets. Security was quickly beefed up across Europe and the heightened state of alert led to highprofile games being called off.

Soccer’s most pressing concern in 2016 will remain ensuring the safety of fans and players, particularly with France hosting the first 24-team European Championship in June and July.

The showpiece event, along with the US-hosted Copa America Centenario, will also offer soccer’s stars a chance to remind people why it’s the world’s favorite game—rather than a source of corruption. AP 40 years at Fifa, 17 as president, the reign »of theAFTERseemingly immovable Sepp Blatter ends in disgrace in 2015. Few lamented his downfall. AP