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Grace Poe rides MRT3, sees need for train upgrade
Aquino not seeking 2nd term
Binay hits foes for smear
Mark Gil passes away
Filipino-Canadian Community News
CONFLICT AREA
Anti-China group nabbed for attempted firebombing at Manila airport and shopping mall BY OLIVER TEVES The Associated Press
Philippine Military Spokesperson Maj. Gen. Domingo Tutaan (left) and Col. Roberto Ancan, commanding officer of the AFP Peacekeeping Operations Center, use a map to pinpoint the area where Filipino peacekeepers are in a standoff with Syrian rebels during a press conference at Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City. PHOTO BY RAFFY LERMA
Philippine House committee rejects 3 impeachment complaints against President Aquino MANILA, PHILIPPINES–The Philippine House of Representatives’ justice committee on Tuesday rejected three impeachment complaints against President Benigno Aquino III, killing the challenges.
The committee, dominated by Aquino allies, voted 54-4 against each of the complaints, declaring them insufficient in substance. The complaints were filed by mostly left-wing activists and sponsored by the House’s left-wing bloc.
❱❱ PAGE 11 Anti-China group
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Philippine News
3 FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
AFP heroes await full benefits under law BY NIKKO DIZON Philippine Daily Inquirer ON THE BATTLEFIELD, recalls retired Army chief and Medal of Valor awardee Arturo Ortiz, a soldier does not consciously think he has to be a hero. But there are times when the mission—and a brave heart—push one to do a “heroic deed.” “It is sort of a self-sacrifice, doing something that isn’t required but you do it just the same. When we are in the middle of a battle, we never think we should be rewarded for what we are doing,” said the former Army commanding general. Ortiz belongs to an elite group of 40 officers and officers who have won the Medal of Valor—the highest combat award in the Armed Forces of the Philippines—for exceptional bravery. Some received the award posthumously. “You just find yourself doing what is beyond the call of duty,” said another fellow Valor awardee, Army Col. Cirilito Sobejana. When they are wearing the Medal of Valor, the President and Commander in Chief can choose to salute them—the only ones in the military given such honor. Aside from being a state policy to honor military heroes, Republic Act No. 9049, enacted in 2001, bestows awardees “adequate social services and financial rewards to encourage men and women to perform heroic deeds for their country.” Except for the monthly gratuity, RA 9049 is mostly on paper because many institutions and establishments are unaware of it. Full benefits
Humiliating as it may be, many recipients of the medal and their dependents have had to bring a copy of the law, their Valor citations and their birth certificates with them to prove they are entitled to the privileges stated in the law. “The problem is there is no IRR (implementing rules and regulations) for the law,” Ortiz told the INQUIRER in a recent interview. Ortiz, who retired nearly three years ago, serves as the de facto head of the loose organization of Valor awardees, being the highest ranking officer among them. “We are not enjoying the full benefits of the law because [of ] lack of awareness and there’s no IRR to direct government agencies involved how to provide these benefits,” Ortiz said. Bravery ‘diminished’
In a way, lack of public awareness of a law that recognizes a soldier’s bravery “diminishes” the prestige of the Valor award, Sobejana said. The Valor awardees make it clear they are not asking for special treatment. Ortiz and Sobejana said what the awardees hoped for was only for the law to have
ing mission in the Golan Heights, Israel. Today, he is the Army’s operations chief. Benefits not enjoyed
Medal of Valor awardees from the Philippine Army are having a tough time obtaining the benefits given to them for receiving the award. PHOTO BY PAULINE BALBA / FLICKR
implementation rules. With an IRR, every government department would have the responsibility to inform the agencies under them how to implement what is stated in the law. Sobejana noted the irony of the “full scholarship” accorded them by the law. “The law says our children get free tuition and matriculation. But in the school [that] Sir Art (Ortiz) and my sons attend, most of the charges fall under miscellaneous fees, which the law doesn’t cover. We pay for that and so we practically don’t enjoy full scholarship for our children, as the law intends,” Sobejana said. At the very least, when their children reach college, they are given slots at Philippine Military Academy (PMA) as long as they pass the physical exam. It is quite insulting, Ortiz said, to feel that he and his fellow Valors have to beg for the benefits that the state says they should enjoy. The stories of the field exploits of the 40 Valor awardees leave one in awe. Firefight with NPA
Ortiz received his Valor medal for leading a night operation against the New People’s Army (NPA) in Murcia town, Negros Occidental province, in April 1990 as the commander of five joint teams of the 60th Special Forces Company. Then a captain, Ortiz and his men made an 11-hour, crosscountry march and scaled a 300-meter cliff to infiltrate the enemy camp. They crept on the ground until they were 10 meters away from the enemy before launching a surprise attack. They overran the large NPA camp and killed 84 rebels in the two-hour fire fight. Fighting the Abu Sayyaf
Sobejana was awarded the Medal of Valor after he and his men fought with 150 Abu Sayyaf bandits in Isabela, Basilan on Jan. 13, 1995. Then a company commander of the
1st Scout Ranger Battalion, Sobejana held his ground although his right arm had been nearly severed by two bullets. Biting his right thumb to keep his arm from falling off, Sobejana continued firing his rifle with his left arm, while giving directions to his men, maneuvering and exposing himself to the enemy. The four-hour fire fight left 30 bandits dead. In 2013, Sobejana became the chief of staff of the United Nations peacekeep-
Sobejana said that to his recollection, no Valor awardee or his family had enjoyed the 20percent discount in transportation services, hotels, restaurants, recreation and sports centers, admission to theaters, movie houses, concert halls and “other places of culture, leisure, and amusement” provided for in the law. RA 9049 states the establishments may claim the cost as tax credits. Ortiz joked that he will just wait until he turns 60 next year to enjoy a 20-percent discount with his senior citizen card. Ortiz and Sobejana said only St. Luke’s Medical Center, Makati Medical Center and Mercury Drug acknowledged the privilege of free hospitalization and discounts on medicines with no questions asked. The law also provides that the Valors and their dependents are entitled to “free medical and dental services and consultation in hospitals and clinics anywhere in the country.” ❱❱ PAGE 10 AFP heroes
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Philippine News
SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
FRIDAY 4
Grace Poe rides MRT3, sees need for train upgrade BY LEI FONTAMILLAS Philippine Canadian Inquirer MANILA—After lining up for 40 minutes in the ticket line, Senator Grace Poe rides the train in North Avenue station of the Metro Rail Transit 3 in Quezon City, to experience for herself what it feels to ride on a Friday’s morning rush hour. Poe will chair a senate hearing to investigate the derailed trip of MRT3 that injured 36 people. “I want to be able to speak from first-hand experience what a passenger experiences riding the MRT,” Poe told Rappler in a text message, when asked about her unannounced MRT3 ride. Despite experiencing some glitches along the way, Poe said she had a ‘pleasant’ experience riding on the coach exclusively for women. Meanwhile, Poe’s son, Brian Poe said in a text message sent to Rappler, that her mother’s ride was unplanned. “She just woke up and decided, ‘Today I’m going to take the
Senator Grace Poe lining up in the ticket line of the MRT3 North Avenue station in Quezon City. PHOTO COURTESY OF MYRNALYN LAVAPIE / SENATOR GRACE POE’S OFFICE
MRT to see for myself what it’s like during rush hour,’” he said. Though some lawmakers are planning to draft a law that will upgrade the train system in the country, most of them, are not regular commuters. Need for upgrade
Travelling from end to end of the train, Poe arrived at Taft
Station in Pasay City almost two hours later, including the time she waited lining up for tickets. The senator, who travelled without media trail, nor an army of security and staff members, saw the inconveniences of traveling through train. Poe’s train ticket got stuck in the ticketing machine. This was
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PHOTO COURTESY OF MYRNALYN LAVAPIE / SENATOR GRACE POE’S OFFICE
after several minutes of standing to line up at the ticket booth. Poe told Rappler that although the line was moving at the North Avenue station, a non-functional escalator caused a bottleneck of passengers. Her train ticket also got stuck in the ticketing machine, she said. She also noticed that the el-
evators of the train were not working saying that it will be difficult for persons with disabilities to travel by train. Despite the inconveniences, Poe said the train is still “not a hopeless situation” adding that, “the government just has to step up its efforts in the proper maintenance of the trains and the station.” ■
Philippine News
5 FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
‘Shocking new evidence’ vs Joc-joc, et al. BY MARLON RAMOS, GIL C. CABACUNGAN, TJ BURGONIO, AND LEILA B. SALAVERRIA Philippine Daily Inquirer NOT SO fast. Former Agriculture Secretary Luis “Cito” Lorenzo, his former Undersecretary Jocelyn “Jocjoc” Bolante and their coaccused in the P 723-million fertilizer fund scam cannot celebrate yet because the Sandiganbayan has not dismissed the case, contrary to reports on Wednesday. What the antigraft court’s Second Division actually did was direct the Office of the Ombudsman to submit within 60 days “additional evidence” supporting its claims that Lorenzo, Bolante and their coaccused embezzled the funds intended to boost agricultural productivity by giving small farmers fertilizer, pesticide and farm implements. “We have newly found evidence that will not only make our case stronger but will also shock the world,” Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales said yesterday at the hearing on the Office of the Ombudsman’s budget for 2015 at the House of Representatives. “We have a strong case, we are not filing a case if we do not have a strong case. We are going to comply with the order of the court. We are going to do that as directed, within 60 days from the order,” Morales said. The report that the Sandiganbayan found no probable cause to prosecute Bolante and the others for plunder came as a shock to former Sen. Ramon Magsaysay Jr., chair of the Senate committee on agriculture that investigated the fertilizer fund scam in 2005. “It’s shocking,” Magsaysay said yesterday. “It’s a slap on the face of the Filipinos.” Morales was calm, but pointed out that it was her predecessor, former Ombudsman Orlando Casimiro, who filed the case in July 2011, days before President Aquino named her as his graft buster. But she said her office would do as directed by the court. The case involves the alleged
diversion of P723 million in fertilizer funds to the campaign of then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2004. Aside from Lorenzo and Bolante, also accused in the case are former Assistant Agriculture Secretary Ibarra Poliquit and fertilizer suppliers Jaime Eonzon Paule, Marilyn Araos, Joselito Flordeliza, Marites Aytona, Jose Barredo and Leonicia Marco-Llarena. Arroyo was also accused of graft in the case, but the Ombudsmandismissed the charges against her on May 2 for lack of evidence. Willing to help
Barredo, a confessed runner in the alleged scam, said yesterday that he was open to helping the Office of the Ombudsman in prosecuting the case but he wanted to be made a state witness. He testified in the Senate investigation of the scam and told all he knew. The committee did not recommend charges against him, but the Ombudsman charged him along with the others when it sent the case to court. “I am willing to help if they want,” Barredo told the INQUIRER in a telephone interview yesterday. “I amunder the [Witness Protection Program], they can ask the help of the [Department of Justice] to get in touch with me.” Barredo said he still had some documents pertaining to the transactions involved in the scam. He said he would tell all he knew about the scam and help investigators determine whom to talk with and where to look for a paper trail that would lead to those responsible for the scandal. As a runner for Aytona, who allegedly fronted for Bolante, Barredo’s task was to help in approaching lawmakers and local officials to inform them about the availability of funds for the purchase of fertilizer. Barredo said he would go to the politicians and local officials to make deals and bring the papers to Bolante for approval. He said the officials got commissions from the deals, with
runners like him delivering the money to them. Barredo also said the fertilizer was overpriced. Sad findings
He said he was saddened by the report that the Sandiganbayan found no probable cause to prosecute Lorenzo and Bolante for plunder. Written by Associate Justice Napoleon Inoturan and concurred in by Associate Justices Teresita Diaz-Baldos and Alexander Gesmundo, the 48page ruling was promulgated on Aug. 15, but was officially released only yesterday. In its decision, the court said government prosecutors failed to present evidence showing probable cause to proceed with the trial of Bolante et al. and for the court to issue warrants for their arrest. It said the prosecution did not submit evidence proving that the accused public officials indeed benefited and received at least P50 million from the transactions involving the fertilizer funds. “The documents presented by the prosecution are bereft of any evidence establishing probable cause against herein accused public officials for violation of the plunder law,” the court said. “The court could already order the dismissal of the present case. However, it cannot close its eyes to the glaring badges of fraud and irregularity in the release and utilization of the P723-million fertilizer funds,” it added. No one accused Bolante
In fact, the court said not a single witness or complainant who submitted sworn affidavits to the Ombudsman accused Bolante of pocketing at least P50 million from the amounts deposited in the account of Feshan Philippines Inc., the main supplier of the fertilizer that witnesses said was never delivered to farmers. If at all, the court said, what the Ombudsman showed was that Bolante, Lorenzo and other government officials could be held liable for violating Section 3 of Republic Act No. 3019, or the antigraft law, which perwww.canadianinquirer.net
The report that there was no probable cause to prosecute Bolante and others for plunder is “a slap on the face of the Filipinos”, according to Magsaysay. PHOTO BY ERIC JAMES SARMIENTO / FLICKR
tains to “corrupt practices of public officers.” Unlike plunder, graft is a bailable offense. The court also reminded the prosecutors that in plunder cases, the prosecution is required to establish “not so much the accountability for the subject funds ... but its illegal acquisition by the accused public official.” Besides claiming that the government was shortchanged because of their illegal acts, the court said the prosecution must also show that the “missing/unaccounted funds” actually went to the pocket of the accused government officials. In the case of Bolante, it noted that he authorized the regional directors of the Department of Agriculture to distribute the funds to the intended beneficiaries and project proponents “none of whom turned out to be Bolante.” “While it is possible that accused Bolante profited from the unliquidated funds, such suspicion requires the support of circumstances sufficiently strong in themselves,” the court said. Accused plunderers like Bolante were not compelled to explain and account for the missing funds “but for the prosecution to establish that such funds... were amassed and accumulated” by the accused. ‘Key player’
“All told, the evidence so far presented by the prosecution fails to establish the existence of probable cause that accused Bolante, by himself or with the
help of his coaccused, amassed, accumulated and/or acquired ill-gotten wealth in the aggregate amount of at least P50 million,” it concluded. In addition, the court said the Ombudsman identified Bolante as the “key player” in the alleged misappropriation of the fertilizer funds, making Lorenzo and the other accused “coconspirators of Bolante.” But the documents it provided in its complaint “tend to establish” that the commissions or kickbacks from the scam went to local officials, nongovernment organizations, agents and Marco-Llarena, one of the suppliers of the fertilizer. “Thus, consistent with justice and fair play, it should be the recipients of the subject funds who should account for the alleged unliquidated portion of the fund,” the court said. It’s plunder
Magsaysay did not agree with the court’s findings. He said the Senate agriculture committee submitted voluminous documentary and testimonial evidence, including a report from the Commission on Audit (COA), to the Office of the Ombudsman then headed by Merceditas Gutierrez. “I feel it’s a diminution of the credibility of the Sandiganbayan and also of the Ombudsman,” Magsaysay said. “We don’t know which of them has watered down the reports,” he added, referring to his committee’s and the COA’s reports. He said the reports pointed to the same conclusion: “There was indeed plunder.” ■
Philippine News
SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
FRIDAY 6
Bernas tells P-Noy to retire, give Santiago a chance BY KRISTINE ANGELI SABILLO Philippine Daily Inquirer SIT BACK, relax and give other people a chance. That’s a message for President Aquino from Jesuit priest Joaquin Bernas, a member of the 1986 Constitutional Commission. “I’ll say, ‘Rest, there are other good people,’” Bernas, an INQUIRER columnist, said in an interview on ANC on Tuesday. Bernas was answering questions about moves by administration allies to amend the Constitution to lift the presidential term limit and enable President Aquino to run for a second term. He made it clear that he disapproved of changing the presidential term limit and advised Mr. Aquino to retire after serving his six-year term. “Give (Sen.) Miriam (Santiago) a chance,” Bernas said in jest. Cancer-stricken Santiago was titillated. Yesterday, she issued a statement declaring that she would run for President in 2016 if she got enough support from the electorate. Saying the tumor in her lung was shrinking, Santiago vowed to “rise to the occasion” if there were enough “like-minded supporters like Fr. Joaquin Bernas.” “I’m not going to be coy. Society leaders have urged me to seek the presidency. I can rise to the occasion, although I [am] following the other signposts on the road to recovery,” Santiago said. If she decides to run, she will go toe-to-toe, as well as pesofor-peso, with Vice President Jejomar Binay, the clear frontrunner in early opinion polls on the 2016 presidential election. ‘President Mar’
Besides Binay, there’s also the
But he thanked the group “for their support and confidence.” His colleagues in the Nacionalist Party, Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano and Antonio Trillanes IV, had said they were going to run for higher office in 2016. Miriam’s conditions
Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago said that she will run for president in 2016, if there are enough “like-minded” supporters for her led by Fr. Joaquin Bernas. PHOTO FROM MIRIAM.COM.PH
ruling Liberal Party’s presumptive standard-bearer, Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, who is unpopular with the electorate, as shown by the polls, but to whom presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda referred to as “President Mar” yesterday. Lacierda, presiding over a briefing for reporters in Malacañang, corrected his error, his second in less than a week. “I was there when President Mar—oh, sorry—well, Secretary Mar Roxas, when Secretary Mar Roxas said it,” Lacierda said, referring to Roxas’ consultation with party members on the antidynasty bill. It appeared that Lacierda, who said at the start of the briefing that he was not feeling well, had his titles mixed up. Roxas is the president-onleave of the Liberal Party (LP). President Aquino is the LP chair. Late last week, Lacierda raised eyebrows when he suggested that there might be no elections in 2016. Realizing his error later, he issued a statement to clarify
that the President had neither decided on term extension nor chosen a candidate to endorse and that there would be elections in 2016, as scheduled. Bongbong not running
Deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte attributed the error to Lacierda’s not being fluent in Filipino, the language preferred by President Aquino and which his officials also use. Lacierda is a Visayan. If Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is to be believed, Santiago has one rival less for the presidency. Yesterday, Marcos laughed off pronouncements by his mother, Ilocos Norte Rep. Imelda Marcos, that he would run for President in 2016. “My mother has been saying that since I was 3 years old. Don’t be surprised that she’s continuing to say that. But then again, she’s a mother, and it’s not surprising,” Marcos said. A group of supporters gathered outside the Senate yesterday carrying streamers urging Marcos to run for President. Told about it, Marcos said it was “embarrassing.”
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Marcos said he was keeping his options open. “When 2016 comes, I will be a candidate. The obvious thing for me to do is run for reelection,” he said. Santiago, who lost the 1992 presidential election, set several conditions for another run for the presidency. “We’ll if they don’t clean up this mess (Disbursement Acceleration Program or DAP)— because as a lawyer I look at the DAP opinion—which goes my way—as a big mess. How are you going to tie up all of these loose ends?” she said. But then again, she said: “Maybe God will send me another disease, so I don’t know what to do.” Months earlier, Santiago had said that Senators Grace Poe, Cynthia Villar, Loren Legarda and Pia Cayetano could give the men a run for their money if they contest the presidency in May 2016. Santiago, who was hobbled by chronic fatigue syndrome that made her miss sessions since March, said in July she would be fully cured of cancer in six weeks, thanks to a “magical tablet.” She said she had a rare condition: “genetic mutancy” where the cells in her left lung were “impermeable” to cancer. And because of this, she said, she didn’t need to undergo chemotherapy. She just needed to take a chemotherapy tablet every day. And only when the cancerous mass didn’t shrink would she take medical treatment abroad,
she said. Perpetuation in power
In his television interview, Bernas said there was a reason why the framers limited the President’s term to six years and made the three branches of government coequal. “To prevent the person from perpetuating himself in power. That’s basically it,” Bernas said. “Although again you can say a good man should be there as long as he can,” he added, joking. Bernas pointed out that it was a lesson learned from the Philippines’ experience with the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who stayed in power for 20 years. “That’s why the move now to reelect is very much against the spirit of the ConCom. It’s very much against (former President) Cory (Aquino) herself,” he said, referring to President Aquino’s mother under whose administration the 1987 Constitution was adopted. Six years long enough
Although Mr. Aquino has yet to confirm that he wants his term extended, he has said that he will continue to listen to his bosses, some of whom are calling for “One More Term.” “Six years is long enough,” Bernas said. “And they used to say four years is short for a good president, six is long for a bad President.” He said the President would probably regret his earlier statements about being open to Charter change. “He can’t do it anyway, he can’t succeed. I don’t think he’ll get the support. But when it moves it will be his undoing,” Bernas said. ■
Philippine News
7 FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
Leila, Kim take ‘ice bucket challenge’ Remulla: Trillanes should admit bullying BY JEROME ANING, PAOLO G. MONTECILLO, AND MARLON RAMOS Philippine Daily Inquirer
TWO SENIOR women officials of the Aquino administration yesterday got on the bandwagon and had themselves doused with cold water. A third official, who apparently relishes his macho image, declined the challenge, saying he didn’t need it. Justice Secretary Leila de Lima had herself doused with freezing water by aides as she took the “ice bucket challenge” —a social media drive that aims to raise awareness about amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a degenerative nerve ailment also known as the Lou Gehrig’s disease. The “ice bucket challenge” has set off an international “craze.” Former US President George W. Bush, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft founder Bill Gates are among those who have taken it up. A game Internal Revenue Commissioner Kim JacintoHenares showed she was more than willing to make fun of herself—she also agreed to have a bucket of ice-cold water dumped on her. But Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada declined, saying he didn’t have to accept the challenge put up to him by gambling buddyturned-accuser, former Ilocos Sur Gov. Luis “Chavit” Singson. “Why? I don’t need to wash myself. Maybe it’s him (Singson) who needs it. He has many sins,” the former President said in jest when asked by reporters if he would accept Singson’s challenge. A worthy cause
Across Manila, De Lima signaled two aides carrying a pail of icy water each to pour it on her as she sat on a chair near the flagpole at the Department of Justice quadrangle. “I’m taking this challenge for a worthy cause so here we go. Go!” De Lima said. De Lima, who wore her office clothes, including her trademark shawl, quickly stood up shivering but recovered her poise and told media men she was nominating Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, former
BY LEI FONTAMILLAS Philippine Canadian Inquirer
The “ice bucket challenge” has been this summer’s charitable activity craze. PHOTO FROM GLOBAL PANORAMA / FLICKR
Sen. Panfilo Lacson and Iloilo Rep. Niel Tupas to also accept the challenge.
in accounting from De La Salle University before taking up law at Ateneo.
$100 pledge
‘Just for show’
Asked why she nominated the three, De Lima replied: “Nothing, I just thought about them. And I hope they will accept my challenge. Many have already accepted the challenge all over the globe. That’s why I tell others, take the challenge, too, because it’s for a worthy cause. We can all help.” De Lima also pledged to donate $100 (about P4,400) to a still undetermined institution undertaking research into ALS. Employees of the justice department cheered De Lima as she was being doused. They also jostled with media men to get pictures and videos of the spectacle. Choice for Henares
A television anchorman earlier dared De Lima and others to take up the challenge. On Monday night, De Lima sent text messages to reporters, saying she accepted because she “loves challenges.” A video of Henares showed her wearing an Ateneo de Manila hoodie and black Adidas sweat pants. Water from a red bucket was poured on Henares’ head. “It was a choice between Ateneo and La Salle. I chose Ateneo so (President Aquino) wouldn’t tease me about it,” Henares said in an interview. Henares earned her degree
Estrada said there was no reason for him to douse himself with a bucket of ice-cold water just to extend assistance for other causes. Estrada said he had been supporting several advocacy groups and scholarship foundations since he first became mayor of San Juan City. “That challenge is just for show. It’s just for show-offs. I have many charities. You don’t have to tell people about that,” he said in an interview after attending the bail hearing of his son, detained Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, in the Sandiganbayan. Added Estrada: “If I want to help, I don’t need to make it public. It will not just be for show. I have done it silently.” Referring to his previous incarceration on a plunder charge, Estrada said: “In fact, I was jailed because I helped (send kids to school). I placed the money in a scholarship foundation. I didn’t benefit from it.” He was referring to the P200 million deposited in a bank under a group called Erap Muslim Youth Foundation. The Sandiganbayan ruled that the money was actually part of Estrada’s supposed kickbacks from the illegal numbers racket “jueteng.” His son Sen. Jinggoy Estrada is also facing plunder charges in connection with the P10-billion pork barrel scam. ■ www.canadianinquirer.net
MANILA—Cavite Governor and Vice President Jejomar Binay’s spokesman Jonvic Remulla urged Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV to admit that he bullied a contractor who was supposed to testify for the Binay family during the Senate hearing regarding the allegedly overpriced Makati City parking building. According to Remulla, Trillanes should answer the accusation on Wednesday that he bullied and cursed the representative of Hillmarcs Construction. The said company was the contractor of the controversial building. “Did he or did he not bully and curse the representative of Hillmarcs? Simple question, simple answer are what the people are looking for,” Remulla said. Remulla also expressed his disappointment over Trillanes’ approach in asking the Vice President to provide proof regarding the incident. “When it’s the Vice President making statements, Senator Trillanes says show proof first. But when it’s their local political allies who are the Vice President’s detractors making baseless and malicious remarks in a Senate hearing, he does not demand proof and in fact coaches and guides them in their answers. This is a clear case of double standard,” Binay’s spokesman added. Remulla said that he also see
Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV.
how Trillanes has double standards in investigating the persons involved. He cited Trillanes’ failure to ask the former vice mayor of Makati regarding the supposed kickbacks he received from the said project. “There is clear double standard when you allow a person like the former vice mayor to get away with a tacit admission of violating the laws without so much as an admonition from Senator Trillanes. In contrast, auditors and specialists from the Commission on Audit, the contractor and Makati officials including Mayor Junjun Binay were bullied,” Remulla stressed. He added that Binay will not file charges against Mercado even if the latter’s statements are disproved. Aside from Mercado, Remulla is also questioning Trillanes on how he did not reproach Renato Bondal. Bondal is the one who disclosed that the birthday cakes being given by the local government of Makati to its senior citizens are priced at P1,000 each. His statement is based on a “guess.” “Why didn’t Senator Trillanes admonish this person, or charge him with perjury for lying under oath? These persons are flouting the law in front of the senators yet they are being treated with kid gloves,” Remulla noted. He added, “The way the hearing is being conducted and the demeanor and statements of Senators Trillanes and Alan Cayetano are those of a prosecutor, not an impartial legislator crafting laws.” ■
PHOTO COURTESY OF TRILLANES’ FACEBOOK PAGE
Philippine News
SEPTEMBER 5, 2014 FRIDAY 8
Highly-questioned ‘Anti-Selfie’ bill promulgated by PH lawmakers Publisher Philippine Canadian Inquirer, Inc. Managing Editor Earl Von Tapia earl.tapia@canadianinquirer.net Community News Editor Mary Ann Mandap maryann.mandap@canadianinquirer.net Correspondents Ching Dee Angie Duarte Lei Fontamillas Frances Grace Quiddaoen Socorro Newland Bolet Arevalo Graphic Designer Shanice Garcia Photographers Angelo Siglos Danvic Briones Solon Licas Operations and Marketing Head Laarni Liwanag (604) 551-3360 Advertising Sales Alice Yong (778) 889-3518 alice.yong@canadianinquirer.net Jennifer Yen 778-227-2995 jennifer.yen@canadianinquirer.net PHILIPPINE PUBLISHING GROUP Editorial Assistant Phoebe Casin Associate Publisher Lurisa Villanueva In cooperation with the Philippine Daily Inquirer digital edition Philippine Canadian Inquirer is located at 400-13955 Bridgeport Rd., Richmond, BC V6V 1J6 Canada Tel. No.: 1-888-668-6059 or 778-8893518 | Email: info@canadianinquirer. net, inquirerinc@gmail.com, sales@ canadianinquirer.net Philippine Canadian Inquirer is published weekly every Friday. Copies are distributed free throughout Metro Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg and Toronto. The views and opinions expressed in the articles (including opinions expressed in ads herein) are those of the authors named, and are not necessarily those of Philippine Canadian Inquirer Editorial Team. PCI reserves the right to reject any advertising which it considers to contain false or misleading information or involves unfair or unethical practices. The advertiser agrees the publisher shall not be liable for damages arising out of error in any advertisement.
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BY ANGIE DUARTE Philippine Canadian Inquirer MANILA—The “selfie”-craze is under threat by a bill in Congress that aims to ban taking photos of people without their permission. House Bill 4807 or the Protection against Personal Intrusion Act is now up for 3rd reading in plenary. But not everyone is on board with the proposed bill. In fact, a big sector of society is decrying the law-in-the-making, which is aimed at putting an end to seemingly haphazard snaps of oneself (hence, the term) in random contexts, involving a diversity of people, places, situations, and things. The craze, bordering on phenomenon, has found a home on social media; becoming second nature, almost, to netizens the world over. It has also largely mutated to know include “groupsies”- or self-taken group shots—in its definition. According to Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Zarate, who has expressed adamant opposition to the bill, the proposed “Personal Intrusion Act” defines “intrusion of personal privacy” as “any person who willfully intrudes into the personal privacy of another, without the consent of that person and with the intent to gain or profit therefrom, shall be civilly liable to the offended party.” “HB 4807 will create a chilling effect on media and would especially affect citizen journalism. It would punish with civil suit taking photos video or even audio recording anything claimed as a personal/ family matter even of public officials and personalities,” Zarate stated. “Even an innocuous selfie with public figures at the background would be liable for ‘intrusion of privacy’. This is absurd and we urge our colleagues to reconsider,” he stressed. “At first glance, the terms used in these provisions may seem harmless and well meaning. Yet, a deeper look at how they will impact in everyday lives is truly worrisome. It affects not only those in the media profession but everyone,” Zarate added. The promulgators of the bill are Congressmen Rufus Rodriguez, Maximo Rodriguez, Jorge Almonte, Gwendolyn Garcia, Linabelle Ruth Villarica, Lito Atienza and Leopoldo Bataoil. The following acts are defined as an “intrusion into personal privacy” and shall be “presumed to have been committed with the intent to gain or profit” under the inclusions of HB 4807: • capturing by a camera or sound recording instrument of any type of visual image, sound recording or other physical impression of the person. • trespassing on private property in
A proposed law-in-the-making from the Philippine Congress that would ban selfies has received heavy criticism from lawmakers and the public. PHOTO BY DANIJEL JAMES / FLICKR
order to capture any type of visual image, sound recording or other physical impression of any person • capturing any type of visual image, sound recording or other physical impression of a person or family activity through the use of a visual or auditory enhancement device even when no physical trespass has occurred, when the visual image, sound recording or other physical impression could not have been captured without a trespass if no enhancement device was used. The bill stipulates in Section 4 that any person whose personal privacy was intruded upon, as delineated in the aforementioned guidelines, “may in a civil action against the person who committed the intrusion, obtain any appropriate relief, including compensatory damages, punitive damages, and injunctive and declaratory relief.” “The fact that no visual image, sound recording or other physical impression of a person was actually sold for gain or profit shall not be available as a defense in any civil action or proceeding for the enforcement of the provisions of this act,” the bill expounded. Furthermore, the bill stipulates that the only “legitimate law enforcement activities” are exempt from these promulgations. Already, the bill is receiving much criticism, primarily because it is seen as an infringement on the freedom of the press and social media. “It would seem that people from the media and journalists can be targets of the proposed measure. Worthy of being emphasized is the phrase ‘with intent to gain or profit therefrom.’ In case a complaint is filed in court against a photo-
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journalist, can lack of intent to gain be used as defense?” questioned Jose Torres Jr., board member of the Photojournalists’ Center of the Philippines (PCP), Incorporated. Many other aspects of the bill need further clarification, such as what qualifies as “gain or profit” and “private property.” “Private property must be spelled out and defined. Public places, cars, public transport, public buildings, among others, and individuals, who by nature of their position or profession are classified as public figures, cannot claim violation of privacy. Does ‘personal privacy’ extend to public domain or public places in private spaces, for instance malls, shopping centers, events venues, a luxurious resort, among others?” Torres further queried. Likewise, the portion pertaining to “capturing any type of visual image” can also have heavy ramifications upon journalists and photographers who use sophisticated legal information gathering devices, such as drones equipped with cameras. The group also wants a corresponding provision of penalty for grave use of authority and clear use of provisions of the law for harassment of journalists. “We worry that this proposed measure can become a tool that ‘unwilling public figures’ will use to suppress press freedom,” Torres stressed. Meanwhile, Zarate called upon his fellow lawmakers to rethink the bill. “We welcome the openness of the bill’s authors to bring HB 4807 back to the committee level so that we can carefully review and scrutinize the bill, for its possible amendments or revision,” Zarate said. ■
Philippine News
9 FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
Philippines says peacekeepers pull ‘greatest escape’ from Syrian rebels; 45 Fijians still held BY JIM GOMEZ AND RYAN LUCAS The Associated Press BEIRUT—Under cover of darkness, 40 Filipino peacekeepers escaped their besieged outpost in the Golan Heights after a seven-hour gunbattle with Syrian rebels, Philippine officials said Sunday. Al-Qaida-linked insurgents still hold captive 45 Fijian troops. The getaway, combined with the departure of another entrapped group of Filipino troops, marked a major step forward in a crisis that erupted on Thursday when Syrian rebels began targeting the peacekeeping forces. The United Nations Security Council has condemned the assaults on the international troops monitoring the Syrian-Israeli frontier, and has demanded the unconditional release of those still in captivity. The crisis began after Syrian rebels overran the Quneitra crossing—located on the de facto border between Syrian- and Israeli-controlled parts of the Golan Heights—on Wednesday. A day later, insurgents from the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front seized the Fijian peacekeepers and surrounded their Filipino colleagues, demanding they surrender. The Filipinos, occupying two U.N. encampments, refused and fought the rebels Saturday. The first group of 35 peacekeepers was then successfully escorted out of a U.N. encampment in Breiqa by Irish and Filipino forces on board armoured vehicles. The remaining 40 peacekeep-
ers were besieged at the second encampment, called Rwihana, by more than 100 gunmen who rammed the camp’s gates with their trucks and fired mortar rounds. The Filipinos returned fire in self-defence, Philippine military officials said. At one point, Syrian government forces fired artillery rounds from a distance to prevent the Filipino peacekeepers from being overwhelmed, said Col. Roberto Ancan, a Philippine military official who helped monitor the tense standoff from the Philippine capital, Manila, and mobilize support for the besieged troops. “Although they were surrounded and outnumbered, they held their ground for seven hours,” Philippine military chief Gen. Gregorio Pio Catapang said, adding that there were no Filipino casualties. “We commend our soldiers for exhibiting resolve even while under heavy fire.” As night fell and a cease-fire took hold, the 40 Filipinos fled with their weapons, travelling across the chilly hills for nearly two hours before meeting up with other U.N. forces, who escorted them to safety early Sunday, Philippine officials said. “We may call it the greatest escape,” Catapang told reporters in Manila. The Syrian and Israeli governments, along with the United States and Qatar, provided support, the Philippine military said without elaborating. In New York, the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force, or UNDOF, whose mission is to monitor a 1974 disengagement in the Golan Heights between Israel and Syria, reported
Filipino peacekeepers were able to escape a besieged outpost after a sevenhour gunbattle with Syrian rebels. PHOTO FROM CARAT / FLICKR
that shortly after midnight local time, during a cease-fire agreed with the armed elements, all 40 Filipino peacekeepers left their position and “arrived in a safe location one hour later.” With the Filipinos now safe, full attention turned to the Fijians who remain in captivity. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon spoke with the Prime Minister of Fiji by telephone Sunday, and promised that the United Nations was “doing its utmost to obtain the unconditional and immediate release” of the Fijian peacekeepers, Ban’s office said. Sharon Smith Johns, a spokeswoman for the Fiji government, said Monday the location of the Fijian peacekeepers remains unknown. She said the number of captive troops has been amended to 45 from the 44 cited earlier by the U.N. after Fijian military officials realized one soldier they thought was located elsewhere was among those captured. “The situation over there is very fluid,” she said. Military Commander Brig. Gen. Mosese Tikoitoga said contacts on the ground in the Golan Heights have assured
the military of the captured soldiers’ well-being. He said a U.N. negotiation team and Fijians in Syria were working toward the peacekeepers’ release. The Nusra Front, meanwhile, confirmed that it had seized the Fijians. In a statement posted online, the group published a photo showing what it said were the captured Fijians in their military uniforms along with 45 identification cards. The group said the men “are in a safe place and in good health, and everything they need in terms of food and medicine is given to them.” The statement mentioned no demands or conditions for the peacekeepers’ release. The Nusra Front accused the U.N. of doing nothing to help the Syrian people since the uprising against President Bashar Assad began in March 2011. It said the Fijians were seized in retaliation for the U.N.’s ignoring “the daily shedding of the Muslims’ blood in Syria” and even colluding with Assad’s army ``to facilitate its movement to strike the vulnerable Muslims” through a buffer zone in the Golan Heights.
The Nusra Front has recently seized hostages to exchange for prisoners detained in Syria and Lebanon. Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center, said the abductions also may signal an expansion of Nusra’s kidnapping operations to make up for a loss revenues from oil resources in eastern Syria and a reduction in private funding from Gulf-based sources. “This money shortage comes amid a period of wider suffering for Nusra, as its image is being overwhelmingly trumped by the Islamic State, leading to sustained numbers of localized defections in areas of Syria,” he said. The U.N. mission in the Golan Heights has 1,223 troops from six countries: Fiji, India, Ireland, Nepal, Netherlands and the Philippines. A number of countries have withdrawn their peacekeepers due to the escalating violence. Philippine officials said Filipino forces would remain in Golan until their mission ends in October and not withdraw prematurely. Both U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Security Council strongly condemned Saturday’s attack on the peacekeepers’ positions and the ongoing detention of the Fijian peacekeepers. ■ Gomez reported from Manila, Philippines. Oliver Teves in Manila, Maamoun Youssef in Cairo, Rod McGuirk in Canberra, Australia, Peter Enav in Jerusalem and Nick Perry in Wellington, New Zealand, contributed to this report.
SC is an independent court—Sereno BY LEI FONTAMILLAS Philippine Canadian Inquirer MANILA—Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno reiterated the Supreme Court’s independence adding that their loyalty lies not in any branch of the government, but in the Constitution. “It should be clear to everybody that the Supreme Court could only be loyal to the Con-
stitution,” she said in a meeting with the media on Thursday. The chief justice called on the public to keep their faith in the high court, adding that the court’s strength is rooted in public trust and that “the judiciary is strong if the people believe in it.” “It is always important for me to uphold the independence of my office on a daily basis,” she said. “It is important that people see that the Chief Justice has the
Constitution first and foremost on her mind, and her devotion to duty and her loyalty to country is always unquestioned.” The statement was made by the chief justice several hours after President Aquino made a statement over the radio saying that he is open to amend the constitution to keep the judiciary’s power in check. Aquino made the statement following the SC’s declaration www.canadianinquirer.net
of several parts of the administration’s Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) to be unconstitutional. Aquino also called on the justices to disclose their statements of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALNs), as a move to a greater transparency in the judiciary. Despite these statements, Sereno gave no direct response. “I have enormous respect for the President and I’m sure he also
respects the office of the Chief Justice,” she said. “The professionalism with which I conduct myself must be consistent. I do not read anything into his (Aquino’s) statements,” she said. “What I am, what we are is an independent court, and that should remain the way it is,” she said. “We are going to assure our people that … that our independence will be maintained to the end,” she added. ■
Philippine News
SEPTEMBER 5, 2014 FRIDAY 10
Antipork forces vow to hit 10M signatures Philippine Daily Inquirer ORGANIZERS OF the people’s initiative to abolish the pork barrel system yesterday said they expected the Aquino administration to try to derail the campaign, but vowed to press the drive for 10 million signatures and force Congress to scrap what they believed was the source of official corruption in government. Activists and militant groups marched across the country yesterday, National Heroes’ Day, to protest against the Aquino administration’s keeping the pork barrel despite a Supreme Court ruling last year that the political patronage fund in the national budget was unconstitutional. Organizers set up booths in market places, schools, plazas and churches to gather 10 million signatures, well in excess of the 6 million required by the Constitution to force Congress to enact a law that the citizens want but the lawmakers do not. Under the initiative and referendum law, the signatures of at least 10 percent of all registered voters, and at least 3 percent of voters in each legislative district, are required for a people’s initiative. The signature campaign was launched in Cebu City on Sat-
urday and it went nationwide starting yesterday. Organizers said they hoped to achieve 10 million signatures by Dec. 31. In Western Visayas yesterday, Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Isagani Zarate led the protest against the pork barrel at a forum on the people’s initiative in Iloilo City. The signature campaign was launched during the forum held at Iloilo National High School. “This is a daunting task and we expect all efforts to derail this initiative,” Zarate said. “Congress will not abolish the pork barrel on its own. But we believe we can gather the signatures because the people want it abolished.” Zarate said the organizers hoped to submit at least 6 million signatures to the Comelec by next February. Lump sums in the budget
He said that despite the Supreme Court ruling that struck down the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) last year and the court’s declaration on July 1 that the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) was unconstitutional, lumpsum appropriations are found in the proposed P2.6-trillion budget for 2015. “Criminalizing lump-sum and discretionary appropriations will greatly diminish op-
Activists and militant groups marched across the country to protest against the Aquino administration’s keeping the pork barrel. PHOTO BY ERIC JAMES SARMIENTO / FLICKR
portunities for corruption” Zarate said. After the forum, about 200 people marched to Plazoletagay to protest the administration’s retention of the pork barrel system in defiance of the Supreme Court’s ruling. In Roxas City, Capiz province, about 1,500 protesters staged “Run After Corruption,” running from People’s Park in Roxas village and through the city’s main streets. Support from Church
In Bacolod City, Negros Occidental province, the Diocese of San Carlos declared its support
for the signature campaign. “We, the clergy in the Diocese of San Carlos agreed during our August monthly recollection to join the historic campaign to pass a law [that would abolish] the pork barrel system through a people’s initiative, because this system has become a source of corruption and of political patronage,” the diocese said in a statement. “We condemn as gravely immoral the irresponsible and unjust use of public funds [that] could otherwise have been used for basic services, like health and education,” it said. The diocese said a law need-
ed to be passed to prohibit and penalize the appropriation and use of lump-sum discretionary funds and require line-item budgeting. The signature campaign also started in Kalibo town, Aklan province, with the Aklan Church and People’s Solidarity Toward Good Governance sponsoring the gathering of signatures. Some politicians in the region said they respected the drive for a people’s initiative, but they believed it was unnecessary. Rep. Alfredo Abelardo Benitez of Negros Occidental (3rd District) said a people’s initiative was not necessary, as the House of Representatives was reviewing the budget, which he believed contained no pork. “As far as I am concerned, there is no more pork barrel,” said Rep. Jeffrey Ferrer of Negros Occidental (4th District). Negros Occidental Gov. Alfredo Marañon Jr. also said there was no more pork barrel, but in a democracy, those behind the signature drive had the prerogative to mount the campaign. Signature booths
In Southern Tagalog, signature booths went up in Laguna and ❱❱ PAGE 14 Antipork forces
AFP heroes... ❰❰ 3
Estrella’s sad story
It is a sadder story for the family of retired Army Col. Hilario Estrella, who was given the Valor award for leading his men in battle against 200 heavily armed communist insurgents in Zamboanga del Sur in 1984. The rebels attacked his 32man detachment in a predawn raid. Then a lieutenant, Estrella immediately lost 10 men. When their M60 machine gun malfunctioned, a wounded Estrella got it back working and fired at the enemies himself. The fight took seven hours until the rebels withdrew, with 22 comrades dead, including three commanders. Family taken hostage
Nearly three decades later, Estrella’s wife, Marilyn, said it
crossed her mind to take down her husband’s photograph in the Gallery of Heroes at the AFP Museum at Camp Aguinaldo. Marilyn and her daughter Abby said they felt they had been shortchanged as the family of a military hero. They said the government seemed to have left them to deal with the consequences of war on their own. Marilyn, an Army nurse, had hoped the military could help her renovate their house, which Estrella vandalized whenever he had a fit. Once, in a deranged moment and armed with his pistol, Estrella took his family hostage inside their house. Abby said it was difficult to get her father medicines that would keep him sedated, because they weren’t always available. “My father loved his job more
than anything and gave his all when he was in the service. But I feel the military has ignored us,” said Abby, 18. She has become the custodian of her father’s medals and nameplate. PMA blast
Estrella’s family and colleagues believe a bomb explosion at PMA in 1987 triggered the deterioration of his mental health. Estrella was at the grandstand rehearsing for his conferment of the Medal of Valor by then President Corazon Aquino. The graduating class included Sobejana and another would-be Valor awardee, Capt. Robert Lucero. Estrella suffered burns on his body. A lieutenant colonel, two other officers and a civilian died in the incident. Among the www.canadianinquirer.net
injured was PMA Commandant Lisandro Abadia, who later became AFP chief of staff. When calm, Estrella would read books about war and the military, or draw up battle plans. Often, he sleeps, withdrawn from the rest of the world. The P25,000 monthly stipend Estrella gets as a Valor awardee is mostly spent on his medication. What’s bravery for?
Just like Ortiz and Sobejana, Marilyn had experienced having to bring a copy of RA 9049 to her children’s schools to convince authorities that they were entitled to scholarships. Marilyn’s daughter dreams of becoming a commercial pilot but the cost of flight training is dizzying. The law states that anyone
who would deny the Valors and their dependents the privileges and benefits due them could be imprisoned for up to six years and fined up to P300,000. “We could always try to sue but what for? We can only imagine how much we’d spend for the litigation cost and our lawyers,” Ortiz said. Increase gratuity pay
Ortiz said some Valors like him were proposing that their monthly gratuities be increased to P50,000 if it was difficult for public and private establishments to give them the scholarships and discounts provided by the law. The amount is a long way from the P200 they each used to get as monthly gratuities for their exceptional bravery before RA 9049 became a law. ■
Philippine News
11 FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
President: I am not seeking a 2nd term
The leader of the group and two other men were arrested Monday with four homemade incendiary devices found inside their car at one of the airport’s parking lots, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said. Government agents, who were tipped off by an informant, said the men planned to set off one bomb at a parking lot restroom and the three others inside one of the country’s biggest shopping malls, which has ethnic Chinese owners. The territorial dispute between the Philippines and China has been simmering for years and Manila has occasionally filed diplomatic protests against alleged Chinese incursions into areas it claims. The Philippines filed a case last year with the Arbitral Tribunal in The Hague, questioning China’s massive territorial claims over nearly the entire South China Sea, angering Beijing. De Lima said the “utra-rightist” but “misguided group” planned also on Monday the “strafing” of the Chinese Embassy in Manila and a building owned by a company operating a power plant that allegedly employed Chinese workers illegally. “They are not content, they are frustrated over the stance of the government against China, which to them is very soft,” de Lima said. “They want this administration to espouse ❰❰ 1
BY CHRISTIAN V. ESGUERRA Philippine Daily Inquirer HE WILL enjoy good food in the company of good friends and celebrate his freedom. That’s how President Aquino plans to spend his first day as an ordinary citizen on July 1, 2016, the day after he steps down from office. After taking a beating for entertaining the idea of staying on, the President yesterday finally made it clear that he would not seek a second term, adding that he was not a “masochist.” “One year and 10 months from now, I think I will be with [Undersecretary Rey] Marfil and [Assistant Secretary Jun] Delantar (his aide) on July 1 (2016), the day after I step down from office, and we will eat something really delicious. Then there will be a banner behind us that reads, ‘Freedom,’” he said in a taped interview on Bombo Radyo that was aired yesterday. Mr. Aquino also spoke about his trip to Belgium, France, Spain and Germany next month to establish stronger relations with the European Union and invite investors to the Philippines and about speaking at the United Nations in New York on climate change at the invitation of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and US President Barack Obama in the light of the Philippine experience from a series of natural disasters. The President also said he believed he would get justice in the four complaints for his impeachment filed in the House of Representatives, which were brought by leftist groups that frequently staged rallies in front of the Aquino home on Times Street in Quezon City. Mr. Aquino questioned the motives of his detractors. Mr. Aquino said his openness to amending the 1987 Constitution had nothing to do with seeking a second term, but rather concerned the need to limit the judiciary’s supposed “meddling” with the two other branches of government. “Am I the one who has this ambition to extend my term?” he asked. He went on to recite the difficulties that came with his job
Anti-China group...
President Aquino has stated he will not seek another term after his current term is up. PHOTO FROM US CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF /FLICKR
and whose “context,” he said, “appeared to have gone missing” when he first discussed the matter in an interview with TV5 two weeks ago. “As I said when I first ran for office, ‘I’m no masochist,’” he said.
tell his supporters that “there’s a limit” to his term in office. But he said he also had to deal with concerns about continuity of programs introduced on his watch. “I also have to provide answers to that,” he said. Row with Supreme Court
Judicial overreach
But while Mr. Aquino appeared to have shut the door on the idea of running for a second term, he had not stepped back from his stand that the powers of the judiciary should be clipped, especially after the Supreme Court struck down his economic stimulus plan, the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP). The President reiterated that he was open to amending the Constitution to set “limits” to “judicial overreach.” “It seems judicial [over]reach has to be reviewed and we have to put limits to it,” he said. “It seems that [the judiciary] has been meddling a lot and this makes it difficult for us to run this government.” In his TV5 interview, Mr. Aquino mentioned the need to listen to his “bosses,” referring to the people, when asked about suggestions that he run for a second term. But he also clarified that his response did not mean that he would “automatically go after an additional term.” In the Bombo Radyo interview, Mr. Aquino elaborated on that statement, saying he was now “consulting” with the people on how to “ensure that what we have started will continue and become permanent.” On his own, he said, he could
In considering constitutional amendments, a move he had consistently rejected before, the President was apparently still hurting over certain Supreme Court decisions. He insisted that government officials who implemented DAP-funded projects were considered “guilty until proven innocent” based on the Supreme Court’s 13-0 decision on July 1 declaring certain DAP practices unconstitutional. Last week, Mr. Aquino appointed to the Supreme Court Solicitor General Francis Jardeleza, who defended the DAP in the high court and later asked the tribunal to reconsider its decision. The President also resurrected former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s appointment of Chief Justice Renato Corona in 2010, maintaining that it violated the Constitution. Mr. Aquino used Corona’s midnight appointment as a major argument in campaigning for the ouster of the Chief Justice, who was eventually impeached in December 2011 then removed in May 2012. The President replaced Corona with Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno. But even Sereno and his other appointees to the Supreme Court found certain practices under the DAP unconstitutional. ■ www.canadianinquirer.net
a tougher stance in its dispute with China.” She said the men would be charged with possession of explosive materials, a nonbailable offence. The Justice Department also was considering filing conspiracy to commit terrorism charges against the three, she said. Military Chief of Staff Gen. Gregorio Pio Catapang played down incident and described the arrested men as “pranksters” who wanted to get public attention. “I don’t think it’s a terror attack because these were just firecrackers,” Catapang told reporters. De Lima said the group considers China and wealthy ethnic Chinese like the owners of the mall as enemies. Rommel Vallejo, head of the Anti-Organized Crime Division of the National Bureau of Investigation, said each of the firebombs consisted of a firecracker as big as the palm of hand with an eight-second wick taped to a plastic bottle containing gasoline. De Lima said the blast from one of the devices could create a huge fireball and send debris flying 5-10 metres (15-30 feet) away, which could cause fatal injuries. De Lima said there were other members of the group and investigations were continuing. ■ Associated Press writer Jim Gomez contributed to this report.
Membes of an ultra-right protest group were arrested by officials after being linked to potential bombings at Philippine malls due to frustration over the “soft” stance of the Philippine government against China. PHOTO BY DEORTIZ /FLICKR
Philippine News
SEPTEMBER 5, 2014 FRIDAY 12
Binay hits foes for smear Veep denies making money from P2.28- building BY CHRISTINE O. AVENDAÑO Philippine Daily Inquirer VICE PRESIDENT Jejomar Binay yesterday fired back at his accusers and detractors, singling out administration coalition allies for the political attacks against him but careful not to link President Aquino. A day after former Makati City Vice Mayor Ernesto Mercado accused Binay of making money from the allegedly overpriced P2.28-billion Makati City Hall Parking Building in an ongoing Senate investigation, Binay called for a news conference to deny anew the allegations. The Vice President also insinuated that his accuser had a deeper involvement than him in the supervision of the controversial project. But even as he slammed Mercado, Binay said he was noncommittal if he would press charges. The Vice President did not rule out the possibility he would attend hearings of the Senate blue ribbon subcommittee even if he criticized the partiality of its members and how they treated witnesses who testified that there was no overprice in the project. “I and my family did not receive any money in any transactions in Makati City—not in the construction of the parking building or any building in Makati City, from contractors and businessmen of our city and especially in giving and baking cakes or other benefits for Makati residents,” Binay said in a statement in Filipino that he read at the news conference. Going into the Senate inquiry, Binay said the bearing of Senate Majority Leader Alan Peter Cayetano and Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV at the hearings on Aug. 20 and Aug. 26 “reinforced” his fear that the investigation was a “politicized forum meant to find my criminal liability and was not in aid of legislation.” He zeroed in on the way Trillanes had tried to initially stop the testimony of the building contractor, a representative of Hilmarcs Construction
Corp., and how the lawmaker threatened to include her in the plunder complaint against him and his son, Makati Mayor Junjun Binay, after the contractor’s representative testified to belie the overpriced allegations. At the first hearing, Federico Cuervo, a property appraiser from Cuervo Valuers & Advisory, said the average cost of a building in Barangay Poblacion, Makati City, was P23,000 per square meter based on 2007 prices. He also said the P23,000 value was for a “Grade A” building. Construction of the parking building began in 2008. It was finished in 2013. Timed for next surveys
“Why are they maligning me? It’s because of the information that the next political surveys will start soon. They wanted their tirades against me to impact on the people’s support for me because not only do I have a high trust rating but I am also the front-runner in the people’s preference for President,” said Binay, who was the leading presidential aspirant in a recent opinion poll. Binay said Mercado was being used by certain people in government who had promised him he would get projects and commissions in exchange for his Senate testimony against him. But when pressed to identify these government officials, the Vice President declined to elaborate. He said Mercado would know who they were. “There is a motive here,” Binay said. Asked whether he thought Malacañang or Mr. Aquino’s Liberal Party had a hand in the political attacks against him, he said: “I don’t want to speculate on the the part of the President. As for the party, they’re in this together. Bondal, Mercado... their group is attacking me.” NP allies
Binay was apparently referring to allies of the Nacionalista Party (NP) because lawyer Renato Bondal, one of the two lawyers who filed a plunder complaint against Binay and his son, and Mercado were party members. Bondal ran for Makati mayor in 2013 and lost while Mercado ran for the same
position in 2010 but lost to Binay’s son. The NP is a member of the administration coalition in Congress. Binay also insinuated that Mercado had supervised the construction of the parking building and other projects. Little mayor
Asked about Mercado’s role in the parking building, Binay described the then vice mayor as being the “little mayor” of the city. “He made follow-ups,” he said. Reiterating that Mercado should be charged after he admitted receiving kickbacks from the parking building project, Binay said he had heard that his then vice mayor was into these activities. “Sabi-sabi (allegations),” was how he described it. Pressed if he undertook an investigation of Mercado, the Vice President said it was difficult to just believe rumors. He insisted that he had trusted his then vice mayor so much that he allowed him to follow up the city government’s projects. That was why he said he was saddened that Mercado acknowledged that he had pocketed kickbacks. At the same, Binay said he was glad that the latter made the admission. Reminded that he had insisted the construction of the parking building was above board, Binay said it was his detractors who were saying the opposite.
Philippine VP Jejomar Binay (left) is greeted by the US Ambassador in the US Embassy. Binay has fired back at people accusing him of corruption. PHOTO FROM US EMBASSY MANILA / FLICKR
No formal invitation
Binay did not rule out the possibility that he would attend the next Senate hearing scheduled for Sept. 4. He said he had not been invited formally to the Senate inquiry and should there be an invitation, he would see if there was an opportunity for him to do so. In saying that there was nothing irregular in the construction of the parking building, Binay cited the following: The Commission on Audit (COA) audited the project 10 times in six years and did not find any anomaly. The construction of the parking building underwent study and processes in accordance with the General Procurement Act. The project was funded through a budget provided by the Makati City Council for five years and that the funds were covered by ordinances. P200M saved
Involving others
Asked why Mercado was saying that he too made money from the parking building like him, Binay said: “Nandadamay lang po ‘yun (He was just involving others).” The Vice President said he heard that Mercado had been instructed by his backers to insist that he accepted money too, but apparently the former vice mayor became conscientious and said this was his speculation. Binay initially said he would study what cases could be filed against Mercado and then said he would leave it up to the Senate subcommittee to make the recommendation. Later, he said he would just leave Mercado’s fate to God. www.canadianinquirer.net
The COA said it would conduct a special audit of the construction of the Makati City Hall Parking Building. COA Chair Grace Pulido-Tan told the Senate on Aug. 20 that her agency found “red flags,” such as the division of the project into several phases and the quick award of the contracts. Binay said the city government actually saved P200 million in constructing the project because initially it had estimated the total cost at P2.4 billion. While the Vice President did most of the talking at the press conference, he introduced his new spokesperson, Cavite Gov. Juanito Victor “Jonvic” Remulla, an NP member.
New Binay spokesperson
Remulla said he asked and got the permission from the NP head, former Sen. Manuel Villar Jr., to be the spokesperson of Binay. “I believe in the Vice President ... I believe in his vision for the country ... I believe in his integrity and [he is] the most qualified person [to run for President],” Remulla told reporters. He refused to say his alliance with Binay signaled the NP was aligning with Binay’s soon-tobe launched political party. Remulla said his NP party mates Trillanes and Cayetano were using the Senate inquiry for their political plans. Trillanes has declared that he will run for higher office while Cayetano is eyeing the presidency in 2016. Remulla said Navotas City Rep. Toby Tiangco, secretary general of the United Nationalist Alliance, would be speaking on the “broader spectrum” of things. Tiangco said the Vice President needed more people to defend him given that the latter had been taking a lot of beating from his political opponents. “We were being punched 10 times and I’m all alone [as the spokesperson],” said Tiangco, who used to speak on behalf of Binay. The Vice President said he chose Remulla because the Cavite governor was a good leader and would do a good job in speaking for him. He said Remulla would be joining his new party. Binay also said that he expected more political mud to be thrown his way and his family, noting that he heard that there would be attempts to unseat him and his son. ■
Philippine News
13 FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
PNP told: Act on kidnaps, Experts didn’t call building reported or not overpriced, says Makati exec BY LEILA B. SALAVERRIA Philippine Daily Inquirer MANILA, PHILIPPINES–The Philippine National Police (PNP) should check reports that kidnap-for-ransom (KFR) cases in Metro Manila are on the rise, whether these incidents have been officially relayed to authorities or not, according to Sen. Francis Escudero. The senator on Tuesday said he had received reports from various parties that a recent spate of KFR activities had again been targeting members of the Filipino-Chinese community, with the victims’ families being asked to pay a relatively “small” ransom, from P500,000 to P5 million. These families had opted to pay the kidnappers, without reporting their cases to the PNP, he said. But the police should nevertheless look into the matter, Escudero said as he announced plans to question the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) about this when its draft 2015 budget is taken up in the Senate finance committee, which he chairs. “Whether reported or not, the police should check if crimes are taking place. The title of criminal cases is the ‘People of the Philippines.’ Even if private rights are abused, the government has the obligation
to go after the perpetrators because in the end, the aggrieved party is the Filipino people,” he told reporters. “Just because it’s not reported doesn’t mean nothing wrong is happening.” Escudero cited the killing of Benito Chao, a 69-year-old businessman who was found dead with a gunshot in the head a few hours after being taken Thursday last week in Caloocan City. He also asked authorities to check an incident on Edsa, which was captured in a photo shared on social media on Monday, where armed men were seen stopping and surrounding a vehicle in broad daylight. He said this could be a kidnapping attempt that the PNP should verify. Also citing Chao’s case, the Movement for the Restoration of Peace and Order (MRPO) will hold at 4 p.m. We d n e s d a y a seminarforum on “antikidnapping action and prevention” at the Kaisa Heritage Center in Intramuros, Manila. The MRPO, a group headed by anti-crime crusader Teresita Ang See, is expected to have Interior Sec. Mar Roxas as guest speaker. According to a media advisory, the forum will tackle ways how potential targets of KFR groups could “minimize chances of victimization.”
BY MARICAR B. BRIZUELA Philippine Daily Inquirer
troops greater access to bases across the Philippines. Aquino has denied any wrongdoing. The son of pro-democracy icons, Aquino won the presidency by a wide margin in 2010 on a promise to rid his nation of corruption and widespread poverty. “Mr. Chair, this is really a terrible day for accountability, a terrible day for the congressional
power over the purse, a terrible day for the Filipino people,” said Rep. Neri Colmenares, one of the sponsors of the complaints, addressing Rep. Niel Tupas Jr., the committee chairman. About a dozen youths who raised protest banners and chanted “Oust Noynoy!” had to be forcibly evicted from the room by security personnel. Noynoy is Aquino’s nickname.
MANILA, PHILIPPINES– None of the experts who inspected Makati City Hall Building II with a Senate panel on Monday categorically said the edifice was overpriced. “The experts did not say the building was overpriced, which is the issue being investigated by the Senate,” said Makati City government spokesman Lito Anzures on Tuesday. Anzures was present during the inspection conducted by the Senate blue ribbon committee chaired by Sen. Aquilino Pimentel III, with Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV as the only other member who came. The experts tapped by the committee, however, said the building was not world-class, having walls of gypsum board and rolled linoleum floors. Quantity surveyor Greg Jackson rated the dual office and parking building “average and standard.” But Anzures countered that these “pop-up experts” were not the ones who would determine if there was an overprice or criminal liability, only the courts [would do that]. “Random and piecemeal assessments made by engineers, architects and quantity surveyors tapped by the Senate are not conclusive and, therefore, cannot be used to validate alleged overprice. It is only the courts that can determine overprice and criminal liability on the basis of evidence presented and the testimonies of all parties involved,” Anzures said. He was confident the plunder
The Makati City Hall Building II. PHOTO FROM RAPPLER.COM
charges against Makati Mayor Junjun Binay and his father, Vice President Jejomar Binay, would be dismissed since the city government “fully complied” with the Procurement Act in the construction of the building. Citing the reviews conducted by the Commission on Audit (COA), Anzures noted the contract amounts in the project phases were all “reasonable.” “The COA consistently found the contract amounts and costs to be reasonable and within allowable limits of variance pursuant to COA Resolution No. 91-52,” Anzures said. The Makati building is the subject of the plunder complaint filed against the Binays by former city officials Renato Bondal and Nicolas Enciso IV for alleged overprice after the construction ended up costing P2.3 billion. ‘World-class, green’
Mayor Binay explained the cost by saying the 11-story city hall extension was “world-
class” and a “green building.” Anzures said the data from the National Statistics Office the complainants used to come up with the purported lower cost and market appraisals “cannot categorically prove” overprice in the building construction. “The Davis Langdon and Seah Handbook cannot categorically prove the building is overpriced, nor can the ocular inspection of the building,” he said. Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano referred to the handbook when questioning witnesses about the building in an earlier committee hearing. “The itemized costs of the materials and labor in the construction of Building II show that the prices were those prevailing at the time the materials and labor were used or incurred. This has been validated by the testimony of a COA technical audit specialist who swore at the Aug. 20 hearing that the prices were OK,” Anzures said.
Philippine House... They charged Aquino of culpable violation of the constitution, betrayal of public trust and corruption. The complaints cited Aquino’s implementation of a major economic stimulus program declared partly unconstitutional by the Supreme Court and a defenceco-operation agreement that gives American ❰❰ 1
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The Philippine House of Representatives in session. PHOTO FROM WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Philippine News
Antipork forces... Cavite provinces with the objective of contributing 1 million signatures to the national campaign against the pork barrel. Southern Tagalog refers to regions IV-A or Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal, Quezon) and IV-B or the island provinces of Mindoro Oriental and Occidental, Marinduque, Romblon and Palawan. Regions IV-A and IV-B are subdivided into 30 legislative districts. In the Bicol region, groups opposed to the pork barrel led by Bayan-Bikol gathered in key urban centers in Albay, Camarines Sur, Camarines Norte and Sorsogon provinces to launch their own signature drive. They aimed to gather half a million signatures. Tomorrow, the first anniversary of the Million People March against the pork barrel, an alliance of teachers and students at the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) will launch a “peach campaign” by sporting peach-colored ribbons and wearing peachcolored shirts to counter the “yellow campaign” of President Aquino. Andrianne Mark Ng, coordinator of the People’s Initiative Against the Pork Barrel System, said her group aimed to get signatures from 10 percent of the region’s voting population of around 8 million, the latest figure recorded by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) for the 2013 barangay elections. To achieve that goal, Ng said, the group will try to convince at least 3 percent of the voters in each legislative district to support the people’s initiative. “That’s about 800,000 signatures plus we have a buffer of around 200,000. So that’s about 1 million signatures,” Ng said. A regional center where people may sign up for the peoples’ initiative was opened at the Calamba City transport terminal in Laguna province. Signature booths were also set up in Biñan and Sta. Rosa cities and in Calauan town in Laguna, as well as in the cities of Dasmariñas and Bacoor in Cavite province. The signature booths will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day until Aug. 31. Ng said he believed it would not be hard for the group to encourage people to sign up. “A year since the pork barrel ❰❰ 10
scam broke out, people have become aware of the issue that the mere mention of pork to them means corruption,” he said. He said all Catholic bishops in Southern Tagalog had signed up and expressed support for the gathering of signatures during Masses in the parishes. .5M signatures
In Bicol, Daniel Baluncio, head of Bayan Bikol, said his group aimed to get signatures from 15 percent of registered voters in every district of the provinces in the region to amass 500,000 signatures. He said around 500 protesters joined simultaneous marches yesterday morning in key cities in the region. In Albay, 100 protesters marched from Daraga to Peñaranda Park in front of the provincial capitol, where they staged a 30minute program to denounce the pork barrel. Balucio said 150 protesters gathered at Plaza Quince Martirez in Naga City and 150 in Camp Escudero in Sorsogon City. He said 50 protesters were expected at the elevated plaza in Daet town, Camarines Norte province, for a rally at 5 to 6 p.m. Paul Vince Casilihan, spokesperson for Karapatan-Bikol, said his group had been using social media and radio even before yesterday’s launch to promote the signature drive. Campaign in Baguio
In Baguio City in the north, a group of activists launched a drive to gather 150,000 signatures for the national campaign. The Tongtongan ti Umili group launched the signature campaign at Malcolm Square in downtown Baguio City. Children of the activists wearing pig masks sang songs to entertain people as they waited to sign up for the people’s initiative. No protests against the pork barrel were reported in major cities and urban centers in northern and central Luzon. ■ Reports from Nestor P. Burgos and Carla P. Gomez, Inquirer Visayas; Maricar Cinco, Shiena Barameda, Ma. April Mier and Michael B. Jaucian, Inquirer Southern Luzon; and Johanna Marie Buenaobra, Inquirer Northern Luzon
SEPTEMBER 5, 2014 FRIDAY 14
Philippine man sentenced to death in Vietnam for cocaine trafficking The Associated Press HANOI, VIETNAM—State media say a court in Hanoi has sentenced a Philippine man to death for cocaine trafficking. The Law and Society newspaper says that Emmanuel Sillo Camacho, 39, was convicted of trafficking 3.4 kilograms (7.5 pounds) of cocaine from Brazil to Vietnam at a one-day trial Thursday. Camacho was arrested in December last year when officials at Hanoi’s Noi Bai international airport found the drugs in his luggage. The newspaper quoted Camacho as telling the court that he transported the drug for a Philippine woman living in Brazil after she promised to
PHOTO FROM BY IMAGENS EVANGELICAS / FLICKR
find him a job with monthly salary of up to $1,500 in the South American country. Vietnam has some of the
world’s toughest drug laws, where trafficking 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of heroin is punishable by death. ■
Rape cases in the Philippines, on the rise BY LEI FONTAMILLAS Philippine Canadian Inquirer MANILA—One woman gets raped every 72 minutes in the Philippines, according to consolidated crime reports from the Philippine National Police (PNP). According to the Women and Children Protection Center (WCPC) of the PNP, they were able to record a total of 5,493 rape incidents, victims were mostly women and children. On the other hand, data from the mother unit which is the PNP Directorate for Investigation and Detective Management (PNP-DIDM), 7,409 rape cases happened in 2013. While the numbers seem staggering, take into consideration that these are only the reported incidents. The Center for Women’s Resources (CWR) said that it is possible that there are still rape incidents that are not being reported to authorities. “Batay sa aming experience, ang isang nabibiktima, lalo na ‘pag bata, ‘di kaagad siya nagkukuwento. Lalo na ‘pag tinawww.canadianinquirer.net
PHOTO FROM LMAP / FLICKR
takot,” said CWR Executive Director Jojo Guan in an interview with GMA News Research. (Based on our records, victims, specially children find it hard to talk and open up specially when they are scared.) Based from records, the recorded numbers in 2013 showed an increasing trend. PNP WCPC Chief Juanita Nebran said that there are several factors to the upsurge. First is the population growth. As the
population increases, the number of crimes rise as well. Aside from that, in the past years, the PNP has been striving to get the “true crime picture.” Meaning, even crime reports from barangay blotters and other law enforcement units are already included. Although the increase in rape cases sound alarming, this also goes to show that more victims are becoming strong and empowered enough to complain. ■
Philippine News
15 FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
Fire Abad, ally urges P-Noy Rep. Bello says DAR chief should also go BY GIL C. CABACUNGAN Philippine Daily Inquirer AN ALLY of President Aquino has made a personal appeal to him to let go of Budget Secretary Florencio Abad and Agrarian Reform Secretary Virgilio de los Reyes to restore the credibility of his “matuwid na daan” (straight path) reform agenda. Akbayan Rep. Walden Bello wants Abad fired for damaging the administration’s reform program with his Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), which the Supreme Court had declared unconstitutional. Bello also wants De los Reyes replaced for being weak and indecisive in implementing the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program Extension with Reforms (Carper) Law. The party-list representative made his appeal in an Aug. 9 letter to the President which he followed up with a one-onone meeting with Mr. Aquino in Malacañang. A source, who furnished the INQUIRER with Bello’s letter on condition of anonymity, said that last week’s meeting was “tense” and futile as Bello failed to convince the President of the wisdom of replacing Abad and De los Reyes. No comment
Bello refused to comment on the letter and the meeting. Asked about Bello’s letter, Abad said in a text message: “He addressed the letter to the President. Ask him what the President’s reply was. Or ask his Akbayan party mates.” De los Reyes declined to comment on the matter, saying he had not read Bello’s letter. “I have not seen his note. I am on the road now. Sorry. I have no comment at this point,” the agrarian reform secretary said
in a text message. In his letter to Mr. Aquino, Bello said: “I have defended you against the efforts of a tiny minority in the House to impeach you on the matter of the (DAP). I cannot, however, defend the continued presence of Mr. Florencio Abad in your Cabinet as secretary of the budget. ‘Abad’s bad judgment’
“Owing to Mr. Abad’s bad judgment, your administration has been severely wounded by the DAP issue. Your popularity may not suffer but the credibility of the reform program with the citizenry will be thoroughly eroded with the continued presence of Mr. Abad. “I think he has become a hindrance to the fulfillment of the program and I feel strongly that he must go for the matuwid na daan to regain its credibility,” Bello said. Unconstitutional
On July 1, the Supreme Court declared the DAP, an economic stimulus program, unconstitutional. The high tribunal struck down the executive branch’s practice of declaring savings from unreleased appropriations and using unprogrammed or standby appropriations. The court ruled that savings and standby appropriations could be declared only at the end of the fiscal year. Partly because of the DAP controversy, Mr. Aquino’s approval and trust ratings suffered double-digit drops between March and June. Similar calls
Others, including Sen. JV Ejercito, have called for Abad’s head. Ejercito earlier said the people could start losing faith in Mr. Aquino if nobody would be held to account for the unconstitutional mechanism.
Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago was more blunt in calling for Abad’s head. “The Supreme Court said the DAP is wrong. Someone has to be made liable. Secretary Abad should resign to save the face of the President,” she said. Resignation rejected
On July 10, Abad handed his resignation letter to the President. The following day, Mr. Aquino used a Cabinet meeting to declare that he was standing by his budget secretary and rejecting his offer of resignation. While he did not believe that Abad had created and managed the DAP with “ill intent and malice,” Bello said the budget secretary had committed a severe error of judgment in his liberal deployment and redeployment of funds appropriated for specific purposes. “Secretary Abad should have had a sense that his fast and loose manipulation of funds with no sense of limits might have involved a violation of the principle of the separation of powers. At the very least, his acts smacked of recklessness,” Bello said. The congressman criticized Abad for keeping DAP’s existence from Congress for three years and for “having no qualms” in giving out P12.8 billion in DAP funds to 20 senators and some representatives. While he did not believe that the funds constituted a bribe to Congress in connection with the impeachment and trial of then Chief Justice Renato Corona, Bello said Abad was aware of the “tremendous power” over senators that Malacañang was acquiring with the release of the DAP funds. The DAP issue came to light after Sen. Jinggoy Estrada disclosed last year in a privilege speech that senator-judges had been assured of additional
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President Aquino was not convinced to let go of two of his officers. PHOTO FROM WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
funds as incentive to convict Corona at the impeachment trial. Corona was found to have not declared certain assets in his statements of assets, liabilities and net worth. The DAP funds given to lawmakers were on top of their pork barrel allocations that were still in place at the time. “This is precisely the kind of presidential patronage subversive of the separation of powers the Constitution wanted to avert,” Bello said. Bello also asked the President to kick out the head of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) for being “irresolute and timid” in enforcing Carper against “landlord resistance” as 550,00 hectares of land were left undistributed after the June 30, 2014, deadline. “De los Reyes has claimed that the failure to meet the deadline stems from ‘technical problems’ like the ‘lack of a central data base,’ inaccurate land surveys, or unclear land titles. This is nonsense that was unfortunately inserted into your speech by your speech writer. The reality is that the problem is landlord resistance and the DAR’s lack of political will or courage to face it,” Bello said. “Given a powerful law like Carper, a bolder and more innovative agency head could have made a big difference.” Bold leader for DAR
Bello said the President needed a bold, political leader to lead the DAR during the “precarious period” of land re-
form struggle. He noted that 450,000 hectares of private land were still with the landlords in Western Visayas and Mindanao. Landlords have also mounted a judicial counteroffensive to set up road blocks to Carper and some of them have resorted to violence to sustain control of their land, according to Bello. He said that replacing Abad and De los Reyes would be an opportunity to “reinvigorate” a “flagging program.” “Mutual loyalty between a leader and his subordinates is important, but a Cabinet is not a UP (University of the Philippines) fraternity,” he said. Akbayan’s role
Bello detailed Akbayan’s role in the Aquino administration coalition in the last four years— from supporting the prosecution of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for plunder to defending the conditional cash transfer program to pushing the reproductive health bill. He said he wrote the letter as an “ordinary citizen” as some Akbayan leaders and members did not agree with his stand. Aside from supporting former Akbayan Rep. Risa Hontiveros’ failed senatorial runs in 2010 and 2013, the Aquino administration has appointed Akbayan leaders, such as Presidential Adviser on Political Affairs Ronald Llamas, Commission on Human Rights Chair Loretta Ann Rosales and National Anti-Poverty Commission Chair Joel Rocamora. ■
Opinion
SEPTEMBER 5, 2014 FRIDAY 16
THERE’S THE RUB
The other three-fourths By Conrado De Quiros Philippine Daily Inquirer Last week, Grace Poe took the MRT from North Avenue to Taft. This wasn’t the first time she had taken a city train, she used to take the LRT to UP Manila in her college years. She took the MRT at 8:20 a.m., the pit of rush hour, so that she could have an idea of the actual conditions there preparatory to a Senate committee hearing on the MRT last Monday. She heads that committee and the MRT had just suffered a major mishap a couple of weeks ago, one of its trains tearing out of the rails and injuring 38 people. Her train experience wasn’t unpleasant, Poe reported. Apart from having to queue up for 40 minutes and the elevators not working, the latter presenting a trial to the elderly and the disabled, she had little complaint. Of course, she said, it might also have been because the MRT people prevented the usual rushhour crowd from storming into her coach—she took a women-only one— when they learned she was there. When she herself learned about this, she said, she remonstrated mildly with the officials, saying, “I called their attention to it nicely and explained that I needed to experience
the plight of our passengers.” Well, I myself, who take the MRT to Makati on the occasions that I cannot avoid it—I lose a good part of the day to drive and look for parking space there—can swear that for the other coaches at least, the experience is far less pleasant. I’ve taken the MRT at rush hour and have had images from Dante’s Inferno flash through my mind, having to wade through a tangle of arms and legs and bodies in the throes of anguish—on really bad days your chest would press into the back of the next person each time you take a deep breath, giving you whole new insights into the expression “packed in like sardines.” Still I prefer enduring this ordeal for 20 minutes to traffic one-way for two hours. I leave the results of the Senate hearing on the MRT for some other day. My own interest here at this point lies in this: I’m glad a senator has taken the MRT, however it was to do an assignment. I’ve been proposing this for a long time, and commended a group some months ago for recommending the same thing. Specifically compelling government officials to take public transport at least once a week. It’s not as facetious as it sounds however initiating it, and certainly enforcing it, will be the hardest thing in the world. It should improve
governance by leaps and bounds. Quite apart from giving public officials a better appreciation, or at least understanding, of public transport, which is as vital to the lives of most Filipinos as rice itself, making them take the MRT, or indeed the jeepney or the bus, once a week should give them an appreciation, or at least a glimpse, of the way “the other half lives.” That is the idiom, referring to the lower classes as seen by the welloff, except that in our case, that is not
Making [Government Officials] take the MRT, or indeed the jeepney or the bus, once a week should give them an appreciation, or at least a glimpse, of the way ‘the other half lives.’ just the other half, that is the other three-fourths. That is most Filipinos, who are the laborers, the factory workers, the sales ladies, the mechanics and electricians, the clerks, the jobless looking for jobs, who teem in the city, who take the train and the jeepney and the bus. Who are prey to the pickpockets, the snatchers, the hold-uppers, the last getting bolder and more
plentiful by the day, not least near the Inquirer. The only thing they haven’t held up yet is the MRT. But that may be speaking too soon. That is not to speak of the rapists, the swindlers, the kidnappers and sundry halang ang kaluluwa waiting in the shadows. Compelling public officials to take public transport regularly, or even now and then, should give them an idea not just of the state of the public transport system, it should give them an idea of the plight of the poor. Who knows? Maybe it might lessen corruption, giving public officials some awareness of the value of what they regard as “loose change,” which is the fare in buses and jeepneys and trains. And what a heinous thing it is to steal that fortune from them. Stranger things have happened, as Malcolm Gladwell notes in “The Tipping Point.” Paradoxically as it may seem, given the teeming numbers of the poor and their obdurate presence, they are often not seen in this country. Their sheer abundance and ubiquity make them invisible. Their very plight makes them unseen, our natural tendency being to turn away from the bloodstained face of humanity until it disappears. We’ve gotten so used to the sight of beggars, children sleeping in streets, the tangle of arms and bodies in hovels beside creeks and
under bridges we no longer see them. Public officials most of all. I still remember how Francis Tolentino took violent exception to one of Dan Brown’s characters describing Metro Manila as the “gates of hell.” One of the things that apparently made it so being its hellish traffic, quite apart from its hellish poverty. An exaggeration? Maybe. But try taking a train or bus or jeepney at rush hour, and see if the experience alone of being thrown into the throng in the streets, quite apart from the sidewalks or the bus stops, even before you board those things, doesn’t make you ask if it’s not literal. Wade through a tangle of arms and legs and bodies and hear mouths cursing, if not the damned weeping and gnashing their teeth as they burn even on rainy nights, and see if you do not catch glimpses of the gates of hell. I’m glad Grace Poe took the MRT last week, however it was only to prepare her for the hearing on the MRT last Monday. It should have given her insights into more than what lies behind the city’s premiere transport system. It should have given her insights into what lies behind the billboards that proclaim unabated growth. The better to prepare her for bigger things. ■
AS I SEE IT
Why the Constitution should not be amended By Neal H. Cruz Philippine Daily Inquirer I read in the newspapers that the Philippine National Railways (PNR) will invest hundreds of millions of pesos to purchase buses. I also saw on television commuters packed liked sardines in PNR commuter trains, with more of them waiting at train stations where trains stop at 30-minute intervals only. Another PNR story was about a train that was derailed, luckily with no one hurt. Instead of buses, shouldn’t the PNR use the money to buy more locomotives and coaches and repair the railroad tracks? Don’t we have a surfeit of buses already? Where is the PNR going to put the additional buses? Most of the roads in the Philippines, except those in remote areas, are already overflowing with vehicles, and traffic movement has been reduced to a crawl. Buses are the biggest cause of traffic jams in Metro Manila, especially on Edsa. On C-5 road, it
is cargo trucks. Giant cargo trucks are also the cause of traffic congestion in Manila’s narrow streets. On Rizal Avenue and Samson Road, it is jeepneys. Every year, the car assemblers pour more than 300,000 more cars onto the streets, not counting the thousands more smuggled in through the free ports, and the jeepneys assembled in Laguna and Cavite from recycled and surplus parts. But not enough new streets are being built to hold them. Some of the country roads in Bulacan and the Calabarzon are almost as congested as Edsa. The elevated MRT trains are also packed and now frequently break down. It is now left to the PNR to transport big numbers of people and goods quickly. But the PNR lacks funds to improve and expand its services. The national government has neglected our only railroad. In all developed countries, the railroad is the cheapest and most efficient mode of transportation. It was the railroad that opened up and helped develop the great Ameri-
can West. The railroad connects the countries all over Europe. In China and Russia, the railroad makes remote areas like Siberia accessible to civilization. But in the Philippines, we have allowed our railroads to rot away to almost nothing. Up to the time of President Dios-
The national government has neglected and forgotten the railroad. It is now like a dying patient. The government should pour money into the PNR to revive it.
dado Macapagal, we had an efficient railroad running from San Fernando, La Union, in the north of Luzon to Legazpi, Albay, in the south. You could travel in comfort in first class coaches through almost the whole
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length of Luzon aboard these trains. There was a plan to expand the railroad—to run from Ilocos Norte to Sorsogon. There also used to be railroads in some of the big islands in the Visayas. Another plan was to build a railroad in Mindanao to connect the provinces and towns there. What happened to all these railroads and plans? Now the PNR has been reduced to run only around Metro Manila and until Quezon province in the south. The central station in Tutuban has been turned into a giant shopping mall, of which we also have a surfeit. The railroad tracks have been occupied by squatters. There should have been no problem with taking cargo out of the congested Manila ports had the railroad tracks from the piers not been taken over by squatters. The North Rail project, intended to reopen the line to North Luzon, was derailed by squatters and corruption. The national government has neglected and forgotten the railroad. It is now like a dying patient. The gov-
ernment should pour money into the PNR to revive it. *** Thank God, 700 trees along the Manila North Road in Pangasinan province have been saved from being murdered by the Department of Public Works and Highways to give way to a road-widening project. But not after 1,059 other huge trees have been massacred. No amount of press releases can bring those trees back to life. To atone for their sins, the tree-murderers say they will plant thousands of tree seedlings to replace those that have been cut. But even if they plant 1 million or 10 million seedlings, it will take many decades before those trees grow to the size of the trees that have been massacred. Those trees are gone forever. God must be mourning over the death of the trees that He had created. To paraphrase Joyce Kilmer’s poem “Trees,” roads are made by fools at the DPWH, but only God can make a tree. ■
Opinion
17 FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
LOOKING BACK
Cultural heritage in rice By Ambeth R. Ocampo Philippine Daily Inquirer When people speak of preserving heritage these days it often concerns a structure that is threatened by destruction or alteration all in the name of progress. Contrary to popular belief, heritage is not just for the rich and educated; it also manifests itself in our daily lives on our palate. Nobody will argue that food is heritage, that food reflects our history and culture like no other and should be nurtured, preserved and protected with the same vigor that we lobby for buildings and, in the case of the Torre de Manila, the preservation of a vista or view of the Rizal monument. The view of Taal from the Tagaytay ridge is patrimony of the nation but we are too late to have stopped people from building properties that obstruct the view for the public. On my way to Pampanga last week, I noticed that the view of Arayat that launched a hundred Amorsolo paintings is now marred by billboards. Is it asking too much to regulate size and location of billboards? Can we not keep them on the left side of NLEX when you are travelling north? This way the view of Arayat and the Central Luzon plain is preserved and advertising can con-
tinue on the opposite side. On my last trip to the United States, I was amused that Customs officers searched Pinoy luggage for chicharon with the same enthusiasm they had for drugs. From previous trips I knew that US Customs looked for fresh fruit and produce but chicharon is already cooked so why bother? “Magic Sarap” was also considered contraband, the same with chicken-flavored instant Lucky Me noodles. They let beef flavor in though. Pinoys cannot cook a sinigang from scratch anymore because it is easier to use a bouillon cube or instant sinigang mix. When the palate has grown accustomed to fast food then part of our culinary heritage is endangered. Nobody cooks rice in a clay pot anymore, and with rice cookers you have perfect rice all the time. Two e-mail reactions to my recent column on rice gives us food for thought. Dr. Ellen Cutiongco, a retired teacher, wrote: “Measuring cooking water for rice made me recall a terrible experience. I put my open palm under the water and pressed it on the rice. I did it so hard that, ooops!, the bottom of our clay pot collapsed. A mean tsinelas landed on my buttocks for meddling
with an adult duty. Sayang ang palayok! “One day during the early part of the Japanese Occupation, I joined my aunt in the rice field to gather whatever fully laden rice stalk heads were spared by the harvesters’ tools. Instead of just picking up the stalks from below, I just walked ahead of the harvesters and secretly cut off the stalks with my Grade I scissors. This angered them so much they banished
Pinoys cannot cook a sinigang from scratch anymore because it is easier to use a bouillon cube or instant sinigang mix. When the palate has grown accustomed to fast food then part of our culinary heritage is endangered. me under a tree to sleep on my bigrimmed hat. That was my first and last day on the job. “The first time I tasted milagrosa rice was when my husband’s pupil in San Beda gifted his favorite teacher, Mr. Cutiongco, with a cavan of milagrosa rice. Such heavenly taste! The family ate it every day until it was gone. I’ve never had the chance to
taste it again since then.” Another regular reader, Mrs. Nery Chan, shared this: “The Japanese way of measuring water for rice is the same as the Chinese way of measuring water. I use the rice cooker but do not use the accompanying cup that allows you to measure the water. I use the finger-style, my husband uses the palm-style. When I see that the ‘bigas’ is not newly milled, I add a little more water; if it looks newly milled, I decrease the water. Our maids like their cooked rice grains to be ‘jumping’—dry and separate so when they cook for their own, they use less water. I guess this is what you call ‘buhaghag?’ “My late father-in-law liked his rice grains to be separate when cooked. For such cases, we steam the rice. After washing the rice grains, we put them in a bowl and place this bowl on a rack. There is gently boiling water under the rack. We then steam the rice till it’s cooked, about half an hour or so. The condensation from the lid provides the water for cooking the rice. The result is separate grains; this is also the original rice for cooking Chinese-style fried rice. In many places in Hong Kong and China, rice is steamed rather than boiled, like
what happens when you use the rice cooker. “For people managing canteens for workers in factories, a premeasured amount of rice is placed in each stainless-steel bowl; these bowls are then stacked on a steamer and allowed to cook. This way, there is no ‘tutung’; each worker gets the same amount of rice and best of all, there is less work because then you don’t have to portion the cooked rice into bowls anymore. The cooked viand is just ladled on top of each bowl of steamed rice. “When you mentioned rice-rationing and having to eat rice-corn combination, you must have been referring to the period after martial law, around 1973. We also experienced that. The cooked rice looked halfway between lugaw and rice, very heavy, sticky and not a lot of whole grains visible. I think this period did not last too long, thank God. In Dumaguete to this day, there are still many who prefer the white corn to rice; your stomach stays full longer. My sister-in-law who married a guy in Dumaguete says she actually likes the white corn ‘rice’ and still alternates between rice and white corn. ” Heritage is in our palate and should be preserved before we lose it completely. ■
AT LARGE
Bridging cultures, time and sensibility By Rina Jimenez-David Philippine Daily Inquirer EPHESUS—To many, albeit religious Catholic, Filipinos, this city is most famous for the shrine that was built on the site believed to be where the Blessed Mother spent her last years and died. The tiny two-room home was actually constructed after a German nun published her “visions” of how the mother of Jesus spent her last days. But today it is the destination of many pilgrims, drawn by their devotion to Mary, including a pope who said Mass at the site. Tourists enter on a nominal fee charged for the upkeep of the place, but picture-taking is forbidden inside, as numerous signs remind. But some tourists, insisting that the signs show only a camera and a video camera, persist in taking shots with their cell phones. Caretakers, though, are ready for those who visit the shrine in short shorts and revealing tops. There are large scarves (with blue roses printed on them) ready to be handed to them for cover. A short walk down the steps in the olive garden are three fountains, actually spigots that bring water up from an underground spring, “one for health, one for love, one for wealth,” as
our tour guide Erhan tells us. There is also a fourth fountain, says Erhan, but this is used mainly by Muslims who likewise pay homage to Mary and use the fountain to clean their hands, face and feet before entering Mary’s little home. I also take time to write a brief “letter” to Mama Mary, as thousands of other pilgrims have done, rolling up the sheets of paper and inserting them in crevices on the wall, containing prayers and petitions. It is a shrine constructed on the directions of a visionary nun, with little archeological evidence to support the claim (save for the fact that St. John the Beloved, who was looking after Mary after Jesus Christ’s death, visited and preached in the vicinity), but who can dispute faith? Who wants to? *** THE REAL historical draw of Ephesus, though, are the Roman ruins, especially the excavated city of Curetes, where the streets are paved with marble and mosaics. A travel guide says only an estimated 15 to 20 percent of the ancient city has been excavated, but the walking tour already takes over two hours under a sizzling sun. But the heat and the uneven stones are still worth it. A Greek city that fell under Roman rule, Ephesus became
a city that was supposedly “second in importance and size only to Rome.” Walking the streets, one espies the remains of an “agora” or market, including a section meant for the slave trade; temples and monuments; a street of homes for wealthy residents, fronted by shops for all sorts of consumables; a library that was said to be second only to the great library of Alexandria in size and importance; and an amphitheater that seated as many as 25,000.
It was a refreshing, peaceful and tranquil break during an otherwise hectic tour, the silence broken only by a tinkling fountain and the gaggle of Filipino visitors relishing the sight. Of particular interest, at least to me, were the public toilets, lined with rudimentary marble toilet seats, that, said our guide, also served as a venue for socializing among the ancient Romans. Behind the library was a street of brothels, with tiles bearing the names and addresses of the women of pleasure, an early form of advertising. *** FOR lunch, we stopped by a restaurant called “Bizim Ev” (roughly,
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“My Kitchen”) that is literally a mom-and-pop affair, with buffet that features Turkish home cooking. “Mom” was in attendance, explaining the many different dishes laid out on her table, ranging from the usual roasted vegetables and stews to lamb chops and salads. But the best feature of Bizim Ev, to my mind, is its setting: a humble home set amid a garden with grape arbors shielding guests eating out in the open. It was a refreshing, peaceful and tranquil break during an otherwise hectic tour, the silence broken only by a tinkling fountain and the gaggle of Filipino visitors relishing the sight. Also a highlight was the hotel we stayed in in Kusadasi, a seaside resort community on the shores of the Aegean Sea, that is a collection of upscale condominiums and shops, and a busy beachfront filled with bars and dining places. A quiet haven amid this vacationer’s paradise was our hotel called Kismet. It stands on a tiny peninsula jutting out to the sea amid its noisier neighbors, and was once the private villa of a prominent family, which has since been converted into a boutique hotel. Its walls are filled with framed photographs showing off its prominent guests, including world royalty and for-
mer US President Jimmy Carter. *** IT IS difficult to visit Turkey and not feel some envy for its enormous tourism resources. In the course of this visit, we encountered many Asians, especially groups of Chinese. And Turkey seems to be an up-and-coming destination among Filipino travelers as well. Turkey offers history and heritage, faith and spirituality that appeal to Christians, despite its majority Muslim population, because of its Biblical roots, especially place names that reverberate with references to our elementary religion classes. At the same time, there are natural wonders—mountains and coasts, deserts and fields of grain, valleys rich with the harvest of vineyards and vegetable patches. I am writing this in Cappadocia, where tourists have been flocking in droves to marvel at the unusual hillsides and rock formations, underground cities and hidden churches and monasteries. Turkey was and is indeed the crossroad of civilizations, the bridge between East and West, Asia and Europe, past and present. And it continues to play that “bridging” role— politically, economically, culturally, spiritually—in this day and age. ■
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
18
Canada News
Canadian relief supplies going to Iraq, RCAF flies in donated
NEWS BRIEFS
FROM THE CANADIAN PRESS
The Canadian Press OTTAWA—Canada is sending relief supplies to Iraq from a newly established warehouse in Dubai. International Development Minister Christian Paradis says the Dubai stockpile includes including tents, blankets, kitchen sets, hygiene kits and jerry cans. “We are dealing with persecuted religious minorities,” Paradis said. “There are very, very basic needs to be addressed.” So far this year, Canada has earmarked $21 million for humanitarian needs in Iraq. The Harper government also says that a Canadian Forces C-177 transport plane has completed its first delivery of military equipment to Iraq, landing with cargo donated by Albania. The flight was part of an international effort to supply Iraqi security forces with small arms and ammunition to support the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Paradis says the decision to locate an emergency warehouse in Dubai allows a faster response to events in Asia and Africa. “Canada’s emergency relief stockpiles of basic, lifesaving necessities can be shipped around the world at any time,” he said in a release.
OBSERVERS SAY LIBERAL WINS IN EAST GOOD FOR TRUDEAU
A Canadian Forces C-177 transport plane was used to transport relief supplies to Iraq. PHOTO FROM WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
“In times of crisis, rapid delivery of basic supplies can be a matter of life and death.” Paradis said Canadian officials will continue to monitor the situation and assess the security and humanitarian challenges in Iraq. In addition to the C-177, the biggest plane in the RCAF fleet, Canada has also deployed a C-130J Hercules transport to the region to support the weapons delivery effort. Prime Minister Stephen Harper said earlier this month that Canadian aircraft would help transport mili-
tary supplies to Iraq, although Canada would not contribute weapons or ammunition. “Canada is taking action with the government of Iraq to counter ISIL’s barbaric activities and expansionist agenda which are further destabilizing the region and posing a very real threat to global security,” Harper said in a statement Friday. “The air support we are providing will ensure security forces on the ground have the weapons they need to defend innocent Iraqi civilians against these terrorists.” ■
Man who dismembered ex girlfriend should serve 20 years without parole: Crown The Canadian Press BRAMPTON, ONT.—Prosecutors say a man convicted of killing and dismembering his ex-girlfriend should have to spend 20 years in prison before he can apply for parole. Chun Qi Jiang was convicted in June of second-degree murder in the brutal
slaying of 41-year-old Guang Hua Liu. The conviction carries an automatic life sentence without parole for 10 to 25 years. In his sentencing submissions today in Brampton, Ont., Crown lawyer Brian McGuire said the horrific nature of the crime—and the fact that it was committed by someone Liu trusted—calls for a longer pe-
riod without parole. He said the fatal attack in August 2012 was “prolonged, it was persistent, it was savage, it was heartless and it was cowardly.” Jiang was arrested that same month after Liu's body parts began to surface in Toronto-area waterways and parks, triggering a massive investigation. ■
After victories in Nova Scotia, Quebec and Ontario, Brian Gallant is trying to keep the winning streak alive for the Liberal party by taking New Brunswick on Sept. 22. It’s an election that some political observers are closely watching to determine if a voting trend in eastern Canada could factor into next year’s federal election. B.C. DAYCARES SWAMPED BECAUSE OF TEACHERS’ STRIKE VANCOUVER—Daycare operators in British Columbia are scrambling to keep up with increased demand for child support as more parents need places to babysit their kids because schools will not open. Janos Stiasny, owner of Wise Owl Montessori Child Care, said spots in his daycare have filled right up because of the ongoing teachers’ strike. FINANCE REBUTS NEGATIVE STUDY ON MIDDLE CLASS OTTAWA—Finance Canada has issued a rebuttal of a politically embarrassing report on middle-class economic woes that was compiled last fall by experts in another federal department. The duelling analyses highlight an economic issue almost certain to dominate the federal election campaign next year, as political parties cite the same data to make opposite points. QUEBEC ELEMENTARY SCHOOL BANS HOMEWORK MONTREAL—Students at a Quebec elementary school may be some of the happiest in the country as they prepare for another year in the classroom. College de Saint-Ambroise, a school of 339 students in the province’s Saguenay region, has introduced a near-complete ban on homework.
19 FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
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Canada News
SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
FRIDAY 20
Canada’s refugee policy risks tearing parents from their children, activists say BY BENJAMIN SHINGLER The Canadian Press MONTREAL—For the past month, Sheila Sedinger woke up every morning fraught with worry over the prospect of being deported to Mexico without her two young children. But Sedinger, who came to Canada in 2005, was recently granted a stay, guaranteeing her at least two more years in Montreal with her eight- and six-year-old daughters while a custody battle with their father plays out. Other families haven’t been so lucky. Activists and legal experts say Canada’s refugee policy regularly threatens to break up families and often fails to take into consideration the interests of the children involved. “We’re very often in the business of tearing families apart,” said Sharry Aiken, a law professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. “In the scheme of things, these are not the people that
Canadian public immigration officials should be worried about deporting.” It’s unclear exactly how often such cases come up. The Canadian Border Services Agency doesn’t track the number of instances where an individual is deported while their Canadian-born children stays behind, said Esme Bailey, a spokeswoman for the agency. In a statement, Bailey said the best interests of the child are taken into consideration “at all times.” She added those facing removal have a number of options available for their Canadianborn children, including “finding a suitable guardian for their children in Canada, or, if there is no one who could assume guardianship, advising them to contact the provincial child protection authorities.” Overall, 10,505 failed refugee claimants were removed in 2013 and 4,632 so far in 2014, according to the CBSA. The Montreal-based activist group Solidarity without Borders contends several recent
claims in the city involving families suggest a worrying trend. Ivonne Hernandez, also from Mexico, was granted a last-minute reprieve in February until a court hearing to regain custody of her son. She had lost custody to her ex-partner, in part because of her lack of status in Canada. In another instance, a Chilean man sought residency on humanitarian grounds to care for his ailing mother, a Canadian citizen suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease. He went into hiding in early August to avoid
deportation. On Friday, a mother and father were forced to return to Egypt after their own stay of deportation was denied. They chose to bring their two Canadian-born children. According to Aiken, Canada’s approach doesn’t always seem to satisfy the provisions outlined in the United Nations convention on the rights of the child, which Canada ratified in 1991. “I’ve seen immigration officers go through the motions,” she said.
“As long as immigration officers kind of tick of the boxes and say, ‘yes I looked at that, and here’s why I don’t think it matters,’ that’s usually pretty immune from challenge, unless there’s an extremely egregious case.” For her part, Sedinger has been involved in a lengthy struggle to gain status in Canada. Her children are the subject of an ongoing custody battle with her ex-husband. Sedinger said she originally fled Mexico to escape a series of traumatic experiences and a violent ex-partner in that country. Deportation would have separated her from a network of friends and family, including her father, she said. But on Saturday, the day on which she was scheduled to be deported, Sedinger remained in Montreal, celebrating her younger daughter’s sixth birthday. “I was just so, so happy, and holding her in my arms and thinking, ‘Oh my god, thank you for letting me still be here.’” ■
First human study of Canadian made Ebola vaccine to start within a few weeks BY HELEN BRANSWELL The Canadian Press TORONTO—The company that has licensed a Canadian-made Ebola vaccine says it hopes to start a Phase 1 trial on the serum within the next few weeks. The safety data the trial produces could allow the World Health Organization to start using between 800 and 1,000 doses of the vaccine which Canada has donated for the Ebola outbreak response. The vaccine was developed at the Public Health Agency of Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg and the Public Health Agency owns the intellectual property. It has been licensed to NewLink Genetics of Ames, Iowa. The company’s vice-president of business development
says NewLink is finalizing the details to start the trial, which will involve injecting the vaccine into between 25 and 60 healthy volunteers. The work will start in the United States, but Brian Wiley did not rule out the possibility that some of the work might be done in other countries as well. “We are looking at options across the board but have not made any comment as to where those sites would be, whether they would be exclusively in the U.S. or outside the U.S.,” Wiley said in an interview Thursday. The vaccine will be one of two that will begin to be tested in humans as early as next month. On Thursday, the U.S. National Institutes of Health announced that they will begin a Phase 1 trial next week on an Ebola vaccine designed by scientists at the Vaccine Research
Center of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The NIH is also providing support for the testing of the Canadian-made vaccine, known as VSV-EBOV. At least one of the trial sites for the VSVEBOV study will be the clinical trials centre of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Md., Wiley says. The German Centre for Infection Research has approached the Public Health Agency with an offer to test the vaccine in a small clinical trial. A spokesperson for the agency says the offer has been redirected to the World Health Organization. But Wiley says NewLink will oversee the first human study of this vaccine, the so-called first-in-man trial. He can’t estimate how quickly results might be forthcomwww.canadianinquirer.net
ing. “Obviously the smoother it goes, the quicker we hope to get there,” Wiley says. “But this is a first-in-man study so those are always very difficult to predict. We’re hoping to be able to move as swiftly as possible.” Ebola expert Dr. Daniel Bausch welcomes the news
that these trials are pushing ahead. And Bausch, an associate professor at Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans, La., says he’s glad both vaccines are being tested. “We need all the tools we can get,” he says. ❱❱ PAGE 22 First human
World News
21 FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
Conservatives embark on late summer campaign to woo Quebec voters BY ANDY BLATCHFORD The Canadian Press MONTREAL—Federal Conservatives are capping off their summer with a pre-electoral push in Quebec, a charm campaign to help the party rebound in what has proven to be challenging terrain. Denis Lebel, the prime minister’s Quebec lieutenant, is banking on his 12-day “End of Summer Tour” to court a province where the Conservatives hold only five seats and recent polls have suggested they trail the New Democrats, Liberals and Bloc Quebecois in popular support. Even though the next election could be more than a year away, Lebel has been shaking hands and delivering speeches across the province on a trek that was to wrap up Thursday in Quebec City. “We wanted to be sure that everybody in Quebec understands that Quebec is very important for our government,” Lebel told a crowd of about 100 supporters at a rally this week in Montreal’s Mount Royal riding, a district long coveted by the Conservatives. “The End of Summer Tour is for us to make political gains. We have worked very hard to make political gains in Quebec, everywhere, in all regions.” He told the audience that the drive started months before he kicked off his tour, with 12 cabinet ministers from outside the province paying visits to Quebec since April. Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander as well as Lynne Yelich, junior minister responsible for consular affairs, accompanied Lebel at the Mount Royal event. A Leger poll taken in June
found the Conservatives had the support of only 12 per cent of Quebecers, compared with 34 per cent for both the NDP and Liberals and 17 per cent for the Bloc. Polls conducted more recently suggest the Liberals have gained ground in regions like Ontario and the Maritimes at the expense of the Tories, which could make additional wins in Quebec even more important. “If the Tories lose seats elsewhere, they’re going to have to find places to make those up,” said David Coletto, chief executive officer of research company Abacus Data. “I think in their mind if they can regain five seats in Quebec ... that probably can at least offset what will likely be some losses in Atlantic Canada and other parts of the country.” But Coletto said the Tories’ growth potential in Quebec appears limited, particularly since recent surveys have found its support has hovered between 12 and 20 per cent—similar to its level after the 2011 election. Even the turmoil within the Bloc, now reduced to two MPs, could hurt the Conservatives’ chances of a turnaround, he added. Recent data from his firm has suggested that only 11 per cent of Bloc voters have a positive view of Harper, 50 per cent have a favourable view of NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair and 27 per cent hold a positive view of Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau. In 2011, the Conservatives lost six of the 11 ridings they held in Quebec following a surge in popularity of the NDP and then-leader Jack Layton. Harper cabinet ministers Lawrence Cannon, Jean-Pierre Blackburn and Josee Verner were all defeated. The Quebec City region, where the Conservatives lost
three seats in 2011, would likely be a focal point of any Tory revival in the province. To help replenish Tory coffers, a party source says the Conservatives are organizing a $500-per-person fundraising dinner in Quebec City on Sept. 8. Lebel and Alexander both expressed confidence their party will bounce back. Following the Mount Royal rally, Alexander predicted to reporters that the Conservatives would add new cabinet ministers in Quebec after the 2015 election. When asked how many, he directed the question to Lebel, who replied: “As many as possible, for sure.” The Tories will once again target Mount Royal as a potential beachhead in Montreal, where the party hasn’t won a seat in a quarter-century. In 2011, Tory candidate Saulie Zajdel finished about 2,300 votes behind popular Liberal incumbent Irwin Cotler in the riding previously held by Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Cotler has announced he will not seek re-election in the district, which is home to a large Jewish population. In his speech, Lebel told the Mount Royal crowd that Harper’s foreign policy has helped Canada become Israel’s “best friend.” “Obviously, our government is taking a strong stance on the right of Israel, not only to exist but also to defend its citizens,” Lebel said, drawing a big applause. “As you know, Mount Royal is a riding we are determined to win—we came pretty close ... But this time we will have to seal the deal.” The Conservatives will run another candidate there in the next election. Zajdel was arrested last year
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Federal Conservative MP Denis Lebel. PHOTO FROM DENISLEBEL.CA
as part of Quebec’s anti-corruption crackdown. He was charged with alleged crimes police say took place between 2007 and 2008 when he was a municipal councillor. Robert Libman, a prominent figure in the area who’s served as a local mayor and a provincial politician, has said he’s decided to seek the nomination in large part due to Harper’s Middle East approach and his economic policy. “I think our riding is ready to make the switch after voting Liberal since 1940,” said Libman, who, as a member of the Equality party, won a provincial riding in the area that had long been a rock-solid Liberal seat. “As I proved in 1989, if you work hard enough, and if the circumstances are working in a certain way around certain issues, you can turn the tide.”
Lebel’s cross-Quebec tour has taken him to a poutine festival, a lunch event at a Royal Canadian Legion and a riding where a Conservative incumbent lost a nail-biter in 2011. Bernard Genereux thought he had retained his seat in Montmagny-L’Islet-Kamouraska-Riviere-du-Loup, but a recount revealed he had lost to the NDP’s Francois Lapointe—by nine votes. Genereux, who’s seeking the nomination once again, said several cabinet ministers from outside Quebec have also visited the area in recent months. “There’s nothing exceptional about what’s happening right now,” said Genereux, who thinks recent attention paid by the Tories was similar in the lead-up to 2011. “It’s important to be visible in politics.” ■
World News
SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
FRIDAY 22
Historic bankruptcy trial starting in Detroit; city hopes to wipe out billions in debt BY COREY WILLIAMS The Associated Press
Graeme Loader’s most recent Facebook profile picture. Loader was killed while cycling across Canada.
Toronto cyclist dead after being hit by an SUV near Brandon, Manitoba The Canadian Press BRANDON, MAN.—A Toronto cyclist who was killed on the Trans-Canada Highway west of Brandon, Man., has been identified by friends as Graeme Loader. The 24-year-old had been cycling across Canada to raise money for the World Wildlife Fund. He was hit from behind about 8 p.m. on Monday about two ki-
lometres west of Brandon. Police say the 28-year-old female driver of the vehicle and her three passengers, all from Manitoba’s Sioux Valley First Nation, weren’t injured. Alcohol isn’t considered a factor in the crash. His co-worker, Josh Bissell, called Loader “a great guy and an inspired photographer.” Loader made a last post to his fundraising page on Facebook about five hours before he was killed.
“I’ve been repeating a phrase that popped into my head this morning,” he wrote. “`I am where I am because I am.’ It’s incredible what can happen when you accept the unexpected and embrace every moment. “While planning this trip I realized there was a great opportunity to raise money for charity, so I’ve decided to ride for what I am most passionate about, the Earth.” Loader was cycling alone when he was killed, RCMP said. ■
could be given to the woman to improve her survival chances. A group of Ebola experts settled on the Canadian vaccine and a dose was flown by courier to Germany. The woman survived. But it was not clear if that was due to the vaccine, which has been shown to be useful as a post-exposure tool in primate testing. It’s possible the virus never made its way into her bloodstream. The unprecedentedly large Ebola outbreak raging in West Africa is fast-forwarding work on several potential Ebola vaccines and drugs that have been in early stages of development for years because of their lim-
ited market potential. While Ebola outbreaks grab headlines, they are sporadic and rare. Before this outbreak fewer than 3,000 people had ever been known to have been infected with the virus, which first came to the world’s attention with the 1976 outbreak in Kitwit, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). Work in this field has been fuelled mainly by U.S. government funds funnelled through the Department of Health and Human Services’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and the U.S. Defence Threat Reduction Agency. ■
DETROIT—Lawyers for Detroit will attempt to convince a federal judge at the city’s bankruptcy trial that its plans to wipe out billions of dollars in debt should be approved. After some delays, the start of the trial Tuesday in U.S. District Court comes just over 13 months after Detroit became the largest U.S. city to file for bankruptcy. Detroit expects to cut $12 billion in unsecured debt to about $5 billion, which is “more manageable,” according to Bill Nowling, a spokesman for emergency manager Kevyn Orr. Most creditors, including more than 30,000 retirees and city employees, have endorsed the plan of adjustment put together by Orr and his restructuring team. The plan includes commitments from the state, major corporations, foundations and others to donate more than $800 million over 20 years to soften cuts to city pensions. In return, pieces in the city-owned
Detroit Institute of Arts would be placed into a trust to keep them from being sold to satisfy creditors. General retirees would take a 4.5 per cent pension cut and lose annual inflation adjustments. Retired police officers and firefighters would lose only a portion of their annual costof-living raise. The strongest opposition to the plan has come from bond insurers like New York-based Syncora Guarantee. Syncora has said its claim is about $400 million and that Detroit has unfairly discriminated against financial creditors. “It has been a very fast-track bankruptcy, which Syncora has no issue with,” company attorney James Sprayregen said. “Syncora’s issue is the lack of transparency of the process and the unfair treatment of its claims.” Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes has scheduled additional hearing dates, if needed, into October. But in the end, bankruptcy expert Anthony Sabino expects Rhodes to approve Detroit’s bankruptcy plan—followed by appeals from creditors. ■
First human... “You just never know how things are going to go. It is possible still that some of these products could have problems and safety issues and so if you put all your eggs in one basket ... and there’s a safety issue, then you’re just stuck.” Up until now only one person has received the VSV-EBOV vaccine. In 2009, A German researcher pricked her finger with a needle which she had used to inject Ebola virus into a mouse. That lab accident sparked a transcontinental effort to figure out which of the various experimental Ebola products ❰❰ 20
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THE DETROIT SKYLINE. Detroit lawyers are hoping that a federal judge will
approve its plans to wipe out billions of dollars of the city’s debt. PHOTO BY BERNT ROSTAD / FLICKR
23 FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
Star MAGAZINE
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Immigration
SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
FRIDAY 24
Fil-Cans dread the end of live-in caregiver program BY CHING DEE Philippine Canadian Inquirer
Obama visited Estonia on his way to Wales for a NATO summit. PHOTO FROM ESTONIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY / FLICKR
Rattled by Ukraine crisis, tiny Estonia seeks powerful message from Obama BY LIUDAS DAPKUS AND JARI TANNER The Associated Press TALLINN, ESTONIA—Spooked by Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, Estonia is hoping for a strong signal of support from President Barack Obama when he arrives Wednesday in a country that two decades ago had Russian troops on its soil. That Obama picked Estonia as his only stop before a NATO summit in Wales is reassuring to Estonia and Baltic neighbours Latvia and Lithuania, which, like Ukraine, were ruled by Moscow until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. “I always knew that America is our key and trusted ally,” said Juozas Kairutis, a 69-year-old retired teacher in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. “Western Europe is too pragmatic. They do not understand what all this means and probably would turn away from Baltic states just like they did in 1940.” During World War II, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany invaded Baltic countries over
the years. The U.S. and many other Western countries never recognized the nearly five-decade Soviet occupation, during which tens of thousands of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians were deported to Siberia. After the Soviet Union crumbled, the Baltic countries turned to the West and joined the European Union and NATO in 2004, irritating Russia. To Baltic leaders, the Ukraine crisis has underscored why they joined the alliance in the first place. They’re now calling on NATO to take a more highprofile role in their defence— something they hope Obama’s visit will reinforce. “It is a very strong message to the region that the United States is taking the security of its eastern European NATO allies seriously,” Estonia armed forces commander Maj. Gen. Riho Terras told The Associated Press. Baltic leaders want NATO to establish permanent bases in the region, but some allies have been wary of doing anything ❱❱ PAGE 31 Rattled by
MANY FILIPINOS are dreading the seemingly imminent end of Canada’s live-in caregiver program (LCP) wherein 90% of participants are from the Philippines. The live-in caregiver program provides caregivers an automatic permanent resident (PR) status after completing the minimum full-time live-in employment requirement of two years. Being a permanent resident of Canada translates into having the privilege of petitioning their immediate family from their country of origin. Many caregivers see this as great motivation in an attempt to bring their loved ones to greener pastures. Some reports are saying that the vote of the growing Filipino-Canadian community might be at risk if this threat to temporary foreign workers and the LCP continues. “This is a defining issue for the Filipino Canadian community. This is something very close to our hearts. It is worrying us because we feel this could be a smoke-screen for changes that are coming to the LCP program. Our concern is they are going to further restrict family reunification under the program,” said Chris Sorio of Migrante Canada. After Employment Minister Jason Kenney’s criticism about the LCP as being “out of control” and “mutated,” Immigration Minister Chris Alexander said in a consultation in Vancouver that the government simply wants to “modernize” the said program. Experts are saying that the shortage of childcare institutions and the rising demand for
elderly care will keep the LCP intact. This demand, however, does not diminish the fact that some caregivers are “abusing” the privileges brought about by being a participant in the program. This reported abuse is a cause for concern, said Kenney. According to the Employment Minister, he met 70 prospective “nannies” during a seminar in Manila, Philippines who are “all” bound for Canada to work for their relatives. However, Kenney’s account was refuted by Gabriela, a group advocating Filipino women’s rights. In a study funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, most of the caregivers were hired through an employment agency. “We’re actually surprised by the number of individuals who were hired by an employment agency. The direct hires by relatives have actually increasingly decreased,” said Ethel Tungohan, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Alberta and lead researcher in the study. The ‘Nanny Study’ was the
first ever national study that focused on live-in caregivers in Canada. The participants were asked about their job, education, community involvement, health, and even the recruitment process they went through. Of 631 current and former live-in Filipino caregivers in six Canadian cities, 61% were hired through legit recruitment firms and 27% were directly hired “by unrelated employers” in the last five years. For those who arrived in Canada over the last decade, 36% were through recruiters and 47% were directly hired by employers. “Characterizing LCP participants in general in such a negative light by claiming that they are using and abusing the program to the extent that it has mutated into a family reunification program is grossly unfair,” said Rev. Tec Uy, one of the 70 pastors from Ontario Filipino Ministerial Fellowship–a religious organization with roughly 40,000 members. ■ With report from The Star and Immigration.ca
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California regulatory judges recommend $1.4B penalty against PG&E for deadly gas line blast BY ELLEN KNICKMEYER The Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO—California regulatory judges recommended a $1.4 billion penalty on Tuesday—the largest safety-related levy ever against a public utility in the state—for a fiery 2010 gas pipeline explosion that killed eight people in a suburban San Francisco neighbourhood. The California Public Utilities Commission said the figure reached by two administrative law judges over the San Bruno pipeline explosion reflected nearly 3,800 violations of state and federal law, regulations and standards by Pacific Gas & Electric Co. in the operation of its gas pipelines. The penalty is meant to “send a strong message to PG&E, and all other pipeline operators, that they must comply with mandated federal and state pipeline safety requirements, or face severe consequences,” Timothy J. Sullivan, one of the two judges, wrote in the order. The largest share—$950 million—of the penalty is a fine to be paid directly to the state. That amount drew objections from city officials in San Bruno, the utility and a private ratepayers-advocacy group that the overall penalty should be focused on spending for the safe operation of the aging pipeline network. “We are accountable and fully accept that a penalty is appropriate,” the utility said in a statement. Asked whether PG&E would appeal, utility spokesman Greg Snapper said, “We’re reviewing the decision and believe that any penalty should go toward pipeline safety.” The recommended penalty requires approval by members
The old Pacific Gas & Electric Building in San Francisco, California. PHOTO BY KEN LUND / FLICKR
of the state utility board. PG&E and other parties in the case have 30 days to lodge an appeal. The commission previously ordered PG&E to pay $635 million for pipeline modernization in the wake of the Sept. 9, 2010, blast in the suburb of San Francisco. The explosion destroyed more than three dozen homes and was California’s deadliest utility disaster in decades. The blast occurred when a 30-inch natural-gas transmission line installed in 1956 ruptured. At the time, survivors described the heat of the blast burning the back of their necks
like a blowtorch as they ran away. The $1.4 billion penalty also includes $400 million for pipeline improvements, and about $50 million to enhance pipeline safety. PG&E cannot recover any of the money from customers, including the earlier $635 million penalty, although a ratepayers’ group called The Utility Reform Network maintained PG&E could raise rates in other rate cases to indirectly offset the penalty. Sending $950 million to the state’s general fund, with no strings attached, means it could
be spent in any way the governor and Legislature see fit, said H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for the state Department of Finance. The public utility commission staff recommended in July that the utility pay at least $300 million in fines. San Bruno city officials were just beginning to study Tuesday’s decision but on first read believed the overall judgment fell short of what was needed to ensure PG&E upgraded pipeline safety as much as necessary, city manager Connie Jackson said.
The penalty was historic in terms of financial charges levied against utilities on safety violations, said Britt Strottman, a lawyer for San Bruno. However, “a lot of the utilities do not cause the same amount of devastation and destruction that was a result of the PG&E explosion in San Bruno,” Strottman said. A 2011 investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board concluded the rupture occurred in a weak weld in a pipeline that PG&E records had shown as being smooth and unwelded. Among other safety failings, PG&E let 95 minutes go by before shutting off the natural gas that was fueling the fire, the federal investigators said. That same 2011 federal investigation also faulted what it called the California Public Utilities Commission’s weak oversight of the utility, which serves customers in the northern two-thirds of California. The San Bruno blast prompted congressional hearings on pipeline safety and recommendations from the National Transportation Safety Board and other government bodies that utilities intensify their oversight of decades-old natural gas lines. This year, federal prosecutors separately indicted PG&E on 27 counts alleging the utility violated pipeline safety requirements. PG&E faces additional fines of more than $1 billion if convicted of the federal charges, which are separate from the state financial penalties. PG&E has pleaded not guilty to the counts. Separately, PG&E was hit with about 160 lawsuits from people who lost family members, suffered injuries or had property damage. ■
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Seen & Scenes: Vancouver
SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
FRIDAY 26
SUNDAY AT PNE The Pacific National Exhibition (PNE) is Vancouver’s big summer event not to be missed. There are entertaining shows to watch like the Pointer Sisters, the Dog Show, Mystic India, timber show, pig races, celebrity stage performers, Game of Thrones, cow milking demo, honey extracting demo and blacksmith demo. All sorts of farm animals are on display and there's a petting zoo for the kids as well as free donkey rides. For those inclined to experience an adrenaline rush, there are over 50 rides to choose from and to satisfy everyone's appetite, food trucks and food stalls are everywhere. A Filipino dance group also performed. The icing on the cake, so to speak, is the nightly free concert by a well-known singers like Air Supply and Boyz II Men. (Photos and caption by Bert Quibuyen).
MARINDUQUENOS HOLD SUMMER PICNIC The Marinduque Association of BC held a picnic at the scenic Queen Elizabeth Park on Cambie St., in Vancouver Aug. 30. Members and the Medical and Dental team group were also in attendance. Dentists Susan Q. Najian and Emily Espiritu, and their visiting dentist-friends also partook in the get together hosted by Annie Jalac Miles, who organized the dental-medical mission with the Chicago group in Marinduque, Philippines last February 2014.
GOLDIE WOWS CROWD AT HARD ROCK
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Marigold Goldie Bugayong Castro and her band got the crowd wild again in their final performance competing in the Rock the Mic at Hard Rock Cafe and Casino at United Boulevard in Coquitlam on Aug. 28 (photos by Treenee Lopez).
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Seen & Scenes: Toronto
27 FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
FILIPINOS CELEBRATE ‘TASTE OF MANILA’ The Philippine Consulate General in Toronto and the Philippine Cultural Community Centre hosted a street festival entitled, “Taste of Manila,” featuring Philippine culture and cuisine. Highlights of the celebration included inspirational talks from former Amb. Leslie Gatan and Filipino-Canadian Senator Tobias Enverga. The ‘world’s largest boodle fight’ was likewise held during the event.
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Michelle Chermaine Ramos and Arnell Ignacio
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Gelli de Belen, Arnell Ignacio, Michelle Chermaine Ramos and Derek Ramsay
With Derek Ramsay (R). www.canadianinquirer.net
SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
FRIDAY 28
GLOBAL FILIPINO: JASON MAGBANUA
Love in the Time of Instagram BY RUEL S. DE VERA Philippine Daily Inquirer IT WAS the video that got everyone talking. Running less than three minutes and uploaded on Vimeo on November 26, 2010, the controversial clip turned Jason Magbanua into the bad boy of prenuptial videos. The video featured then engaged couple Maggie Wilson and businessman Victor Consunji making out in several settings: indoors, in a sports car and finally, underwater, to the dream-like tune of Portishead’s “Glory Box.” Released just weeks before the couple’s wedding, it definitely had an impact on the romance-oriented Pinoy. Wrote the Inquirer: “The video, shot by wedding videographer Jason Magbanua, is the raciest prenup video we’ve ever seen. It shows VJ and former Bb. Pilipinas Maggie Wilson and real estate scion Victor Consunji in various states of undress, in bed, in the pool, in the car, kissing, touching, taking more clothes off. Hot? Sexy? Wild? Tacky? Inappropriate? Practically pornographic? We’re still deciding.” It is still widely considered the hottest pre-wedding video ever. Television reporters asked Magbanua to comment, but back then, he declined. Today, he looks back at the controversy from a more philosophical perspective: “It was amazing and funny at the same time because it wasn’t your typical pre-wedding shoot. It touched a lot of different people’s nerves. My take on it is: ‘Ay, conservative pa rin pala ang Pilipinas (Wow, the Philippines is still conservative after all),”’ the 39-year-old Magbanua explains. He goes on to clarify the back story behind the video: It was the couple’s idea to do scenes that steamy, with the initial meeting done in the presence of the bride’s parents. “It was a celebration of their bodies at their peak, although Maggie and Vic still look hot now,” says the videographer who says he didn’t usually shoot this sort of fare. In fact, he was initially uncomfortable about it that he had eschewed a full crew and settled on just himself and another camera operator.
He has changed his mind since then: “It was great. I didn’t really realize that, wow, so many hits on YouTube, so much drama about it,” He adds: “It is what is what it is. If it was the (couple’s) intention to be sensational, well and good, that goal was achieved.” Serendipitously, the WilsonConsunji video made Magbanua a hot conversation topic while he was already the country’s most sought-after wedding videographer. It wasn’t anything he planned, says Jason Roderick Osete Magbanua who first fell in love with video work while an AB Economics major at the Ateneo de Manila University, when he held a video camera for the first time in his life. He loved doing camera work so much that he shifted to AB Communication, graduating in 1995. But back then, he didn’t see himself working professionally in video. “I’m not really a forward thinking person,” he admits. “I really didn’t know what I was going to do, except that I was going to make the most of learning and learn whatever I can. Bahala na what I will be after.” Initially, he wanted to teach, so he moved to Lucena City where he taught at Sacred Heart College for five years. His students on video production would often ask him to shoot their older siblings’ weddings, and he said, “Yes, why not?” It was extra income for him, he says, plus he liked what he did. “I was able to apply techniques I saw in the movies and taught in the classroom. I thought I can make them better. I can use better music, different shots, a variety of angles. I can make the product more appealing, more cinematic.” As his clientele in Quezon province grew, he found himself hopping on a bus to shoot weddings in Villa Escudero or in Manila. He was shooting so many weddings he was missing classes. “So I reached a crossroads,” Magbanua recalls. Did he want to have a steady paycheck or did he want to take the risk and start his own business? In 2000, Magbanua decamped to a studio apartment in Manila and threw himself into his fledgling wedding video business. The one-man operation saw him doing 10 weddings
PHOTO BY JILSON SECKLER TIU / PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER
a year, and charging P15,000 for each wedding. “I got lucky with my initial clientele because they had a good profile,” he says. “They knew a lot of people who were also getting married.” His first celebrity wedding, he recounts, was that of former actor Monsour del Rosario. After that, his name became associated with those of class-A wedding planners. “Everything skyrocketed in 2006 when I did Claudine Barretto’s wedding,” he says. He has since done almost all the big celeb weddings, including the Judy Ann Santos-Ryan Agoncillo’s nuptials in 2009. He also did the wedding video for the popular love team of Maya and Sir Chief from the TV series, “Be Careful With My Heart.” When you get hired for fictional weddings, you know you’ve arrived. Success has meant bigger, better video toys and appurtenances for this videographer. Magbanua’s studio is located in a townhouse in Palm Village, Makati, that has its own minitheater for viewing videos and a conference room for meeting prospective clients. He now runs a 25-man operation although he still personally shoots each of the 80 weddings he does in a year, although he has imposed on himself the implacable rule of doing only one wedding a day. How times have changed indeed: From P15,000, his basic wedding package now costs P150,000, or ten times what he www.canadianinquirer.net
used to charge when he was starting out. Despite the hefty cost, he routinely turns down clients because he is always fully booked. And that’s just for weddings. The pre-wedding videos are a different matter altogether. The love child of the business presentation and the home video, pre-wedding videos were originally known by the generic tag “audio-visual presentation,” or AVP, that were shot by wedding videographers almost as an afterthought in the days or weeks leading to the wedding so that guests at the reception had something to view while tucking into their meal. Then everything changed, thanks to computer technology. “My career is parallel to the development of the Internet,” says Magbanua. “Even when I still couldn’t post videos online, I already had e-mail and that helped generate word of mouth.” One of the transformative technologies is the same-day edit, which allowed wedding videographers and photographers alike to show wedding guests the video and photos they shot of the wedding during the reception, with sometimes just an hour or two between them. The Internet Age also allowed videographers and photographers to post and upload their work online, something very useful for couples who want to announce their engagements and reinforce the save-the-date announcement in style. Magbanua’s first pre-wedding videos were quite traditional. But as he got used to shooting
this genre, he got better and more ambitious. “To be honest, it’s additional income for me, as well as another form of artistic expression outside of the wedding,” he says. “You can’t control the wedding—it’s an event by the numbers. This is one way to show we can do other stuff.” While the wedding itself tends to be a collaborative experience for the couple with their parents, the pre-wedding video is purely the turf of the bride and groom: They make all the decisions themselves. During those early days, recalls Magbanua, the clients wanted the pre-wedding video as a throw-in, an extra or a free service courtesy of the photographer hired to do the wedding shots. “Utang ng loob (a goodwill gesture from the photographer),” he recalls. “Then soon you realize, wow, this is more difficult to do that the actual wedding! It was tough because people would demand things of us that we wouldn’t do for weddings, complete with concepts, styling, production design, and location. This has to be treated differently because it has evolved.” So Magbanua began charging for it. “It’s different because it’s not just a matter of shooting, but has a dynamic of its own.” He has a very popular Vimeo micro-site where he posts all his pre-wedding and wedding vids and they aren’t cheap. The pre-wedding videos can be just a few minutes long, but Magbanua charges a minimum of P75,000 for a single video. He has shot an estimated 250 prewedding videos in places such as San Francisco, Paris, Rome, Hong Kong and Singapore, and almost all the romantic destinations in the Philippines. Among the hundreds of prewedding videos he’s done, there a 2009 fully-scripted work he’ll never forget. “I think that was my favorite because I was pushed to show what I could do. It was like I did a short film for that couple. It was not as viral as the other videos but it holds a special place in my heart. I think I can only do one of that in a year. It was taxing but it really showed in narrative form that the couple was meant for each other, and that the girl ❱❱ PAGE 38 Global FIlipino
29 FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
CALL FOR NOMINATIONS:
FILIPINO-CANADIAN IN FOCUS Every week, the Philippine Canadian Inquirer celebrates the unwavering Filipino spirit through a feature called “Filipino-Canadian in Focus.” The feature recognizes the achievements of Filipinos living in Canada who have shown concern for the community, success in spite of trials, and the uniquely Pinoy practice of “bayanihan.” This year, we are welcoming nominations for the next subject of “Filipino-Canadian in Focus.”
MECHANICS: - All nominees must have (a) Filipino heritage/ancestry - All nominees must be residing in Canada at the time of nomination - Nominees from all industries are welcome (e.g. medical/health, politics, community service, business, entertainment, charity institutions, etc.) - Who can nominate? Anybody.
Fill up the nomination form online by scanning the code with your smartphone or by visiting InFocus.canadianinquirer.net.
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Filipino-Canadian Community News
COMPILED BY COMMUNITY NEWS EDITOR, MARY ANN MANDAP
Meet new PH ambassador to Canada PETRONILA P. Garcia is the new Philippine Ambassador to Canada. She is a career diplomat who previously served as ambassador to the Arab Republic of Egypt with concurrent jurisdiction over Sudan (2004-2007) and ambassador to Israel (2007-2011). Prior to her assignment to Canada, she had been designated as the assistant secretary for Middle East and African Affairs of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA)—a position she held since August 2011. She was born on January 22,1956, in San Juan, Rizal, Philippines, divorced with two children Angelo Victor Garcia and Jose Gabriel Reyes. She has a bachelor’s degree in Behavioral Science from Maryknoll College (1977) and a bachelor of laws degree. She
is also a member of Mensa, the oldest and largest high IQ society in the world. She joined DFA in 1981, after passing the Foreign Service Officer’s examination. She also passed the Career Minister’s examination in 1984. Garcia served in the Philippine Embassy in Singapore (1984-1987) as third secretary and consul; the Philippine Consulate General in Sydney, Australia (1987-1992) as consul; the Philippine Embassy in Tel Aviv (1993-1995) as counsellor; the Philippine Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa (19951997) as counsellor and charge d’ affaires a.i.; the Philippine Embassy in South Korea (19971999) as minister and charge d’ affaires, a.i. She hails from Negros Occidental, Philippines. ■
SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
FRIDAY 30
First Filipino-Canadian senator marks 2nd year in office SEPT. 6, marks the second anniversary of Senator Tobias C. Enverga Jr.’s appointment to the Senate of Canada. The historic recommendation by the Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, made Senator Enverga the first Filipino-Canadian to serve in the Senate of Canada. “My second year in the Senate has proved to be more demanding, yet more rewarding, than I expected,” said Senator Enverga in a statement. “What stands out is the disastrous impact of Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda, which mobilized Canadians from coast to coast to coast, to come together to help. Our government’s rapid and appropriate response resulted in a total contribution of $170 million. Thank you to all
who contributed.” Senator Enverga made two visits to the affected region to witness the destruction first hand, and to visit Canadian funded humanitarian projects. He visited Estancia, Iloilo on Jan. 22, and Tacloban City on July 15. The legislative agenda during this year has been very demanding with several bills being studied by the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology, of which Senator Enverga is a member. Changes to the Citizenship Act, budget implementation bills and a study on prescription pharmaceuticals in Canada are some of the major achievements. The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries
and Oceans, another committee Senator Enverga is a member of, is conducting a study on the aquaculture industry in Canada which has proven to be a steep learning curve. “This year I have attended over 260 events, and given more than 60 speeches in the community,” said Senator Enverga. “These are usually in the evenings and on weekends, which makes the life of a senator very busy. The work pays off, though, and ties between Canada and the Philippines have never been stronger.” “I want to thank everyone who has contacted my office with their issues, and who have showed me support through my second year in the Senate,” he said. ■
Senator Enverga stresses a point during his inspirational talk given at the Taste of Manila Festival in Toronto.
Toronto hosts Living Well Festival AS PART of Harmony Village–Sheppard’s commitment to building a vibrant community destination, they will be co-hosting The Living Well Festival with its partner, St. Paul's L'Amoreaux Centre for programs and services. The festival, to be held on Sept. 7, will bring together various exhibitors and leaders in health, nutrition, and environmentally friendly practices. This one-of-a-kind event, taking place at the Harmony
Village Presentation Centre (3260 Sheppard Ave. East at Warden Ave), will allow guests to participate in health and nutrition seminars, yoga and tai chi workshops and enjoy gourmet food, juice, tea and wine. Guests will have the opportunity to hear keynote speaker, Dr. Elie Klein talk about his revolutionary and highly effective Healthy Heart Program. “I am so thrilled to be part of an event that celebrates a
healthy, well -rounded lifestyle,” says Dr. Elie Klein, Klein Naturopathic Care. “Festivals that focus on the various aspects of healthy living, from fitness to nutrition, diet and even heart health, work to show the community that it is never too early or too late to change your lifestyle.” Other exciting exhibitors and activities include tai chi with Master Leopold, Let Your Yoga Dance with Lesley White, Sitting Fit with Fiona Griffiths, www.canadianinquirer.net
Be Energized Fitness & Wellness: leading children in an exercise routine. PHOTO FROM WHCC-HEALTHYWILMOT.ORG
Chinese calligraphy, Georgian College, Frankie Fettuc-
cine Food Truck, Blue Donkey Streatery and many more.` ■
31 FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
Filipino-Canadian Community News
Consulate holds outreach in Alberta THE PHILIPPINE Consulate General in Vancouver conducted a consular outreach activity in the cities of Brooks on Aug. 10 to 12, and in Medicine Hat on Aug. 14 to 16, to provide passport, notarial and civil registry services for Filipinos living in Southern Alberta Province. A total of 715 applications for passport renewals and first-time applicants were processed in Brooks while 691 applications were received from Medicine Hat using the Consulate’s appointment system. Aside from availing of consular services, the residents of Brooks and Medicine Hat and a number of Filipinos who came all the way from Calgary and Edmonton took advantage of the outreach event to register for the Overseas Voting for the 2016 National Elections. A total of 828 new registrants signed up for the overseas voting. The visit to Brooks also included a courtesy call by Consul General Neil Frank Ferrer on Deputy Mayor Barry Morishita. They exchanged views regarding the positive contributions of Filipino workers in Brooks. Consul General Ferrer also paid a courtesy call on Mayor Ted Clugston of Medicine Hat and briefed him on the services provided to Filipinos during
Consular Outreach in Calgary, Alberta.
the first consular outreach in Medicine Hat. The mayor acknowledged that the number of Filipinos residing in the city had been increasing over years and gave his assurance of support to the Filipino community association. He shared the concerns of businesses and foreign workers on the impact of the recent changes in the Temporary Foreign Workers Program (TFWP) of the federal government. A visit by the consul general was arranged through the mayor, to the city’s power plant and the solar energy facil-
Consular Outreach in Edmonton, Alberta.
ity. The power plant which was built in 1910 uses co-generation turbines with natural gas and steam to produce electricity which is more than enough for the city’s consumption. Medicine Hat exports surplus electricity to the towns of Redcliff, Dunmore, Veinerville and other surrounding rural areas. The city was the first municipal utility in Canada to incorporate gas turbine combined cycle technology, which enables the plant to produce electricity using one third less gas. Aside from the power plant,
Multilingual seniors get award THE 3RD annual Mosaic of Seniors multicultural celebration and multilingual resource fair will take place on Sept. 13 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., at the Bonsor Recreation Complex. This year, the first Seniors Champion Award will be presented in recognition of a senior who actively gives back to the community. Over 250 seniors, their families and caregivers are expected to attend this free event to access information from 19 service providers who, as a whole, will provide resources in over 10 languages. Volunteers will be on-site to provide additional language support. As well, seniors will be served a light lunch and will be able to enjoy performances by traditional Korean dancers, Okinawan Taiko drummers and performers of traditional Chinese song and dance.
Ferrer viewed the city’s latest project on renewable energy using concentrated solar thermal power system. Under the new system solar energy will be captured in rows of high performance parabolic solar trough collectors installed in a field located 400 meters south of the power plant. With this project, Medicine Hat will soon be the first city in the world to operate a concentrated solar thermal power system in a high latitude and cold weather location. It will also be the first city in Canada to have a solar-powered
Rattled by... that might endanger a 1997 agreement with Moscow under which NATO pledged not to permanently station substantial numbers of soldiers in Eastern Europe. The issue is likely to come up as Obama meets the Baltic presidents Wednesday in a 18th-century palace in Tallinn. “The current situation shows that the principle of collective territorial defence hasn’t gone away—on the contrary,” Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves said Sunday, marking the 20th anniversary of the exit of the last Russian troops from Estonian territory. The relations between the Baltic countries and Russia were chilly even before the Ukraine crisis. Moscow routinely accuses them of discriminating against their Russian❰❰ 24
According to Saleem Spindari, manager of Community Outreach & Advocacy Programs, who heads the MOSAIC Seniors Club, “What started out as a celebration of the UN and Canada’s annual day of recognition for seniors into something more community-driven: word-of-mouth has led to more seniors coming together, and support from community businesses and service providers lets us accommodate a larger gathering. But more importantly, these groups come with ideas about how to keep our seniors
integrated with the broader community, so more than just a celebration, the event is starting important conversations about our seniors. We intend to keep those conversations going to build communities more responsive to the needs and contributions of our seniors.“ The event was made possible by support from Mosaic sponsors and funders, including Citizenship & Immigration Canada, the Province of British Columbia, Safe Care Home Support, McDonalds and United Way of Lower Mainland. ■ www.canadianinquirer.net
steam generation system integrated into a natural gas power plant. About one megawatt of electricity, or enough electricity to power about 150 homes in Medicine Hat for a year, is estimated to be generated as a result of the project. Ferrer invited the two officials to participate in the Winter Escapade tour to the Philippines jointly organized by the PH posts in Canada. The program entices Canadians to visit the Philippines to escape from the harsh winter months in Canada. ■
speaking minorities. About one-third of Estonia’s 1.3 million residents have Russian as their mother tongue. Many of them feel detached from Estonian society and get their news from Kremlin-controlled Russian TV stations. Ruben Airapetyan, a 19-yearold student at a vocational school in Tallinn, said he only speaks Russian and English— not Estonian. He didn’t share the enthusiasm that many ethnic Estonians feel over Obama’s visit. “This visit seems a bit strange to me. Such a powerful man arriving in this small country,” he said. “I don’t have any hatred for Americans. The problem is I don’t know what news to believe in.” ■ Liudas Dapkus reported from Vilnius, Lithuania.
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Veteran actor, Derek Ramsay’s ex holds Mark Gil passes away press con on allegations BY ANGIE DUARTE Philippine Canadian Inquirer MANILA, PHILIPPINES— Long time and well respected actor, Raphael Joseph De Mesa Eigenmann, better-known as Mark Gil, died today at the age of 52. He would have marked his 53rd birthday on September 25. Reports from ABS-CBN said that Gil died on eight o’clock Monday morning of cirrhosis of the liver. Although the family has yet to issue an official statement on his death, Gil’s manager, Jane Rufino, confirmed the actor’s passing. Gil—who was of FilipinoSpanish, and Swiss descent— comes from a lineage of
highly-acclaimed showbiz personalities, having been born to renowned actors Eddie Mesa (born Eduardo Eigenmann) and Rosemarie Gil. His siblings, Michael de Mesa and Cherie Gil, are likewise highly regarded in the industry. He rose to fame in the film directed by Mike de Leon, Batch 81, in which Gil plays the role of a neophyte initiated in a fraternity. His last television series was the ABS-CBN drama The Legal Wife. Gil is survived by his parents; current spouse Maricar Jacinto, and children, Andi, Ira, Gabby, Maxine, Stephanie Cheri Jacinto-Eigenmann, and Timmy Eigenmann (also known as Sid Lucero). ■
PHOTO FROM MARK GIL’S BIOGRAPHY ON PINOYSTOP.COM
of ‘psychological violence’ BY ANGIE DUARTE Philippine Canadian Inquirer MARY CHRISTINE Jolly Ramsay, the estranged wife of actor Derek Ramsay, has spoken up about the complaint she filed in June, in which she accused her husband of violating Republic Act No. 9262, the Anti-Violence Against Women and Their Children Act. Speaking to reporters, the former commercial model said on Friday that she filed the complaint with of the Makati City prosecutor’s to pressure Derek to live up to his obligations towards the support of their 11-year-old son, Austin Gabriel. Derek in turn filed a counter affidavit last week, contesting the assertions made against him. He said that the only valid portions of Christine’s complaint were the facts indicating they were married in 2002 and that they have a son. He added that he did not want to speak negatively of the mother of his child, which is why he has chosen not to hold a press conference regarding the issue. “The court will play this out. That’s why I’m not holding any press con,” he said. “There’s something deep inside me that wants to [talk] and just blurt things out so that ev-
PHOTO FROM FACEBOOK PAGE OF DEREK RAMSAY
eryone knows the truth. But I care about my son. And I don’t want my son to hear his father talk bad about his mother,” the actor shared. “Whatever she throws at me, I’m going to have to respond to it. And we’ll do that in court,” he stressed further. Meanwhile, Derek’s legal counsel, Joji Antonio raised the pertinent question, which is central to the validity of Christine’s complaint:“The question remains unanswered. What in the world will an 11-year-old kid do with P45 million, which the complainant wants in lump sum? “We shall respond to the complainant’s latest claims in Derek’s rejoinder-affidavit,” Antonio stated. In a press conference which the 36-year-old complainant held at the New World Hotel in
Makati, Christine said: “This fight is not about me. It is about my child abandoned by a negligent father for so many years.” She added that Ramsay had only paid four visits to their son since they went their separate ways, and allegedly only because she “threatened to sue him.” She also claimed that her complaint is rooted in Derek’s refusal support their child despite her constant efforts to contact him, which is tantamount to “psychological violence” against the child, who resides with her in her home country of Dubai. “There comes a point when enough is enough and I think I have come to that point. My son is growing up and he is asking too many questions,” Christine said, with regard to breaking her silence on the matter. ■
Entertainment
33 FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
‘Back to basics’: Sharon Cuneta leaves TV5
Orianthi shreds her way across Manila’s music scene
BY BAYANI SAN DIEGO JR. Philippine Daily Inquirer IN HER open letter to fans, posted on Facebook last week, singer-actress Sharon Cuneta vowed, “I am going back to basics.” What she meant became clear only when she announced on Twitter and Facebook on Friday night that she was “no longer with TV5.” (She left ABS-CBN, her home studio for 23 years, to join TV5 three years ago.) That same night, Cuneta’s manager (and Viva Entertainment head) Vic del Rosario told the Inquirer that “Mega” (as Cuneta is known in the biz) was now a freelancer. Comanager Sandra Chaves likewise told the Inquirer: “Projects are in the works. She will make announcements as they are confirmed.” Deluge of comments
In her Twitter and Facebook posts, what Cuneta said was that she’d be be working on “things…which could start sooner than you think.” Cyberspace was deluged with comments from fans and foes alike. When Inquirer Entertainment broke the story on Friday night on Twitter and INQUIRER.net, both sites received all sorts of responses— from the encouraging (“Good for her!”) to the inane (“Is she moving to the government station (Ch. 4)?”) On her fanpage, Mega’s announcement received more than 2,100 “likes” overnight and 354 comments. Saturday morning, she posted this message on Facebook: “Good morning, everyone! It’s a beautiful day! I have not seen a day as beautiful as today in a few years and I [couldn’t] be happier…Thank you for your loving words of encouragement…I wish you all a beautiful day just like mine.” A bit of confusion
Prior to her Friday announcement, Mega set the record straight with the Inquirer and clarified several issues that arose from her open letter. No, Hollywood actor Robin
BY ANGIE DUARTE Philippine Canadian Inquirer
Sharon Cuneta is “grateful for, and humbled by, all the loving words of encouragement.” PDI FILE PHOTO
Williams’ recent passing (from apparent suicide) didn’t cross her mind. Neither was she on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Her confession caused a bit of confusion. Former costars Judy Ann Santos and Herbert Bautista expressed concern; daughter KC Concepcion pledged support. A few pundits had their own opinions, insinuating that Mega’s message was a cry for help and/or inspired by Williams’ tragic death. Best to take it straight from Mega: “Yes, I’ve been sad but no, I haven’t gone crazy, or entertained any thoughts of harming myself.” Midlife crisis
She told the Inquirer: “I think some people misunderstood. If you reread my post, what I said was that I had a midlife crisis when I hit 40 (eight years ago), and that it lasted for a couple of years. I am long over that.” A few days after the Facebook missive, Mega insisted, “I am feeling better.” She said she was just glad that she got to vent. “I had typed that [open lettter] from out of the blue, with tears streaming down my face. I felt that was my weakest point,” she recounted. “It was [addressed] solely [to] my most loyal fans and supporters who have been patiently waiting for so long for me to deliver something to them. I felt so bad that I had let them, and myself, down.” She described her letter as a “pure apology from the
depths of my heart. I hadn’t been moved enough to humble myself that much in all these years.” She reiterated that the main cause of her outburst was her weight. “Plus, a few other problems, concerns and obligations that I’ve had to deal with these past few months.” She felt besieged, Mega explained. “Everything seemed to be coming at me all at once, and at full speed. I had never experienced anything like it.” For those troubles, she wanted to take full responsibility. “Even with my loving husband (Francis Pangilinan) by my side, it is only I, with the help of God, who can solve my problems, as it was only I who had caused them,” she said. What she found most stunning was that a lot of ink and airtime was devoted to her Facebook apology.
MANILA, PHILIPPINES—You may know her as the attractive, blond, female guitar player shredding riffs on stage with the late, great Michel Jackson as he practiced in 2009 for what would have been his comeback concert tour. She goes by the name Orianthi, and she recently wowed music lovers and guitar aficionados across the Metro with her skills on the strings. The Australian singer-songwriter-musician, best known for her acumen on guitar, held a string of intimate concerts in Manila to promote her latest single Every Road Leads Home To You. The first show was a band charity concert, in which Orianthi was a guest musician, held in Resorts World Manila on August 20. Then, she showcased her prowess at Chef & Brewer in Ortigas Center on August 22. A stellar performance at 19 East in Sucat followed on August 25, and she capped her Manila shows off at the Hard Rock Café in Makati on August 27. “It’s my first time here and I find that people are very nice,” she said at a press conference held at the Hard Rock Café. Orianthi, who was catapulted to almost instant guitargoddess stature when Michael Jackson featured her incredible talent on guitar in the making of what would have been the This
Is It concert series, expressed her gratitude to the King of Pop. “I’m very grateful to have worked with MJ. It was a crazy time, especially that we did not go beyond rehearsing. But we had a good time. I’m a huge fan and being with him on stage was surreal. I learned so much from him,” she said. In 2009, Orianthi released her major label debut album, Believe, from which came the platinum single According To You. Her newest hit single, Better With You, which was written by Richie Sambora of Bon Jovi fame, is already making its mark on the music charts. She performed with Sambora in Korea and in Japan, where she also released the Best of Orianthi album. In 2013, she worked with producer Dave Stewart, the man behind the Eurythmics, to come out with Heaven In This Hell. Aside from Jackson and Sambora, Orianthi has worked with guitar legends Steve Vai and Carlos Santana; iconic singers Steven Tyler, Alice Cooper, ZZ Top, and Prince; pop sensations Michael Bolton, John Mayer, Adam Lambert, and Carrie Underwood. “I’ve learned something valuable from all the artists I have had the privilege to work with,” she said. Orianthi’s Every Road promotional tour in Manila was produced in local collaboration with Primeline Management & Production, Incorporated. ■
Outpouring of love
“It came as a bit of a shock to me that lots of people, even the networks, thought to pick it up,” she admitted. “I had no idea there was going to be this outpouring, this avalanche of love and support.” Friends she hadn’t seen in years “came out of the woodwork,” she said. “It’s all good. I felt I had to take responsibility for my actions, and say what I really wanted to say to those I wanted to say it to.” For all that had happened since, she said, she was “truly humbled and grateful.” ■ www.canadianinquirer.net
Orianthi posted on Facebook this photo of herself playing at the Hard Rock Cafe with this message: “Thank you so much Manila .. I had a blast ! Leaving today with great energy from you all … I’ll be back really soon with Richie Sambora .. Peace and love to you all.” PHOTO BY FERDIE ALQUERO
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www.canadianinquirer.net
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Apple says some celebrities’ accounts hacked; sites remove nude images of Lawrence, others BY ANTHONY MCCARTNEY The Associated Press LOS ANGELES—Apple said Tuesday that hackers obtained nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence and other female celebrities by pilfering images from individual accounts rather than through a broader attack on the company’s services. Meanwhile, numerous sharing sites removed images of the stars apparently in response to copyright complaints. However, experts say there is no way to fully scrub the photos from the Internet and the images could keep popping up in the future, forcing celebrities to file repeated complaints as they play a cyber-version of the arcade game “whack-a-mole.” Apple said its engineers have determined that hackers breached individual accounts and didn’t obtain general access to a pair of the company’s services—iCloud and Find my iPhone. The tech giant said it released the results after conducting 40 hours of investigation. Law enforcement inquiries likely will take days or weeks to complete.
The FBI offered no details on its efforts to identify people responsible for stealing the images that were posted on imagesharing site Imgur.com, the social networking sites Reddit and Twitter, and other websites. But the agency said Monday it was aware of the breach and addressing the matter. Similar investigations have involved the use of search warrants and digital forensics to determine how hackers obtained everything from Paris Hilton’s contact list to nude photos of actresses Scarlett Johansson and Mila Kunis. Lawrence, an Oscar winner for her role in “Silver Linings Playbook,” contacted authorities after the images of her began appearing Sunday. By Tuesday, a Reddit thread that had been compiling links to images of nude photos of Lawrence and other celebrities had been disabled due to a copyright claim, the website said. Users reported difficulty finding working links to the images on other sites. Representatives of Twitter, Reddit and Imgur did not respond to messages seeking comment.
PHOTO FROM MINGLE MEDIATV / FLICKR
Apple Inc. said it was co-operating with the FBI and urged users to adopt stronger passwords and enable a two-step authentication feature to prevent data thefts. Naked images purported to be of other stars also were posted, although the authenticity of many couldn’t be confirmed. Mark Rasch, a former federal prosecutor who specialized in computer crimes, said investigators will focus on who’s responsible for the theft of the photos, the tools they used, and the idiosyncrasies of how they program. “There is a digital trail,” Rasch said. “What you hope for (is) the people aren’t very good at what
they do, that they screw up, that they (upset) other hackers. Or that they leave a trail.” Rasch said authorities will sometimes catch an early break or get a tip that leads them to suspects. The investigations are difficult, he said, but “It’s equally difficult to get away with it scot free.” In the past decade, federal prosecutors have successfully prosecuted a Massachusetts teenager who hacked Hilton’s phone account and posted her contact list online. The teenager was sentenced to several months in jail. Christopher Chaney, a Florida man, was ordered by a federal judge in 2012 to be impris-
oned for 10 years for the hack that targeted Johansson. The people responsible for stealing the Lawrence photos might also be tracked by private investigators who can operate faster than government agents, said Rasch, whose company Rasch Technology and Cyberlaw has conducted similar investigations but is not working on the current data breach. “Even if you can get it taken down, it’s likely to pop up somewhere else,” said F. Jay Dougherty, a law professor at Loyola Law School Los Angeles who specializes in entertainment and intellectual property issues. Mickey Osterreicher, a media lawyer and general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association, said a successful copyright complaint could scrub the images from a site forever, but Lawrence and other celebrities will have to remain vigilant and keep filing takedown notices. “You have to go to each place,” he said. “It’s kind of like playing whack-a-mole.” ■ Associated Press writer Mae Anderson in New York contributed to this report.
New charges against Justin Bieber the latest in a line of legal woes The Canadian Press TORONTO—Justin Bieber’s arrest in Ontario on charges of dangerous driving and assault is the latest in a series of runins with the law for the Canadian pop star. A look at some of Bieber’s recent legal troubles: Dec. 30, 2013: Police allege Bieber hit the driver several times in the back of the head after the pop star and five others were picked up by a limousine in Toronto on Dec. 30, 2013. Bieber has pleaded not guilty to assault. Jan. 14, 2014: Police searched Bieber’s home in Calabasas, Calif., and detectives later filed a search warrant following an egg-tossing incident which
caused damage to a neighbour’s home. In July, Bieber pleaded no contest to a misdemeanour vandalism charge and was ordered to pay nearly $81,000 in damages and to serve two years’ probation. The singer was also ordered to complete five days of community labour and a 12week anger-management program. Bieber has since moved from Calabasas into a Beverly Hills condo. Jan. 23, 2014: Bieber was arrested in Miami Beach after what police described as an illegal street race involving the pop star and a friend. Neither was charged with drag racing, but Bieber was charged with resisting arrest after a profanitylaced tirade against police officers. Urine tests also revealed
the presence of marijuana and the anti-anxiety drug Xanax in his system. In August, Bieber pleaded guilty to charges of careless driving and resisting arrest. A plea deal struck with prosecutors included a 12-hour anger management course, a $50,000 charitable contribution already made to a local children’s organization and a $500 fine. Aug. 20, 2014: A lawsuit filed by paparazzo Aja Oxman alleged Bieber ordered his bodyguard, Dwayne Patterson, to take a memory card after the photographer snapped photos of the pop singer on a Hawaiian beach in November of 2013. The suit also alleged Patterson placed Oxman in a chokehold and seriously injured him www.canadianinquirer.net
PHOTO BY ADAM SUNDANA / FLICKR
and damaged his camera. The photographer is seeking unspecified damages in excess of $25,000 for assault and battery, negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Bieber wasn’t arrested and no charges were filed against him due to a lack of evidence that he ordered Patterson to attack Oxman. Aug. 29, 2014: Bieber was arrested and charged with dangerous driving and assault after a collision between a minivan and
an ATV in a rural area northeast of his hometown of Stratford, Ont. A lawyer for the pop star said Bieber’s “peaceful retreat” with Selena Gomez—the singer’s on-again, off-again girlfriend— was “unfortunately disrupted by the unwelcome presence of the paparazzi” whom he said was involved in the incident. Bieber is to appear in a Stratford court on Sept. 29. ■ With files from The Associated Press
Entertainment
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Titles we’re anxious to see at the Toronto International Film Festival The Canadian Press TORONTO—If previous years are any indication, there’s a pretty good chance that the next Academy Award best picture winner is buried somewhere among the almost 300 movies set to unspool at the Toronto International Film Festival, which kicks off Thursday. There’s no cinematic crystal ball that will tell us which title will have the appeal of “Argo,” the whimsy of “The Artist” or the gravitas of “12 Years a Slave,” but here are 10 titles that Canadian Press reporters will be rushing to the theatre to see.
interest in the life of a troubled Olympic wrestler portrayed by beefcake box-office champ Channing Tatum. “The Good Lie”
Reese Witherspoon plays an American woman who takes four refugees from the Sudanese civil war under her wing in this drama that’s drawing comparisons to that formulaic heart-tugger “The Blind Side.” Still, don’t count out the nuance that will no doubt be added by Quebec director Philippe Falardeau, the Oscar-nominated auteur who brought us the exquisite “Monsieur Lazhar.” “Imitation Game”
“Boychoir”
With a blue-chip cast headed up by Dustin Hoffman, Debra Winger and Kathy Bates, direction from Quebec master Francois Girard (“Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould,” “The Red Violin”) and an against-all-odds story about a troubled Texas boy who lands at a prestigious choir school, this one’s got all the elements of a winner. “Foxcatcher”
This star-studded true-life character study arrives at TIFF after being cemented as an Oscar contender at its Cannes coronation. Starring an againsttype Steve Carell as a twisted millionaire who takes a toxic
Benedict Cumberbatch, who starred in last year’s Wikileaks drama and TIFF opener “The Fifth Estate,” returns to the festival this year in the role of Alan Turing—a brilliant British mathematician whose codecracking skills help hasten the end of the Second World War. The man able to reveal the enemy’s secrets has a dark one of his own though, and the film, co-starring Keira Knightley, promises action, drama and suspense. “Mommy”
When 25-year-old Quebecois auteur Xavier Dolan unveiled his latest feature at Cannes this summer, it was met with deafening buzz and went on to
win the prestigious Jury Prize. Starring Anne Dorval as a widowed single mother who enlists a mysterious neighbour (Suzanne Clement) to help care for her explosive son (AntoineOlivier Pilon), who has ADHD, “Mommy” promises powerful performances and masterful storytelling from its talented young director. “The Riot Club”
Danish director Lone Scherfig made a splash at TIFF a few years back with the smart, stylish drama “An Education.” Here she takes on the story of the exclusive Oxford University society known as The Bullingdon Club. While that earlier film introduced audiences to the multi-talented Carey Mulligan, Scherfig’s latest also boasts a fleet of promising newbies, including Max Irons (son of Oscar-winning dad Jeremy) as well as “Hunger Games” stars Sam Claflin and Natalie Dormer. “Rosewater”
Jon Stewart took a break from hosting “The Daily Show” to make his directorial debut on this much-anticipated true story of Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari’s five-month imprisonment in Iran. Gael Garcia Bernal plays Bahari, who was arrested after appearing on Stewart’s show while covering elections in Iran in 2009. Stewart recently told Entertainment
PHOTO BY CKCHIU / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
Weekly he got input from J.J. Abrams and Ron Howard as he adapted Bahari’s memoir “Then They Came For Me.” “St. Vincent”
Perhaps only two words are required to explain the feverish anticipation for this film: Bill Murray. The comic jedi portrays a living-on-the-edge retiree who strikes up an unlikely friendship with his 12-year-old neighbour in this debut feature from director Theodore Melfi. Rounding out an extremely talented cast are Melissa McCarthy, Chris O’Dowd, Terrence Howard and Naomi Watts. “The Theory of Everything”
At 21, a Cambridge cosmology student named Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with a fatal illness and given two years to live. Galvanized by the
love of a fellow student, Jane Wilde, Hawking went on to become one of the most brilliant scientists of our time. Starring a physically transformed Eddie Redmayne as Hawking, and Felicity Jones as Wilde, this biographical drama directed by James Marsh is likely to pack a powerful emotional punch. “Wild”
Reese Witherspoon looks like she put herself through the wringer to portray a divorcee who treks nearly 1,800 kilometres along the Pacific Crest Trail after years of heroin use and reckless sex. Quebec director Jean-Marc Vallee, whose “Dallas Buyers Club” won three Oscars earlier this year, directed while acclaimed writer Nick Hornby adapted the story from Cheryl Strayed’s bestselling memoir. ■
Joan Rivers in serious condition, daughter says BY MAE ANDERSON The Associated Press NEW YORK—Joan Rivers remained in serious condition in a New York City hospital Friday, one day after going into cardiac arrest at a doctor’s office. Melissa Rivers said in a statement Friday that her mother was “receiving the best treatment and care possible.” She also thanked Rivers’ fans and friends for their support. “My mother would be so touched by the tributes and prayers that we have received from around the world,” Me-
lissa Rivers said. “Her condition remains serious ... We ask that you continue to keep her in your thoughts as we pray for her recovery.” The Mount Sinai Hospital said it had no updates Friday. On Thursday, hospital spokesman Sid Dinsay confirmed that Rivers had been taken there that morning. New York City police officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly name Rivers, said she was taken to the hospital just after 9:30 a.m. Thursday. It was unclear why she was visiting the doc-
tor’s office. The comedian with a halfcentury of show business under her belt has spawned a reputation for often-snarky red carpet fashion commentary. A show she had scheduled Friday at the Count Basie Theatre in New Jersey, has been postponed. An early and outspoken proponent of cosmetic surgery, Rivers’ drastically altered her appearance over the years—and found plenty of material for jokes. (“I’ve had so much plastic surgery, when I die they will donate my body to Tupperware.”) The host of “Fashion Police” www.canadianinquirer.net
on E! network, Rivers also presides over an online talk show, “In Bed With Joan” and costars with her daughter on the WEtv reality show, “Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best?” Her latest book, “Diary of a Mad Diva,” was released this summer. In 2009, Rivers emerged as the winner of NBC’s “The Celebrity Apprentice.” A documentary, “Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work,” premiered in theatres in 2010. The New York native originally entered show business with the dream of a theatrical career, but comedy became a
way to pay the bills while she auditioned for acting roles. “Somebody said, ‘You can make six dollars standing up in a club,”‘ she told The Associated Press in 2013, “and I said, ‘Here I go!’ It was better than typing all day.” After proving herself in comedy clubs as a rarity—a woman comedian—Rivers was a smash on her first booking on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” in 1965. “God, you’re funny,” Carson told her. ■ AP writers Frazier Moore and Tom Hays contributed to this report.
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The greater challenge facing the ALS Association’s ‘ice bucket challenge’ BY ANGIE DUARTE Philippine Canadian Inquirer YOU WOULD have to be living under the largest rock in the most remote of areas to not notice video after video of people being doused with icy bucketsful of cold water, flooding your Facebook homepage and other avenues of social media. Celebrities, common folk, politicians, the young and the old—people from all walks of life—have jumped on the #icebucketchallenge bandwagon. Not because they are attention-starved, but because they have chosen to get behind a good cause: fund and awareness raising for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) disease. Also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, ALS affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. The ice bucket challenge has become an international phenomenon, and has generated a whopping US $ 88.5 million, from July 29-August 26; a mind-blowing amount, compared with US $2.6 million raised in the whole of 2013. Beyond the challenge the frozen chosen have accepted, however, lies the greater challenge for the ALS Association (ALSA): how will they spend such a huge sum of money? Fortune.com gives us some insight on the matter. Thad Calabrese, a professor of public and non-profit management at New York University points out that as non-profit organization, the ALSA is not legally required to spend the amount it raised from its viral video sensation. The public, however, especially those who endured the ice and those who made donations, would want to see the association spend the funds and do so wisely. As such, guidelines for how non-profit organizations
should spend the monies donated to them have long been mapped out by charity watchdog organizations such as Charity Navigator, the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance, and Charity Watch. Charities are then rated in accordance with how diligently they observe those guidelines. The watchdog organizations all agree that the bulk of a non-profit organization’s income should be directed towards
“programming;” such as research and education. Charity Navigator has set that percentage at 75; Better Business Bureau at 65%; and Charity Watch at 60%. Thus far, ALSA has done very well in living up to the expectations and guidelines of the charity watchdogs. Charity Navigator’s most recent report indicates that ALSA earned the highest four-star rating, as it allotted 72% of its fiscal year 2013 income towards programs and services, 11% to administration costs, and 16% to fundraising expenses.
Given the current figure of $88.5-million raised in ice bucket challenge donations, and given Charity Navigator’s requirements, the ALSA would have to spend a huge chunk of money (roughly $63.72-million) on research and education by the end of fiscal year 2014, which is in January 2015, in order to replicate its most recent 72% annual programming expenditure.
ALSA chief chapter relations and development officer Lance Slaughter says the organization doesn’t plan on accepting that challenge. “When you’re doubling a budget, it can’t be spent all in same year. If a [hypothetical] $3 million organization gets a $10 million bequest one year, there’s no way the members of its board can thoughtfully
spend three times as much [in one year's time],” he said. “We’re going to work with these watchdog groups. They understand that anomalies take place,” Slaughter added. If the looming year-end deadline were taken out of the picture, Slaughter says that the ALSA board will be better able to give though and consideration into how to best spend the money to bolster the organization’s current prior-
ities: researching the disease and its potential cures, offering ALS patients the compassionate care they need, and the advancement of public policies that would be for the welfare of people living with the disease. The ALSA raised $24-million at the end of fiscal year 2013; less than half the amount raised in just one month of the ice bucket challenge. Slaughter noted that in early August of this year, ALSA – without the full realization of the mind-boggling amount of
money the campaign would generate—awarded 21 new grants amounting to $3.5 million to scientists in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Switzerland, Israel and Australia. With the success of the chilling campaign, Slaughter expressed confidence that all these grants—which focus on developing effective therapies for ALS –will remain funded into the next couple of years. Before the challenge became a viral sensation, the ALSA had also planned on opening 11 new ALS clinics on top of its 34 existing clinics that offer multidisciplinary therapies to ALS patients. Slaughter shares that opening the new clinics “was a leap of faith,” but now, the outpouring of donations from across the globe is “an opportunity to provide greater funding [to the clinics].” Some experts in non-profit management have meanwhile suggested that apart from spending the money on research that shows promise and value, ALSA can set up an endowment-type fund with the ice bucket donations. This would transform what could very possibly be what they call a “one-time donation phenomenon” into a steady stream of income for the future; providing a source of funds for any medical advancements in years to come. Slaughter pointed out that the ALSA has never had an endowment-type fund before, and while “nothing’s off the table,” setting the ice bucket money aside for future use is not quite in tandem with organization’s mission, primarily because ALS “is a disease that requires urgency,” with those afflicted surviving for an average of only 2-5 years. ■
Lifestyle
SEPTEMBER 5, 2014 FRIDAY 38
Visual search could change how we shop on phones and tablets, but it's got a long way to go BY MAE ANDERSON The Associated Press NEW YORK—Imagine using your phone to snap a photo of the cool pair of sunglasses your friend is wearing and instantly receiving a slew of information about the shades along with a link to order them. It’s a great idea—but it doesn’t quite work. Though many companies are trying to make “visual search” a reality, this seemingly simple notion remains elusive. Take Amazon, which made visual search a key feature in its new Fire smartphone. The e-commerce company says the feature, known as Firefly, can recognize 100 million items. It’s similar to a Flow feature Amazon has on its apps for other phones. So far, Firefly can reliably make out labels of products such as Altoids or Celestial Seasonings tea. That makes it easy to buy items such as groceries online. But try it on a checkered shirt or anything without sharp corners, and no such luck. “It works really well when we can match an image to the product catalogue,” says Mike Torres, an Amazon executive who works on the Fire’s software. “Where things are rounded or don’t have (visual markers) to latch on to, like a black shoe, it’s a little harder to do image recognition.” Visual search is important to retailers because it makes mobile shopping a snap—literally. It’s much easier to take a picture than to type in a description of something you want. Shopping on cellphones and tablets is still a small part of retail sales, but it’s growing quickly. That makes it important to simplify the process as much as possible—especially as people look to visual sites such as Instagram and Pinterest as inspiration for purchases. “Retailers are trying to get the user experience simple enough so people are willing to buy on their phones, not just use it as a research tool,” eMarketer analyst Yory Wurmser said. Mobile software that scans codes, such as QR codes and UPC symbols, are fairly common.
Creating apps that consistently recognize images and objects has been more challenging. Forrester analyst Sucharita Mulpuru believes it could take at least three more years. Since 2009, Google’s Goggles app for Android has succeeded in picking up logos and landmarks. But Google says on its website that the app is “not so good” at identifying cars, furniture and clothes in photos. What’s holding visual search back? The technology works by analyzing visual characteristics, or points, such as colour, shape and texture. Amazon’s Firefly, for example, identifies a few hundred points to identify a book and up to 1,000 for paintings. U.K. startup Cortexica uses 800 to 1,500 points to create a virtual fingerprint for the image. It then scans its database of about 4 million images for a match. Without easily identifiable markers, non-labeled objects are difficult to identify. Lighting conditions, photo quality, distance, angles and other factors can throw the technology off. Visual search works best when there is a clearly defined image on a white background. Some retailers are finding success with visual search by keeping the selection of searchable products limited. Target’s new “In a Snap” app works only with items from its Room Essentials furniture, bedding and decor line. And it works only when snapping a product image in a magazine ad, not when you see the actual product on a shelf. When a shopper scans the ad, items pop up for the shopper to add to a shopping cart. Heels.com, an online shoe retailer, keeps visual search limited to shoes. Shoppers upload pictures or send links of shoes and are offered similar pairs for sale on the company’s website. “People shop through images nowadays,” Heels.com CEO
Eric McCoy says. “We want to give them the exact shoe, or something similar.” So, the race is on to perfect the technology that will create smartphone apps that easily recognize objects in a realworld environment. Cortexica’s founders spent seven years on academic research before forming the company in 2009. Since then, it has been trying to mould the technology work more like the human brain when it comes to identifying objects. “Someday you’ll be taking a picture of a whole person, and it will identify the different the things they’re wearing and offer recommendations,” says Iain McCready, CEO of Cortexica. “That’s really challenging technically, but that’s what people tell me they really want to do.” The U.K. company was hired by eBay to develop an app that recognizes cars from behind and matches them with similar cars available on eBay. Next, eBay asked Cortexica to develop a similar app for fashion. The outcome was Find Similar, which analyzes a clothing item’s colour, texture and shapes to find similar items available for sale. Find Similar is now being used by startup app Style Thief and other Cortexica clients. Superfish, a startup in Palo Alto, California, counts 12 people with doctorate degrees on its staff and has 10 patents for visual search technology. Its technology can be found at PetMatch, an app that matches photos of pets with local pets available for adoption. Superfish CEO Adi Pinhas believes it will be normal in two or three years to use your smartphone to search for things visually. “Your camera will be as smart as the rest of your smartphone,” he says. Once that happens, Forrester’s Mulpuru says, it will “unleash a whole new type of ecommerce.” ■ www.canadianinquirer.net
Global Filipino... changed the guy’s life when they met.” Magbanua may enjoy the shoot, but he also hates being micro-managed by his subjects. In fact, it takes a lot out of him to control the urge to snap back at the couple, “This is why you hired me; let me do my job.” Still, those difficult videos will be shot and delivered. “But because I don’t consider them my work anymore, they will never be posted on the Net.” The most common local venue is definitely Tagaytay, he says. If the clients are busy, the Ninoy Aquino Parks & Wildlife and the La Mesa Eco-Park are close by. He has shot in beaches like Boracay and Bohol, and he loves shooting in these locations. “From the point of view of the filmmaker, you can do a lot. Inherently, there is beauty. You have sunsets and you have sand. It’s already romantic by itself,” he explains. It wasn’t all about the videos, of course. Photographs used to be the definitive way of preserving wedding memories, until the images began to move. Wedding photographers are considered an essential part of wedding planning—especially if you want a good one. A necessary sacrifice for Jason Magbanua are his weekends. Since most weddings are scheduled on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, he knows his weekends are basically shot. He considers his Mondays his days off, and spends two days a week meeting booked or prospective clients. Otherwise, he stays home to play “NBA 2K” on the PlayStation 4, root for his beloved Houston Rockets or hang out with his kids: Jakob, 13, Lukas, 9, and Elise, 4. Things have been different since the Wilson-Consunji video. “That’s hard to beat, and it’s an outlier because except for that one, what I shoot is usually general patronage,” he says. Magbanua says the demand for pre-wedding videos is pushing him and his contemporaries to push the boundaries. He is, for example, a big fan of Instagram. “I love Instagram,” he says enthusiastically. “Before, it has to be a song that’s two-anda-half to three minutes. Now 15 seconds is enough. You say what you can say in that span of time and it still works.” He sees pre-wedding videos getting even more complicated. “I guess it’s because the couple is paying a premium. They can say, I’ve seen this, I’ve seen that, ❰❰ 28
show me something different.” Costs are bound to soar as well. The most expensive prewedding video Magbanua has ever done costs a whopping P225,000 because it was a fullyscripted spectacle. The cost has not deterred couples any, it seems. In fact, Magbanua’s shooting sked is so full he started a second wedding video business called For You Are Mine, which operates out of his Makati studio as well and is handled by manager Therese Yee. If Magbanua is already booked on your chosen date, he would then recommend his second team. “We’re turning down so much business it’s better if those jobs still go to us,” he says. For You Are Mine is now doing some 50 weddings a year. The wedding landscape is changing fast, Magbanua notes, adding that some things still amaze him. “I’ve done one samesex wedding. Right now, I have three lesbian weddings on my calendar. I’m amazed that these same-sex couples are coming out and getting hitched, despite the difficulties they encounter because some venues don’t want them and some planners turn them down. That’s kind of sad for me because I’m very open to this kind of thing. The bottom line is, they’re professing their love in front of family and friends regardless of their sexual orientation. “But we’re in the Philippines. It’s going to take forever for same-sex marriage to find acceptance here. But these are necessary baby steps, so kudos to these people for moving it forward.” Filipinos love weddings, after all, and Jason Magbanua still catches himself being in awe of what he has experienced. “I just really feel that Filipinos value weddings so much that they’re willing to spend a lot. Of course, I never advocate that couples go into debt just for a wedding… but here there’s no divorce and it’s very difficult to get an annulment. So they want to make it right, and cost is not that important. That’s why the wedding business is booming. Personally, how a couple fits together is what’s important. Our role is just to make sure they start their married life together with a bang.” ■ This article has been edited for length. The full version can be found in the June 1st, 2014 issue of Sunday Inquirer Magazine.
Lifestyle
39 FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
Rub a dub dub, no matter how much you scrub, your home is covered in your unique germs BY LAURAN NEERGAARD The Associated Press WASHINGTON—Sorry, clean freaks. No matter how well you scrub your home, it’s covered in bacteria from your own body. And if you pack up and move, new research shows, you’ll rapidly transfer your unique microbial fingerprint to the doorknobs, countertops and floors in your new house, too. In fact, researchers who studied seven families in Illinois, Washington and California could easily match up who lived where using their microscopic roommates, almost like CSI for germs. Thursday’s study is part of an effort to understand how the trillions of mostly beneficial bacteria that live in and on our bodies—what’s called the human microbiome—interact with bugs in the environment to affect our health. “We have so little information about where the microbes come from that shape our microbiome, whether it’s for health or disease,” said microbiologist Jack Gilbert of the Argonne National Laboratory and University of Chicago. Where do people spend most of their time? “It’s the indoor environment. The best place to
look at that was the home,” said Gilbert, who led the Home Microbiome Project and included his own family. Right at birth, babies start picking up microbes on the skin, in the nose, in the gut that eventually make up living communities that will share their bodies throughout life. Many of these bugs play critical roles in digestion, the immune system and other health-inducing factors. Others may make it easier to gain weight, or influence disease. What shapes the balance of good bugs and bad is a huge scientific question. Hospital studies make clear that someone who already is sick can catch a new infection from pathogenic bacteria left behind by a previous patient. In contrast, the new study examines healthy people, and it marks an important step: Beginning to show what’s normal in a regular home, said Dr. Lisa Helbling Chadwick of the National Institutes of Health. That’s a key question before scientists can explore how to possibly create healthier homes. “You have to think about the microbiome of your home as part of your home’s immune system,” said Chadwick, of NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences,
who wasn’t involved with Gilbert’s project. “Instead of relying on killing bugs to stop the spread of infection, maybe we need to cultivate better bugs.” For the study, Gilbert recruited seven households that included 15 adults, three children, three dogs and a cat. For six weeks, participants collected samples of the microscopic bugs living on and around them by swabbing the hands, feet, noses and paws of everyone in the household, plus doorknobs, light switches, floors and countertops. Back in the laboratory, Gilbert’s team identified the bugs by their DNA, and they reported Thursday in the journal Science that people substantially affect the microbial communities in their homes. Different homes harboured
markedly different bacterial populations, but they closely matched the microbiomes of their residents. The big surprise: How quickly the bugs settled in. Like Pigpen’s trailing cloud of dust in the Peanuts comic strip, when three families moved—one of them from a hotel room to a house—it took about a day for the microbes in their new homes to closely resemble those in the old ones. “The speed at which that colonization happens was quite remarkable,” Gilbert said. Sure, there are some leftover bacteria from previous occupants, he said. But many bacteria die or go dormant after a while on a hard, air-conditioned surface. At the same time, the oil in your skin read-
ily transfers your own bacteria to surfaces. That’s not counting all those tiny flakes of dead skin that people constantly shed, microbe-filled dust that probably just blankets the bugs that were there first, Gilbert noted. “It changed my perspective almost on hotel rooms,” he added with a laugh. In another home, someone went on a three-day trip, and that person’s contribution to the usual household microbe mix dropped noticeably. And dogs moved the bacteria from surface to surface even more rapidly. As for potentially dangerous bacteria, in one house, the scientists tracked a germ called Enterobacter from one person’s hands to the kitchen counter and then to another person’s hands. No one got sick, possibly because the residents were healthy and hadn’t recently used antibiotics, Gilbert said. It will take more research to figure out where the different bugs that people and their pets bring into their homes originally come from. And Gilbert pointed to the study’s other implication: Maybe people should make sure they’re regularly getting outside to expose themselves, and their immune systems, to a wider variety of bugs. ■
PCI and Sprott Shaw College is in need of a pool of part time Tagalog teachers for their Vancouver and New Westminster Campus. Submit resume to info@canadianinquirer.net. Only those shortlisted will be contacted. www.canadianinquirer.net
Business
SEPTEMBER 5, 2014 FRIDAY 40
Foreign companies in China feel ‘targeted’ by regulators; business group The Associated Press BEIJING—An American business group warned Tuesday that foreign companies in China feel increasingly targeted for unfair enforcement of antimonopoly and other laws and said investment might decline if conditions fail to improve. The American Chamber of Commerce’s report adds to mounting complaints about a flurry of investigations of global automakers, technology suppliers and other companies in recent months. Some foreign managers say Chinese authorities appear to be trying to hamper them and shield domestic rivals from competition. Foreign companies believe
they face “selective and subjective enforcement” of anti-monopoly, food safety and other rules, said the American Chamber of Commerce in China. Almost half of companies responding to a survey “believe that foreign companies are being targeted,” the group said. It said the risk was increasing that China “will permanently lose its lustre as a desirable investment destination.” “Improvements in these areas are imperative if foreign companies are to continue to invest in China’s future,” the group said in a statement. Uncertainty over regulatory investigations adds to challenges for foreign companies at a time when China’s growth is slowing and they face more competition
from ambitious local rivals. Economic growth edged up to 7.5 per cent over a year earlier in the three months ended in June from 7.4 per cent the previous quarter. But that was barely half of 2007’s peak of 14.2 per cent. Beijing announced last week it will fine 12 Japanese auto parts suppliers a total of $202 million on charges of pricefixing. Officials have said Mercedes Benz, Audi and Chrysler also will face punishment. Microsoft and chip maker Qualcomm also are under scrutiny. Business groups welcomed the enactment of China’s antimonopoly law in 2008 as a step toward clarifying operating conditions. Since then, they have said it is enforced more
PHOTO BY CHAMELEONSEYE / SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
actively against foreign companies than against local rivals. Another business group, the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, said last month that competition law should not be used to achieve
other goals such as forcing price reductions. The group said it received reports that regulators pressure companies to accept penalties without a full hearing and to avoid involving their governments. ■
Asian stock markets mostly higher as wages data boosts Japan; Hong Kong slips
Modi woos Japanese business with promises of “red carpet, not red tape”
BY ELAINE KURTENBACH The Associated Press
BY ELAINE KURTENBACH The Associated Press
TOKYO—Asian stocks were mostly higher Tuesday after a jump in average wages boosted Japan’s market. Hong Kong’s benchmark was recovering after initially retreating on weak Chinese data and concerns over tensions with Beijing. Keeping score
Japan’s Nikkei 225 gained 1.5 per cent to 15,703.50 while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slipped 0.2 per cent to 24,700.94. China’s Shanghai Composite was up 0.9 per cent at 2,255.62 and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 added 0.4 per cent to 5,649.50. Southeast Asian stock markets rose while South Korea’s Kospi dropped 0.7 per cent to 2,052.63. Wall Street was closed Monday for a public holiday. Wages boost
Japan’s government reported that average wages rose 2.6 per cent in July from a year earlier,
mostly helped by bonus payments. Increases in household incomes are a crucial part of Japan’s economic revival strategy and the July figures are a rare positive development on that front. China chill
Indicators such as power generation, steel output and property sales point to continued weakness in the world’s No. 2 economy, which has raised expectations of additional stimulus and boosted Chinese stocks. But Hong Kong, which has heavy exposure to the troubled Chinese property market, was lower. It also has been shaken by rising friction between China’s communist leaders and local protesters demanding a direct say in the choice of Hong Kong’s leader. The quote
“We still expect China’s overall economy to cool toward the year’s end, and to stay weak through 2015,” says Wang Tao, an economist at UBS in Hong Kong.
U.S. economy
Traders will be focusing on the U.S. employment report for August due Friday. Investor confidence over the U.S. economy has risen following several months of strong growth in hiring and corporate profits and a series of major corporate acquisitions. U.S. shares looked headed for an upbeat start to the week, with both Dow and S & P futures up 0.1 per cent. Currencies
The Ukraine crisis and weak European economic data have combined to hurt the euro, taking it to a near year-low of $1.3119 on Monday. On Tuesday, the euro was trading at $1.3123, down from $1.3132 late Monday. The dollar rose to 104.83 yen from 104.35 yen. Energy markets
U.S. benchmark crude for October delivery was down 22 cents at $95.74 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It gained $1.41 on Monday to $95.96. ■ www.canadianinquirer.net
TOKYO—Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is wooing Japanese businesses with a promise of “red carpet” treatment rather than the bureaucratic red tape that India is notorious for. India is the best possible investment destination, offering “democracy, demography and demand” in its market of nearly 1.3 billion people, Modi told Japanese business leaders Tuesday. “I have come to assure you that there is no red tape but red carpet in India. We have eased off lot of regulations,” he said. Modi will wrap up his fiveday visit to Japan on Wednesday, bringing home pledges of billions of dollars in aid and investment after the two governments agreed to beef up their economic and security ties. The slew of agreements signed by Modi and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe did not include a nuclear energy pact India needs for imports of Japanese equipment to ramp up nuclear power.
During his visit, Modi sidestepped questions from his audiences about China’s rising influence, emphasizing instead values India shares with Japan, such as democracy. “Fighting darkness with a sword doesn’t work,” Modi said in response to a question about China at a gathering of students at Tokyo’s University of the Sacred Heart. “An intelligent person instead can use a small lamp to chase away the darkness.” “India and Japan are both democracies. If we work together, we can only move in a positive direction,” he said. In an address at Tokyo’s stock exchange, Modi promised Japanese businesses that his threemonth-old government would guarantee smooth sailing. He lauded agreements on selling defence-related equipment and co-operating in natural gas trading, solar energy and infrastructure projects including smart cities, high-speed railways, subways, airports and highways. “India has a ‘Look East’ policy, and it seems Japan has a ‘Look at India’ policy,” he said. ■
Sports
41 FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
Ryan Nelsen loses power struggle at Toronto FC, fails to complete turnaround BY NEIL DAVIDSON The Canadian Press TORONTO—It was the worst and lowest-paying job offer on the table. But Ryan Nelsen said yes to Toronto FC in January 2013, reckoning he could learn more from trying to resuscitate a perennial MLS loser than sit on a bench as an assistant coach at an English Premier League club. Twenty months later, Nelsen’s education in Toronto is over. General manager Tim Bezbatchenko, who inherited Nelsen as coach when he was hired last September, fired the former New Zealand international Sunday. In an interview with The Canadian Press last Wednesday— when he suspected the axe was coming—Nelsen mused about why he chose to become Toronto’s eighth coach in seven years. The biggest challenge is the most rewarding, he reasoned. “For me, my biggest enjoyment I get from work—whether it’s in little business stuff or anything—is to take something that’s nothing or crap (and) build it into something that’s respectable and good ... because that’s where you learn the most,” a relaxed Nelsen said while sitting in the sunshine at the club’s $20-million-plus training centre.
PCI SUDOKU
“And once you’ve turned into something that’s really good, then it doesn’t have the same interest for me ... Then I’ll probably move on.” He never reached his goal in Toronto despite rebuilding the roster, earning the franchise much-needed respect and steering the club towards the playoffs for the first time. In axing Nelsen and five assistant coaches, Bezbatchenko cited the 9-9-6’s team’s disappointing record of late—Toronto is 3-5-5 in its last 13 games. Greg Vanney, Bezbatchenko’s assistant GM and academy director, took over as coach. In truth, the 32-year-old rookie GM had been at odds with Nelsen for some time. Bezbatchenko, a former league official described as “wicked smart” by MLS commissioner Don Garber, won a power play to rid himself of Nelsen and his assistant coaches. The coaching staff had been responsible for many of the team’s recent deals, having filling a void left by the previous regime. Toronto went from being a franchise routinely fleeced to one Nelsen believed was one of the league’s “stealthiest.” Bezbatchenko, who clearly was not on the same page as the coaching staff, was not willing to sit on the sidelines. A recent point of contention was the purchase of a pricey
analytics service. Nelsen is not averse to analytics but saw the outlay—and the front office’s focus on numbers—as somewhat out of whack given the team’s success in horse-trading. Bezbatchenko and Vanney made a point Sunday of talking up the worth of analytics. In recent weeks, as Bezbatchenko flexed his muscle, Nelsen resisted—only to see support from outgoing MLSE CEO Tim Leiweke fade. Leiweke once had Nelsen’s back, retaining “Nellie” as coach when he axed team president Kevin Payne in September 2013. “What I am certain of is that with respect to the way that we need to go as an organization, Ryan sees the world exactly the way we do,” Leiweke said at the time. “I’m supportive of Ryan. He will be our coach next year.” That changed. Nelson, it appears, was on a short leash. “I was loyal to Nellie and I think Nellie was loyal to the organization,” Leiweke said Sunday after the firing. “But that said, we always knew that there would be a pretty short window here as to if things went south, due to how competitive everything is. “And with that said the team obviously not only did not play well but really didn’t show up.” Leiweke has his own masters. And Toronto FC was his baby, with a playoff guarantee and
Nelsen (left) as coach of Toronto FC in 2013. PHOTOS BY ABDALLAHH / FLICKR
buckets of money poured into his pet project. Even while headed to the MLSE door, Leiweke could not afford to see his team fail to deliver. Especially when the franchise, traditionally a cash generator, will lose money this season due to the megabucks lavished on star striker Jermain Defoe and midfielder Michael Bradley. Reminded that Toronto FC was one win away from tying the franchise record of 10, set in 2009, Leiweke replied: “We’re also one game away from being out of the playoffs.” Still Leiweke made a point of saying the decision to unseat Nelsen was Bezbatchenko’s— an employee he has jokingly referred to as Harry Potter. “This was a decision Tim made and I fully supported,” Leiweke said. “You can’t have a team quit on you. And it’s
unfortunate and I’m not sure it’s all Nellie’s fault. I think the team has to step up and accept some of the blame here too. But that said we can’t let the season slip away. But that said and we’re going to do anything and everything we can to try and make the playoffs.” Nelsen, not surprising, saw things differently. He believed his revamped team was headed in the right direction, but hitting dips or plateaus as it learned along the way. “We’ll kick on again and then we’ll have our roadblocks where everyone will call us crap again,” he said with a smile. “And next thing you know— whatever time, and it will be in the future—we’ll be crushing teams and you’ll be going ‘Oh you only won 3-0 today.”‘ Nelsen firmly believed that Toronto FC would be the class of the league next year. ■
HOROSCOPE Aries (March 21-April 19) Accept what you can’t change and change what you can’t accept. Let it all out today and you will rock the coming days with positive thoughts and a peaceful mind! Taurus (April 20-May 20) Gather all the events that happened in the past days and take some time to reflect on them today. Gemini (May 21-June 21) No matter how tired you are, just think about the happiness you’d get one you get there, so keep on driving. Stop worrying because the stars will always be there to fuel your engine. Cancer (June 22-July 23) Remember that having people who will always be there for you is also a great achievement in your journey, so take some time to prioritize them today.
Leo (July 24-August 23) Remember that the only best way to nurture your knowledge aside from reading is by active listening. Virgo (August 24-Septemeber 22) This week, you will realize that there is one great cure to ease all the emotional pain you are feeling. That is, acceptance. Libra (September 23-October 22) You might be forgetting the importance of learning to let your feelings out. Stop holding and keeping those negative emotions inside you. Scorpio (October 23-November 21) The stars are telling you that everything related to love and romance will work just well this week, if you play your cards right. Sagittarius (November 22-December 21) Remember to always keep cool and
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calm. Never let that unwanted emotion eat your opportunity of having the best day this week. Capricorn (December 22-January 19) Be careful in meeting new friends today. Someone who might have a hidden agenda will come to you and act so dear and friendly. Be vigilant. Do not get fooled. Aquarius (January 20-February 18) A good advice is always worth taking. Do not hesitate to listen to a friend’s voice today. The decision is always yours, so do not be afraid to listen. Pisces (February 19-March 20) The stars will give you the comfort that you need if you will open that door of opportunities. Do not be afraid to take risks. Grab your strength and have faith.
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
42
Travel
Manitoba’s ‘Da Vinci Code’: legislature a treasure trove of hidden symbols, codes BY CHINTA PUXLEY The Canadian Press WINNIPEG—The seat of political power in Manitoba is the last place one might expect to find the bust of Medusa, recurring odes to “666” and the number 13, alongside Egyptian sphinxes etched with hieroglyphics. But a closer look at the province’s legislature reveals a whole host of hidden clues left behind by an architect who thought his magnum opus in Winnipeg would be a jewel rooted in the beliefs of Freemasonry in the heart of one of the most powerful cities in Canada. If ever there was a building designed for fans of Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code,” this is it. Between April and October, visitors can take a tour of the legislature led by Winnipeg’s Robert Langdon, Frank Albo, who has studied the legislature and its secrets hidden by British architect Frank Worthington Simon for a decade. “He thought this building in the centre of Canada was going to be the continental showpiece. This was supposed to be a much bigger city than it ever became,” said Albo. “He placed ideas and symbols in this building, hoping that the public would figure it out. Turns out it took 100 years later for that to happen.” Without knowing the history behind the symbolism, many elements of the legislature can look out of place. To truly understand the beauty of the legislature, Albo said you have to understand Simon and his beliefs. Simon was a member of the Freemasons, a secret society that believed architecture “had the capacity to reform the soul,” Albo said. “He was a strange kind of British genius who believed that occultism, Freemasonry,
The Manitoba Legislative Building was designed and built by Frank Worthington Simon and Henry Boddington III, along with other masons and many skilled craftsmen. PHOTO BY CANUCKS4EVER83 / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Hermetic philosophy and many other ideas that we might dismiss today are essential to moral advancement, especially to the government and in beautifully built buildings.” The first feature hits any visitor at the legislature’s front door, guarded on either side by two huge Egyptian sphinxes— about as far from the desert as you can get. On the chest of each are hieroglyphics beckoning the sun god to give life to something in the building while, in the centre, is the symbol of Pharaoh Thutmose III. The pharaoh lived 3,500 years ago and is widely believed to be the founder of Freemasonry. The hieroglyphics are only visible from the roof, Albo said. But one of the most distinctive features of the legislature— and one visible kilometres away—is the so-called “golden boy” holding up a torch and carrying a sheaf of grain perched atop the building’s dome. According to the legislature, the golden boy is an embodiment of enterprise and youth, facing
north to where the province’s natural resources lie. Simon had something completely different in mind, Albo said. The golden boy is actually modelled after the Greek god Hermes, Albo said. “Hermes was a guide of souls and he knew the secrets about the mysteries of the world—alchemy, numbers, astrology and geometry,” he said. “People just think it’s a curious statue encased in gold, but he’s a symbol and a signal to what the architect incorporates into the building’s architecture.” Inside the legislature, most visitors are blissfully unaware they are walking through an “architectural sudoku puzzle.” In virtually every room in the building, Albo said you can find the numbers five, eight and 13. The grand staircase in the legislature foyer is made up of three sets of 13 stairs. Lights in the rotunda are made up of 12 small lights around one larger bright light—both an ode to the number 13 and a symbol of Jesus Christ and his disciples. The black star on the main
floor of the building, and the focal point of the rotunda beneath the dome, has eight points and is 13 feet across. The repetition of five, eight and 13 is a reference to the famous sequence in math—the Fibonacci series where the two previous numbers add up to the third, Albo said. It was long considered a kind of divine blueprint. “In the ancient world, this series of numbers geometrically was considered a proportion in the mind of God,” he said. “So by replicating that proportion on Earth, you are basically drawing upon God’s heavenly power into the design of things.” The number 666 also appears throughout the building, Albo said. The length and width of the building itself are both 666 feet. The room that houses the grand staircase in the middle of the building is exactly 66.6 feet in width and 66.6 feet in length. While most would associate the number with Satan, Albo said that was not the architect’s intention. “In Hermetic philosophy, it
does not have that association at all,” said Albo, adding numbers had different associations with planets and stars. “For instance, 666 was considered the number of the sun because if you add up numbers one to 36, that number collectively equals 666.” The revelations come as a surprise to many who have worked in the legislature for years, never noticing the bust of Medusa over top of the grand staircase or the 13 bulbs that light up the rotunda. Health Minister Erin Selby recently took Albo’s tour and marvelled at “all those clues in plain sight.” “When the building opened years ago it would have been commonly known the legislature was built by masons,” she said. “Many would have recognized the symbols and the intent.” Now, Albo said the building requires educated interpretation to appreciate it in the way it was intended. “It’s like having a Michelangelo in your backyard,” he said. “We have a great world heritage site ... not many buildings contain this level of mysticism woven into it. It’s the genius of one mind who told not a soul about it but left so many clues that he was beckoning people to figure it out.” ■ If You Go...
The Hermetic Code tour runs every Wednesday until Oct. 1 from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. Cost is $39.30 per person. For more information or to book tickets visit http://www.heartlandtravel. ca/hermeticcodetours.htm The Manitoba legislature is open and offers guided tours year-round. Appointments are required for tours between September and June by calling 204-945-5813. The legislature also has a walking tour brochure on its website: http:// www.gov.mb.ca/mit/legtour/ pdf/walkingtour.pdf
Travel
43 FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
5 free things to do in Cape Town, South Africa, from oceanfront views to a quiet garden park BY CELEAN JACOBSON The Associated Press CAPE TOWN, South Africa—Cape Town is a place of wry contrasts, a place where you might encounter an international fashion model, a hippie or a “bergie” (beggar). There are urban black townships and picturesque seascapes. A mix of colonial history, the struggle against apartheid and 20 years of democracy colour what Cape Town is today. Two of the city’s most famous attractions are Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, and Table Mountain, with an aerial tram to the top. You’ll have to buy tickets to take the island ferry or the tram, but many other experiences can be had for free. Sea Point Promenade
This is the perfect vantage point to see sea gulls, waves crashing onto rocks and miles of Atlantic beaches. With the taste of sea salt in the air, you can walk, jog or sit on a bench to view the Mother City. The promenade offers a temporary art project, art54, with new pieces exhibited from time to time. For exercise lovers, there is a free outdoor gym. Around the corner, Green Point Urban Park, a 2010 World Cup legacy, offers one of the most biodiverse regions with Wetland Walks and child-friendly spots for picnicking.
An important communal space is the Sea Point Promenade, a paved walkway along the beach-front used by residents and tourists for walking, jogging or socialising.
Along the scenic coastline of False Bay—so called because sailors confused it with another nearby bay—you may see both penguins and whales. Enjoy spotting majestic Southern Right whales from June until November. The endangered African Penguin Colony offers a look at adorable jackass penguins waddling on Boulder’s Beach, but does charge a fee. You know you’re near when you see penguin road signs on the streets.
kets that offer all-the-rage food and a wide range of designer stores. Feast your imagination on the street art around each corner. You will see graffiti tags in neon and a variety of ab-
Company’s Garden
The Company’s Garden was started in 1652 by the Dutch East India Company, which supplied ships for the spice trade route via the Cape of Good Hope. It’s a calm, quiet hideaway from the surrounding busy streets for students, tourists and people who work in the centre of Cape Town. The oak trees that silhouette Government Avenue lead to landmarks like the sombre Slave Bell memorial, the Houses of Parliament and the National Gallery (which charges admission). You can also meet cute and curious squirrels that expect visitors to feed them nuts. Will you by chance spot the particularly aggressive albino squirrel made famous by YouTube and the Company’s Garden travel writings? False Bay
Visit quaint Kalk Bay, a village with old-fashioned stores, sea-hugging trains and natural harbour. Walk along as waves crash the wharf and see rustic boats and seals that are lazy on land but look elegant in the water. You can meet Afrikaans fishermen, colorful and candid, while locals barter for the catch of the day.
Lion's Head and Signal Hill.
Lion’s Head and Signal Hill
Drive up Signal Hill for a scenic perch above this beautiful coastline. At 12 noon each day, a gun is fired, waking up birds and making you jump out of your skin with laughter. Two centuries ago, the South African Navy used the cannon to announce the arrival of ships. Locals love this spot for sunset picnics, drinks and meeting friends. It offers views of Robben Island, Table Mountain and the seascape. There are easy trails from Signal Hill to the top of Lion’s Head, and full moon hikes offer a chance to see spectacular glittering moonlight on the sea. A word of caution: There have been reports of muggings and other security issues in the area, so be aware of your surroundings and be careful with your possessions. Woodstock
Woodstock, infamous for crime and drugs, has become a rejuvenated innercity suburb. The warehouses, old and rundown, have been transformed into trendy shops, art galleries and fashionable places to be. You can stroll through Saturday marwww.canadianinquirer.net
PHOTOS BY HILTON1949 / WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
stract images and realistic portraits by renowned street artists from all over the world. The art themes range from the neighbourhood’s crime-ridden past to its rebirth. ■
Seen and Scenes
SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
FRIDAY 44
PCG VANCOUVER HOLDS CONSULAR OUTREACH IN BROOKS AND MEDICINE HAT IN ALBERTA PROVINCE
Above: Medicine Hat Mayor Ted Clugston briefs Congen Ferrer on the developments in the city particularly on the natural gas and renewable sector sector during the courtesy call on the Mayor on Aug. 15. Joining the meeting is Vice Consul Rogelio Villanueva, Jr. Left: Medicine Hat power plant officals give a tour of the facilities and explain the operations of the co-generation turbine system to Congen Ferrer during his site visit to the plant on Aug. 15.
Consul General Neil Frank Ferrer leads consulate personnel in providing passport, notarials and other consular services to Filipino residents of Brooks during the consular outreach held in the city on Aug. 10 to 12.
CALGARY DISPLAYS 'LIGHT OF UNITY' PAROL
FIRST FILIPINO-CANADIAN SENATOR MARKS 2ND YEAR IN OFFICE
Above: Light of Unity lantern display at Calgary City Hall. Right: Father and daughter bonding moment.
Senator and Mrs. Enverga at Taste of Manila. Senator Enverga and Canadian Ambassador Neil Reeder visit Canadian-sponsored village in Tacloban City.
The senator was warmly welcomed by residents of Agincourt Senior Centre.
Workshop participants proudly show off their finished lanterns.
For photo submissions, please email info@canadianinquirer.net. www.canadianinquirer.net
Events
45 FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
CANADA EVENTS
YUKON NORTHWEST TERRITORIES
NUNAVUT
View all events by scanning this QR code or visiting
http://bit.ly/ PCI-Events
It’s Showtime Canada Live in Edmonton By 3J Events Services WHEN/WHERE: 4 p.m., September 21, Show Conference Centre, Halls ABC, 9797 Jasper Ave., Edmonton, AB. MORE INFO: Call 780-440-4282 ext 3 (Zed); 780-938-7373 (Girlie). Tickets at $50, $85, $100, $125, $250
BRITISH COLUMBIA
Free Lantern Making Workshop
ALBERTA
MANITOBA
SASKATCHEWAN Dual Citizenship Info Session By the UP Alumni Association of British Columbia WHEN/WHERE: 6 p.m., September 5, Metrotown Community Room (near Old Navy), Burnaby, B.C. Vancouver Zombie Walk 2014 WHEN/WHERE: 4 to 6 p.m., Sept. 6, Vancouver Art Gallery, 750 Hornby St., Vancouver, B.C. Finding God in your Life By Jesuit Alumni Group WHEN/WHERE: 9 a.m., to 3:30 p.m., September 6, Fr. Richard Soo’s Parish, Dormition of the Mother of God 8700 Railway Ave., Richmond, B.C. Walk of Hope Ovarian Cancer By Ruth Thrivors WHEN/WHERE: 9 a.m. to 12 noon, Sept. 7, Queen Elizabeth Park, British Columbia, 33rd and Cambie Sts., Vancouver, B.C. NDP Transit Canvass Blitz with the BC MPS By NDP WHEN/WHERE: 8 to 10 a.m., Sept. 8, Broadway-City Hall Skytrain Station
By PiM Foundation NEWFOUNDLAND
ONTARIO
QUEBEC
Summer Hip Hop Dance Showdown & Ballroom @ the Square WHEN/WHERE: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., September 20 @ The Shipbuilders Square, Wallace News Rd., North Vancouver, B.C./ for Ballroom 5 p.m. to 12 mn. MORE INFO: Free admission; For dinnerdance event: $25/person Filipino Canadian New Era Society 12th Anniversary By FilCanes WHEN/WHERE: 12 noon to 6 p.m., Sept. 21, Capri Hall, 3925 Fraser St., Vancouver, B.C. Bamboo World Tour Live in Canada By Great Smile Denture Inc., MCY Entertainment and TFC WHEN/WHERE: 6 p.m., Sept. 26 @ Massey Theatre, New Westminster, B.C. MORE INFO: Sept 27 – Calgary; Sept 28- Winnipeg; Oct. 3 – Saskatoon; Oct. 4 – Toronto; Oct. 5 - Edmonton
Nanaimo Teen Fest By Teen Fest Canada WHEN/WHERE: 11-5:30 p.m., Sept. 13, Maffeo Sutton Park, 50 Arena St., Nanaimo, B.C.
The Singer & The Songwriter Featuring Ms. Joey Albert and Mr. Dennis Lambert By MediCard Philippines Intl.. in cooperation with Harana Entertainment & St. Clare of Assisi Parish WHEN/WHERE: 7:30 p.m., September 27 @ Michael J. Fox Theatre, Burnaby B.C. MORE INFO: Tickets at $40, $50 and $100. Call Harana Entertainment 604-763-2590
Peer Support Training By Immigrant Women’s Peer Support Program WHEN/WHERE: 9 a.m., to 4:30 p.m., from Sept. 13 to Dec. 13 at the Immigrant Services Society of B.C. #200C- 504 Cottonwood Ave. Coquitlam B.C. MORE INFO: Contact Liza @ 604-395-8000 ext. 1706
Zumbacoustic Neon Party WHEN/WHERE: 7 p.m., Sept. 27, Latin Fitness Studio, 5595 Kingsway Ave., Burnaby B.C. MORE INFO: Part of benefit will go to Quezon province children and schools affected by Typhoon Glenda. www.canadianinquirer.net
WHEN/WHERE: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sept. 6, T & T Pacific Place Mall (NE) MORE INFO: Register @ 587-700-1047 Music for all Ages Featuring Mike Hanopol, Lolita Carbon, Wency Cornejo and Anne Marie By South Pointe Toyota Scion in cooperation with Pacific Hut WHEN/WHERE: 5:30 p.m., Sept. 6, Century Casino, Calgary Bamboo World Tour By MCY Entertainment WHEN/WHERE: Sept. 27, Century Casino, Calgary
The Hotdog Concert & Dance Party By Primetime Events Group WHEN/WHERE: 7:30 p.m., September 12 and 13, at Rembrandt Banquet Hall, 930 Progress Ave., Scarborough, ON. MORE INFO: with special guest Elaine Evangelista-Virata Linda Modern Thai By Royal Thai Embassy in Ottawa WHEN/WHERE: 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Sept. 14, Yonge-Dundas Square, Toronto, ON
To have your events featured on PCI, please email events@canadianinquirer.net
FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2014
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