Senator Vicente “Tito” Sotto

ENQUIRY
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

Senator Vicente “Tito” Sotto
Sunday, 03 28, 2010

Senator Vicente “Tito” Sotto will be back at the Senate in the 15th Congress, that my friend Leina de Legazpi proclaimed with certainty when we met at the Senate Lounge last Thursday.

Sotto is a candidate for senator under the Nationalist People’s Coalition.

I asked Leina what makes her absolutely sure that Sotto would be back at the Senate. Leina said matter-of-factly: “Because Tito has earned it!” I cannot but agree with Leina. The Filipino voter is a discerning voter, one who knows which candidate would make a good and performing senator of the Republic. So, in the same fashion that performers in the august halls of the Senate like Enrile, Tatad, Jinggoy Estrada, Pia Cayetano, Santiago and Serge Osmena will be recognized and rewarded, Sotto will be recognized and rewarded by the voters on May 10, 2010.

Indeed, Sotto has earned his spurs.

Sotto topped the senatorial elections in 1992 and served two terms until 2004. He is credited for having authored/steered the passage of the Overseas Absentee Voting Law, the Seat Belts Use Act, the creation of Family Courts, the Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Code, and the establishment by legislative fiat of bodies such as the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency, the Film Development Council and the Optical Media Board. He sponsored the conversion into cities of 25 municipalities in various parts of the country, such as Makati, Marikina, Pasig, Parañaque and Muntinlupa. Sotto was also responsible for the passage of several bills providing for the establishment of tourist zones in the country, considered vital to the promotion and advancement of our tourism industry towards international standards.

Tito was twice bestowed the International Award of Honor by the International Narcotics Enforcement Officers Association in Florida and California, USA. As senator, he helped build and improve schools nationwide and directed budgetary support to medical institutions such as the Philippine General Hospital, National Kidney Institute, the Philippine Heart Center, the Lung Center, Quirino Memorial Hospital and the Vicente Sotto Medical Center.

Sotto, has proved himself as an achiever, worthy of the trust of the electorate. As the Senate beckons once more, Sotto is determined to pursue his advocacy against the scourge of drugs. Sotto vows to continue his fight against illegal drugs, which he started when he was vice-mayor of Quezon City and carried on in the Senate through his dogged stewardship of the Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002, and the creation of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), of which he was the principal author and sponsor. “It has been eight years since the passage of the law,” he says, “and it is about time we review it, fine-tune it, and make it more responsive to the times. Drug traffickers have become more creative and more sophisticated in dancing around the law. We should not allow them to outrun, outgun and outmaneuver our law enforcers and our justice system. We must plug all the loopholes so they will not be able to circumvent the law.”

Sotto’s name is now synonymous with the fight against the proliferation and use of illegal drugs. The creation of PDEA at the instance of Sotto is an organizational approach to control and eventually eliminate the drug problem by creating an agency that focuses on the coordination of the different anti-drug entities and the implementation of government policies addressing the drug problem. Sotto is also credited for the inclusion of “methamphetamine hydrochloride” commonly known as “shabu” under the classification of dangerous and prohibited drugs,” a direct approach to ban certain substances prone to abuse.

Once back in the Senate, the improvement of the capabilities of the Philippine Coast Guard is part of Sotto’s overall continuing advocacy against the menace of illegal drugs and prohibited substances. He understands that this is another investment in the future of a great number of our “spaced-out youth” who, directly affected by the influx of illegal drugs in the country, could not seem to know whether they are coming or going.

Sotto will also push for a mandatory rehabilitation (for free) for the country’s drug dependents under a proposed agency of the Department of Health. The agency, to be called Bureau of Drug Abuse Treatment, will handle all problems and development programs related to drug dependents. Sotto says that the government cannot win the war against drugs and drug abuse by having effective law enforcement and prosecution alone. What is also needed, Sotto correctly diagnosed, is a program for rehabilitation and preventive education.

Sotto acquitted himself well as chair of the Dangerous Drugs Board from July 2008 until November 2009, when decency called for him to resign from that post as soon as he filed his Certificate of Candidacy for senator.

Working with him since 1992 at the Senate, I saw how then neophyte senator Sotto faced the immense pressure from the prying eyes of critics and expectations of his colleagues, and eventually prove his mettle and earn the respect and trust of the other senators and, most importantly, the Filipino people who voted him topnotcher senator into office. Sotto as senator, again, for the third term, this time as a senior legislator working alongside Enrile, Tatad, et al., will make the nation expectant of another vibrant and working Senate.

Sotto, in both his capacities as Senate minority leader and majority leader of the Commission on Appointments, in the 9th, 10th, and 11th Congress, has been known to be a consensus-builder and a mediator, reconciling differences among colleagues into a happy and mutual concession.

Composer of Magkaisa, that stirring anthem of the 1986 Edsa revolt, Senator Vicente “Tito” Sotto III will live up to his billing as Senate consensus-builder and mediator — a tunesmith, as it were, who will transform harmonious chords out of the discords of the men and women of the Senate in the15th Congress.

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Remembering Emi Boncodin

ENQUIRY
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

Remembering Emi Boncodin
Sunday, 03 21, 2010

On a fine day in September 2006 — I had just shepherded the Kabul Declaration Against Corruption at a conference held at the Serena Hotel, and was about to leave for my UN quarters — I heard a familiar voice asking the hotel concierge what rooms were available and how much they cost. The gravelly yet sing-song inflections took me back in time to my Senate and UP days, and I was very sure to whom it belonged. And true enough, it was Emi, a.k.a. former Budget Secretary Emilia Boncodin.

What was a very fragile Bikolana like her doing in war-torn Afghanistan? She told me she had come as a consultant to the Afghan Ministry of Finance in the preparation of the national budget. Emi stayed at the hotel only for two days, preferring to stay at the more frugal quarters for consultants. She did save a lot in changing residence, and took pride in being able to spend her savings buying a rare indulgence for an austere woman like her: a hand-spun cashmere shawl — the famous pashmina.

The thoroughness of Emi’s work was evident in the neatness with which the budget of Afghanistan for 2007 breezed through the two Houses of the Afghan parliament, whereas the 2006 budget was hardly one that could be called a national financial plan, and therefore had a rough time at the parliament.

In 2007, I was handling the parliamentary side of the budget process, and Emi’s inputs to me greatly enriched the advice I gave to the Wolesi Jirga (counterpart of our House of Representatives) and the Meshrano Jirga (the Senate of the Afghan parliament). And in an admirable gesture of the bayanihan spirit found among fellow Filipinos in foreign lands, Emi even graciously helped me draw up the framework of a Legislative Budget Research and Monitoring Office for the Afghan parliament.

Outside of our work as consultants, I got to discover a lot about Emi. In the quaint streets of Kabul where internationals like us could safely saunter during our free time — Flower Street where kebab stalls (which Emi never liked at all) abound but has only a sprinkling of flower stands; Chicken Street where no chicken is sold but is overflowing with carpets and Afghan bric-a-bracs; or, in the restaurants which had security clearance for internationals to dine in — we talked about home, and the political environment we left behind. Emi wanted a respite from the murky bureaucracy back home, and a consultancy in Kabul was a very opportune excuse.

Emi talked about simple living, a lifestyle she had imposed on herself despite the perks that went with her having been a high career government official. I could not believe that here was a lady who simply had no cravings for material possessions, nor a predisposition for the fancy! A plain and small bag that never left her side contained all she needed for her stay in Kabul. Back home, this simplicity spoke more eloquently through the simple house she lived in, and her aversion to anything that would announce her high station in government — no mansion in a gated subdivision, no fancy cars, no diamonds and pearls, and no obsequious lackeys trailing behind her.

In one meeting at the Afghan Ministry of Finance, where I chanced upon her one Sunday morning (Sunday is workday in Afghanistan), Emi was totally conspicuous by the simplicity — almost to the point of tawdriness — of her dress, except with the recently acquired pashmina draped over her head, while all the rest around her, including two other lady expatriates, were in their Sunday’s best.

But beneath the simplicity was an innate dignity. I remember how Emi’s countenance lit up with pride and transformed the features of her plain, unadorned face (a face that made no pretensions to cosmetic enhancements) into something that approached a seraphic serenity when she recounted to me her decision to join the Cabinet members who dissociated themselves from the Arroyo government in July 2005. I remember, too, how the same sublime smile gave way to a gloomy, black look when she told me of her misgivings about where our nation was headed under a government that seemed impervious to the scandals besetting it.

And beneath the innate dignity was a steadfast devotion to duty. It is amazing how Emi could subordinate a serious medical problem to her professional responsibilities. She was determined to have been in need of a kidney transplant in 2005, but Emi, as she would confide to me, had it postponed until Congress had passed the budget that year. Imagine having just come from a kidney transplant, and now she was in Kabul where the nearest decent medical facility was three and a half hours away by plane in Dubai! Here was a frail woman who would not allow what ails her to get in the way of her utilizing her expertise to heal the ills of society, whether it be in the Philippines or in Afghanistan.

Emi loved the academe, the fertile ground where she sought to impart her many years of experience to students at the UP National Center for Public Administration and Governance. She must have relished the thought that by her example, students looking to join the government would be inspired not to lie, cheat or steal. She must have taught with a passion that strove to reach beyond compassion, that when she chanced upon me teaching some members of the Afghan parliament how to conduct oversight, Emi said: “Pag nakita mong lumaki ang mga mata nila, wala ka nang iibigin pa.”

At one lunch meeting I and Tom Achacoso (who was then visiting Kabul as consultant to the Afghan Ministry of Labor) had with her at the Bahay Kubo, a restaurant operated by a Filipino couple, Emi shunned the rich food that had been prepared for us. Following a strict diet, she settled for the simple soup. But she regaled Tom and me with juicy morsels of her love affair with the academe after she had left government service. And there was one word she kept repeating whenever the conversation veered toward government service: transparency. Transparency eliminates thievery, Emi said.

I saw Emi a few months back at the NCPAG in UP Diliman where she used to teach, and where my wife also teaches. She was many pounds lighter than when I saw her last in Kabul. She asked me what had happened to the claim of several laid-off workers of the Metro Rail Transit, for whom Emi had prepared a supplemental budget, and was dismayed to learn that it had taken already seven years and no benefits had been given to them. She also said she had a baby that would soon be born, and asked me to join her at its birth. (Knowing she was a spinster, I had to gasp in disbelief until she laughingly told me it was a “baby” in the field of governance.) It is only now, in the eulogies delivered to keep the memory of our friend Emi alive, that I learned Emi’s baby was a project designed to build the capacity of civil society to monitor a budget that, otherwise, perennially gets overstated, realigned or stolen.

We parted that evening with the customary beso-beso, and I cajoled her: “Punta ulit tayo sa Kabul!” But that was not to be. I will be going back to Kabul after the Holy Week, alone.

Emi now rests in the country that she has served so well, honestly, and with distinction. It will be many years from now when we will have another Emilia Boncodin guarding the budget. And there might never come a time for another Emi, espousing transparency and accountability, who lived simply and left public service untouched by scandal.

Khuda hafiz doste man. Wa tashakur az yaad bood — Goodbye, my friend. Thank you for the memories.

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Senator Tatad and the surveys

ENQUIRY
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

Senator Tatad and the surveys
Sunday, 03 14, 2010

Senator Francisco “Kit” Tatad is trying to make a comeback to the Philippine Senate. He is running under the Puwersa ng Masa ticket of the hugely resurgent Joseph Ejercito Estrada.

Despite his exemplary performance for two terms as senator of the Republic, four years of them as majority leader, and his being in the constant consciousness of the Filipino electorate for the 41 years that he has been in public service, Tatad has yet to land in the top 12 of today’s surveys on senatorial candidates.

Tatad is optimistic he will win, and takes comfort in the classic “defeat” of Harry Truman at the hands of the pollsters who had the surveys proclaiming Thomas Dewey as the choice of the electorate in the 1948 US presidential polls. The pollsters were proven wrong, and Truman went on to become president of the United States.

Why do the survey results continue to exclude Tatad, who stands head and shoulders above many of those who now revel in their top slots, as churned out by mercenary survey outfits masquerading as crystal ball operators?

Tatad – in behalf of the millions who voted for him in 1992 and again in 1995, and those whom he has converted to his side with his scholarly dissection of Constitutional issues that would put many lawyers pretending to be Constitutional experts to shame – has every reason to wonder why, and he has taken the survey outfits to task, head-on.

Tatad says the Social Weather Station (SWS) should first explain its fatally flawed exit polls in the 2004 elections in Metro-Manila before it conducts yet another opinion poll related to the 2010 elections, and that Pulse Asia should disclose to the public how many candidates have paid how much in order to participate in and benefit from the surveys.

This is the irreducible minimum ethical and profesional requirement before the two firms resume their unrestrained effort to shape public perceptions in the 2010 elections. Tatad insists that the electorate have the right to make this demand in light of the far from exemplary records of SWS and Pulse Asia and the unaccountable persuasive power they now seem to possess.

Tatad recalls that on May 11, 2004, within hours of the close of balloting, SWS announced that Gloria Arroyo got 31 percent of the votes in Metro-Manila as against Fernando Poe, Jr. who reportedly got 23 percent. The SWS announcement was dutifully recorded around the world. However, when the official Commission on Elections count came, FPJ took Metro-Manila with 36.67 percent of the votes, while Arroyo got 26.26 percent. SWS had messed up in an exit poll, where no professional pollster should.

Yet, SWS simply carried on as though its credibility had not at all been tainted nor polluted.

Tatad points out serious limitations—from the questionnaire design, to the sampling method, to the manner of interviewing respondents, to the collation, analysis and interpretation of data. And he laments that despite these limitations, SWS once again seeks to foist itself upon the electorate as a competent and faithful interpreter of public opinion as the campaign enters its critical stages.

Similarly, Tatad is asking Pulse Asia to make a full disclosure of the services it has sold to politicians who are eager to rate in the surveys. At the Kapihan sa Sulo, where Tatad serves as Resident Constitutionalist, Tatad showed to us documents bearing the letterhead of Pulse Asia, inviting politicians to participate in its surveys at the rate of P400,000.00 per head, and to introduce “rider” questions about their candidacies at P100,000.00 each.

Indeed, from our recollection, the politicians’ names have never been published, and neither have the “rider” questions. Since the questionnaire forms the soul of any survey, it should be neutral and not biased for or against anyone. But the fact that paying politicians are allowed to contribute their own questions is not the best way of ensuring the neutrality and objectivity of the questions. And it does not prevent anyone from asking what else is being sold aside from the questions.

Tatad is clamoring for a new set of professional survey outfits, given the dismal and questionable performance of SWS and Pulse Asia, and to the extent that opinion polling can be done according to the highest professional and ethical standards.

I conducted my own uneducated and informal survey — call it primitive and unreliable, if you like — at a seminar where I served as discussant on the credibility of electoral surveys. The participants were simply asked to write at least 12 names of the senators they would vote for. Thirty-four responded, but not all of them completed the 12 names. But 32 of the 34 respondents indicated Tatad among their choices.

So there. That should put a lie to those paid survey results. Fransciso “Kit” Tatad, that irrepressible Bicolano who has served the country well, will be elected senator of the Republic, the surveys notwithstanding.

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And speaking of irrepressible Bicolanos, I know of one who’s celebrating — or ruing — his birthday today. As a Senate service chief for twenty-two years, Dan Pinto, a.k.a. Leina de Legazpi, has steered his underpopulated, ragtag staff to perform difficult tasks immediately, and impossible things a little bit longer. Happy 63rd birthday, Dan/Leina.

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Gusto ko happy ka!

ENQUIRY
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

Gusto ko happy ka!
Sunday, 03 07, 2010

I must admit that when I first heard of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile’s new slogan, “Gusto ko happy ka!”, I asked myself how someone as brilliant and experienced as JPE could settle for something as unelaborate or unadorned—or tacky, according to some people who have grown accustomed to expect political slogans as a statement of egoism and self-deification. You know, the usual variations of “I am the greatest; I am the purest; I am the wisest.” Or like the “C’est moi” song in the musical “Camelot” where Launcelot beats his breast and boasts:

I'm far too noble to lie.

That man in whom

These qualities bloom,

C'est moi, c'est moi, 'tis I.

I've never strayed

From all I believe;

I'm blessed with an iron will.

Had I been made

The partner of Eve,

We'd be in Eden still.

Having known him for a considerable length of time—including those when I was in and without the Senate, when I had observed him pluck an elaborate phrase out of thin air while thinking on his feet—I sort of expected something more profound to come from him. Until I heard him over the radio. In countless interviews, the Senate President took time to explain his thoughts behind this catch phrase that has become so popular that even overseas Filipinos or residents of remote towns in the Visayas have all become familiar with it.

Many years ago, JPE—or Manong Johnny as he is now more fondly called—launched his political career with the slogan “Action agad!”, a promise that he somehow kept, even when he later on strayed into the dark nights of the Filipino soul as martial law administrator. But perhaps it is true when they say that God writes straight in crooked lines, because when the miracle of EDSA happened as it did, JPE was right there. There are a good number of people who would dispute the claim that JPE was the precursor of that action, but it is indisputable that JPE was right there in the thick of the suspenseful stand-off, prodded by a call to act.

So what has happened to the action man these days?

The action man has turned into a wise man—that’s exactly what happened. Not exactly young at 86, but still very healthy and equipped with perhaps the most brilliant mind in the Senate, JPE has been a fixture of the legislature since its restoration in 1987. He has been there for quite a time that it would not be a gross exaggeration to say that the young senators, through either beneficient contagion or osmosis, have absorbed from JPE a most important attribute a legislator could have: Thinking on one’s feet on every policy issue tossed at his face.

The public has often seen how JPE would debate, thrash out, hash out and argue any issue. Often he does this as if he were just thinking out loud, but the more significant reality is that JPE does his own homework, and comes prepared for the showdown. Now as Senate President, JPE could very well be the taskmaster who expects his senators to be prepared as well, and anyone not prepared to debate an issue but feigning otherwise could be exposed for the pitiful lack of sense and sensibility that lie behind the blather of his statements.

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In October 2008, when the Senate presidency fell on his shoulders, JPE said: “To lead the Senate, with its great minds, strong advocacies, varying and independent political beliefs and leanings, it is not an easy task. But it is precisely this variance in points of view and the battle of great ideas that provide the dynamism we need to craft legislation that takes into account and balances the competing interests involved, with the end in view of serving the greater good of the people to whom we owe our mandate.”

These words speak volumes about the self-awareness of the man, of his admission that there are limits to the exercise of power despite the awesome capacity now in his hands to influence persons and events. It not so many words, JPE has said that he is not the Senate: that, rather, he is the servant of the people who relies on the collective wisdom of his peers.

What else has happened to the action man these days?

The action man has also turned into a compassionate man—that’s exactly what happened. This man now sincerely believes, with a wisdom borne out of years of experience, some of them not too pleasant, that people should not be deprived of their basic rights—food, health, education, employment, security, safe and peaceful environment, among others. That the government, from the highest official of the land down to the rank-and-file employees of all public offices and instrumentalities, is duty-bound to protect and safeguard these civil liberties. That by all means, but within the bounds of law, the government must cause the efficient delivery of basic services, provide economic opportunities for all, promote equality amongst its people, and safeguard its constituents from any form of threat to security. Evidently, this will remain to be his mission in life—to serve his country and his people the best way he knows how — by being simply our “Manong sa Senado.” How appropriate that sobriquet is! It brings to mind the original definition of Senatus: a council of wise old men.

As he goes around the country campaigning, expect his voice to reverberate to all corners of the country as he shouts, “Gusto ko happy ka! Gusto ko happy ka sa iyong kabuhayan, sa iyong kalusugan, sa iyong seguridad, at sa iyong kinabukasan! Gusto ko happy kayong lahat!”

And who could say no to a wise, compassionate man who wishes him happiness or the pursuit thereof?

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