From now, it’s less than three weeks before the elections in the Philippines. According to the nation-wide survey conducted by the Social Weather Station released in mid-February of this year, Villar trails Aquino by 7 percentage points. But I will not delve on this; this post will be for the 5 per cent who, until this time, remains undecided. Five per cent of the roughly 45 million voters is 2.25 million voters, and these people who are yet to decide whom to vote for in May may decide the outcome of the election, granting the present administration will not do any dirty tactics that will result in failure of elections.
2. His ads on TV are just obscenely many. I almost stopped watching Philippine TV shows because wherever I go, ABS-CBN2 or GMA7, I see nothing during commercial breaks but faces of those kids singing a song that sounded like worshipping Villar.
3. His vice-presidential running-mate, Loren Legarda, is the most irritating TV personality to date since Mystica.
Her thirst for power seeps through her nose, ears, pores, and eyes every time she is interviewed on TV. Moreover, I hate how she phrases her sentences and how it shouts indecision.
4. Villar lied about his brother’s death because his family did not have the money to give the boy proper medical attention. He lied about his family’s real financial status; they’re not the dirt poor he’s been telling us they were, middle-class by all respect, Winnie Monsod said.
5. His steely composure reminds me of Donald Trump. That man is scary, so is Villar.
6. He has not responded to any the accusations of corruption hurled at him. His dry response by saying these are merely politically motivated is as dry and boring as his personality. But seriously, if he brushes all these accusations as if they are products of imagination now that he is still a candidate, imagine how he’ll react to cases of corruption when he’s already sitting in the highest seat of the land.
7. His Botox makeover is hideous. His dyed crown is horrible. Too ascetic, too black.
He stayed with us for more than five years, cooked dinner for us, washed our clothes, and took care of my siblings and me during those times when our parents were out working. After several years, he decided to leave out house, found a small house for rent in the nearby village, and married the daughter of the owner of the sari-sari store located at the corner of a block perpendicular to ours.
Twelve years later, he now has a 12-year-old daughter, two sons – a third grader and a five-year-old boy, and just recently, his wife gave birth to another baby boy. With his job as a casual carpenter and his wife being unemployed, I wonder where he shall get the money to support his children, how he shall send them to school at least until high school and provide for their daily needs.
The Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines is vehemently opposing the passing of a bill in the lower house of the of the Congress called Reproductive Health and Population Development Act which would require governments down to the local level to provide free or low-cost reproductive health services, including condoms, birth control pills, tubal ligation and vasectomies. The bill, in case it becomes a law, would also mandate sex education in all schools, public and private, from fifth grade through high school.
Supporters of the bill cite urgent public health needs. A 2006 government survey, which interviewed 46,000 women, found that between 2000 and 2006, only half of Filipino women of reproductive age used birth control of any kind. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit organization based in the United States that researches reproductive health policy, 54 percent of the 3.4 million pregnancies in the Philippines in 2008 were unintended.
Most of those unintended pregnancies — 92 percent — resulted from not using birth control, the institute said, and the rest from birth control that failed. Those unintended pregnancies, the institute says, contributed to an estimated half-million abortions that year, despite a ban on the procedure. Most of the abortions are done clandestinely and in unsanitary conditions leading to deaths of mothers.
Birth control and related health services have long been available to those who can afford to pay for them through the private medical system, but 70 percent of the population is too poor and depends on heavily subsidized care. In 1991, prime responsibility for delivering public health services shifted from the central government to the local authorities, who have broad discretion over which services are dispensed.
But since the task of distributing these contraceptives to their intended beneficiaries, primarily the poor, is already devolved to the local government, pressure from the Roman Catholic Church stalled the distribution. Many communities responded by making birth control unavailable.
The population issue in the Philippines is a political one. The main opposition has come from the church and affiliated lay organizations, which say the proposed law would legalize abortion. And local politicians, adept at bootlicking, will do anything to get the support of the church especially now that the elections are fast approaching.
The population issue in the Philippines must be addressed now. The need to check on population is a national concern. The Philippine population, estimated to be at 98 million is one of the biggest Asia, growing at more than 2 percent annually, one of the highest rates in Asia.
That is 98 million Filipinos! More than half of that go hungry before they sleep, do not have access to social services like clean water, safe dwelling, and basic education.
I denounce these politically invertebrate politicians who give in to the pressure of the church. Their lack of political will is the reason why this country remains impoverished.
I denounce the Catholic Church in the Philippines for its dogmatism and bigotry. While the rest of the world is moving toward a progressive mode of thinking, the church in the Philippines has successfully framed the Filipino thinking inside its century-old, irrelevant teachings on population reminiscent of the Dark Ages.
I am aware that our country’s demographic issue does not only concern the church but also the education of the populace regarding sex and responsible parenthood, that providing the people good education and equal opportunities will eventually lead to lower population growth rate as seen in western countries. We can all agree that this has to be addressed now. And if only the Catholic Church can leave the rein of government to the state.
Source: Conde, C. Bill to Increase Access to Contraception Is Dividing Filipinos, The New York Times. October 25, 2009.
In a recent study made by the Department of Science and Technology, female Filipino students outperformed males by more than 2 percent in Algebra, Fraction; and the males doing better in Geometry by only one per cent.
In the Philippines, it has been a common belief that males are better in Mathematics than females reflected by the overrepresentation of males in fields with numbers as the foundation such as Engineering, Aviation, Physics, and Mathematics. However the result of this study conducted by DOST disproved this common notion.
When I was eight I dreaded standing in front of my grade-two class reciting the table of multiplication. In my third grade, the difference between odd and even number escaped me that it took me two grading periods to know that an even number is divisible by two and the opposite is odd. When I turned 12, fractions were too complex for me to comprehend. I passed my subjects in high school algebra and geometry without knowing the fundamental concepts that govern them. In college, I dropped Math 17, a subject in algebra and trigonometry at UP. I barely passed a Mathematics appreciation course, Math 1, the only one I had to take in college as a Broadcast Communication student.
Math triggers a lot of biological flight responses in me. I experienced heart palpitation, increased blood pressure, pupil dilation, and over-secretion of saliva and digestive juices whenever I took exams involving number. I could’ve become a medical doctor had I been more confident with my math. But I survived the first twenty years of my life without Math, and I know that the succeeding years will not be that trying even if my background in Mathematics is shamelessly shameful.
In the Philippines, men are expected to do well with numbers. I remember the dread in the eyes of the wife of my landlord back in college, who is herself a graduate of the University of the Philippines, when I told her that I would be dropping Math 17 after failing the first two exams with dismally low scores, scores so low that I cannot bring myself to mention them here. She said “Daw kalabanan man sang lalaki mayo sa Math.” (Most men are good in Math) after I told her that I am giving up BS Biology because I did not want to stay in college for more than four years just because of failed foundation courses in Math.
In a way, I am thanking my weakness in the subject for it led me to the direction I am heading this time. One’s future, they say, is determined by his scholastic performance, which is not true all the time. Although the relationship I had with Math was that be of fear, hatred and detestation but it has forced me to make decisions that I never regretted.
A result of a study such as this one by the DOST may not change the long held belief of the correlation between number and one’s sex but at least it has started to create cracks in the great gender divide that pervades all aspects of Filipino culture. The study, in addition, allowed me to remember the challenges I had to go through in the past all because of Math, and how I overcame all of them and eventually do the thing I love to do – writing.
If Joseph Estrada wins in the 2010 presidential election in the Philippines, whatever attempt we try to change the country will just be in vain. The victory will be an act of absolution by the Filipino nation of former president. It also means that we have gone too desperate as to install once again a corrupt leader in the country’s highest seat. It’s not that we lack choice, for we have if only we look further.
Estrada’s victory will be a proof that we’ve gone numb and accepted with full resignation our fate as a hopeless nation. It is an act of acceptance that anyone who plundered us once can come back to rape us again and again given enough time for us to forget once more.
Estrada who was convicted of plunder in 2007, in an interview made by the Philippine Daily Inquirer, said that he could still run for the post because his civil and political rights were “fully restored” when President Macapagal-Arroyo pardoned him. A statement made by the same man who used to question the legitimacy of the current administration.
And in fact it is not impossible that he’ll win the election given his lead in the recently released poll results where other presidential wannabes trailed behind him. According to him, if the opposition cannot have a standard bearer, then he’ll place the burden upon himself to unify the opposition by running as president and Senator Loren Legarda as her running mate because she has “beauty and brains”. Legarda, on the other hand also plans to run for president.
I was 14 years old then, a second year high school students in the southern most province in the Philippines. I was watching on our old television screen how people in EDSA, united in one purpose to seek justice in peaceful way, successfully overthrew a plunderer out of the Malacanang. Eight years later, the same man who left the palace via Pasig River looking defeated, with then first lady and now senator Loi Ejercito with their son Jinggoy who is also a senator now, is now as close as ever to the most important post in the country.
We are a nation of amnesiacs. An amnesia caused by repeated battering that left all of us in forced forgetfulness. In a way this makes us a happy nation where problems are easily forgotten and calamities easily overcome. But this also makes us commit the same mistakes over and over again. We never learned from what history taught us because our definition of history encompassed anything that happened from yesterday to last week. Anything beyond that is of non import, immaterial.
Older generations of Filipinos have repeatedly failed us; now it is the responsibility of the new generation, the twenty-somethings, to change the course of events and do something different-all for the sake of the Philippines. The 10 million strong vote of the youth can make a big difference. Let’s not make the same mistakes that our parents have committed. Let us make them know what the 10 million votes mean. Let the 10 million votes be a statement that we’re heading for change and that we will not let a plunderer or any crook lead the country ever again.
Asked an almost obese guy to an overly-muscular gym instructor in a TV ad that tries to sell a machine that promises to give a rock-hard abs in four minutes.
The obese guy, miraculously transformed himself into an Arnold Schwarzenegger-like specimen after two weeks. “Impossible, but true,” said the closing spiel of the fat-man-no-more.
Second to a huge penis, a modern man is obsessed with his abs. But unlike the penis whose length and girth are rather for life unless of course evasive surgery is done to extend it, which is beyond the capacity of most men to pay, developing the abs is generally easier, at least compared to penile enlargement.
Abs is a commonly used colloquialism for the abdominal muscles. It is the group of muscles running up and down in the abdominal wall that contains the rectus abdominus muscle, “rectus” meaning straight.”
Media has conditioned the consumers’ mind that abs is sought after by everyone, a sign of health, and discipline if we extend it further. Men, and even some women, want it because it looks good. And what looks good in a society like ours is not actually based on philosophical or metaphysical definition of aesthetics, rather beauty as how it is portrayed and misrepresented in television. So if a certain popular movie star is donning a stupid Mohawk haircut, then Mohawk, no matter how atrocious it looks, is going to be beautiful. Same is true with having abs.
However, as regards abs, no matter how hard the work out and long gym time time needed to ‘sculpt’, or impossible for some who are not genetically destined to have toned abdomen, most men still pursue it not wanting to abandon the dream of having six-packs, at whatever expense.
Here are simple, easy to follow guides to have this wash-board abs:
1. Do 10,000 crunches everyday, that is, if you have time to spare. (If you do it, say one second per sit up, then it will roughly take you 2 and a quarter hours, without rest, and you’re on your way towards having the dreamed abs.
2. If you are overly endowed with fat around the waist area, give up the 10,000 crunches scheme. You may have time to spare, but the sculpted abs will never appear unless you get rid of all those fats. Not eating anything for a week, is the best advice since your body fat will just be enough to supply your energy need. In a week’s time, six pack coming up!
3. If the first two do not work, and the content of your bank account is rather considerable plus the fact that blood doesn’t scare you, then liposuction is for you.
4. If the third one still doesn’t work then refer again to number one and do the entire process all over again.
According to a 2004 study conducted by David A. Frederick, Daniel M.T. Fessler and Martie G. Haselton of the University of California, Los Angeles, men overestimate the degree of muscularity that is attractive to women, and women overestimate the degree of thinness that is most attractive to men.
Consistent with the thesis that sociocultural input influences such body type preferences and beliefs, they postulated that magazines aimed at a male audience would portray a more muscular male body ideal than would magazines aimed at a female audience. Systematic comparison of popular magazines (Cosmopolitan, Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness) revealed that the ideal male body marketed to men is more muscular than the ideal male body marketed to women.
Herein they introduced the Physical Trait Overvaluation Hypothesis, which proposes that gender-specific media fuel emphasis on certain body parts in within-gender prestige competitions. The resulting competitive escalation creates a disconnect between the preferences of one gender and the personal aspirations of the other.
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While searching for the definition of abs, I chanced to read this usage of the word: Abs are no longer abs, they’re queer abs, and anybody who has abs, is queer. It occured to me that although the study conducted by the UCLA Department of Psychology does hold water, it is worth mentioning that these male muscle magazines that target the male market also victimize a segment of that market: the homosexual health buffs, who like heterosexual males, are also inclined to be as muscular, with the development of the abs as their top priority (no study has been conducted so far with regard to this predilection for six packs).
For now, modern society’ penchant in having the toned, well-sculpted, abdominal muscle is here to stay.
During the first three quarters of this year, the city of Ho Chi Minh (Saigon) alone received a total of 27 billion US dollars worth of Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs). Now compare this with the 3.5 billion received by the Philippines during the same fiscal quarters. If this does not mirror the lack of trust of foreign investors in the Philippines, then I do not know how to look at it. Countries in Southeast Asia – Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam – have already left the Philippines behind in attracting investors which are needed in developing the economy.
Investors blame this on the glaring corruption in the government. Nothing new. Transparency International released a report several weeks ago ranking the Philippines as one of the most corrupt countries in the world, even surpassing Indonesia. In fact it is found in the bottom 20. We all know this, and this report did nothing to confirm this fact it mainly quantified our corruption index.
President of the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, on the other hand, in an effort to divert the attention from her government’s inaction, said:
“A lot of their (Transparency International) basis is what they read in the papers. It’s a whole layering of perception indexes. And if you compare the Philippines with the rest of the region, we have to remember that the Philippines has the freest media in the region.
“What would be on page 10 in some other countries would be a banner headline in the Philippines. Even rumors and innuendos become fact when they’re in the banner headline. That’s part of what we have to live with,” she added. “I don’t think the business community would like a clampdown on freedom and liberties in the Philippines because that’s part of our competitiveness I suppose.”
This was her answer when she was asked in an open forum by Charles Goddard of The Economist Intelligence Unit on how the country would combat corruption. A woman is caught stealing and blamed it on the witnesses because if not for them there will be no stealing. A lousy argument once again made by Mrs. Arroyo.
This essay will not be about corruption in the Philippines for several reasons: Number one, I am not an expert in Philippine bureaucracy and how it works; number two, it’ll be a waste of time to propose solutions to this problem because the people who run the Philippine government have gone callous to heed the calls for reform. Ordinary Filipinos are already hopeless that this country will change in this generation. Our national leaders have failed us. Straight. And number three, I am more interested in discussing about a topic very close to me – the media.
The president might have begged the question for instead of acknowledging her administration’s failure to curb corruption she blamed the media. however, there is truth to her declaration. Media in the Philippines, the “freest in Asia”, contributed a lot why the country’s falling down the drain.
In a democratic country, a free media is indispensable. It is a component of freedom that without it democracy is nothing but a general noun.
Meaningless.
In the case of the Philippines, a country that claims to be democratic, or is working toward it, having a kind of media that is a sloppy imitation of the United States’ media is problematic at best and a nuisance at worst. The kind of ‘free’ media cherished by the American people works for a certain kind of social situations – strong state apparatuses, literate people, powerful middle class, historically mature population – aspects that are obviously lacking in the Philippine setting.
Philippine Daily Inquirer's Sunday issue, a far tamer version of its weekdays issues
Philippine media, on the other hand, has a free reign and is having a great time partying with the gore, controversies, blood, sex. It is never controlled in the real sense. I’ve read newspapers in English in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam; these are papers read by foreigners, by English-speaking business men. Yes, they print news about national problems, corruption, natural disasters, political factionism, crimes, but they do not place them in the front page. They allot a small portion of the paper for these concerns.
In the Philippines, the case is the complete opposite. Politics takes precedence over other issues followed by entertainment news. So debacles in the senate such as the recent confrontation between senate president Manny Villar and another senator Jamby Madrigal is more important than the approval of JPEPA, an economic partnership program between the Philippines and Japan that will boost development in the country. Or that the rumored break up of senator Francis Pangilinan with his wife Sharon Cuneta got more attention than the 8.3 per cent losses that the stock market incurred.
According to the Agenda-setting theory, a communication theory that basically explains that media organizations can be so powerful because they can actually dictate what is newsworthy, if it’s not broadcast, aired, or printed then it is not news. In the Philippines national development is not the primary agenda of the media, that is, if they consider it as part of their agenda at all.
Media in the Philippines are at a failure to recognize that they can shape public opinion and they can do it for the good of this country.
Comparing Vietnam News and Philippine Daily Inquirer based on criteria such as page design, the way news are written, use of the language, and editing, an objective journalism professor will clearly judge the Inquirer as winner in all fronts. But Vietnam news creates a better image of the country than the Inquirer does for the Philippines.
I am not interested with Foreign Direct Investments but when I read Vietnam News my attention is pulled towards it because it is in the front page. I am not interested about national economic policies of the Communist Party for 2015 but I get to read them because they are prioritized over other sensational issues. These controversies, if I may add, are rarely printed or if they are, are not in banner headline where a poor foreigner can see them and would think that Vietnam is pathetic.
The Philippine Daily Inquirer dated October 13, 2008
Inquirer is the complete dialectic of English newspapers in Southeast Asia. It may be the ‘freest’ but it has redefined the word free that it has gone unrecognizable. For Inquirer, it seems that it has made an assumption that all its readers are dumb so news related to entertainment are placed in the font page. They do not think that if readers would want it, they could just go to Showbiz page and read about the fight between Cristy Fermin and Nadia Montenegro. No, Inquirer slaps these details, scandals on to the readers’ faces. “The bad news is good news” dictum is still the guiding principle of most media organizations in the Philippines.
I believe that the kind of media the Philippines has is not suited for its developing status. Sensationalism, crime reporting, warring politicos, rampant corruption have their right places. And the front page is far from it.
Truly corruption in the Philippines as measured by Transparency International is based mainly on perceptions that are further based on reports from national media. And the sad truth is that in the Philippines this is not just perceived corruption for it is too obvious. The government is too hypocritical to blame this low Foreign Direct Investment turn out on the media. Nevertheless, the media is also answerable. It has not transcended sensationalized reportage. Issues are not tackled in the manner of investigative journalism. It’s a hybrid between half-baked adversarial journalism and down the line shallow showbiz reporting that results to what the Philippine media is today.
Going against the current 
