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For the past 20 years, The Filipino Express has provided the Filipino American community the best news, arts and entertainment coverage from around the United States and the Philippines.
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PRESIDENT Gloria Macapagal Arroyo only has herself to blame when she found her five-nation trip that started in Helsinki, Finland soured by a sharp rebuke from the European Union because of the human rights records of her administration.
Mrs. Arroyo was in Helsinki for the Asia-Europe Meeting (Asem). She hardly warmed her seat during the opening of the Asia-Europe People’s Forum (AEPF) when Finland’s foreign minister gave notice of the Europeans’ disapproval of the appalling extra-judicial killings in the Philippines.
She cannot blame her critics and the political opposition of putting her administration in a bad light by spreading black propaganda against her. The facts are as glaring as the broad daylight in which most of the killings were staged: more than 700 leaders and members of militant organizations killed since 2001, when Arroyo assumed office.
Of course, the President can always claim that she has no direct hand in the killings. But as commander-in chief of the Philippine military and as head of state, she bears responsibility for the lawlessness pervading the country. The buck goes all the way up her office for the audacity of the killers, whom many suspect to be members of the military, in carrying out their death mission, and for the ineptness of the police in solving these heinous crimes.
It does not help that the military officer accused of perpetrating most of the political killings, Gen. Jovito Palparan, was being rewarded by Mrs. Arroyo with the deputy national security adviser position. Does this mean that Palparan’s activities has had the go-signal and endorsement of Mrs. Arroyo?
Mrs. Arroyo cannot hide the fact that political killings during her five-year term has grown worse than the 20 years of the dreaded martial law regime of the late unlamented President Marcos. At least, the killers during Marcos’ time tried to be subtle and were sensitive about public opinion.
Not so with the Arroyo-era executioners. They kill with brazen impunity. They are so rash and brash. They are impervious to public opinion. Just like Mrs. Arroyo.
Until she came face-to-face with the full weight of international public opinion. And now, she is scrambling to show the civilized world that at least, she is doing something about the killings. The whole world, or at least the European Union, is watching.
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PHNOM PENH, Cambodia – With a casting call deadline set for September 7, the 2007 episode of the Philippine Independence Day Council, Inc. (PIDCI) is just about to begin. The search was open to all member-organizations of PIDCI and since no audition was required, it is assumed that every hopeful is an experienced actor.
Whether the role calls for a hero or that of a villain, the selected player is expected to join dramatis personae that may again amuse a viewing public with their performance. And the timing of the election is aptly right in the beginning or in the midst of a new season of TV series.
I have not thought about this apparent similarity until after I reviewed my notes from last year’s cliff-hanger season-opener of PIDCI. It was like watching a re-run of the season finale of popular TV series “Dallas” where viewer’s interest in the show was aroused with a puzzling question: “Who killed J.R.?”
In the case of PIDCI, where a lawsuit was filed to stop the elections, the question was: “Will the election proceed?” That was in everybody’s mind after the announcement of a lawsuit was made in a town hall meeting two days before the supposed election date. And the rest is history becoming yet another segment of a continuing chronicle of our community.
The stage is set anew. Lolita Gillberg, chair of the Committee on Elections, is acting like a casting director of reality TV. The job of her committee is to ensure that the players have met all the qualifications of their prescribed roles and oversee the entire production of the election process with paramount independence and transparency.
Vying for the lead role as president are Paul Versoza and Wilson Versoza. The two are not related and if they were the only contenders, a billboard would probably have said: Versoza vs. Versoza, just like the movie Kramer vs. Kramer.
In a ballot, Paul has the advantage over Wilson. His name comes before Wilson. While Wilson has been receiving many “awards” for himself, the latest of which is his being selected one of the Twenty Outstanding Filipino Americans (TOFA), Paul is humble with his many achievements. Unlike others whose pictures are featured in almost every page of a journal or newspaper in town, he does not volunteer “praise releases” for himself.
But perhaps sensing that a repeat performance was needed, Gani Puertollano, the outgoing president, has also filed his candidacy for re-election. That now makes the lead role contested by three aspirants: all from New Jersey. Not only was Puertollano’s presidential entry surprising, his filing of his candidacy for a supporting role as board member is amusing.
Now you ask: Is this possible? For those who are not familiar with the by-laws of PIDCI, some may argue that he is not. But for those who know the by-laws by heart like the back of their palms, they’d say Puertollano is eligible to run again.
Term of office, they claim, is different from term limit. And they assert that the operative word in the by-laws that makes Puertollano qualified is a provision that allows “two consecutive terms” for both the president and board members.
Well, operative word or not, perhaps the important questions which Puertollano may have to face himself in a mirror are first: “Have I thoroughly and seriously considered my decision to run again? Second, “what am I trying to prove here when I already had a shot at the presidency and succeeded?” Third, “Is my decision honorable?”
He may consider himself a maverick and wanting to set a record-breaker. He may be gutsy but his audacity could be interpreted in a different light by the community. Perception is reality and the more people talk about his eager desire to stay longer in PIDCI as its leader or board member may lead them to vote against him.
Let’s face it: The public least expects from someone like him that started from the lowest rung of the ladder to be doing this. He has served his time and he should move to a more challenging mission. And this leads to the question: Isn’t there life after PIDCI?
With his years of community service, Puertollano has earned medals to his credit. Must he now squander the goodwill he has achieved with another attempt at the presidency? What more attention and glory does he want?
Aside from the contenders for the lead role, aspirants for supporting roles as board members that have reportedly filed their candidacies are: Ronnie Atinaja, Raul Estrellado, Gani Puertollano, Arnie Rosario, Rev. Gaudencio Soriano and Tambi Wycoco.
Could this be a complete list of those that responded to the casting call? My source in PIDCI says it is. There are two things which you can readily conclude from this list of names. First, they all have served PIDCI previously; and second, if no other applications were put on the table, all of them may already have automatically won a board seat.
And even if Puertollano loses the presidency, he may still be a board member. That is, assuming the Committee on Elections does not reject his candidacy. Which rejection, if that happens, maybe challenged and lead to another crisis in PIDCI that may result to a new round of casting call.
If only a handful responded to the casting call, what message is being played here? And if only half of about 206 member-organizations have renewed their membership, what message does this low turn-out give us?
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Bolante hearing closed to the public
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CHICAGO, Illinois – The Immigration Court hearing the Jocelyn “Joc-Joc” Izada Bolante case excluded anew the public, particularly the media, depriving them from observing up close Mr. Bolante who was present in court for the first time in Chicago on Wednesday, Sept. 13. No explanation was mentioned for the closed-door session.
At the previous hearing, Bolante was presented at a video conference. He was in Kenosha County Detention Center in Wisconsin while the judge and his and the government lawyers were in Chicago.
Seth Fitter, assistant chief of the Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE), told the Filipino American media waiting outside the court room that he had instructions from the Immigration Court Judge George P. Kastivalis not to make any statement after the two-hour closed session.
Meanwhile, Bolante’s habeas corpus hearing is set on Sept. 20 in the Milwaukee’s Eastern United District Court of Wisconsin, which has jurisdiction over Kenosha County Detention Center.
Bolante questions US Embassy
Bolante was questioning the action of U.S. Embassy in Manila cancelling his U.S. non-immigration visa based on the arrest warrant issued by the Philippine Senate. Bolante said in the filings that when the Senate sub-poenaed him to appear before it, he ignored it because the subpoena is not a warrant of arrest.
Unlike the last hearing of the case on August 21, the government lawyer of the Bolante case, who preferred not to be quoted by name, volunteered information on what transpired behind the closed door hearing. She said that the issue of whether to let the public watch the proceedings was supposed to be resolved Wednesday (Sept. 13) but there was no word if a ruling on the matter was already issued.
Because of the public exclusion from the case, Filipino American lawyer Mary Carmen Madrid-Crost concluded that Katsivalis must have supported the motion of Bolante’s lawyer to keep his deportation case off-limits to “non-parties.”
Madrid-Crost, together with this columnist and other press representatives, waited outside the courtroom hoping to be let inside to watch the proceedings. She was there as representative of University of the Philippine Law Center Institute of International Legal Studies (UPLC-IILS), which filed an amicus curiae (friend of court) brief that opposed the prolonged stay of Bolante in the U.S. soil and had sought that Bolante be deported in earnest back to the Philippines.
Admissibility of Amicus Curiae
UPLC-IILS’s Prof. Harry L. Roque, Jr. arrived in Chicago on Tuesday just to see for himself the progress of the case. Like, Ms. Madrid-Crost, Mr. Roque was not allowed in the court room.
Up for resolution also Wednesday was the admissibility in court of UPLC-IILS’s amicus curiae brief.
Also to be resolved was whether to grant or deny bond for Bolante. “The mere fact that Bolante was escorted back to jail means that bond was denied. However, if he was granted bond paper work will take a couple of days to complete.” according to another Chicago lawyer Manny Aguja, who was among the public not allowed to watched the hearing.
The next master calendar hearing of the case will be on Sept. 27.
The brief of the amicus curiae asked the immigration court to immediately deport Bolante to the Philippines, where Bolante is facing charges in connection with his complicity in the 728-M pesos (US$14-M) fertilizer fund that bankrolled the election of President Arroyo last May 2004, citing Philippine Senate investigation reports.
(lariosa_jos@sbcglobal.net)
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“The voice is that of Jacob. But the hands are those of Esau.”
This identity theft dates back to Genesis xxvii. Jacob conned his blind father by wrapping his smooth hands in kidskin, so they’d resemble those of his twin brother: Esau. Through fraud, he extracted a paternal blessing.
Did we see a similar scam unfold before 2,000 councilors hauled over the weekend to Cebu City , at taxpayer’s expense, for “Third Termer Councilor Recognition” rites.
Why “waste P10 billion to P20 billion for the election”, Presidential Chief of Staff Michael Defensor told assembled councilors. “Without an election in 2007, you could put in your perspective on what path this country should take...Instead, we should work for a system that is stable...into a parliamentary system”.
Cabinet secretaries are alter egos of the President. So, Jacob’s voice and Esau’s hand are one in this first overt resucitation of the notorious “No-El” proposal.
“No-El” would disenfranchise 43.2 million voters to clamp on a vaguely constitution. “What will you give me in exchange?,” Judas asked in history’s shoddiest quid-pro-quo. In this case, Jacob a.k.a Esau replied to the councilors : Transitory Provisions ( Article XX ). Section 7 would stretch the terms of senators, congressmen, mayors, governors to councilors – the lot -- to 2010.
Make no mistake. An entire officialdom, no less, is being tittilated into trashing the 2007 ballot. In exchange, they get three more years without the hassle of facing voters while President Arroyo expands her powers. It’d be like unleashing hungry monkeys in a cage full of bananas, as the old Thai proverb put it.
This is sophisticated pimping for mass prostitution. Never before in our checkered history have so many been “propositioned” for so little by so few.
“Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac,” former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said. The administration’ has strapped “No-El” to the gut desire of many to cling to power, position and pelf.
Representatives Clavel Asas Martinez, Antonio Yapha and Simeon Kintanar, for example, filed bills to saw off their districts from Cebu . Lilliuptian provinces would suit midget governors just fine, they said. “Who needs four governors on one freaking island?.” Now, “No-El” may give their crumbling careers a three-year reprieve.
Thousands of officials are in the same fix. For them, “No-El” is also a escape hatch. Will the 2,000 councilors -- and others after them -- snap at the bait dangled by the regime?
There are, of course, decent officials who’d reject this siren song. But others will stampede to become -- what? Many shrink at the harsh Anglo-Saxon word: “harlot”. They prefer the softer Pinoy euphemism: kalapating mababang lipad (“pigeons who skim rooftops in flight”).
But that doesn’t alter the basic betrayal. As Julius Ceasar sneers in one of Shakespeare’s plays: “Let me tell you Cassius, you yourself are much condemned to have an itching palm”.
Controvery always hounded “No-El” even in the Constitutional Consultative Commission. On the first vote, 18 delegates -- among them Chairman Jose Abueva and former Senator Vicente Paterno -- voted down 16 who wanted to scupper the polls.
But crass opportunism ruled the day. “The people that we are (talking about ) here can’t even count. Okay?”, delegate Romela Bengzon cynically argued. “By contrast, the people that local authorities have provided to market this is measurable. It’s tested. They have the machinery.”
Did such a mindset smack of Jacob’s hanky-panky? Bengzon and Delegate Raul Lambino (who morphed into pointman for People’s Initiative) authored the notorious Transitory Provision. And flip-flops by men like Delegate Sergio Apostol saw, in the second round, 22 vote against 19.
In the end, the ConCom stitched the “No-El” provision into the draft charter it submitted. “Greed”! “Self Serving” were the milder epthitets lobbed by former President Fidel Ramos and church groups and civil society.
That forced Speaker Jose de Venecia and others to shelve it to dampen the tempest --- temporarily it runs out, as the Defensor speech shows. Esau’s fist shows even as Jacob speaks. Thus, the March 8 denunciation by former Senator Paterno gains relevance.
The “No-El” proposition, Paterno said, also anchored provisions that’d vest President Arroyo with powers similar to that acquired by the dictator, Ferdinand Marcos.
Incumbent members of the Senate and House anoint themselves “members of the interim Parlimanent.” And President Arroyo also gets to stack the house: she’ll have the power to appoint “thirty persons, experienced and experts in their own fields,” as members of Parliament.
Wait. Bengzon, Lambino et al are just warming up. Section 12 says the interim Prime Minister and Cabinet shall exercise their functions “under the direction and supervision of the incumbent President.” Not Noli de Castro for sure.
Section 13 adds : the “incumbent President shall exercise the powers vested in the Head of State and the Head of Government....until the expiration of her term on June 30,2010.”
So, isn’t this the same presidential system but dolled up as a parliamentary government? The same tired cynical faces remain.
But the process has started, in Cebu, to rescurrect “No El”. This would strip citizens of their right to votes by officials who’re gleefully pimping as cashiers for what arguably would be the best bawdy house of hookers in this neck of the woods.
(E-mail: juan_mercado@paci-fic.net.ph )
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WHAT do you call when a situation like the Joc Joc Bolante episode undergoes an unusual turn of events and appears to come closer to a totally unexpected solution in a weird twist of fate?
How do you foresee a development like the darkest chapter in Philippine human rights history that has become associated with a military general who our government has placed on a pedestal as an iconic hero, but who is now the subject of worldwide disgust for allegedly making the Philippines into a killing field?
There are many more misdeeds allegedly perpetrated by the present administration, about which the people could do nothing but helplessly watch because they are overwhelmed by an unprecedented disregard of the law and physically suppressed by the military and the police who subjugate them with truncheons and water hoses that has now graduated to plain terror tactics.
One known member of the hierarchy has gone on to call the government evil.
What do we call these weird twists of fate? Did we hear “divine intervention?” Yes, finally the empire is struck back.
Now that the evil has spilled beyond our shores, we are wondering how many people are now rethinking their future plans? The official policy of President Bush of ruling out the US as a safe haven for kleptocrats has caused some grafters to lose sleep.
These grafters has perfected their modus operandi of how to escape retribution everytime the wind changes with a change in administration. The usual plan is to escape to the US where they have in advance stashed their loots and to enjoy the rest of their lives in happy retirement. Not any more.
They have to replan. They have to transfer their assets to friendlier countries, especially those where they can buy peace from equally corrupt rulers.
After Joc-Joc, who’s next? The much admired Senate, target of abolition by whose who are promoting Charter Change, has gained a new stature. By some, it is now regarded with fear. Those summons will now probably command serious attention.
An arrest order by the Senate for ignoring those summons in a corruption case has caused ripples across the great Pacific. One may ignore them and invite an arrest order, but then he has to forget the US as a destination when he decides to flee.
One thing is sure. Immigration lawyers in the US can look forward to a bustling business. They are going to be contacted by new clients, and these clients can pay. These lawyers will find it good for business to look at the immigration laws of other countries, especially those known for their hospitality to illegal wealth.
But these services are for the incorrigible. The US policy against kleptocrats is to be highly commended. Its desired effect is to discourage kleptocracy and considering the huge amounts lost to corruption the world over, its contribution should be huge in combating poverty.
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The October 2006 priority dates
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OCTOBER is the start of the “fiscal year” for immigrant visas. The priority dates for all Family-Based Petitions moved forward (or advanced) as shown in the monthly Visa Bulletin for October 2006, released by the State Department. In fact, the priority dates stopped “retrogressing” (moving backwards), and some categories moved forward several years!
The priority date for professional/skilled workers also moved forward by 2 months, and the priority dates for employment-based petitions for “other” (or unskilled workers) is now available.
Petitions by Citizens:
The priority date for the First Preference Category, F-1 (unmarried sons and daughters of U.S. citizens, over 21 years of age) moved forward by 10 days, from October 22, 1991 to November 1, 1991.
The Third Preference Category, F-3 (married sons and daughters of United States citizens) moved forward by 4 years and 8 months, from December 1, 1985 to August 1, 1990.
The Fourth Preference, F-4 (brothers and sisters of United States citizens) moved forward by 1 month and 17 days, from February 15, 1984 to April 1, 1984.
Petitions by Green Card Holders:
The Second Preference Category, F-2A (Spouse and minor children of green card holders) moved forward by 1 year and 7 months, from September 22, 1999 to April 22, 2001.
The Second Preference, F-2B (unmarried sons and daughters, over 21 years of age, of green card holders) moved forward by 2 years, 6 months, and 21 days, from January 1, 1994 to July 22, 1996.
Petitions by Employers:
The Third Preference (professionals and skilled workers) of Employment-Based Petitions (Labor Certification) moved forward by 2 months, from March 1, 2002 to May 1, 2002. The Third Preference (non-skilled workers) now has the available priority date of January 1, 2001.
Each month, the Visa Office of the State Department publishes the priority dates for that particular month. This means that visas would now be available for persons whose priority date is earlier than the cut-off date listed below. If your priority date was “current”, but retrogressed before your immigrant visa was issued (or you adjusted status in the U.S.), maybe your priority date became current again in October!
Michael J. Gurfinkel has been an attorney for over 25 years, and is an active member of the State Bar of California and New York, as well as the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the Immigration Section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association. He has always excelled in school:Valedictorian in High School; Cum Laude at UCLA; and Law Degree Honors and academic scholar at Loyola Law School, which is one of the top law schools in California.
WEBSITE: www.gurfinkel.com
Four offices to serve you:
LOS ANGELES:
219 North Brand Boulevard, Glendale, California, 91203 Telephone: (818) 543-5800
SAN FRANCISCO:
966 Mission Street, San Francisco, California, 94080 Telephone: (415) 538-7800
NEW YORK:
60 East 42nd Street, Suite 2101, New York, NY 10165 Telephone: (212) 808-0300
PHILIPPINES:
Heart Tower, Unit 701, 108 Valero Street, Salcedo Village, Makati, Philippines 1227 Telephone: 894-0258 or 894-0239
(This is for informational purposes only, and reflects the firm’s opinions and views on general issues. Each case is different and results may depend on the facts of a particular case. All immigration services are provided by an active member of the State Bar of California and/or by a person under the supervision of an active member of the State Bar. No prediction, warranty or guarantee can be made about the results of any case. Should you need or want legal advice, you should consult with and retain counsel of your own choice.)
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