The Manila Times


A 2


■ DANGEROUS FROM A1 Govt war vs. SC dangerous


principle of co- equality among the three branches of


the government. In a 12-page position paper, the


Forensic Solutions noted that in the past few days, its members who are all lawyers were witness to harsh criticisms of the High Court result- ing from its decision on EO 1, which had created the Truth Commission. “We will not delve into the mer- its of the SC’s decision on the Truth Commission, as we are neither privy to the pleadings submitted to the Supreme Court, nor we are parties to the case. We focus, instead on the Supreme Court as an institution and its imperiled role in Philippine de- mocracy,” the group said. It is well settled in our system of


government, according to the Foren- sic Solutions, that when the legality of the act of the executive branch is under judicial review, it is not because the executive is inferior to the courts, but because the law is above the Presi- dent of the Philippines himself and the courts seeks only to interpret, ap- ply or implement the law.


The same principle is true regard- ing acts of the legislature lodged before the courts for judicial review. “This does not mean judicial su- premacy over the Office of the Presi- dent [or Congress] but the perform- ance by the court [High Tribunal] of a duty specifically enjoined upon it by the Constitution, as part of a system of checks and balances,” the group noted.


It said that restraint in comments is a duty, not a restriction, stressing


■ ‘MORONG 43’ FROM A1 DOJ WITHDRAWS RAPS VS. ‘MORONG 43’


and violation of the gun ban during the election period.


Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said that there will be no more hear- ing on the motions and no one is expected to oppose the motions. The Justice department’s with-


drawal of charges against the “Morong 43” is in accordance with President Benigno Aquino 3rd’s or- der to clear the health workers of charges last week. The health workers were arrested


by the military on February 6 on suspicion that they were members of the communist New People’s Army (NPA), and for illegal posses- sion of explosives and firearms. They were charged with alleged violation of Presidential Decree 1866, as amended by Republic Act (RA) 8294, and RA 9516, which imposes penalties for illegal posses- sion of grenades and other explo- sives and Commission on Elections Resolution 8714 in relation to Arti- cle 261 (q) of the Election Code, which imposes a ban on firearms during election periods. Relatives and supporters of the “Morong 43” continuously peti- tioned the government to release the health workers, whom they said were just holding a health training and seminar when they were ar- rested by the military.


De Lima, who handled the case of the “Morong 43” while heading the Commission on Human Rights, has made several proposals to Presi- dent Aquino to release the detained health workers but the President re- peatedly declared that he was letting


■ RATIFIED FROM A1 2011 budget report ratified by senators


of the amount do not pertain to the purchase of contraceptives. “The P200 million alloted for the purchase of pills, injectables and even condoms has been removed because these contraceptives are in violation of . . . the Constitution,” Sotto told reporters. He cited a provision in the Con-


REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES ANNOUNCEMENT


stitution that says: “It [the state] shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception.”


Bigger judiciary pie Judges had threatened to stage a


COMMISSION ON APPOINTMENTS PASAY CITY


President Benigno Simeon C. Aquino has submitted to


Ricardo A. David, Jr. – General; and Antonio S. Sotelo, Jr. (PAF) - Colonel


or sworn complaints or oppositions in forty (40) copies on the above appointments to the CA Secretariat, 6th


For the schedule of the public hearings, the CA Secretariat


can be reached through telephone numbers 551-7532, 831- 0893, 831-1824, 834-2706, 831-1566 and 834-2713.


13 December 2010. MT – Dec. 14, 2010


ARTURO L. TIU Secretary


The public may submit any information, written report Floor,


PNB Financial Center, Roxas Boulevard, Pasay City, Metro Manila.


the Commission on Appointments (C.A.) for confirmation the ad interim appointments of the following officers in the Armed Forces of the Philippines:


walkout over what they perceived to be a reduction in the budget of the judiciary. Drilon, however, said that the P14.3-billion budget proposed for the judiciary was even bigger than that in the budget pro- posed by the former administration in the 2010 budget.


Senate President


Juan Ponce Enrile said that the judges had no reason to stage a walkout. “We did not re- duce the budget, and we cannot increase the budget of the President [Benigno Aquino 3rd


he said. ]. They


should know. They are men of the law,”


The bicameral report put in four special provisions for the imple- mentation of the controversial Con- ditional Cash Transfer (CCT) pro- gram of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). The first two are the mandating of the inter-agency committee com- posed of DSWD and the depart- ments of Health and Education to create a secretariat under the DSWD to oversee the implementation of the CCT program, and mandating the Oversight Committee on Pub- lic Expenditure to strictly monitor the effective implementation of the cash transfer program. The other two are the direct depos- iting of the actual cash grant to gov- ernment depository banks, and man- dating the CCT secretariat to submit reports on the program to the House Committee on Appropriations and the Senate Committee on Finance. The bicameral report also adopted an amendment introduced by Sen. Joker Arroyo that the total indebted- ness of the national government and any of its agencies, offices and gov- ernment-owned and controlled cor- porations which carry a sovereign


the courts decide their fate. But on the occasion of the 62nd


anniversary of the Universal Dec- laration of Human Rights last week, Mr. Aquino ordered de Lima to withdraw the six criminal complaints filed against the health workers. At least two of the 43 health work-


ers may still remain in detention because of the other standing war- rants of arrest stemming from other filed cases against them. According to de Lima, govern- ment prosecutors are checking if those with the standing warrants were really the same persons. Earlier, she said that there are standing warrants of arrest on other cases not connected with the Feb- ruary 6 arrest covering six of the 43 health workers.


Arrest illegal Despite the withdrawal of charges


against the 43 health workers, the Armed Forces of the Philippines maintained that the group’s mem- bers were communist rebels. De Lima, however, said that even if there is evidence that the health workers are really rebels, charges against them would not prosper be- cause their arrest was illegal. Jigs Clamor, secretary general of Human Rights group Karapatan and husband of one of the 43 health workers, said that there were several procedural lapses in the arrest. De Lima used the “fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine” in convinc- ing President Aquino that the case against the health workers would


not prosper. “I looked at the records of the


case. I knew that the ‘fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine’ would ap- ply to the case. It is then useless, unfair and pointless to pursue the case because the evidence will be inadmissible under that doctrine, anyway,” she said.


The “fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine” refers to the use of evi- dence in trial that was attained through an illegal search and arrest. The Supreme Court has consist- ently ruled that such evidence is in- admissible in courts. Relatives and supporters of the “Morong 43” who went to the Jus- tice department on Monday ex- pressed gratitude to de Lima recom- mending that charges against the health workers be withdrawn.


No demoralization Meanwhile, Mr. Aquino said that he


does not think his decision to drop the charges against the “Morong 43” would trigger demoralization within the Armed Forces.


The President said that from the start, he talked with the Armed Forces hierarchy regarding the case of the 43 health workers. “I did give instructions to start explaining to everybody my sense of frustration [over the ‘Morong 43’]. In-explain kung bakit mali magkaroon ng shortcuts, kung short cuts ang nangyari dito. Kailangan klaro, i-demonstrate sa sambayanan, iba yung mga nagpapatupad ng batas, iba ang lumalabag sa batas. Kailangan klarong-klaro ang distinction. Kung


that constitutional democracy ordains the principle of separation of powers. Citing the book of Justice Ruperto Martin, the group reiterated that the foundation of liberty under the country’s system of government is respect for the law.


In the case of EO 1, the group said that the government counsel has the option to file a motion for reconsid- eration and even cited the opinion of others that instead of concentrating his efforts on curing infirmities in the creation of the Truth Commission, President Benigno Aquino 3rd, should just use existing institutions— the Office of the Ombudsman and the Department of Justice, among others—in his campaign against graft and corruption. The Forensic Solutions, headed


by former acting Justice Secretary Alberto Agra, said that reliance on the independence of the ju- diciary should be encouraged, not undermined.


All public officers and all mem- bers of the law profession are called upon to uphold the rule of law, ac- cording to the group.


“Such attacks on the judiciary can result in two distinct—yet related— undesirable consequences. First, the criticism will prevent judges from remaining insulated from the per- sonal and political consequences of making an unpopular decision, thus placing judicial independence at risk,” it said.


“Second, unjust criticism of the judiciary will erode the public’s trust and confidence in the judiciary as an institution.”


Members of militant groups also on Monday stepped up their attacks on


news TUESDAY


the Supreme Court by calling for the resignation of 10 justices who voted to declare unconstitutional EO 1. Led by its former representative in Congress, Risa Hontiveros- Baraquel, the Akbayan part-list and other groups, urged the 10 magis- trates to resign for striking down the fact-finding body. In voting 10-5, the Supreme Court en banc granted last week a petition questioning the constitu- tionality of the Truth Commission, investigator of alleged anomalies during the administration of then President Gloria Arroyo.


Concurring with the decision written by Associate Justice Jose Catral Mendoza, were Chief Justice Renato Corona and Associate Jus- tices Presbitero Velasco Jr., Teresita Leonardo-de Castro, Arturo Brion, Diosdado Peralta, Lucas Bersamin, Mariano del Castillo, Martin Villarama Jr. and Jose Perez. All of them were appointed by


Mrs. Arroyo to the High Court. Hontiveros, in a letter sent to the


High Tribunal, said that Filipinos no longer see the independence of the Supreme Court with the 10 justices, whom she said, acted with political motivation in making the decision. “We are appealing to your con- sciences and on what is left of your honor and dignity to voluntarily resign as justices of the Supreme Court to avoid the rigors of subject- ing our nation in an unnecessary constitutional crisis and spare the public from possible political and economic costs of this upheaval,” the letter stated. Also last week, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said that the appoint- ments made by Mrs. Arroyo to the High Court and to the Office of the Ombudsman have been “paying off” for the former president, now a lawmaker representing her home


D e cember 14, 2010 province of Pampanga.


“[P]resent executive actions to correct injustices and abuses of the past administration and to punish the perpetrators are frustrated at every turn because of wise institu- tional investments of the past re- gime,” she added. “There is, therefore, basis for speculation that the investment of the past administration in the Of- fice of the Ombudsman and the High Court is now paying off,” the Justice chief said.


De Lima added that then Presi- dent Arroyo “packed the SC with her appointees who will help get her off the hook.”


All but one of the current mem- bers of the High Tribunal are Arroyo appointees.


The creation of the Truth Com- mission being declared unconstitu- tional by the Supreme Court did not stop lawmakers from giving it P83 million of the proposed P1.645-tril- lion budget for 2011. Rep. Joseph Emilio Abaya of


Cavite, the chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, also on Monday announced approval of next year’s general appropriations after a joint meeting of House and Senate contingents at the Philippine Coconut Authority in Quezon City. “It [budget for the Truth Commis-


sion] was never discussed at the [bi- cameral level] [but] it is in there. As you all know, the decision of the SC is not yet final and executory. [The com- mission’s fate] will still depend on le- gal action to be taken by the Palace, so it [budget] is still there,” Abaya said. “I’m sure it [Truth Commission allocation] will be put to good use,” he added.


WITH REPORTS FROM ROMMEL C. LONTAYAO,


LLANESCA T. PANTI AND RUBEN D. MANAHAN 4TH


hindi, paano natin maasahan na papanigan tayo ng taumbayan kung tayo mismo hindi kayang magpatupad ng mga batas na umiiral sa ating bansa? [I explained why it is wrong that we take short cuts, and if there were short cuts in the case. We have to be clear, and to demon- strate to the people that there is a difference between enforcing the law and breaking the law. We must make a very clear distinction. If we do not do that, how could we ex- pect the people to be on our side if we in government could not en- force the laws of the land],” Mr. Aquino told reporters.


The Armed Forces said that the case of the “Morong 43” has taught them a lesson and vowed never to commit the same mistake in the fu- ture when handling cases against so- called enemies of the state. “At this point, we are awaiting advice from the DOJ as to the tech- nicalities involved and with these technicalities involved, we will cer- tainly look at them. We will really consider them and look at them so that we will not, if I may say, repeat the same technicalities again,” the Armed Forces spokesman, Brig. Gen. Jose Mabanta Jr., said.


He added that the military chain of command was properly con- sulted on the President’s decision to withdraw the charges against the detained health workers. According to him, the directive of the President, also the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, was a “political decision” and must be followed even if the hard work of the soldiers to arrest the 43 health workers was put to waste. But he clarified that the release of the “Morong 43” has not caused demoralization in the military.


guaranty of the government shall not exceed 55 percent of the latest gross domestic product (GDP). Any borrowing beyond 55 per- cent of the latest GDP needs prior consent of Congress. GDP repre- sents the amount of goods and services produced locally, and is a proxy for a country’s yearly eco- nomic performance. Meanwhile, a new provision re- quires the distribution of the MOOE of operating units of the Philippine National Police within five days from receipt of the funds for these units. Drilon said that this provision


was the answer of Congress to the complaints of PNP field units on the delay in their MOOE. “For 2012, we will require the di- rect release of the MOOE to the pro- vincial, district, city and municipal stations,” he added. The approval of the bicameral conference committee report on the national budget came with still two days left before Congress goes on Christmas break.


The enrolled copy of the recon- ciled budget measure as approved by the House and the Senate will be sent to Malacanang for the Presi- dent’s signature, the final act before it becomes a law. If it is signed within the month, the national gov- ernment will not have to operate on a reenacted budget next year.


■ UNDERSIDE FROM A1


Cybersex is outsourcing boom’s dark underside


in which call-center work and other back-office operations are done for companies in richer countries. In one recent police raid on a house in Olongapo City in Zambales province in northern Philippines, five girls aged 14 to 18 and three women were found performing sex acts in front of web cameras for clients sitting at computers overseas. “It’s a lot like working for a call


center. We do shifts and we chat. They can also make us do anything, as long as they pay,” said one of the girls picked up in the raid who used the working nickname of Rainbow. The girl, 15, and her sister, 17,


told Agence France-Presse that they left their rural home on a northern Philippine mango orchard to work for their aunt in Olongapo City but that their planned employment as babysitters turned into cybersex work. “It took us about a week to adjust,


but after that, we became blase about it,” said the elder sister, adding that their aunt had stayed beside them during their work to ensure the online clients’ demands were met. The aunt was arrested in the raid in


October and has been charged with trafficking in children for prostitution, which carries a maximum penalty of life in jail. A police report of the raid shown to


Agence France-Presse said of the younger girl, “One of them was naked while in the act of inserting a sex toy in her mouth in a scandalous position.” The girls are now undergoing


counseling and rehabilitation at a local children’s center run by an Irish Catholic priest. The center’s lawyer and counsellor,


a trained psychologist, gave Agence France-Presse permission to speak with the girls. The counsellor was present when the interview took place.


Law agencies hard-pressed Although police raids on cybersex dens


across the country are turning up women and children almost every week, they could be the tip of the iceberg, said law enforcer Migdonio Congzon of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI). “It’s an economic issue. People are poor and they need the money,” Congzon, the bureau’s computer crimes


■ ODYSSEY FROM A1 ‘Ancient’ Philippine boats


September 2009 and took them to Brunei, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indone- sia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The vessels were replicas of boats


discovered on the southern Philip- pine island of Mindanao in the 1970s that were carbon-dated to 320 AD, the oldest seafaring vessels ever to have been found in the country. Valdez said that the voyage retraced the trading routes used by the sea gyp- sies who would have used the ancient boats as they roamed the Pacific. The modern-day crew sailed us- ing the stars as charts, and with the vessels powered only by the wind gusting into sails. Valdez said that the vessels held up well in stormy weather, surviv-


ing waves as high as two-storey houses, although there were some worrying moments. “We were blown off course and


we ended up in Indonesia. My plan was not to go to Indonesia but there was no way we could go against the winds and the waves,” he added, recalling a three-day storm in late October.


“I tied the three boats together so


that we wouldn’t be separated. So that whatever happened, we would be together,” Valdez said. Organizers said that the voyage also proved that ancient seafarers from the Philippines were astute navigators who built tough boats.


AFP »In The Manila Times


December 14, 1987 Trade ties top summit agenda LEADERS of the noncommunist Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) begin today a two-day summit, their first in 10 years, amid an usually tight security cordon around the conference site. Four of the Asean leaders— Brunei’s Sultan Sir Hassanal Bolkiah, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and Thai Prime Minister Prem Tinsulanonda—arrived yesterday.


December 14, 1967 Aquino case rule delayed THE Supreme Court failed last night to decide whether it will issue an injunction stopping the proclamation of Benigno Aquino Jr. as elected senator. After a three-hour, closed-door session, the court broke up without approving any resolution on the motion of former Labor Secretary Emilio Espinosa Jr., Nacionalista senatorial candidate, to stop the Commission of Elections proclamation of Aquino.


December 14, 1947 Philippines, China silent on racial issue GENEVA: The Philippine and China abstained from voting as the United Nations Human Rights Commission defeated a Soviet proposal to make racial and religious discrimination and propaganda inciting to “national hatred” crimes punishable by law. The proposal was defeated 10 to four, with Egypt also abstaining. Voting for it were Russia, Yugoslavia, White Russia and Ukraine.


chief, told Agence France-Presse. “There is no definite set-up. It could be a house, it could be a condo unit, it could be anything else as long as you have computers with cameras and an Internet connection,” he added. Authorities appear ill-prepared to deal with the mushrooming industry. The NBI, the investigative arm of the


Department of Justice, has just five experts on computer crime who also have to deal with Internet fraud and privacy cases. The Philippine National Police also has just five cyber experts. Congzon said that the Philippines needed a law that directly addressed outsourced cybersex, because the current ones on child prostitution were not specific enough to deal with the Internet age. Dolores Alforte, a member of a


government committee on child welfare, said that police only acted on a few of many tip-offs because most cybersex operations were run out of private homes that could not be raided without a court order. She added that law-enforcement


efforts were further hampered by a wall of silence put up by neighborhoods where there is social acceptance of cybersex. Alforte recalled a 2005 case when 70


children from a depressed Manila neighborhood were paid a bag of groceries and P3,000 to be videotaped by a Japanese filmmaker. The tapes were later uploaded on


the Internet but prosecutors decided to drop the case against the Japanese suspect, she said. Alforte added that the dens charged


clients anywhere from $15 an hour to $10 a minute. She said that most dens operated near money transfer facilities, although some of the more sophisticated operations now got paid via credit cards. Teresa Calubid, a psychologist at


the church-backed Preda Founda- tion helping the girls from the Olongapo City cybersex raid, said that they faced the prospect of having to stay at the shelter until the case went to trial. “Their parents want them back, but


at this stage it is just not possible,” she also told Agence France-Presse. “There’s a possibility that the pimp


and recruiter would get back at them, or the parents will be pressured to drop the case,” Calubid said.


AFP


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