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Richard John Hatton MBE, more commonly known as Ricky "the Hitman" Hatton, (born 6 October 1978, in Stockport, Greater Manchester, England), is a British professional boxer is a two-time IBF and IBO light welterweight champion, having relinquished the IBF belt, only to step back down to the weight class and beat Juan Urango. He was the WBA Welterweight Champion, but relinquished this title on 31 August 2006.[3] Hatton is also the former WBU, WBA Light Welterweight Champion and WBC, WBA, WBO Inter-Continental Light Welterweight Champion, and current Ring Magazine Junior Welterweight Champion. Pacquiao vs. HattonOn May 2, 2009, Pacquiao is set to battle Ricky Hatton for the latter's IBO and Ring Magazine Light Welterweight titles.[34] Since the Wembley Stadium in the United Kingdom had been rejected as the venue for this championship bout, it would be held in the United States at MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.[35] The fight was placed in jeopardy due to disputes with both camps over the fight purse money. Pacquiao wanted a 60-40 share while Hatton insisted on an equal 50-50 share, but later offered Pacquiao a 52-48 split.[36] Arum believed that Hatton's popularity in the sport will bring enormous pay-per-view revenue, which other fighters would not be able to contribute.[37] On the other hand, Pacquiao's astute trainer Freddie Roach argued that a 60/40 share was fair for his ward because Pacquiao just destroyed De La Hoya, while Hatton was knocked out by Floyd Mayweather Jr. However, Hatton and his camp believed he deserved a more even split as he was the reigning Ring Light Welterweight champion, a division in which he remains undefeated, and a large draw in the U.K..[38] If the fight with Hatton would not materialize on a 55/45 share, which should favor Pacquiao, Roach stated that they would look into either fighting Mayweather, Venezuelan knockout artist Edwin Valero or even Pacquiao's rugged arch rival Juan Manuel Marquez.[39][40] Meanwhile, Hatton’s lawyer threatened to file a suit against Pacquiao if the Filipino fighter backed out of a “verbal contract” for a 50-50 split in earnings for their superfight.[41] Since Pacquiao had not signed off on the fight contract and had not accepted the 52-48 share that Bob Arum renegotiated with the Hatton's camp, the mega fight was officially scrapped. Both Arum and Roach stated that they were unable to contact Pacquiao during the final days of negotiations. Roach was quoted as saying that "a $12 million guarantee today is unbelievable" and that he hoped Pacquiao "comes to his senses".[42] Arum even speculated that the world's best pound for pound warrior might just have to sit out for the remainder of the year.[43]. The already scuppered mega fight between Manny Pacquiao and Ricky Hatton had been resurrected, after Pacquiao confirmed that he had changed his mind and had signed the fight contract. Bob Arum, Pacquiao's promoter, was jubilant about the decision of Pacquiao to pursue his fight with Hatton, and even went on record and proclaimed that his boxer (Pacquiao) would receive an unprecedented $20 million for this junior welterweight mega fight.[44] This super fight has a great chance of breaking pay-per-view records, revenue wise, due to the massive boxing fans from UK who would be rooting for their countryman Ricky Hatton, and of course, the charisma and drawing power of the pound for pound King Manny Pacquiao in the international realm. HBO would air the fight between Pacquiao and Hatton on May 2, 2009. The most recognized pay-per-view infrastructure would present 24/7 series for both gladiators leading up to their junior welterweight showdown at MGM Grand Hotel and Casino.[45] 5/19/08
* Friendster is bigger today than ever before - there are over 70 million registered members visiting us from over 75 countries globally! * Friendster is now the 8th largest website on the planet in terms of traffic, serving over 18 billion page views per month * Friendster is a leading website in many Asian countries and is now the #1 most visited site in the Philippines and Indonesia and the #2 most visited site in Singapore and Malaysia according to Alexa * Friendster is growing rapidly in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Taiwan,Japan, Korea, and China (don't forget to connect to your friends from these countries!) * Over 80 thousand people have joined Friendster in the last 24 hours June 25th, 2007 Friendster sees massive 40 percent page view boost in May The site had 24.7 million unique users last month, according to the latest Comscore data for global traffic just released. It lags behind leaders such as MySpace and Facebook (see chart below), but it is holding its own among the large pack of second-tier social networks of size, including Bebo and Piczo, as it grows in places like Malaysia and the Philippines. 3/13/08 * Friendster is bigger today than ever before - there are over 60 million registered members visiting us from over 75 countries globally! * Friendster is now the 12th largest website on the planet in terms of traffic * Friendster is a leading website in many Asian countries and is now the #1 most visited site in the Philippines and Indonesia and the #2 most visited site in Singapore and Malaysia according to Alexa * Friendster is growing rapidly in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Taiwan,Japan, Korea, and China (don't forget to connect to your friends from these countries!) * Over 80 thousand people have joined Friendster in the last 24 hours "The rise in overseas worker
remittances to $14.4 billion in 2007 buoyed domestic demand, lifting real GDP (gross domestic product) growth to 7.3 percent--a three-decade high," Lehman said in a global economic report dated March 14. By Doris Dumlao Philippine Daily Inquirer http://www.topphilippinewebsites.com/ The Top Philippine Websites is a ranking of websites related to the Philippines based on Alexa's traffic ranking, a site owned by Amazon.com. The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa users worldwide. http://multiplypilipinas.multiply.com/journal/item/363/Unannounced_Emergency_Merger_-_Yahoo_and_Yehey Manila, Philippines - Yehey.com and Yahoo.com, two of the top 5 search engines in the Philippines, announced that they would have an unannounced emergency merge today, April 1. Yahoo is targeting to partner with the the top search engines for each country, like Baidu in China for its new strategy to bring yahoo to the top again.
 694 Million People Currently Use the Internet Worldwide According to comScore Networks
www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=849 694 Million People Currently Use the Internet Worldwide According To comScore Networks
comScore Announces New Worldwide Online Universe Estimate Based on the World’s Largest, Most Representative Sample and Most Robust Methodology
Estimate Marks a Major Step Forward for Marketers and Media Properties around the World
RESTON, VA, May 4, 2006 – comScore Networks today announced the launch of comScore World Metrix, the first true estimate of global online audience size and behavior based on activity from the world’s largest online behavioral research panel. The comScore World Metrix panel has active representation from countries that comprise 99 percent of the global Internet population. In launching comScore World Metrix, the company announced that 694 million people, age 15+, used the Internet worldwide from all locations in March 2006, representing 14 percent of the world’s total population within this age group. This number marks the first worldwide universe estimate based on a consistent methodology across all countries.
Notably, comScore World Metrix includes measurement of the major Asian countries, including China, Japan, India and Korea, which represent nearly 25 percent of the total worldwide online population (or 168.1 million users), and which, in the aggregate, are 11 percent larger than the U.S. (152 million users).
“Today, the online audience in the U.S. represents less than a quarter of Internet users across the globe, versus ten years ago when it accounted for two-thirds of the global audience,” said Peter Daboll, president and CEO of comScore Media Metrix. “This is a sea change of enormous proportion, and comScore is pleased to be able to provide measurement to aid the world’s largest marketers in understanding how the world uses the Internet.”
“Previously, MSN has attempted to harmonize disparate sources of data to get a global view. The fact that comScore World Metrix data are produced with a consistent methodology worldwide will make a significant difference, enabling us to analyze what is happening globally and truly understand consumer online behavior,” said Chris Dobson, vice president of sales, MSN International. “This is a significant step forward for the industry and timed perfectly as the importance of markets outside the U.S. grows, especially rapidly developing countries like China and India, which up to now have not enjoyed such insight.”
* Excludes traffic from public computers such as Internet cafe and, access from mobile phones or PDAs. American Gladiators - Venus Ramos - Contestants Bio & Profile - NBC Official Site
www.nbc.com/American_Gladiators/contestants/venus_... VENUS RAMOS
AGE: 35
PROFESSION: Rehab Physician
The reigning Miss Fitness America, Dr. Venus Ramos is a rehab physician who wanted to be a doctor her whole life. An incredibly motivated athlete, she has to do one-handed push-up workouts in between patient visits to stay in shape. Venus barely has to time to balance her career and her training for the fitness competitions, often living out of her car to keep up with her crazy schedule. American Gladiators - Venus Ramos - Contestants...
www.nbc.com/American_Gladiators/contestants/venus_... VENUS RAMOS
AGE: 35
PROFESSION: Rehab Physician
The reigning Miss Fitness America, Dr. Venus Ramos is a rehab physician who wanted to be a doctor her whole life. An incredibly motivated athlete, she has to do one-handed push-up workouts in between patient visits to stay in shape. Venus barely has to time to balance her career and her training for the fitness competitions, often living out of her car to keep up with her crazy schedule. Event Organizers, Event Planners in ManilaReply to: serv-554364361@craigslist.org Date: 2008-01-29, 12:04AM PHT Around town productions will plan and execute your event for you top - drawer professional services from video, stage, production design, talents, - from soup to nuts ....Hit us up at emailus@arountownprod.com or call us at 5339905
PostingID: 554364361  MULTIPLY PILIPINAS - Unannounced Emergency Merg...
multiplypilipinas.multiply.com/journal/item/363/Un... Posted by Tonio on Mar 31, '08 6:48 PM for everyone     Manila, Philippines - Yehey.com and Yahoo.com, two of the top 5 search engines in the Philippines, announced that they would have an unannounced emergency merge today, April 1. Yahoo is targeting to partner with the the top search engines for each country, like Baidu in China for its new strategy to bring yahoo to the top again. The two CEO's, Yehey's Donald Lim and Yahoo's Jerry Yang said at a joint press conference in Discovery Suites yesterday that a call for simpler licensing fees and technology standards for hardware and software with superior customer service made the merger a must. Try and visit www.yehey.com for the fusion of the Yahoo and Yehey website feel. Philippine News -- Manila Standard Today -- Ame...
www.manilastandardtoday.com/?page=goodLife4_mar29_... American Idol is… Ramiele Malubay? By Giovanni Paolo J. Yazon FOR the third time, a Filipino makes it to the top 10 of American Idol! Her name is Ramiele Malubay, a 4-feet and 11-inch native of Florida, tagged as a “small girl with a huge voice, funky hair and dynamic personality.” And for the nth time, she survived the elimination last Thursday—enduring the cruelty of Randy Jackson while charming Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell. Ramiele began belting out songs at age 12, and her musical influences include Aretha Franklin, The Jackson 5, Mariah Carey as well as Lani Misalucha and Regine Velasquez. Citing in her profile at the American Idol Web site that the country’s Nightingale and Asia’s Songbird were among those singers who have a bearing on her was what endeared herself to many Filipinos. Born in Saudi Arabia, the 20-year-old Idol wannabe spent her early years here until her family migrated in the United States. The Malubays now reside in Miramar, Florida. She finished her secondary education at the Zephyrhills High School in Florida, and was a student-nurse at the Broward Community College prior to the contest. She may have been “Americanized” in many ways, but Ramiele’s never forgotten where she came from. She can still speak Tagalog and the Ilocano dialect fluently. Previous six Fil-Ams who reached the top 24 of this reality TV talent series created by Simon Fuller were Brad Estrin (Season 1), Jordan Segundo (Season 2), Jasmine Trias and Camile Velasco (Season 3), Jose “Sway” Peñala (Season 5), and AJ Tablado (Season 6). Sharon Galvez—formerly known as Zhar Santos of the Smokey Mountain—the ‘90s teen pop group which was the brainchild of Ryan Cayabyab—generated ripples of excitement among Filipinos during the fourth season three years ago. But despite impressing ruthless judge Simon Cowell in most of her routines, the then 28-year-old waitress failed to earn a slot in the top 24. Only Jasmine and Camile were lucky enough to go through final 12. But Camile was the fourth to be eliminated, while Jasmine finished third overall. As American Idol Season 7 goes to a stage where everyone could just be anyone on any episode, Ramiele’s legions of fans and kababayans worldwide hope, pray to high heavens and cast their votes via SMS to help her stay on top until the competition’s conclusion. But would Ramiele Malubay be able to equal, if not surpass Jasmine Trias’ feat, or just have the same fate as Camile Velasco? Will she make it to the final three or not? Here’s what some of the Idol viewers said: “She will make it [to top three]. She has a very good chance. ‘Vocally’, she’s okay.” –Resty Furuc, software developer “No, she won’t [make it]. She keeps on choosing songs that don’t highlight her vocal range. She’s trying to copy Regine Velasquez. American Idol isn’t a venue for imitating anybody.” —Ria Olson, health care officer “She’s gonna make it. I think her performance is way better than the other female finalists.” —Alvin Perez, fitness trainor “She will go far [in the contest], but not as far as top three.” —Christian Guatlo, migrant worker “Yes. She spices up every song that she sings. She sounds better than Jasmine Trias!” —Ihna Obispo, bank teller “No. [Because] Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson will choose a ‘pure’ American in the end. Look what happened to Jasmine Trias? Finalists with foreign [particularly Asian] lineage have zero chance of winning the grand prize. It’s a sad fact.” —Donald Carpio, student “Ramiele [Malubay] has what it takes to make it to the top three—she has the looks, the [stage] presence and the voice. What could ruin her chances to reach the finals is a bad choice of song. Song choice, as Simon Cowell has always emphasized, can make or break a singer. I completely agree with him. All American Idol contestants are only good as their last performance. Ramiele, if she doesn’t chuck the habit of picking the wrong song, might get booted out of the competition sooner than we think.” —Gabby Libarios, journalist “No. She’s not that versatile, and her previous performances were quite disappointing.” —Lizet Pinpin, student “Yes. I applaud her for being proud to be Pinoy ever since she got in at American Idol. I believe that she will make it because she’s natural, and her personality’s simply engaging. She’s a real talent and very worthy of the title. I am glad because she’s making us [all] proud.” —Catherine Untalan, Miss Earth 2006 second runner-up “Yes. She will make it to the final three… [She will make us all proud].” —Cecille Garcia Mapa, theater actress Google Image Result for http://www.pmptoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/nokia_n77_21.jpg
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Products and Services
Smart Link PhilippinesSmart Link Philippines is designed exclusively for the Philippine market. Focused on the maritime industry, Smart Link Philippines provides communication services to Filipino seafarers as they ply the waters of Asia-Pacific and beyond.
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Smart Link International 
Free SMART Link for your ship ››› PHILIPPINES |
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PH -
92,681,453 population - Area: 300,000 sq kmPhilippines
Map and data for Philippines.
National Statistics Coordination Board
Phillipines statistical information.
National Statistics Office
Philippines population information.
Philippines
Links and information about Philippines.
Philippines Internet and Telecommunications
Internet usage and telecommunications information for Philippines.
ASIA INTERNET USAGE AND POPULATION |
||||||||
|
Population |
Internet Users, |
Internet Users, |
Penetration |
(%) Users |
Use Growth |
|||
|
32,738,376 |
1,000 |
580,000 |
1.8 % |
0.1 % |
57,900.0 % |
|||
|
2,968,586 |
30,000 |
172,800 |
5.8 % |
0.0 % |
476.0 % |
|||
|
8,177,717 |
12,000 |
1,035,600 |
12.7 % |
0.2 % |
8,530.0 % |
|||
|
153,546,901 |
100,000 |
500,000 |
0.3 % |
0.1 % |
400.0 % |
|||
|
682,321 |
500 |
40,000 |
5.9 % |
0.0 % |
7,900.0 % |
|||
|
381,371 |
30,000 |
176,029 |
46.2 % |
0.0 % |
486.8 % |
|||
|
14,241,640 |
6,000 |
70,000 |
0.5 % |
0.0 % |
1,066.7 % |
|||
|
China * |
1,330,044,605 |
22,500,000 |
253,000,000 |
19.0 % |
43.7 % |
1,024.4 % |
||
|
1,108,777 |
- |
1,200 |
0.1 % |
0.0 % |
0.0 % |
|||
|
4,630,841 |
20,000 |
360,000 |
7.8 % |
0.1 % |
1,700.0 % |
|||
|
7,018,636 |
2,283,000 |
4,878,713 |
69.5 % |
0.8 % |
113.7 % |
|||
|
1,147,995,898 |
5,000,000 |
60,000,000 |
5.2 % |
10.4 % |
1,100.0 % |
|||
|
237,512,355 |
2,000,000 |
25,000,000 |
10.5 % |
4.3 % |
1,150.0 % |
|||
|
127,288,419 |
47,080,000 |
94,000,000 |
73.8 % |
16.2 % |
99.7 % |
|||
|
15,340,533 |
70,000 |
1,400,000 |
9.1 % |
0.2 % |
1,900.0 % |
|||
|
23,479,089 |
-- |
-- |
-- |
-- |
0.0 % |
|||
|
49,232,844 |
19,040,000 |
34,820,000 |
70.7 % |
6.0 % |
82.9 % |
|||
|
5,356,869 |
51,600 |
750,000 |
14.0 % |
0.1 % |
1,353.5 % |
|||
|
6,677,534 |
6,000 |
100,000 |
1.5 % |
0.0 % |
1,566.7 % |
|||
|
Macao * |
460,823 |
60,000 |
238,000 |
51.6 % |
0.0 % |
296.7 % |
||
|
25,274,133 |
3,700,000 |
14,904,000 |
59.0 % |
2.6 % |
302.8 % |
|||
|
379,174 |
6,000 |
33,000 |
8.7 % |
0.0 % |
450.0 % |
|||
|
2,996,081 |
30,000 |
320,000 |
10.7 % |
0.1 % |
966.7 % |
|||
|
47,758,181 |
1,000 |
40,000 |
0.1 % |
0.0 % |
3,900.0 % |
|||
|
29,519,114 |
50,000 |
337,100 |
1.1 % |
0.1 % |
574.2 % |
|||
|
167,762,040 |
133,900 |
17,500,000 |
10.4 % |
3.0 % |
12,969.5 % |
|||
|
92,681,453 |
2,000,000 |
14,000,000 |
15.1 % |
2.4 % |
600.0 % |
|||
|
4,608,167 |
1,200,000 |
2,700,000 |
58.6 % |
0.5 % |
125.0 % |
|||
|
21,128,773 |
121,500 |
771,700 |
3.7 % |
0.1 % |
535.1 % |
|||
|
22,920,946 |
6,260,000 |
15,400,000 |
67.2 % |
2.7 % |
146.0 % |
|||
|
7,211,884 |
2,000 |
19,500 |
0.3 % |
0.0 % |
875.0 % |
|||
|
65,493,298 |
2,300,000 |
13,416,000 |
20.5 % |
2.3 % |
483.3 % |
|||
|
5,179,571 |
2,000 |
70,000 |
1.4 % |
0.0 % |
3,400.0 % |
|||
|
28,268,440 |
7,500 |
1,745,000 |
6.2 % |
0.3 % |
23,166.7 % |
|||
|
86,116,559 |
200,000 |
20,159,615 |
23.4 % |
3.5 % |
9,979.8 % |
|||
|
TOTAL ASIA |
3,776,181,969 |
114,304,000 |
578,538,257 |
15.3 % |
100.0 % |
406.1 % |
||
| ||||||||
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_internet_usage
Global Internet usage
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article provides information relating to the number of people who use the Internet by language, nationality, geography, etc.
Contents[hide] |
[edit] Total number of Internet users
As of December 2007, approximately 1,319,872,109 people worldwide use the Internet, according to Internet World Stats.
[edit] Languages used on the Internet
The most-used language on the Internet is English. Although the total number of native English speakers in the world is about 322 million, English is spoken as a second language by up to 1.2 billion people around the world. They make their contributions to the Internet in their own language as well as in English.
Chinese is the most spoken native language on Earth, and the second language on the Internet. The Chinese population online is increasing at a high rate; this is expected to have a great impact on the Internet in the near future.
Notably absent from the table below is Hindi, the most widely spoken language in India, the second most populated country in the world. This is due to preference for English among most users having Internet access. The Indian population online is also increasing at a high rate; this is also expected to have a great impact on the Internet in the near future.
The figures in the table below were taken from Global Reach [1]. These are estimates, for September 2004, of the world online population per language.
Browse Southeast Asia
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Top Sites Philippines
Browse the most popular sites on the web. Learn more.
Yahoo!
Personalized content and search options. Chatrooms, free e-mail, clubs, and pager.
yahoo.com
Site info for yahoo.com
Friendster
Friendster is a leading global social network emphasizing genuine friendships and the discovery of new people through friends. Search for old friends and classmates, stay in better touch with friends, share photos and videos, and so much more.
friendster.com
Site info for friendster.com
YouTube
YouTube is a way to get your videos to the people who matter to you. Upload, tag and share your videos worldwide!
youtube.com
Site info for youtube.com
Multiply
Users can create, share and discuss blogs, photos, videos and music with others as well as post reviews of movies and books, or share a calendar of events.
multiply.com
Site info for multiply.com
Enables users to search the Web, Usenet, and images. Features include PageRank, caching and translation of results, and an option to find similar pages. The company's focus is developing search technology.
google.com
Site info for google.com
Blogger.com
Free, automated weblog publishing tool that sends updates to a site via FTP.
blogger.com
Site info for blogger.com
Imeem
Users interact with each other by watching, posting, and sharing content of all media types, including blogs, photos, audio, and video.
imeem.com
Site info for imeem.com
Photobucket image hosting and photo sharing
Provides image hosting for auctions, live journals, blogs, message boards, personal websites and online photo albums. Reliable, fast and very simple to use.
photobucket.com
Site info for photobucket.com
Y8
Y8.com has Free Online Mini Games in both Flash and Shockwave as well as Flash Fun Animations.
y8.com
Site info for y8.com
Microsoft Corporation
Main site for product information, support, and news.
microsoft.com
Site info for microsoft.com
A social utility that connects people, to keep up with friends, upload photos, share links and videos.
facebook.com
Site info for facebook.com
RapidShare
Users can upload up to 100 meg files for sharing. Provides downloads of 100 megs per hour on the free service. Premium service also available.
rapidshare.com
Site info for rapidshare.com
Flickr
Picture galleries available with social networking, chat, groups, and photo ratings.
flickr.com
Site info for flickr.com
WordPress.com
Free blogs managed by the developers of the WordPress software. Includes custom design templates, integrated stats, automatic spam protection and many more features.
wordpress.com
Site info for wordpress.com
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Mobile TV in the Philippines
29 07 2007
Mobile TV is now available in the Philippines! Smart Communications and MediaQuest unit 360media Corp. recently launched their mobile TV service on July 24, making TV viewing more flexible and longer for Filipinos constantly on the go. MediaQuest will be investing at least $ 50 million (about P2.75 billion) for infrastructure, but this figure does not include Smart’s investment, who is in charge of building and marketing the brand called myTV.
Though Smart’s video streaming runs on their 3G network, mobile TV will be based on a seperate platform called DVB-H or Digital Video Broadcasting-Handheld. This platform was chosen since devices that run on DVB-H, such as the Nokia N77, is now gaining popularity in Europe and Asia. As of now, only the Nokia N92 model is offered by Smart as part of their mobile TV package.
As of the formal launch, there are 10 channels available on myTV. While the service will be free until August 31, subscribers will be charged 488 Philippine pesos (US$10.78) per month on top of their regular post-paid plans. Smart hopes to amass 60,000 to 70,000 subscribers to the service during the next few months.
[via manila bulletin online]
« PMP Today Weekly Round Up Issue no. 2 Zune Scorpio and Draco Delayed to September or Beyond »
Philippines 3G Mobile Services Market - Subscriber Interest and Market Analysis |
|
Mobile services, 3G applications, consumer forecast and demand analysis for 3G wireless cellular service. |
Publication Date: April 2006
Number of Pages: 41
Price: US$ 1,500 - Single User License
Format: Delivery by email, in PDF format, within 24 hours.
Purchase Inquiries: Email to sales @ aprg.com for invoice and
payment information.
This study provides
quantitative market intelligence on mobile data consumption in this
new 3G country, offering insight into the overall market potential.
|
Oxford Analytica
The mobile phone has become the most widely used and diverse piece of technological equipment, surpassing fixed line telephone, radio or television -- with 3 billion subscribers worldwide expected by year-end. Having once been viewed as a calling device for high-income consumers, it is now a multipurpose data device used by many people in developing countries.
The adoption of mobile phones and expansion in the functions they are used to perform have created opportunities for telecommunications companies. In particular, the low-cost, secure and widely accessible mobile telephony platform has facilitated the delivery of financial services to people without bank accounts in Asia and Africa.
Developments in the Philippines, where mobile subscribers grew from 10,000 in 1990 to 46.2 million this year, illustrate how companies operating in low per capita income countries have become highly profitable by customising innovative products and services of use to lower-income groups. Smart Communications and Globe Telecom are market leaders in the Philippines, offering services using short messaging system (SMS) technology ('texting') to make payments, transactions and remittances.
Globe Telecoms introduced SMS in 1994 as a free service to attract customers. The SMS facility, along with the introduction of prepaid methods of subscription, led to a sharp growth in mobile subscribers. By 2005, all mobile phone owners were utilising SMS, with texting traffic exceeding voice traffic by ten to one. The preference for SMS use is explained by its relative cost, where an SMS costs two cents compared to 9-15 cents per minute for a phone call.
As the use of SMS has taken off, Filipinos have started using mobile phones to make financial transactions. By the middle of the year, about 5.5 million Filipinos were using their mobile phones as virtual wallets, making the country a leader among developing nations in mobile transactions.
Smart Communications pioneered prepaid mobile and electronic micro-credit loading (topping up prepaid phone credit in small denominations using SMS) in the Philippines, which in turn led to the development of other innovative products. In 2000, the company introduced Smart Money, which allows subscribers to transfer cash from a bank account to a mobile phone. They can also use the credit to:
- pay for goods and services;
- load airtime into any Smart phone;
- transfer money from one Smart Money card to another;
- pay utility bills; and
- send remittances.
Subscribers have to register their mobile phone, which is then linked to a cash or debit card. The card, which costs 200 pesos, does not require a bank account, but can be used to purchase goods in establishments that accept Mastercard or to withdraw cash from an ATM cash machine. Each time a user makes a transaction, a message is sent via SMS that allows real-time tracking of how funds are used.
In February, Smart Communications launched Smart Remit, a low-cost remittance service using the mobile phone as a financial service platform. The service enables Filipinos in the Middle East and Europe to send remittances home. The pilot project is undertaken in partnership with Mastercard, Bahrain's MTC Vodafone, United Arab Emirates' Etisalat, and leading regional banks, and is part of the GSM Association's Global Money Transfer Project.
When using the service, a sender gives cash payment to an agent who then transfers the cash to the designated recipient in the Philippines. The recipient, alerted by an SMS, can immediately withdraw the cash from local ATMs if they have a bank account or at a McDonald's restaurant. As of September, Smart reported 5 million Smart Money and Smart Remit users.
There are several challenges facing efforts to develop the use of mobile transactions. They include:
- financial regulations such as formal barriers to the provision of payment and transaction services by non-banks, formal and informal cross-border trade barriers, and anti-money laundering regulations;
- ensuring the safety, security and accessibility of services to increase consumer confidence;
- finding viable commercial models, pricing strategies and distribution channels that work where customers' disposable incomes are low; and
- establishing partnerships between banks, credit associations and telecommunications companies domestically and internationally
www.filipinolinks.com.ph/Internet/Portal_Sites/mor...
FilipinoPeople.com
Filipino Americans.net
Filipino American National Historical Society
Embassy, Consulate and Immigration Information
Consulate General of the Philippines - San Francisco
Immigration Forum
Philippine Embassy in San Francisco, California - Forms and Information.
Philippine Consulates in the United States
United States Citizenship and Immigration Services
Links to Links
FilipinoLinks.com
The Filipino
Large collection of links to and in the Philippines
Google Directory of Filipino Society and Culture
News, Magazines, Radio, etc.
Filipinas Magazine
Filipino Reporter
Manila Times Online
myPH.com
Philippine News
Philippine Post
Philippine Star
Philippine Radio Stations Online
Pinoy Global Online News
The Manila Bulletin
Of Interest
BilRosky.com - A local Juneau artist making his web debut
DirPedia.com - combining a dictionary, an encyclopedia and a web directory
English <=> Tagalog Dictionary
Filipino Songs Online Resource
Global Pinoy
GoodNews Pilipinas
Manilla Florist - send your loved ones flowers and gifts.
Pangasinian Online
Philippine eLib (eletronic library)
Tagalog Dictionary
Other Organizations
Asians in America
Filipino-American Association of Arizona (FAAAZ)
Filipino-American Association of Stafford Virginia (FAASV)
Filipino American Association of Pittsburgh, Inc. (FAAP)
Filipino-American Sampaguita Club of Tucson (FASCOT)
Filipino American Service Group, Inc. (FASGI)
Filipino Community of Anchorage Alaska (FCAA)
Filipino Community of Seattle (FCS)
National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA)
Recipes
FilAm Recipe Database
Filipino Recipe.com
Recipe Source.com
Kusina at iba pa!
media.www.thesantaclara.com/media/storage/paper946...
Filipino American Heritage MOnth comes to Santa Clara
By Ria Marie Reyes
Last update: 2/23/06 at 1:29 PM PST
- Page 1 of 1
In commemoration of Filipino American Heritage Month, Barkada sponsored several activities throughout October, including its first Barrio Fiesta, with the purpose of spreading awareness about the Filipino American culture, said Minda Sanchez, co-chairperson of the Barrio Fiesta committee.
"It's important for Barkada to educate (its members) about our culture so that we can educate others," Sanchez said. "When people think of Asian Americans they think of the Japanese and Chinese. Filipino Americans are the largest Asian group in California and the second largest in the U.S. but no one knows anything about us."
Barkada is SCU's Filipino American club. It sponsors cultural events throughout the acaemic year.
Being Filipino American Heritage Month, the club sponsored even more activities for October, such as a trip to a Filipino American museum, a dance in Brass Rail with Filipino American performers and a Barrio Fiesta.
Sanchez said Barkada wanted these events to be both entertaining and educational so that they could reach out to the entire SCU community.
Joining the search
"Our culture is a developing one. We still don't know what it means to be Filipino Americans," Sanchez said. "We're still trying to figure it out. We're still learning and searching, and we invite others to join in that search."
Neil Sugay, chairperson of the Asian Pacific Student Union, said he feels that the Barrio Fiesta was a good concept because those who attended weren't just attendants but actual participants of the event.
"Unlike the PCN (Pilipino Cultural Night) where Barkada performs and the audience watches, everyone can participate just by going to the Barrio Fiesta," Sugay said. "People who came learned cultural dances, there was constant music, decorations ... people experienced the culture."
Barkada member and SCU sophomore, Eric Tancongo, said that he has learned a lot about his Filipino American culture by actively participating in the cultural programs Barkada has sponsored.
Tancongo said that dancing for last year's PCN, Barkada's biggest annual cultural event, was a fun learning experience because he learned dances he didn't know existed, like the Igorot and the Coconut.
"Events like that remind me of how special my culture is and I appreciate it more," Tancongo said.
Sharing the culture
Sanchez said that aside from sharing the culture with others, cultural events by Barkada are meant "to give a little bit of color" to the campus.
"If Barkada can create an atmosphere where people walk away wanting to learn and not be afraid to be part of a group of people who are different, then we are one step closer to bringing color to a color blind campus," Sanchez said.
According to Sanchez, even though Filipino American Heritage Month has come to an end, Barkada will continue to sponsor as many events as they did during October.
"As the only Filipino-American organization on campus, it's Barkada's responsibility to educate the SCU community," he said. "Who else are they going to learn about us from?"
Directory: College & University Groups |
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San Francisco Bay Area Cal State Hayward -- Pilipino American Student Assocation (PASA) Midwestern Association of Filipino Americans (MAFA) Southeast Filipino Student Network Agnes Scott University Other Filipino Student Groups (Web Listings) |
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Copyright © 1995-2001. Project PULL.
All rights reserved.
project pull is a learning organization
with the pilipino american community
2124 Rock Street, Suite 23
Mountain View CA 94043-2623
phone/fax (650) 962-8775
URL http://www.projectpull.org
Filipino Folkdance Links
updated 11-Apr-2003
I'm truly grateful to have Pilipino folkdancing perpetuated on the Web. Check out these websites for a wealth of pictures and additional information. Sites with a Community
Event Calendars |
Community Event Calendars Top
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Cultural pages Top
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Student Groups TopUS - Pacific
US - Mountain/Central
US - Eastern
Canada
Asia/Australia/Europe
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Filipino & Dance Directories Top |
Merchandise Top
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Personal homepages Top
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have a link to
www.filipinasoul.com/canada-opens-its-doors-to-fil...
Over the next 10 years, Canada will need almost 2 million skilled workers and professionals, and guess where’s its looking? (via Inquirer)
Drawing on its well-established relationship with overseas Filipino workers, Canada is once again throwing its doors open to employees who can fill the labor shortages in various provinces. Just a few examples:
* British Columbia is looking for 22,000-24,000 temporary workers to help it prepare for the 2018 Winter Olympics
* Manitoba and Alberta need more caregivers, nannies, and skilled workers like pipe fitters and welders.
* Alberta is also looking for maintenance managers and facility operators.
* Prince Edward Island needs construction workers, meat processors, educators and researchers.
British Columbia has already started the process with the signing of a two-year memorandum of understanding with the Philippine government. As a result, a joint labor committee will be established to oversee the training, certification and assessment of the Filipino employees and their Canadian employers. (via Canada.com). Most of the labor needs will be handled by private recruitment agencies.
www.canadavisa.com/western-canada-seeking-filipino...
Western Canada Seeking Filipino Skilled Workers |
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The Philippines is one of the largest exporters of labourers in the world, with 10 per cent of its current population working abroad. In 2006, it was the third highest source country of immigrants to Canada; it has been among the top five for over 25 years. As Canada’s labour crunch continues, Filipino workers are an increasingly important source of labour. Carmilita Dimzon of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), has said that skilled Filipino workers are needed in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. These provinces are actively seeking health workers, nurses, engineers, and hospitality staff. Filipino representatives of the POEA and the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA), a government agency that protects the well-being of Filipino workers and their dependents overseas, recently visited Western Canada to assess available job opportunities. According to the Philippines ambassador in Ottawa, Jose Brillantes, Philippine consulate offices in Canada have been conducting verification processes to ensure that Canadian job offers to Filipino workers are indeed credible. "The process is also designed to prevent Filipino professionals ending up in jobs far below their educational qualifications, skills and experience," he explained. Ambassador Brillantes also noted that a Philippines labour office will be established in Vancouver, which will streamline the hiring process and provide assistance to Filipino migrant workers in Western Canada. There are currently about 500,000 Filipinos living in Canada, mainly in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. In 2008, Western Canada is looking to recruit 30,000 skilled Filipino workers. Source: Asian Pacific Post |
Mata Press Service
Jose S. Brillantes, the Philippines ambassador in Ottawa, said his overseas officers at Canadian consulates in The Philippines are preparing for the expected influx of Filipino workers this year.
Brillantes told The Asian Pacific Post in an interview that Philippines consulate offices in
Canada are conducting “verification process” exercises to ensure that Filipino workers don’t fall victim to bogus job offers.
“Although such illegal activities are so far not prevalent in Canada, we have to be vigilant to prevent such occurrences,” said Brillantes.
“The process is also designed to prevent Filipino professionals ending up in jobs far below their educational qualifications, skills and experience.”
The ambassador also told The Asian Pacific Post that a Philippines labor office will be established in Vancouver to streamline the hiring process for new workers and provide “on-site” assistance to Filipino migrant workers in British Columbia and neighboring provinces.
Brillantes said skilled Filipino workers are ready to take advantage of the job opportunities in preparation for the 2010 Olympics, which will be held in Vancouver, Whistler and municipalities throughout Metro Vancouver.
B.C. is now experiencing record employment levels of 63.9 per cent, and the shortage of skilled labour is hindering growth.
Several construction projects, like the Cloverdale Trades and Technology Centre at Kwantlen University, have had their openings delayed due to a shortage of trades people.
Carmilita Dimzon, deputy administrator of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), said in Manila that skilled Filipino workers are needed in the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
Among those professional workers needed in Canada are: Hospital nurses, health workers, mechanical and electrical engineers, and hotel and restaurant personnel in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics.
Ambassador Brillantes said POEA administrator Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baldoz and Marianito D. Roque, administrator of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA), a government agency tasked to protect and promote the welfare and well-being of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) and their dependents, recently visited Western Canadian provinces to assess the job opportunities.
The Philippines is one of the biggest exporters of skilled and unskilled labor in the world.
The Southeast Asian nation deployed more than one million overseas Filipino workers, or OFWs, to 160 host destinations last year, most of them in medical and health, information and technology, and the services sectors.
About eight million Filipinos, or 10 per cent of the population, are working abroad while their remittances last year were estimated at more than 10 billion U.S. dollars, or 10 per cent of GDP.
Presidential Spokesman Ignacio R. Bunye said that 2008 would be another banner year for OFWs, marked by increased job opportunities and higher wages.
In his weekly column The View From the Palace, Bunye based his prediction on the shifting employment profile of Filipino migrant workers from non-skilled to skilled.
He said that unlike in previous years, most OFWs leaving the country now are professional or skilled workers.
“In 2006, 60 per cent of Filipinos working abroad were professionals and skilled workers. In 2007, the deployment ratio became 73-27 in favor of skilled workers,” Bunye said.
He described this change in the employment pattern of OFWs over the last two years as no less than dramatic.
“This explains why despite the constant level of deployment, foreign exchange remittances has been increasing,” he added.
Labor Secretary Arturo Brion said the country’s track record of sending one million OFWs workers abroad in the past two years would be topped this year to help the struggling Philippines’ economy recover.
He pointed out that although it is not a policy of the government to send workers abroad, OFWs continue to help sustain the country’s economic growth through their remittances, especially Filipino migrant workers belonging to the higher pay levels.
While the demand for workers is high in Western Canada, the speed with which visas are being approved for Filipinos to come to Canada is very slow, says Vancouver lawyer Catherine Sas.
“I would like to pose the challenge to the Filipino community in Canada to go to your politicians to say that this is wrong,” said Sas, in an earlier interview with The Asian Pacific Post.
“Canada needs the skills and talents of Filipinos . . . but processing time is really bad news for Filipinos.”
Sas advised Filipino-Canadian organizations to look into the new B.C. Provincial Nominee Program, which could help skilled Filipino workers find jobs quickly.
“Filipinos have a strong network in Metro Vancouver to find Canadian employers . . . the employers right now cannot find Canadian people to fill their jobs,” Sas said.
Based on the 2006 Census of Canada released recently, the Philippines was the 3rd highest source of immigrants to Canada in the world, and has consistently been in the top five since 1981.
“We are one of the fastest-growing immigrant communities in Canada, yet our issues remain virtually invisible,” says Cecilia Diocson, Executive Director of the National Alliance of Philippine Women in Canada (NAPWC), in a press statement.
According to the NAPWC, the chronic economic and political crisis in The Philippines, including the current state of civil war in the country and the lack of jobs, pushes over 34,000 Filipinos abroad daily in search of a better life.
It is estimated that there are around 500,000 Filipinos living in Canada, concentrated in the major cities of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.
“Although we have been migrating to this country for the last 40 years, we remain economically marginalized and segregated,” says Diocson.
She points to the example of the nearly 100,000 Filipino women who have entered Canada since the early 1980s under Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP).
“The LCP as Canada’s de-facto national childcare program has resulted in many women suffering a lifetime of de-skilling and all forms of abuse,” says Diocson.
Monday, February 18, 2008
With intensified promotional campaigns
especially in European countries, the
Department of Tourism (DOT) said
international tourism receipts are
likely to hit $5.8 billion in 2008, up
by one billion from last year.
Although he did not give a specific
target for tourist arrivals this year,
Tourism Secretary Joseph Ace Durano
said the agency will continue to
encourage more high-spending tourists,
such as Europeans, for a longer stay
in the Philippines.
Durano made the statement during the
kick-off ceremony of the 15th Travel
Tour Expo at the SMX Convention Center
in Pasay City last Friday.
Durano said the DOT will work hard to
maintain its 10 percent growth rate
average in tourist arrivals per year.
Last year, the tourism industry
generated a total of $4.8 billion
revenues from 3.09 million foreign
tourists, he said.
Durano said 3,000 additional rooms in
places where tourist spots are
located, are expected to open this
year until 2009.
He also stressed the need for the
passage of the Tourism Bill which he
said would not only strengthen the
industry but would provide
opportunities to many Filipinos to
travel around the world.
The DOT secretary pointed out the need
to abolish travel taxes, which
according to him affects mostly the
country’s modern day heroes – the
overseas Filipino workers.
“The biggest group that is traveling
and paying taxes are the new heroes of
the country – the OFWs. Why give them
additional burden?” Durano said.
Senate Bill 1238 or the “Tourism
Bill,” principally authored by Sen.
Richard Gordon, seeks, among others,
to create “Tourism Philippines, a
corporation combining the functions of
the Philippine Convention and Visitors
Corp., the Philippine Tourism
Authority and the promotions and
marketing departments of the DOT to
strengthen the promotion of the
tourism industry.”
The bill also “seeks to encourage
investments in new hotels, resorts and
other tourism enterprises through tax
breaks and fast, friendly and
efficient governance to truly create
world-class establishments in the most
beautifully, historical and culturally
significant areas of our country.” –
Helen Flores
Heyphilippines.
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ASIATYPE, INC.
Suite 114, Columbia Tower
Ortigas Avenue, Greenhills
Mandaluyong City
Philippines 1550
Tel: +63 2 744 6262
Fax: +63 2 727 6053
E-mail us »
www.wikimapia.org/#lat=14.380167&lon=121.046816&z=...
Sto. Nino Village, Tunasan, Muntinlupa
place comments: |
8 months ago mon montales | 0 |
 
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very nice place home of beautiful people | ||||
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6 months ago dj | 0 |
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mi gwapitos and gwapitas! | ||||
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Crown Tower U Belt - Lifestyle Condo In U Belt Sampaloc Mla.
Asking Price: $35,000 USD (Financing Available)
CROWN TOWER University Belt - Definitely More Than Your Usual College Dorm!
Affordable Lifestyle Condos in University Belt, Manila.
Lifestyle condos walking distance to prestigious University of Sto. Tomas.
PAYMENT TERMS MADE MORE AFFORDABLE!
PRICE STARTS AT P1.4M!!! NO DOWNPAYMENT
25% payable in 24 months.
75% Balance In-House or Bank-Financing up to 15 years to pay!!!
ABSOLUTELY NO VAT
Very ideal for families with students studying or will study in the University Belt. Also for professionals in the area who do not want to go through the hassle of traffic. For investors who may want to open up their own business through rental business in this high-occupancy rate area?
WHY RENT WHEN YOU CAN OWN YOUR UNIT?
At approximately the same price per month, you may own one of our units in a building that will be maintained and operated by professional property managers.
Project Concept
• Crown Asia creates a master thesis of value and practicality that would serve as an investment that will earn high remarks!
• Crown Tower University Belt is Crown Asia’s response to execute a building strategy for function, cost and comfort in high arty-style.
• Crown Tower University Belt shall be the latest home of choice for:
a. Families with children going to nearby colleges & universities;
b. Young, mobile & chic urbanites working at nearby business areas (University Belt, Binondo, Intramuros);
c. Medical professionals working at nearby medical schools or institutions;
d. Starting families;
e. Real estate / property investors;
• A 25-storey building of a modern contemporary inspired community
a. Ideal for young, busy groups of people;
b. With strategically and carefully designed architecture to answer the needs of its target market.
• The elements to attain academic excellence are all here!
a. Location;
b. Comfort;
c. Style;
d. Value;
• It embodies the concepts of modern, progressive urban living
a. Convenience
b. Privacy
• Commercial / retail establishments
Restaurants, stores and shops of numerous products and offerings, essential to the homeowners and its neighborhood.
• Complete, chic and sensible amenities made available.
a. to provide homeowners means of having a healthy lifestyle;
b. to create an environment of design excellence that will inspire anyone to top any task.
• Transportation and accessibility is never a problem
a. Crown Tower University Belt is located at G. Tolentino St., Sampaloc, Manila.
b. Right by the time honored España Avenue
c. Across the street from University of Santo Tomas, it is literally 20 steps away from the tree lined España Ave. and the tree laden campus of UST.
d. With the LRT Station and bus stops just minutes away and available round the clock.
ARHITECTURE
• by internationally-renowned RECIO + CASAS.
• Recio+Casas, since its inception, have been responsible for many prestigious projects such as First Pacific Bank in Hong Kong, Mandarin Hotel Macau, Thailand's Stock Exchange Building, and Phuket Yatch Club Hotel. In the Philippines, some of the firm’s noteworthy projects are
Pacific Plaza Towers in Fort Bonifacio, Salcedo Park in Makati and Richmonde Hotel in Ortigas.
Because of Crown Tower University Belt's proximity to major hospitals, educational institutions, and commercial areas, aside from university students, our clientele also include those in the medical profession, faculty members, start-up families, balikbayans, and other investors.
A mixture of commercial and residential condominium units, Crown Tower embodies the concepts of modern, progressive urban living – convenience and privacy and security. Specific units would be made available for business enterprises, to the benefit of residents who enjoy not only the exclusivity of their residence but also the convenience of finding everything they want near.
On top of all the amenities, the tower is designed to assure homeowners of their privacy, security and exclusivity.
LIFESTYLE AMENITIES
• Cyber Library
• Event Plazas ( Function Room )
• Sundeck / Gardens
• Swimming Pool at the Podium deck
• Roof deck
• Fitness Gym
• Laundromat
• Internet Café
BUILDING FEATURES
• Mixed use commercial and residential units
• Security counter for 24-hour security check
• Grand Residential Lobbies
• CCTV of the lobby & key areas of the building (for security)
• Condominium Administration by experienced Property Manager
• Centralized Deepwell and Overhead Water Tanks
• Three (3) high speed passenger elevators and One (1) service lift
• Complete Amenities
• Four ( 4 ) Levels Podium Parking
• Provision for raceways for internet connection, cable TV and telephone
• Standby generator set
• Fire detection and alarm system
BUILDING FEATURES
• Mixed – used commercial and residential units.
• Security counter for 24 hours security check.
• CCTV at the lobby & key areas of the building.
• Condominium administration by experienced Property Manager.
• Three high speed elevators and one service lift.
• Three level podium parking.
• Provision for raceways for internet connection, cable TV and telephone.
• Standby generator set.
• Fire detection and alarm system.
For investors, Crown Tower will command a higher rental rate because it will be the newest in the area, and because of its more advanced features and amenities.
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DoJ clears Ayala firm in mall blast
MANILA, Philippines—No officer of the Ayala firm that runs the Glorietta 2 mall in Makati City will be held criminally liable for the explosion on Oct. 19, 2007, that killed 11 people. But the Department of Justice threw out the Ayala theory that a bomb attack had caused the blast.
The DoJ panel led by Senior State Prosecutor Leo Dacera recommended the filing of criminal charges of reckless imprudence resulting in homicide and multiple physical injuries against eight officers and staff members of Makati Supermarket Corp. (MSC) and two private firms that conducted repair work in the area.
It likewise cleared Bureau of Fire Protection (BFP) personnel of any liability.
MSC spokesperson Federico Ples could not be reached for comment Thursday despite repeated attempts by the Philippine Daily Inquirer (parent company of INQUIRER.net).
The DoJ panel threw out the contention of Ayala Property Management Corp. (APMC) that the blast that also injured more than 100 persons and damaged a wing of the shopping complex was caused by an explosive.
According to the panel, there was sufficient evidence to believe that a buildup of methane gas and diesel fumes in the MSC basement in the Glorietta mall—which is owned by the Makati Supermarket Corp.—led to the blast. Ayala Land, Inc. (ALI) owns the land which is leased to MSC.
It was the Philippine National Police and the Department of Interior and Local Government that had filed the complaints against APMC, MSC and BFP officials at the DoJ.
The accused
Those recommended charged with reckless imprudence resulting in homicide and physical injuries were MSC assistant for projects and project engineer Candelario Valdueza; Marchem Industrial Sales and Services operations manager Clifford Arriola; Marchem supervisor Joselito Buenaventura; Marchem maintenance personnel Charlie Nepomuceno, Jonathan Ibuna and Juan Ricafort; Metaline operations manager and engineer Ricardo Cruz, and Metaline foreman Miguel Velasco Jr.
Marchem had conducted electrical work in the MSC basement, and Metaline, pipe work.
Those cleared of criminal responsibility were APMC building engineer Marcelo Botenes and building administrator Jowell Velvez, and Glorietta building manager Arnel Gonzales.
The DoJ panel said it found “worthwhile” to mention that Ayala companies had voluntarily shouldered the medical, funeral and burial expenses of the victims, and extended financial assistance to the injured.
SFO4 Anthony Grey, SFO2 Leonilo Balaois and Senior Insp. Reynaldo Enoc of the BFP were also cleared of neglect of duty.
But the multi-agency task force that looked into the Glorietta 2 explosion is considering filing a motion to include Ayala engineers and firemen in the charges, Director Geary Barias, chief of the National Capital Region Police Office, told the Inquirer.
Barias said the task force would hold a case conference shortly. “If we see no more need [to file the motion], we will let it be,” he said.
Civil liability
Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez Thursday told reporters that while no Ayala official would be held criminally liable for the explosion, the victims or their families could still file civil cases for damages.
“Civilly, I believe that [APMC] may still be liable. But I’m not suggesting that because they might say I encouraged it,” he said.
Gonzalez also said APMC could still contest the finding that a biogas explosion, and not a bomb attack, was responsible for the blast, “in the anticipation that there will be people who will charge them for damages.”
Although APMC runs the Glorietta mall, MSC is responsible for overseeing the repair being conducted in its own basement, the DoJ panel said in a 51-page resolution.
“The integration of the building into Glorietta 2 notwithstanding, MSC, as owner of the building, remains directly responsible for the proper maintenance and upkeep of its facilities and utilities,” it said.
The DoJ panel also said that even if MSC had designated ALI as manager of the building through a memorandum of agreement, ALI’s role was limited to selecting tenants, conducting audit examinations relating to the rent due, the billing and collection of rentals and the administration of financial matters.
“Verily, under both the [agreement] and original contract of lease between MSC and ALI, the responsibility for repairs and maintenance of the building, i.e. physical maintenance, shall be for the account of MSC,” it said.
The DoJ panel also pointed out that none of the equipment in the MSC basement was owned by the Ayala companies, and that the building, electrical, mechanical, plumbing and sanitary permits were in the name of MSC.
Thus, it said, MSC’s Valdueza could not excuse himself from responsibility for the blast. (Valdueza had contended that it was APMC that was responsible for maintaining the Glorietta mall, and that he had reminded it of the need to fix the pumps.)
Failures
In finding Marchem personnel liable, the DoJ panel said they had failed to maintain and inspect the basement and supervise their maintenance personnel.
Marchem personnel also failed to observe safety practices that led to the defective pumps and the accumulation of methane in the MSC basement, the panel said.
Marchem was also found to have altered the electrical safety devices in the basement and failed to use explosion-proof electric control cabinets and equipment.
(In their defense, Marchem personnel had countered that the electrical system and pumps in the basement were working properly, and that they had not been negligent.)
Metaline officials were recommended charged for failing to properly install the air duct ventilation system and fire protection system of the MSC building. (They had earlier said that the complaint against them was baseless and that the DILG recommendation to prosecute them ran counter to the PNP findings.)
As for the BFP officials, the DoJ panel said they inspected the building three months before the incident and the MSC was found to have complied with the building code, and their issuance of fire safety inspection certificates were found to have been done regularly.
Since their inspection, activities took place that altered the landscape of the MSC.
Happy
Barias said the task force was “happy” that charges had been recommended by the DoJ.
He added: “We are glad that the DoJ has sustained the results of our investigation that the blast was caused by an accumulation of gases in the basement.”
In maintaining that the explosion was caused by an accumulation of methane gas, the DoJ panel noted the reports of the public works and labor departments and the National Bureau of Investigation’s physics report.
According to the reports: The gas accumulated in the basement after several pumps broke down, reducing the number of working pumps.
The basement became flooded and foul odor pervaded it. There was also increased temperature and accumulation of diesel vapors because of the storage of diesel fuel in the basement, poor ventilation and lack of an exhaust system.
The spark
The spark that set off the blast could have come from the use of jumpers on the safety fuse and the presence of open switches, motor pumps and circuit breakers, among others.
As for the findings of Ayala’s consultants that the blast was triggered by a bomb, the DoJ panel said these were matters of defense that should be aired in a trial.
Ayala’s consultants had said that samples taken from the basement contained explosives residue, and that biogas generated by the sump pits could not have caused the blast because the pits were emptied thrice a day. With reports from Alcuin Papa and Elizabeth Sanchez-Lacson
Copyright 2008 INQUIRER.net and content partners. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/metro/view_arti...
By Alcuin Papa
Inquirer
First Posted 11:18pm (Mla time) 10/25/2007
MANILA, Philippines -- Grizzled veterans of the Philippine National Police (PNP) are in the thick of Chemistry 101.
PNP investigators have found themselves leafing through textbooks and combing the Internet to bone up on high school and college chemistry in the wake of the explosion at the Glorietta 2 mall on October 19.
At a meeting with Philippine Daily Inquirer reporters and editors on Wednesday, Chief Superintendent Luizo Ticman, director of the Southern Police District and head of the Multi-Agency Investigation Task Force looking into the blast, took pains to explain how methane could have been involved.
Later, he joked: “Well, that explanation should be good for [a grade of] 76.”
Ticman said information had been free-flowing for police investigators because “people from different disciplines”-- such as chemists as well as arson, metallurgic and petrochemical experts -- were part of the task force.
Director Geary Barias, chief of the National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO), said police were learning so many things from the Glorietta explosion, including chemistry, the law on criminal negligence, and how to handle crisis situations.
“It’s Chemistry 101 all over again. I think I have information overload,” he told the Inquirer, adding that he had had to go online to do research on methane and other deadly gases.
Barias’ job appears doubly hard because he has been named police spokesperson on matters related to the explosion.
“I have to understand [the information], digest it, so it will be understandable to the public,” he said.
But Barias does not seem to mind the crash course: “I’m learning a lot of things. We have to be thorough and accurate in our investigation. It also helps in explaining things to our people and media friends.”
Bomb investigators are also going back to school, so to speak.
According to a police investigator, an American explosives expert recently conducted a seminar on gas blasts for members of Explosive Ordnance Division units in Metro Manila.
Police officials said this was part of the cooperation being extended by foreign governments to the PNP.
Philippines: Police Charge 15 for Makati Mall Explosion
January 10th, 2008 · No Comments
By Mike Cohen
The Philippine National Police led Dept of Interior, “MULTI-AGENCY
INVESTIGATION TASK FORCE” released tonight at 8:30 pm in Manila the
list of names to be arrested in a report dated January 10, 2007,
naming those to be charged in connection with the findings of the Task
Force.
“The multi-agency investigating body has recommended the filing of
criminal and administrative charges against 15 persons over the
accidental explosion at the Glorietta 2 Mall in Makati City last
October 19 that killed 11 persons and injured 108 others.”
Stating the Terrorism is not the cause and negligence is the primary
cause of the explosion Fire Officials and Management of the mall and
its maintance staff will be formally charged in court. The report
says, “The investigation has ruled out with finality the terrorism or
bombing theory behind the explosion, noting that no bomb parts or
components of an explosive device were found at the scene; the absence
of a crater at the seat of explosion; no tearing effect on damages; no
soot or blackening of affected areas; no explosive residue in the skin
or clothing of victims and affected areas.” The Official summery of
the report says further.
That In the 41-page report submitted to Dept of ILG Secretary Ronaldo
V Puno, the Multi-Agency Investigation Task Force (MAITF) chaired by
Southern Police District Director, CSupt Luizo Ticman, affirmed
findings, “that the balst at the basement of Glorietta 2 was caused by
metahne and diesel vapor explosion.” The report summery futher quotes
the head of the investigation unit.”The generation and accumulation of
gas became possible due to the negligence of personnel tasked to
maintain the facilities in the basement,” Ticman said.
The MAITF is composed of investigators from the Philippine National
Police, National Bureau of Investigation, Armed Forces of the
Philippines and the Inter-agency Anti-arson Task Force of the Dept of
Interior and Local Government. The MAITF is also provided technical
support by the Dept ofScience and Technology, Dept of Environment
Natural Resources, Dept of Public Works and Highways and some NGOs. In
an audio-visual presentation in Camp Crame today, the MAITF
established that methane accumulated in the mall basement and it
reached its lower explosive limit causing a Methane Explosion.
According to the reports findings, “The Methane Explosion caused the
sudden rise in temperature and build-up of pressure in the basement,
causing the diesel fuel to reach its flash point and allow the
build-up of diesel vapor.” PNP Chief, Director General Avelino I Razon
Jr. noted that the conclusion of the MAITF is consistent with the
findings of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Australian
Federal Police, and the Isreali security experts. ”Since the
accumulation of diesel vapor inside the tank reached its explosive
range, the second xplosion- the Diesel Vapor Explosion, occurred,” the
MAITF report said.
The MAITF recommended the filing of cases for Reckless
Imprudence/Negligence (Gross Negligence) Resulting in Multiple
Homicide, Physical Injuries and Damage to Property against:
1. Engr. Candelario VALDUEZA, Project Engineer of Makati Supermarket Corp.;
2. Engr. Marcelo T BOTENES, Building Engineer of MSC-G2
3. Engr. Jowell VELVEZ, Bldg Administrator of MSC-G2
4. Engr. Arnel GONZALES, Bldg Manager of MSC-G2
5. Engr. Clifford ARRIOLA, Operation Manager of Marchem Industrial
Sales and Services Inc.
6. Joselito BUENAVENTURA, Supervisor, MARCHEM
7. Charlie NEPOMUCENO, MARCHEM Maintenance Personnel
8. Jonathan IBUNA, MARCHEM Maintenance Personnel
9. Juan RICAFORT, MARCHEM Maintenance Personnel
Recommended to be charged for violation of the Anti-Graft and Corrupt
Practices Act (RA 3019), and Administrative Charges for Gross Neglect
of Duty are:
1. SFO4 Anthony GREY, Fire Safety Inspector, Makati City Fire Station
2. SFO2 Leonilo BALAIS, Fire Safety Inspector, Makati City Fire Station
3. FSInsp Reynaldo ENOC, Fire Prevention Officer, Makati City Fire Station
The Bureau of Fire Protection and the DILG-IATF will also file a
separate case for violation of the Fire Code of the Philippine (PD
1185) against the Makati Supermarket Corporation, and the Ayala
Property Management Corporation, including:
1. Engr. Ricardo V CRUZ, Operations Manager of Metalline Enterprises, and
2. Miguel VELASCO Jr., Foreman
Also facing administrative charges for Simple Neglect of Duty is
FCInsp Jose S EMBANG Jr., City Fire Marshall of Makati City.
The Philippines largest property developer, Ayala Land, a unit of
conglomerate Ayala Land Inc. released a statement on the PNP led Philippine Government Multi Agency Task Force findings,
“Ayala Land has deep concern over the PNP findings and vowed to complete its own assessment of what happened on October 19 at its Glorietta mall in Manila’s financial district of Makati.” The explosion killed 11 people.
Alaya Corporation in its statement says, “Our own assessment shows due diligence and care was exercised in the maintenance of the basement where the explosion appears to have ccurred,”
The corporation claims that, “conditions in the basement could not have resulted in the build up of methane and diesel vapor required for such a powerful blast.” further claiming “We requested the PNP to be pen to investigating all other possibilities. We have shared lab results from forensic experts we had consulted that indicate that traces of explosives were present at the site,”
The Philippines largest property developer went on to say they, Acknowledge the authority of the PNP and the multi-agency task force as the official investigating body, we are disappointed that the evidence we have shared appears not to have been considered,” ALI senior management was not directly affected in the report which focused on the tenant leasing the basement area for its generators and other items..
Tags: glorita explsoion · mall explosion · glorietta · philippine · terrorism · manila · makati
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This report presents the circumstances surrounding the Glorietta 2 explosion, the actions taken by the Multi-Agency Investigation Task Force (MAITF) and the result of the investigations conducted. Reports (PDF format):
Video Files
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Glorietta_explosion
The 2007 Glorietta explosion occurred in the Glorietta 2 section of the Glorietta shopping complex at Ayala Center in Makati, Metropolitan Manila, in the Philippines on 19 October 2007 at around 1:25 PM PST. Initial reports indicated that the explosion originated from an LPG tank explosion in an in-mall restaurant.[1] However, authorities were (as of yet) unable to confirm the true nature or source of the explosion. The blast has killed eleven persons and injured more than 100. Many of the victims were admitted at the Makati Medical Center and Ospital ng Makati.[2][3][4]
Contents[hide] |
www.sunstar.com.ph/static/net/2007/10/25/ayala.lan...
The claim of ALI president and chief executive officer Jaime Ayala got a boost from a prominent University of the Philippines (UP) chemist who debunked the “gas leak” theory advanced by the Philippine National Police (PNP) as the likely cause of the massive blast.
Post your comments on the explosion at the Glorietta 2 mall in Makati City.
But police investigators clarified that their findings leading to an industrial explosion theory was based on the evidence gathered from the site while Ayala’s claim were mere experts’ opinion.
Chief Superintendent Luizo Ticman, head of multi-agency task force investigating the Glorietta 2 blast, said their investigation is ongoing and they are still pursuing other angles like a possible sabotage or terrorist attack, despite focusing more on the accidental theory.
Ticman said their investigators were at the site since Day 1 and what they are presenting are factual compared to the statement of the Ayala officials, which may just even be their opinion.
“Ayala’s claim that the incident was not an accident is their opinion only. I would like to point out that what we are presenting is not a conclusion but results of the investigation, our findings that there is nothing to suggest that this was caused by a bomb explosion because there is no evidence,” he said.
Quoting a report of the technical team tasked by ALI to conduct its own probe on explosion, Ayala said there was nothing wrong with the mall’s sewerage system prior to the blast contradicting the opinion of the authorities that there was a leak that had to be repaired.
“Results of the technical study showed there could not have been an accumulation of high methane gas levels in the mall’s basement since wastes coming from the mall stays in the sump pit for less than 24 hours,” Ayala said in a press conference at the Intercontinental Hotel in Makati.
Ayala said the technical team found no likely errors as to result to such a massive blast.
"There is constant flow of mainly liquid wastewater from toilets into sump pit and onto city sewer. Wastewater entering the pit stays in pit for less than 24 hours. The usual decomposition process brought about by large amounts of solid matter in house septic tanks does not occur in this pit," Ayala said, reading from results of the company’s technical team study.
Ayala also said there were no "reports or observations by maintenance personnel of any aberrations to the diesel tank," noting that the diesel fuel tank was last used during the last power outage in June.
He also noted that the basement is well-ventilated.
But police investigators said they discovered that there was no functioning ventilation and no exhaust system, which contributes to the increase in temperature and accumulation of diesel vapor/fumes; there were open switches, motor pumps, batteries and other possible igniters; and that the vent of explosion clearly showed strong upward push which characterize gas explosion.
Ticman said their gas explosion angle is supported by the upward ruptures and damage on the diesel tank, the concave concrete slab directly above the diesel tank, and the presence of septic tanks and wastewater treatment facilities that produce methane.
However, Ayala said the diesel fuel tank has approximately 14,000 liters capacity but has only 6,000 liters due to last June’s power outage.
He added that the flash point of diesel contained is 72 degrees Celsius and auto ignition temperature is 220 degrees Celsius, saying that the ambient room temperature before the time of explosion was estimated 28-30 degrees Celsius.
But National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) Director Geary Barias said inspection at the basement of the mall showed that it “did not follow the standard cylindrical structure” for fuel tanks.
Barias said the fuel tanks, which reportedly contained more than 8,000 liters of diesel were “rectangular” and were not probably evenly distributed causing the explosion.
Ayala in the same press conference also explained the a regular pick-up and clean-up of the grease trap, which separates grease from wastewater entering the sump pit, was maintained and that grease is extracted daily to every morning.
He said there are 2-types of sump pit -- the kitchen sump pit where wastewater from the kitchens of five restaurants in Glorietta 2 enters the sump pit where a grease trap separates grease from water and was also extracted daily, and the waste sump pit, where the wastewater from the toilets in the portion of G2 is dumped.
He explained further that the wastewater from the kitchen sump pit was pumped out to the main city sewer line automatically while the waste sump pit seldom contained solid wastes due to the nature of customer use of toilets in the restaurants, which was also pumped out to the street sewer by a sump pump.
“Therefore, there is constant flow of mainly liquid wastewater from the toilets into the sump pit and on to the city sewer. Wastewater entering the sump pit stays in the sump pit for less than 24 hours. The usual decomposition process brought about by large amounts of solid matter in house septic tanks does not occur in this commercial sump pit,” Ayala claimed citing the study conducted by the technical team.
He added that their technical team recently began compiling relevant information and already submitted an initial report to the company on the evening of Tuesday.
Ayala said they have furnished the PNP with additional technical information that would be helpful to the ongoing investigation, particularly with respect to the basement area, which was recently reported to have caused the deadly explosion.
Ticman asked the Ayala officials to instead furnish the Task Force a copy of their own findings to compare it with their own results and that of the foreign and local experts that are helping in the investigations.
Ticman said they are also inviting the experts from the UP to join them in their inspection and investigations instead of criticizing or questioning their findings.
He said the PNP had earlier asked the UP experts to join them but so far they have not turned up.
“I'm talking about the evidence (here)…They (UP experts) have no findings. I have not seen any findings. They are just saying that it's not possible. But the experts we're talking with are saying that it's possible. Our experts who are on board have inspected the area, they have seen the evidences we have,” he said.
Ticman added that despite their initial findings, they continue to investigate, conduct further studies, and consult other people, until they have ascertained that they have found out the truth and there are no more questions or doubts on the reason and cause of the explosion.
At the same time, Ayala said they are ready to face charges from the families of the victims of last Friday’s explosion.
“We are ready to face the consequences of the tragedy if the result of the PNP investigation points to the company’s negligence. Ayala Land has always done the right thing. We are ready whatever actions we have to take,” Ayala said, adding that most of their efforts have been focused in assisting the victims and securing the safety of their premises and patrons.
He also said they are waiting for the results of investigations conducted by local authorities and foreign experts before it makes a final assessment on the mall explosion.
Asked if they are prepared to charge anyone, regardless if it is from Ayala or even from the Makati City government, if proven that the blast was an accident, Ticman said: “Of course, kung talagang magiging ang kalalabasan nito ay iyung gas explosion…Kung kinakailangan, at kung iyan ang ating findings, why not?”
“Kailangang suriin kung mayroong naging kapabayaan, kung sino man at aling organization. So iyan ay pinagaaralan na rin ng ating ibang counterparts sa ibang agencies ng government helping us in the investigation,” he added.
Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Sergio Antonio Apostol, in a separate interview, said city engineers and officials of Makati maybe liable for negligence aside from the mall owners if it is really proven that it was a gas explosion.
Dr. Ernesto dela Cruz, chairman of the UP Chemical Engineering Department, said in a radio interview that it was highly improbable that diesel fumes caused the explosion, contrary to the theory being pursued by police investigators.
Dela Cruz said it was almost impossible to have an accumulation of diesel fumes in the mall basement, saying diesel will not evaporate until it reaches the temperature of 210 degrees Celsius, which is hotter than boiling water.
Director Barias said there was a high probability that the Friday explosion at the Glorietta 2 mall was an accident though a bomb attack was not ruled out totally.
Barias said post-blast probers also failed to recover evidence that will indicate the blast was caused by a bomb.
He said aside from the failure to recover triggering devices, power source, and traces of explosives the investigators also found no crater at the blast site.
Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno said there is a strong possibility that the explosion was caused by “underground structures” at Glorietta, including the diesel depot, and the presence of a methane gas concentration that could have abetted the blast. (JMR/AH/Sunnex)
thepurplehaze.wordpress.com/2007/10/20/ayalas-offi...
We at Ayala Land are deeply saddened by yesterday’s explosion that occurred at around 1:30pm in Glorietta 2. We would like to extend our deepest condolences to the families affected by this tragedy. We stand in solidarity with those who were hurt during the explosion, and would like to ensure the public that we are extending the utmost care and maximum medical treatment to the injured and the families of those killed.
In terms of our priorities at this point, we are focusing our efforts on three areas:
- Extending maximum assistance to those injured and the families of those who died.
- Cooperating with authorities in the police investigation
- Ensuring safety and security of our customers
VICTIM ASSISTANCE
In terms of assisting those injured from the explosion, our people have been in the hospital since yesterday afternoon and continue to be there, working closely with the Red Cross and the doctors and medical personnel of Makati Medical Center and Ospital ng Makati. Our company physician, Dr. Bernardo Cueto, has been designated as the attending physician at Makati Medical Center.
We would like to commend the valiant effort of the Red Cross, the medical personnel at Makati Med and Ospital ng Makati, and all those involved in the rescue operations for their bravery and courage in this time of tragedy. Our primary concern continues to be the welfare and well-being of those injured, the families of those killed, and all those affected by this tragedy.
We have been monitoring closely the status of the injured. Based on reports we have received, as of this morning 68 injured persons were brought to Makati Medical Center and 34 injured persons to Ospital ng Makati. Of these 102 injured persons, 71 have been released 2 remain in Ospital ng Makati but will be discharged today, and 15 in Makati Medical Center are still confined, and 3 are in the Intensive Care Unit. Per police reports, 9 deaths have been confirmed. We are extending maximum assistance and care to the victims of this tragedy and their families.
We will have a mass immediately after this press conference at 11am in Glorietta 3 in memory of those killed and to continue to pray for the safe recovery of those injured.
COOPERATION WITH AUTHORITIES RE. INVESTIGATION
In terms of the investigation moving forward, we are in close and constant communication with the authorities from the PNP and Makati City Hall. The PNP is in the lead in the investigation, we are extending to them our full support and cooperation as they ascertain the cause and nature of the explosion.
CUSTOMERS AND SAFETY
Finally, with regards to the safety and security of our customers, the safety and security of the public continue to be our paramount concern at Ayala Center and at all our malls, as it has always been.
A team of independent structural engineers from Aromin and Sy Associates as well as our own people inspected the site of the explosion last night and again this morning. After undergoing an extensive study of the premises, they have determined that Glorietta 1, 3, and 4’s structural integrity is sound and gave us assurances that we will be able to resume normal mall operations for these areas today. In this regard, we have determined that we can, in fact, resume normal operations for Glorietta 1, 3, and 4 this morning. The affected area at Glorietta 2 has been cordoned off as police investigations continue.
In light of this incident, we will be further beefing up security at Glorietta and across all our malls. For Glorietta in particular, we will be supplementing the complement of 120 security guards that regularly protect and patrol the interior and exterior of the mall with additional security personnel and bomb-sniffing dogs. This is in addition to the metal detectors that we installed last year at the mall entrances with heavy pedestrian traffic. We have instructed all security personnel to continue to be vigilant and to continue to coordinate closely with the PNP and the local government of the City of Makati.
Again, we would like to assure the public that your safety at our malls continues to be our primary concern, and we will continue to review our procedures moving forward to continue to ensure the safety of the public even as we resume normal mall operations.
To conclude, let me just say that we at Ayala Land are deeply saddened at what has happened. We, too, are victims of this incident, and we will extend our utmost cooperation to the investigating authorities to determine the cause and nature of the explosion. As a gesture of our solidarity with the victims and their families, we are extending moral and financial help to them and will provide them maximum care and assistance.
The following are the contact persons from Ayala Land:
- For coordination with the families of those injured:
- Elis Tanlapco, 0917-851-5609
- For inquiries on identities of those injured / deceased, please call the Red Cross hotline: 819-5767; 815-9469; 0915-987-6716.
- For all media inquiries:
- Alfie Reyes, Corporate Spokesman – 0917-807-7296;
- Jan Bengzon, Head, External Affairs – 0917-840-5552
- For all tenant inquiries:
- Myrna Fernandez, Ayala Malls Group – 0917-839-8095
- Pam Perez, Ayala Malls Group – 0917-881-1009
thepurplehaze.wordpress.com/2007/10/20/ayalas-offi...
www.mukamo.com/foreign-experts-rule-out-bomb-in-gl...
Director General Avelino Razon Jr., chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP), said that bomb experts from the United States (from the Federal Bureau of Investigation), Australia (Australian Federal Police) and Israel submitted the results of their investigation on the Glorietta 2 explosion to Filipino investigators Tuesday.
The foreign bomb experts assisted in the investigation on the explosion in Makati City and they have ruled out the theory that a bomb caused the explosion. Razon cited the absence of bomb fragments and the rupturing of a diesel tank at the basement of the Glorietta mall as signs indicating the explosion was an accident and not a bomb.
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Ayala land in Calatagan to be seized
Inquirer.net - May 22, 2008 MANILA , Philippines - - The Department of Environment and Natural Resources on Thursday moved to implement a 20 - year - old Supreme Court decision ordering the distribution to farmers of land ...
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Manila clears developer Ayala Land in mall blast
Reuters - May 22, 2008 MANILA , May 22 ( Reuters ) - The Philippines cleared the country's top property developer , Ayala Land ( ALI.PS : Quote , Profile , Research ) , on Thursday of any responsibility for an explosion ...
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Reuters - May 13, 2008 MANILA , May 13 ( Reuters ) - Ayala Land ( ALI.PS : Quote , Profile , Research ) , the Philippines ' biggest property developer , said on Tuesday its board had approved the issue of 4 billion ...
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Ayala to put up mall in CDO: Emano
Sun.Star - May 13, 2008 WHILE construction of the posh Ayala - owned subdivision Alegria Hills is now ongoing , Vice Mayor Vicente Emano announced that the company is also planning to put up a shopping mall in the city.In ...
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Water Champion: Antonino T. Aquino
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Antonino T. Aquino is currently President of Manila Water Company, Inc. and Managing Director of Ayala Corporation. He has been with Manila Water since its concession agreement with Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System began in 1997, becoming President of the company in 1999.
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What has Manila Water done differently than other private water service providers that you believe is making a sizeable difference?
Manila Water is one of the few companies that has aligned its business plans with its sustainable development goals of social and environmental improvement. In the process, we emerged a more successful business enterprise.
Early on, we recognized that we are in the business of providing a very basic need. And since a huge portion of our customer base belongs to the poorer sections of society, we thought of prioritizing water for the poor programs. And so Tubig para sa Barangay (TPSB) or Water for the Community was born to provide safe drinking water to informal settlements, while reducing water losses caused by unregistered connections from these areas. All our other sustainable development programs, of which TPSB is one, are directed towards improving the lives of our customers.
In addition to these, we attained operating efficiency improvements and financial viability. The Manila Water concession is now regarded as one of the successful public-private partnerships in the world. We have a progressive regulatory framework that has proven to be highly effective. Part of the credit for the success of the concession goes to the strong professional partnership that has been established between Manila Water and the regulators in the past 8 years.
What are your biggest challenges with delivering water supply to Manila neighborhoods, particularly the slum areas?
Our system losses continue to be a major challenge for the company. We were fairly successful at reducing non-revenue water (NRW) to meet our regulatory targets in the past year. But a considerable amount of capital investment is needed to further bring down the level of NWR from its present level of 36%. We had to work at NRW reduction because without water, poor communities are at a bigger disadvantage. In the past, they had to pay five times the current rates, had fewer hours of water supply and bought water from vendors.
So we went to depressed communities via our Territory Management program. We assigned a territory manager to take care of the needs of a particular area such as Manggahan Floodway. Through our territory managers, we started to establish partnerships with local organizations to facilitate the implementation of projects. A key learning for us was that stakeholder participation is important to ensure that the project objectives are met. Now, we have one Territory Business Manager for every poor community being served through TPSB, which is a flagship project of the company.
Has Manila Water reached its target for connecting poor households as new users?
Over the past 8 years, Manila Water has already served about 820,000 people in 517 low income communities through our TPSB program. We will aggressively pursue our TPSB projects for the medium term by providing properly connected water system for urban poor communities. Our target is to serve 100,000 people from poor communities every year. And this will materialize with the support of our partners in the communities we serve.
What are Manila Water's plans and targets for addressing sanitation services?
Under the concession agreement, Manila Water was initially required to extend the existing sewerage system by making new connections and offering sanitation services every 7 years. We estimated that these targets would require a huge investment which, realistically, would not be recovered through tariff increases to customers. In addition, there are physical constraints to building large, centralized sewage treatment plants because of the road congestion in Metro Manila.
During our business plan review in 2003, we agreed, together with the Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) and the regulators, to adopt a different approach. We are now implementing a decentralized approach by providing on-site sewerage treatment plants to medium and high rise housing establishments and by taking control of existing sewerage systems.
From 1997, we have already doubled the sewerage capacity and have invested $23 million to rehabilitate and improve our sewerage operations. We also constructed 26 package sewage treatment plants located in small communities within the East Zone. We expect to double coverage to 30 percent of the population in the next 5 years. This will cost us $64 million with loan facilities from the World Bank, plus $21 million in equity.
In the same program, septic tank desludging services will be offered to 100% of the population within the next 5 years. We are currently building 3 septage treatment plants for this purpose and will be procuring a fleet of 134 tankers over a period of 10 years.
Civil Society groups often use the 1997 Manila Water concession as an example for opposing private sector involvement in the sector. What do these groups have right and wrong about the Manila experience?
In our public consultations, the vast majority of civil society groups are supportive of Manila Water's efforts, particularly in poor communities. A very small minority, however, decry the periodic increase in tariffs.
However, we continue to have affordable tariff rates at 0.33 US cents per cubic meter. Besides, we would have higher tariffs now had there been no private sector participation in Manila. Moreover, our tariff increases have gone largely to capital expenditures to improve access of the poor to piped water supply. Over and above the tariff increases, we have even raised $322 million in equity and loans to supplement our capital spending program. Our initial public offering on the Philippine Stock Exchange in March enabled us to raise funds to help finance our capital investments in the next few years.
To what length will Manila Water pursue a stake in the troubled Maynilad concession in East Manila?
Manila Water would like to share its best practices with the other concessionaire, particularly with regard to service to urban poor communities, NRW reduction, and operational efficiencies. We would like to be involved in the operations of Maynilad, together with other investors.
With 8 years experience as a large water service provider in Manila, what challenges prepare the company for doing business elsewhere in the Philippines and Asia?
Manila Water's added value, as a large water service provider, will really be sharing its best practices. We have 8 years experience of improving the East Zone water/ wastewater system and our track record speaks for us. I think that our experience will be most applicable to similarly situated systems as well as third world countries in South East Asia.
What does Manila Water hope to gain from its recently published Sustainability Report?
Our Sustainability Report clearly defined for us the vision, organizational commitment and buy-in by employees. It also defined for us the performance metrics by which we can measure our initiatives and we are committed to publish a report each year.
Publishing the first report is an opportunity for us to demonstrate the social and environmental dimension of our business and to highlight the success of Public-Private Partnership. We hope that through this, we will also obtain access to developmental funds by multi-lateral organizations with shared objectives.
Contacts
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K.E. Seetharam Senior Water Supply and Sanitation Specialist E-mail: water@adb.org |
Ellen Pascua Water Fund Manager E-mail: epascua@adb.org |
| ANTONINO T. AQUINO President Manila Water Company, Inc. |
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Summary
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29/F, Tower One Building Ayala Triangle, Ayala Avenue
Makati City, 1226 Philippines +63-632-8485313 (Phone) +63-632-8485336 (Fax) |
Company website: http://www.ayalaland.com.ph Corporate History/Profile, Executives |
Key Stats & Ratios
| Quarterly (Mar '08) |
Annual (2007) |
Annual (TTM) |
|
| Net Profit Margin | 23.57% | 19.82% | 19.46% |
| Operating Margin | 29.82% | 23.55% | 23.11% |
| EBITD Margin | - | 32.12% | 31.29% |
| Return on Average Assets | 9.19% | 6.32% | 6.48% |
| Return on Average Equity | 15.74% | 10.16% | 11.02% |
| Employees | 1,986 | - | - |
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| Hong Kong Ferry (Holdings) Co. Ltd. | Hong Kong Ferry (Holdings) Co. Ltd. | HKG | 0050 | 7.40 | +0.04 (0.54%) | 2.64B | |
| International Equities Corporation Ltd | International Equities Corporation Ltd | ASX | IEQ | 0.07 | 0.00 (0.00%) | 8.98M | |
| SEAL Incorporated Berhad | SEAL Incorporated Berhad | KUL | SEAL |
#606 Jaime Zobel de Ayala & family
 © Munshi Ahmed |
Fortune: inherited
Source: Diversified
Net Worth: 1.3
Country Of Citizenship: Philippines
Residence: Manila, Philippines, Asia & Australia
Industry: Diversified
Marital Status: married, 7 children
De La Salle University
Harvard University
Runs Ayala Corp., the oldest and largest conglomerate in the Philippines, founded in 1834. Has interests in real estate, water and telecom, among other industries. For 2005 posted record profits of $150 million. Big environmentalist, chairs the Philippines branch of the World Wildlife Fund.
Distribution of Billionaires by Residence
Diameter of disc reflects size of fortune. The red disc indicates Jaime Zobel de Ayala & family
#1 Jaime Zobel de Ayala & family
10.18.07, 6:00 PM ET
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Networth: $2 billion
Age: 73
Marital Status: Married, 7 children
Jaime Zobel de Ayala (born 1934) is a prominent Filipino businessman and photographer of German and Spanish descent[citation needed]. He served as both president and chairman of Ayala Corporation from 1984 to 1994 (succeeding his first cousin, Enrique Zobel), when he retired as president. In 2006 he retired as chairman; he is currently chairman emeritus of the corporation. His eldest son, Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala II, is chairman and chief executive officer of Ayala while his younger son, Fernando Zobel, is president of the corporation.
Zobel graduated from Harvard University in 1957 with a Bachelor of Arts in architectural science. He was Philippine ambassador to the Court of St. James's in London and the Scandinavian countries from 1970 to 1975. He is married to Beatriz Miranda Zobel de Ayala.
In the 2006 Forbes ranking of billionaires, "Jaime Zobel de Ayala & family" was ranked #606 with a net worth of US$1.3 billion.
In 2007, Jaime Zobel de Ayala tied with Henry Sy as the richest person in the Philippines with a net worth of $2.6 Billion according to Forbes magazine.
The February 2008 Forbes Asia magazine’s first Heroes of Philanthropy list included 4 Filipinos - Jaime Zobel de Ayala, John Gokongwei, Ramon del Rosario Jr., and Oscar Lopez.The list is composed of 4 philanthropists each from 13 selected countries and territories in Asia.[1]
www.yugatech.com/blog/wifi/aa-hotspots-on-google-e...
Philippine meets Thailand in ASEAN June 24, 2008 Philippines faces Thailand in both the boys’ team and girls’ team events of the ASEAN Schools Badminton Championships which starts today at the Ninoy Aquino Stadium, Rizal Memorial Sports Complex, Manila. read more.. |
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more on ASEAN website
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PSC-MILO Summer Sports Program Closing Ceremony Philippine Sports Commission held the closing ceremony of PSC-MILO Summer Sports Program with the theme “Lakas ng Kabataan para sa Kinabukasan” on May 23, 2008, 3:00 pm at Enchanted Kingdom Sta. Rosa, Laguna. read more... view photos |
“We play fair. We play according to the rules. We play true,” jointly declared Ramirez and Pineda, echoing the slogan of the WADA.
Tinikling
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tinikling - (tikling-bird; in-to be like; tinikling- to be like a tikling) is a dance from the Philippines.
Tinikling involves two people hitting bamboo poles, using them to beat, tap, and slide on the ground and against each other in coordination with one or more dancers who step over and in between the poles in a dance. It originated in Leyte among the Visayan islands in central Philippines as an imitation of the tikling bird dodging bamboo traps set by rice farmers. The bamboo is also used as a percussive instrument as it is banged against the ground (or a piece of wood to make it easier to hold) and each other in a pattern. when the bamboo closes it has to be hard enough to make a sound and the dancers must be quick enough to not get their foot (or feet) caught. As the dance continues the banging of the bamboo becomes faster and harder , the sound of clashing bamboo thrills the crowd and the quickness of feet demonstrated by the dancers awes them.
In the United States, tinikling is taught as part of physical education class in many elementary schools. It is a form of aerobic exercise that also improves spatial awareness, rhythm, foot and leg speed, agility, and coordination.
[edit] See also
- Cariñosa - A similar dance, regarded as the national dance of the Philippines.[citation needed]
SM Mall of Asia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| SM Mall of Asia | |
 "No other mall comes close." |
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| Facts and statistics | |
|---|---|
| Location | Bay City, Pasay City, Philippines |
| Opening date | May 21, 2006 |
| Developer | SM Prime Holdings |
| Management | SM Prime Holdings |
| Owner | SM Prime Holdings |
| Architect | Arquitectonica |
| No. of stores and services | 600 shops, 150 dining establishments |
| No. of anchor tenants | 9 |
| Total retail floor area | 407,101 m² |
| Parking | 5,000 cars |
| No. of floors | 2 for the Main and Entertainment Malls, 5 for the North and 8 South Parking Buildings |
| Website | SM Mall of Asia |
Coordinates: 
14°32′6.24″N, 120°58′55.75″E
The 'SM Mall of Asia' (also known as MOA) is the largest shopping mall in the Philippines and is the 3rd largest shopping mall in the world in terms of Gross Leasable Area according to Forbes Magazine, after the South Dongguan Mall (China) and Golden Resources Mall (China). [1] It opened on May 21, 2006.[2]
It is owned and operated by SM Prime Holdings, under the management of Henry Sy, a Chinese-Filipino business tycoon. It was abbreviated as MoA.
Temporary Maintenance
Thank you for visiting Friendster. While our goal is to give you 24-hour access to Friendster, from time to time, we need to do maintenance to ensure you have the best possible experience. We will be back online shortly.
In the meantime, we would like to share some great facts about the Friendster community.
Did you know?
- Friendster is bigger today than ever before - there are over 70 million registered members visiting us from over 75 countries globally!
- Friendster is now the 8th largest website on the planet in terms of traffic, serving over 18 billion page views per month
- Friendster is a leading website in many Asian countries and is now the #1 most visited site in the Philippines and Indonesia and the #2 most visited site in Singapore and Malaysia according to Alexa
- Friendster is growing rapidly in the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Taiwan,Japan, Korea, and China (don't forget to connect to your friends from these countries!)
- Over 80 thousand people have joined Friendster in the last 24 hours
Additionally...
- Friendster continues to add new features and build a global community for friends to connect, share and network with one another
- Friendster has recently launched:
- Apps on Friendster: Add Apps to your profile - music, photo slideshows, and more!
- - Multiple Languages: Users now have a choice of English, Chinese (both Traditional and Simplified), Japanese, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Korean, and Spanish to navigate the site, enter content and use features.
- - Fan Profiles: Enable entities like bands, musicians, artists, models, non-profits, athletes, websites and venues to build a fan base.
- - Open Platform: Developers can now build and deploy widgets on top of the Friendster global social networking platform.
- - Classifieds: Lets users search and post listings for free and access locally targeted classifieds
- - Schools in over 10 NEW countries including: Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, India, Malaysia, Norway, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, United Kingdom, and The United States
Thanks for being part of such a great community!
- The Friendster Team
- Drag the picture on the left and drop it into the "House" icon.
- Click on "Yes" from the pop-up window.
- you're done!
How can I make Friendster my homepage?
If you are using IE:
- Under the "Tools" menu, click "Internet Options".
- Click on the "General" tab.
- Type "http://www.friendster.com" in the text box, then OK.
If you are using Firefox:
- Under the "Tools" menu, click "Options".
- Click the "General" tab.
- Type "http://www.friendster.com" in the text box, then OK.
If you are using Firefox or Safari for the Mac:
- Click on "Firefox" in the top left corner and select "Preferences".
- If you are not already on the "General" tab, click "General".
- Type "http://www.friendster.com" in the "Location" area.
- Click the "Enter" button on your keyboard then close the "Preferences" window.
If you are using Netscape 7.0:
Under the "Edit" menu, click "Preferences". Under the "Home page" section, in the "Home page location" text box, type "http://www.friendster.com". Click "OK."Some recent press coverage
- Friendster Receives A 2008 Webware 100 Award In The Social Category
- Friendster Moves to Asia
- Friendster Now Available in Top 3 Languages on the Internet
- Friendster Opens Platform to Developers
- Friendster Fan Profiles - The International Threat
- What Can Users Expect From OpenSocial?
Some great Friendster Blogs
venturebeat.com/2007/06/25/friendster-sees-massive...
updated
Friendster, the early social network that stumbled badly three years ago and gave up leadership status to MySpace, Facebook and others, continues to recover — and its 40 percent page view boost last month is remarkable.
The site had 24.7 million unique users last month, according to the latest Comscore data for global traffic just released. It lags behind leaders such as MySpace and Facebook (see chart below), but it is holding its own among the large pack of second-tier social networks of size, including Bebo and Piczo, as it grows in places like Malaysia and the Philippines.
The site’s page views, though, grew to 9 billion, a whopping 41 percent in May compared to April. At first glance, this suggests some mistake, or worse, a scam. We talked with David Jones, vice president of marketing, and he said the boost was coming in a number of ways, but assured us they are legitimate. The site has made a number of changes over the past two months. The biggest is that it has finally managed to fix the technology that had slowed its growth in 2004: Its “graph server” allows it to see how you are linked to your friends through three degrees (allows you to control relationships with your friends, their friends’ friends, etc.). The graph plagued Friendster at first by creating too many variables to track. It has been fixed to be able to manage four quadrillion possible configurations.
Aside from that, Friendster is driving page views in other ways. Just as on Facebook, when your friends change their status, such as add a friend, that information gets updated on your profile. The system also defaults to sending you an email with those changes weekly — prompting you to click through to Friendster, and creating still more page views. It has added a classmate function, to track people you may have gone to school with. It has added a classifieds section. When you sign up with Friendster, it will prompt you to add your contacts from your address books, and tell you who is not already in Friendster and prompt you to invite them. This, of course, drives still more page views as those friends click into to see your invite. And yet, while many of these features drive up page views, and may seem artificial, they have become pretty standard at other sites.
The company is still not profitable, but is poised to be soon, Jones said.
PEOPLE POWER IN THE PHILIPPINES
FERDINAND MARCOSWhen Ferdinand Marcos was twenty years old he was arrested for conspiracy in the murder of one of his father's political rivals. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to prison. The case was appealed before the Philippine Supreme Court. Marcos, a young lawyer with no trial experience, represented himself and won the appeal. He was set free. At one time Marcos was one of the world's most powerful dictators. First elected president of the Philippines in 1965, he pulled the strings of power like a master puppeteer. He consolidated power by manipulating public opinion, stealing elections, perfecting the arts of political patronage and bribery. Arrests and assassinations kept the public living in fear. Although the Philippine constitution limited the presidency to two four-year terms, Marcos ruled for twenty years. He achieved this by suspending the constitution (after declaring martial law), and then writing another constitution more conducive to his ambitions. He ran the Philippines like it was his private country club, controlling the military, the parliament, the courts, the bureaucracy, the press and several business monopolies. He and his "cronies" got richer while the country got poorer. ASSASSINATIONThen in 1983 Benigno Aquino decided to return to the Philippines after three years of self-imposed exile. As a popular politician, Aquino represented the primary threat to the Marcos presidency. For his "protection," a military escort greeted Aquino when he arrived at Manila International Airport. As he exited the plane, there were shots. When it was over Aquino's body lay sprawled on the tarmac. The assassination of Benigno Aquino was the match that lit the fire that would eventually consume the Marcos regime. THE FUNERALThe Marcos government banned TV coverage of the Aquino funeral. As a result, thousands of people showed up, wanting to see for themselves what was going on. The funeral march turned into an eleven-hour impromptu demonstration against Marcos. By not allowing TV coverage, Marcos was using the old-fashioned tactics of heavy-handed repression. He didn't understand what the elites of most modern industrial nations have learned—that there are much more subtle (and efficient) means of controlling a population. Had he allowed, even encouraged, extensive TV coverage and turned the whole affair into a spectacle, people may have stayed home and watched the tube instead of going out and getting involved. REACTIONThe public reacted angrily to the Aquino murder. Rallies and other forms of resistance sprang up in cities and towns all over the Philippines. During the next two and a half years all segments of the population, including the upper and middle classes, joined the struggle to get rid of Marcos. Finally, yielding to pressure from his people (and the U.S.), Marcos called for presidential elections to prove he still had widespread support. Benigno Aquino's widow Cory, a self-described housewife, ran against Marcos. The election was marked by widespread fraud, with Marcos' thugs beating up election workers and scrambling voter roles. The government declared Marcos the winner. After the election Cory Aquino spoke to a crowd of one million people at a rally in Manila. She proposed a seven-part program of nonviolent resistance, including a one-day work stoppage and a boycott of Marcos-controlled banks, stores and newspapers. She urged people to "experiment with nonviolent forms of protest" and declared: "...if Goliath refuses to yield, we shall keep dipping into our arsenal of nonviolence and escalate our nonviolent struggle." The revolution had begun. DEFECTIONOn February 22, 1986, Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and Deputy Chief of Staff Fidel Ramos defect from the Marcos government. Enrile and Ramos barricade themselves in the Defense Ministry headquarters in Manila, along with a small group of sympathetic troops. They say they are prepared to die rather than continue supporting the corrupt Marcos regime. Marcos is not worried about the rebel officers. "They are cornered," he says. They "can be easily wiped out with simple artillery and tank fire." He declares: "I intend to stay as President and if necessary I will defend this position with all the force at my disposal." Unfortunately for Marcos, force is not the same as power, and although he still has plenty of force at his disposal, the sources of his power are drying up. RESISTANCERadio Veritas, an independent radio station run by the Catholic Church, calls for people to surround the Defense Ministry and block the movement of any troops that Marcos might send. Hundreds of thousands of people respond. They chop down trees and park buses in intersections to blockade streets leading to Camp Crame where the small contingent of rebels has consolidated their forces. For the next four days, entire families camp out on the streets of Manila, using their bodies to protect the rebel troops from attack. A carnival-like atmosphere prevails. Hawkers sell peanuts and souvenirs. People sing and dance and cheer. They talk and sleep and listen to Radio Veritas. Priests hold street masses and prayer vigils. There are spontaneous rallies and processions. Marcos has a plan: "We'll bide our time, but we'll disperse the civilians, protects them, take care of them, and then we'll hit Enrile and Ramos." He sends Marines, tanks and armored personnel carriers to attack Camp Crame. Marcos' soldiers and weapons are met in the streets by tens of thousands of ordinary Filipinos who are surrounding Camp Crame to protect the rebel officers. As the tanks start forward into the crowd, people sit down in front of them. The tanks stop. People offer the soldiers candy and cigarettes, asking them to defect and join the rebellion. Young girls walk among the soldiers, passing out flowers. The blocked tanks start forward again. The people sit tight, holding their ground. The tanks stop again. A Marine commander threatens to start shooting. Priests and nuns kneel before the tanks, praying the Rosary. No shots are fired. Finally the tanks turn around and withdraw as the crowd cheers. Marcos, the power professional, knows the foundation of his authority is perception. Despite his frail health, he lashes out against the rebels with macho bluster: "If they think I am sick, I may even want to lead the troops to wipe out this Enrile and Ramos. I am just like an old war horse, smelling powder and getting stronger." Enrile responds: "He can't even lead himself to the bathroom." On February 24 Marcos imposes a dusk to dawn curfew. No one pays any attention. By now the Reagan White House, whose support is one of the keys to Marcos' power, is openly calling for him to resign. Troops begin to defect in increasing numbers. Seven helicopter gunships land at Camp Crame to join the rebels. A small group of rebel soldiers in Manila take over channel four, a government-run TV station, cutting off a Marcos speech in mid-sentence. Tens of thousands gather outside to defend the station while the opposition begins broadcasting news updates and appeals for assistance from Enrile, Ramos and Aquino. DEFENDING CHANNEL FOURWhen several platoons of loyalist soldiers try to take back channel four, they are surrounded by civilians. A priest walks up and leads the crowd in the Lord's Prayer. People begin shaking the soldiers' hands and giving them McDonalds hamburgers, doughnuts and orange soda. The tension eases. After a while the commander agrees to withdraw his troops. As the soldiers prepare to depart, a middle-aged woman in an Aquino T-shirt helps a machine gunner wind belts of ammunition around his chest. "There, now you look like Rambo," she tells him. But as the soldier bends down to pick up his gun, it accidentally discharges. Another soldier is hit in the face and killed. It is the only violent death on February 24, the next to last day of the revolution. VICTORYOn the 25th both Aquino and Marcos hold separate inaugurations. The Marcos inauguration is a pathetic affair, attended by family members and a few paid guests. Behind the scenes Marcos is maneuvering to save face, placing phone calls to influential Filipinos and begging to be allowed to stay on as an "Honorary President," or at least to remain in the Philippines as a private citizen. He must be astonished to see his power, which seemed so absolute only a few weeks ago, evaporate so quickly and completely. At about nine o'clock that night, Marcos and his family sneak out the back door of Malacañang Palace and take a boat across the Pasig River where helicopters are waiting. At Clark Air base they board a U.S. Air Force plane headed for Guam. Marcos, who ruled for twenty years as one of the world's most powerful dictators, is now just a sick old man fleeing his country like a frightened dog. When Marcos' departure is announced jubilant Filipinos celebrate in the streets and flood into Malacañang Palace. There is some fighting and retribution against citizens and troops who had been loyal to Marcos, but it is minimal. After violent revolutions there are always scores to settle, grudges to satisfy, revenge to extract, and the cycle of violence continues. But because the Filipino people created major political change largely without violence, national reconciliation was that much easier. COMMENTARYWhile the Philippine revolution deposed a powerful dictator, it left much of the old centralized power structure unchanged. The U.S. still retained major influence through military aid and bases. The Philippine military remained intact under Defense Minister Enrile, the same man who had gotten rich from political connections while serving as Defense Minister under Marcos. The new President, Cory Aquino, was from a wealthy family. The poor were still poor, and the rich were still in charge. Capitalism emerged stronger than ever. What the story of the Philippine revolution demonstrates is the power people can have when they withdraw consent. The same dynamics apply, no matter what the issue. Had Filipinos decided to go on and struggle for a more equitable distribution of wealth, the abolition of the military, or a decentralized government that was more responsive to their needs, who knows what more amazing things they might have achieved. 1997
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LINKS TO RELATED PAGES ON THIS SITE
THE POLITICS OF NONVIOLENT ACTION
LINKS TO RELATED PAGES ON OTHER SITES
The 1986 EDSA Revolution Website
A thoughtful look back at the people power revolution from many points of view. Includes pictures and quotes from ordinary people as well as leaders. A great site.
Remembering 1986 People Power Revolution
Several commentaries about the effects of the revolution on the Philippines today.
María Corazón Sumulong Cojuangco-Aquino (born January 25, 1933), widely known as Cory Aquino, was the 11th President of the Philippines, serving from 1986 to 1992. She was the first female President of the Philippines and was Asia's first female President (not including Soong Ching-ling, Honorary President and acting Chairman of China). She is a world-renowned advocate of democracy, peace, women's empowerment, and religious piety.
Aquino is the widow of Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr., a leading figure in the political opposition against the autocratic rule of President Ferdinand Marcos. After her husband was assassinated upon his return from exile on August 21, 1983, Aquino, a housewife with no prior political experience, became a focal point and unifying force of the opposition against Marcos. She was drafted to run against Marcos in the 1986 snap presidential elections. After Marcos was proclaimed the winner despite widespread reports of electoral fraud, Aquino was installed as President by the peaceful 1986 EDSA Revolution.
Benigno Servillano A. Aquino, Jr.[2][3] (November 27, 1932 – August 21, 1983), popularly known as Ninoy Aquino, was a Philippine senator and a leading oppositionist to the autocratic rule of Ferdinand Marcos. He was assassinated at the Manila International Airport (now named the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in his honor) upon returning home from exile in the United States. His death catapulted his widow, Corazon Aquino, to the limelight and the presidency, subsequently replacing the 20-year-old Marcos regime.
Aquino, Corazon
Aquino, Corazon (Maria Corazon “Cory” Aquino) (kôr"uzōn', äkē'nō) [key], 1933–, Philippine politician, president of the Philippines (1986–92), b. Maria Corazon Cojuangco. Her husband, Benigno Servillano Aquino, Jr.,. 1932–83, was Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos's chief political opponent. In 1983 he was assassinated by government agents as he returned to the Philippines from exile in the United States. When the accused agents were acquitted, Corazon Aquino declared her candidacy for the presidency. After the election (1986), both sides claimed victory. When Marcos refused to step down, Aquino organized strikes and boycotts. With the nation on the brink of civil war, Marcos accepted asylum in the United States, and Aquino assumed the presidency, becoming the first woman president of the country. Promised changes and improvements largely failed to materialize during Aquino's term in office, which was plagued by economic difficulties and ineffectual leadership, and there were six coup attempts against her. In 1992, she did not run again but supported the successful presidential candidacy of Fidel Ramos. Benigno Aquino's accused assassins were later retried and convicted (1990) of his murder.
www.time.com/time/asia/asia/magazine/1999/990823/a...
| Corazon Aquino Born Jan. 25, 1933 in Tarlac province 1954 Marries Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr., a popular opposition leader 1980 Exiled to New York with Benigno by Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos for three years 1983 Benigno assassinated on his return to Manila 1985 Joins the United Nationalist Democratic Organization 1986 Elected President after Marcos is ousted by People Power revolution |  |
AP Photo |
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The political widow and former housewife led a revolution that restored power to the people in the Philippines and inspired millions across Asia
By SANDRA BURTON To the dismay of the soldier who was driving Corazon Aquino to her swearing-in ceremony in 1986, the housewife who would be President insisted on stopping at red lights to let civilian traffic pass. Eager to signal a break from the past, she chose to abandon the imperial-style motorcades of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. Although the military high command was quick to quash that egalitarian notion as an unacceptable security risk, she found countless other ways during her six years in office to drive home the message that distinguished her from the dictator she had toppled: she owed her power to the people. Aquino was still at it on the day in 1992 when she rode away from the inauguration of her successor, Fidel Ramos, not in a government-issue Mercedes, but in the simple white Toyota Crown she had purchased to make the point that she was once again an ordinary citizen.
Yet it is her slight, bespectacled embodiment of People Power--at once fragile and invincible--that defines her hold on history. Her determination to "lead by example" helped restore Filipinos' faith in government--and themselves. Beyond the archipelago, her ability to overcome force without resorting to violence made her a role model for an ever-lengthening line of women leaders--Violeta Chamorro, Benazir Bhutto, Chandrika Kumaratunga, Khaleda Zia, Megawati Sukarnoputri, Aung San Suu Kyi--who, like her, were thrust into public life by the violent fates that befell husbands and fathers. In the beginning Cory Aquino did not seem like the prototype for a new breed of democrat, much less a trailblazing woman. Sure, she knew about democracy, having come of age in the newly independent Philippines and worked as a volunteer in Thomas Dewey's 1948 presidential campaign during her college days in New York. Later, as the wife of Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr., a charismatic politician whose popularity doomed him to become Marcos' best-known political prisoner, she learned firsthand the thrill of electoral victory and the agony of martial law. Ninoy's 1983 assassination on his return to Manila from exile in the U.S. catapulted her out of his shadow and into the spotlight. But she lacked the self-confidence to take up his fight to restore democracy on her own. When I met her shortly after Ninoy's funeral, she was under the illusion that as soon as public curiosity about her waned, she could retreat to the privacy of her old life and fight Marcos from the sidelines. Little did she--or anyone--foresee the potential power of her role as a widow. Despite her growing influence within the opposition, she refused to think of herself as a political leader. She rejected appeals to run for office and made light of her ability to help elect others. "It's very simple," she would say in her sweetly self-deprecating way. "I just tell my sad story, and people weep." Not until late 1985, when Marcos suddenly called a "snap" presidential election in an attempt to capitalize on opposition disarray, did Cory finally acknowledge that she alone could unite the anti-Marcos forces and transform the race into a political morality play. This revelation came to her after 10 hours of meditation at the convent of the Sister-Servants of the Holy Spirit of Perpetual Adoration, not far from Manila. "We had to present somebody who is the complete opposite of Marcos, someone who has been a victim," she concluded. "Looking around, I may not be the worst victim, but I am the best-known." Once she believed the Lord was on her side, she could pursue even the most impossible mission with serene confidence. Yet to assume that she proceeded on faith alone was to underestimate her, as I discovered on the last leg of her campaign for the presidency. All day I watched her work her magic on the mammoth crowds. I shared her view that she could win the vote. But what, I asked, led her to believe Marcos would let her win the count? During our late-night flight back to Manila, she stunned me by confiding that she had recently received a delegation of reformist military officers who had pledged in secrecy to support her in the likely event that Marcos rigged the vote. "I think the military will come into the picture if they perceive gross irregularities will be committed," she said bluntly. Within days history confirmed the strength of her faith and the quality of her military intelligence. Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and Deputy Chief of Staff Fidel Ramos mutinied against Marcos, claiming massive electoral fraud. When Marcos forces threatened to retaliate, the influential Archbishop of Manila, Jaime Cardinal Sin, broadcast an appeal for "people power" to protect them. By the time Marcos' tanks began rolling down a key highway, which bore the inspired name Epifanio de los Santos (EDSA for short, after a Filipino hero), toward the defectors' camp, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos had gathered to pray the rosary and stop them in their tracks. In four days the so-called "Miracle of EDSA" swept Cory into power with the backing of the victorious rebels and whisked Marcos off to exile in Hawaii. The hard part began as soon as she took office. To survive seven coup attempts by disgruntled military elements within her makeshift coalition, Aquino was forced to transcend her conciliatory nature and steel herself to make unpopular decisions. Her defining moment came when forces identified with Enrile threatened to topple her if she fulfilled her campaign promise to negotiate with the communist guerrillas. Typically, she dithered and prayed. But then, in a move that marked her coming of age as a leader, she cemented her relationship with General Ramos, fired Enrile, announced a controversial ceasefire with the insurgents and calmly took the heat. Six years later, after both the communists and the coup-plotters had been marginalized, she made one of the least popular--but most responsible--decisions of her career. Defying her core supporters in the liberal community and the Catholic Church, she endorsed Ramos, an architect of martial law and a Protestant, as the candidate best equipped to restore stability and promote economic recovery. Then, Ninoy's mission accomplished, Cory retired with a clear conscience to play with her grandchildren, write her memoirs and paint landscapes as sunny as her outlook. She also pioneered a new role as ex-head of state, something nearly unprecedented in Asia, where leaders rarely left office voluntarily or alive. Commuting regularly to a family-owned office building in the heart of Metro-Manila's Makati business district, she directs a portfolio of projects aimed at furthering the spread of Asian democracy from the bastions of the middle class where it began to the villages it has barely reached. No longer shy about courting controversy, she has played host to visiting groups of oppositionists-in-exile and delivered a speech smuggled out of Burma in the name of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. She has also extended a public podium to Wan Azizah Ismail, who--shades of the young Cory--is struggling to fill the political shoes of her jailed husband, Malaysia's ex-Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim. "I tell them I don't have any formula for ousting a dictator or building democracy," says the former housewife who managed to do both. "All I can suggest is to forget about yourself and just think of your people. It's always the people who make things happen." Provided, of course, they have a leader who can touch their hearts. Sandra Burton, who covered the People Power revolution for TIME, is now a contributor to the magazine |
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MANILA: Corazon Aquino, the former Philippine leader who played a major role in the ouster of two of the country's presidents, has been found to have colon cancer, her family announced Monday.
The ailment was discovered after Aquino, 75, underwent a series of medical tests because of hypertension and difficulty in breathing in December. Since then, her daughter Kristina Bernadette Aquino said at a news conference Monday, the former president had lost weight and suffered consistent coughing and a loss of appetite.
"The results showed that our mother is suffering cancer of the colon," she said, adding that the former president decided to disclose her illness to the public because "our mother has always believed in being up-front."
"It's a very difficult time for our family, most especially for our mother," she said. She did not provide other details of the medical findings. She called on Filipinos to pray for her mother.
The administration of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said it was saddened by the news.
"We are hoping for strength for her in the face of adversity," said Ignacio Bunye, the press secretary.
Although Aquino stepped down from office when her term ended in 1992 - she had succeeded the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who was deposed in the 1986 "people power" uprising that she had led - Aquino had remained in the political spotlight, playing a key part in the second "people power" movement that removed Joseph Estrada from the presidency in 2001.
More recently, Aquino participated in demonstrations calling for the resignation of Arroyo, whose government has been hounded by allegations of corruption and vote-rigging.
Educated in religious schools in Manila and in the United States, Aquino belongs to one of the richest landholding families in the Philippines.
She married Benigno Aquino Jr., a former journalist who became one of the youngest senators in the Philippines and the archrival of Marcos.
Benigno's assassination in 1983 on his return from years of political exile in the United States provoked protests that ultimately led to Marcos's fall from power. That event pushed Corazon, his widow, who was a homemaker at the time, to the country's political center stage and a run for the presidency in 1986. When Marcos won by a slight margin in a vote widely regarded as fraudulent, a popular uprising swept him from power and into exile, and she was inaugurated.
She also began a movement to promote microenterprises and microfinancing in the Philippines, believing that empowering poor Filipinos by helping them start small businesses was a way to combat poverty.
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Aquino, 75, was swept into power by the peaceful uprising that ousted late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, cementing her as an icon of democracy.
Usually dressed in her trademark yellow in public, she has remained active in social and political causes. Most recently, she has been attending rallies calling for the resignation of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
Kris Aquino, her voice breaking as she fought back tears, read a statement on live television that said her mother had gone in for tests after suffering from high blood pressure, difficulty breathing and fever during the Christmas and New Year holidays, then a persistent cough, loss of appetite and weight loss.
"The result showed our mother is suffering from cancer of the colon," she said.
She said her family knows that its affairs are "part of our country's history," but asked that her mother "be accorded her privacy."
"We ask you for your compassion and prayers for our mom's recovery," she said.
The presidential palace was saddened by the announcement and hopes for Aquino's speedy recovery, Arroyo spokesman Ignacio Bunye said.
A former housewife and political neophyte, Aquino reluctantly took over as Marcos' main challenger after her husband, opposition leader Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr., was gunned down at Manila's airport upon returning from exile in 1983.
"I don't know anything about the presidency," the mother of five said in mid-1985, laughing off a seemingly ridiculous suggestion she run for president.
It turned out to be far from ridiculous. After a fierce campaign, voting was held Feb. 7, 1986, and journalists, foreign observers and church figures raised charges of massive fraud by Marcos.
The Commission on Elections ruled Marcos won by a slight majority; Aquino's camp figured she lost 25 percent of her votes through fraud.
The military brass mutinied, and hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, accusing Marcos of cheating, swept Aquino to power on Feb. 25 in a peaceful protest that became a harbinger of change in authoritarian regimes worldwide.
Marcos fled the country and died in Hawaii in 1989. Aquino held office until 1992, surviving at least six coup attempts.
"During Ninoy's incarceration and before my presidency, I used to ask why it had always to be us to make the sacrifice," she told a newspaper last year. "And then, when Ninoy died, I would say, why does it have to be me now? It seemed like we were always the sacrificial lamb."
Aquino promised that her administration would mark a complete change from the pomp and ostentatious displays of wealth during the Marcos years.
She moved her office to a whitewashed guest house in the palace complex and turned the ornate building where the Marcoses had lived into a museum.
Adopting a policy of national reconciliation, she freed more than 500 political prisoners, including some of the top leaders the Communist Party of the Philippines.
She oversaw the writing of a new constitution, but critics claimed that she fell short of the promise of social and economic reforms, which many of her supporters hoped would follow the ouster of Marcos.
Aquino again became active in 2001, throwing her support behind Arroyo, who was swept to power in the country's second "people power" revolt, toppling Joseph Estrada.
However, Aquino later took on Arroyo, joining opposition figures in calling for her resignation over allegations of vote-rigging in the 2004 elections and, more recently, of corruption.
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Former Philippine President Aquino Has Colon Cancer, Says Daughter
Monday , March 24, 2008
MANILA, Philippines —
Former Philippine President Corazon Aquino, who sparked a wave of pro-democracy movements around the world by leading a 1986 "people power" revolt, has colon cancer, her daughter said Monday.Aquino, 75, was swept into power by the peaceful uprising that ousted late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, cementing her as an icon of democracy.
Usually dressed in her trademark yellow in public, she has remained active in social and political causes. Most recently, she has been attending rallies calling for the resignation of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
Kris Aquino, her voice breaking as she fought back tears, read a statement on live television that said her mother had gone in for tests after suffering from high blood pressure, difficulty breathing and fever during the Christmas and New Year holidays, then a persistent cough, loss of appetite and weight loss.
"The result showed our mother is suffering from cancer of the colon," she said.
She said her family knows that its affairs are "part of our country's history," but asked that her mother "be accorded her privacy."
"We ask you for your compassion and prayers for our mom's recovery," she said.
The presidential palace was saddened by the announcement and hopes for Aquino's speedy recovery, Arroyo spokesman Ignacio Bunye said.
A former housewife and political neophyte, Aquino reluctantly took over as Marcos' main challenger after her husband, opposition leader Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr., was gunned down at Manila's airport upon returning from exile in 1983.
"I don't know anything about the presidency," the mother of five said in mid-1985, laughing off a seemingly ridiculous suggestion she run for president.
It turned out to be far from ridiculous. After a fierce campaign, voting was held Feb. 7, 1986, and journalists, foreign observers and church figures raised charges of massive fraud by Marcos.
The Commission on Elections ruled Marcos won by a slight majority; Aquino's camp figured she lost 25 percent of her votes through fraud.
The military brass mutinied, and hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, accusing Marcos of cheating, swept Aquino to power on Feb. 25 in a peaceful protest that became a harbinger of change in authoritarian regimes worldwide.
Marcos fled the country and died in Hawaii in 1989. Aquino held office until 1992, surviving at least six coup attempts.
"During Ninoy's incarceration and before my presidency, I used to ask why it had always to be us to make the sacrifice," she told a newspaper last year. "And then, when Ninoy died, I would say, why does it have to be me now? It seemed like we were always the sacrificial lamb."
Aquino promised that her administration would mark a complete change from the pomp and ostentatious displays of wealth during the Marcos years.
She moved her office to a whitewashed guest house in the palace complex and turned the ornate building where the Marcoses had lived into a museum.
Adopting a policy of national reconciliation, she freed more than 500 political prisoners, including some of the top leaders the Communist Party of the Philippines.
She oversaw the writing of a new constitution, but critics claimed that she fell short of the promise of social and economic reforms, which many of her supporters hoped would follow the ouster of Marcos.
Aquino again became active in 2001, throwing her support behind Arroyo, who was swept to power in the country's second "people power" revolt, toppling Joseph Estrada.
However, Aquino later took on Arroyo, joining opposition figures in calling for her resignation over allegations of vote-rigging in the 2004 elections and, more recently, of corruption.
Corazon Aquino
When the People Power revolt broke out in Manila in 1986, Corazon Aquino was in Cebu, 580 km to the south, to kick off a civil-disobedience campaign against the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Her supporters, fearing for her life, urged her to flee the country or go into hiding. Instead she went to the convent of the Carmelites, a contemplative order of Catholic nuns, and spent the night praying with them. "I just felt so at peace," she recalls. "I felt that whatever happened, I'd be ready for it." Three days later, Aquino—the woman derided by Marcos as "a mere housewife"—was President. She was ill prepared to rule over a fractious nation ruined by 20 years of corruption and abuse. But, armed with the same prayerful fatalism she showed that night, she led her country as it underwent a rocky transition to democracy.
Aquino was the symbol of People Power and an inspiration to others around the world struggling against tyranny. The widow of popular opposition leader Benigno Aquino, who was murdered at Manila airport in 1983 on his return from exile in Boston, she showed a quiet courage that moved millions. To Filipinos, who are devoutly Catholic, she was both Mater Dolorosa and Joan of Arc.
When an icon becomes President, however, she loses her shine. Running against Marcos in an election prior to People Power, Aquino did not present a political platform. Instead, she would tell the story of her husband's homecoming and death. Filipinos saw their suffering mirrored in hers. "I am like you," she told them. "I am a victim of Marcos." Yet Aquino is not like most of us Filipinos. Born to privilege, she was the dutiful political wife, who stayed in the background while her husband, also from a wealthy family that had held public office for generations, was on the fast track. He believed that one day he would be President. That office would be hers instead.
Aquino's six-year presidency was marred by attempted military coups, human-rights abuses by a still-powerful army, and general incompetence. She is also blamed for resurrecting a political system dominated by élite clans, causing disappointed supporters to say that she could not transcend the interests of her class. But she will always be remembered for uniting Filipinos in their fight for freedom. Today, Aquino, 73, remains a political and moral force. "I don't know how [people] will judge my presidency," she says, "but I hope they will realize it was not easy restoring democracy after a dictatorship." For sure it was not. And we Filipinos will always be grateful that Corazon Aquino was there when we needed her most.
With reporting by Sheila Coronel heads Columbia University's program for investigative journalism
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- http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1554976,00.html
Aquino Rewrites the Script
A television program that Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos, 55, watched last week did not exactly follow the script he had written. Beamed to Manila's Malacañang Palace by closed-circuit TV, the drama was supposed to be an orderly show trial of Marcos' longtime political enemy, former Senator Benigno (Ninoy) Aquino Jr., 41, onetime secretary-general of the Liberal Party. Instead, the President had to watch, presumably in pain and anger, as Aquino turned the trial into an emotional and stunningly effective public challenge to the regime of martial law that Marcos imposed over eleven months ago. Startling the seven army officers who sat as judges of the military tribunal, his voice quavering with emotion, Aquino implored: "I am begging this court to be allowed to speak. I am pleading for my life!"
Aquino, who was charged with illegal possession of firearms, murder, and plotting subversion with Maoist rebels, was not exaggerating; if convicted, he could have been sentenced to execution or life imprisonment. Despite having spent eleven months in prison since his arrest, Aquino looked trim and confident when he took his place in the dock of the courtroom, a converted army lecture hall in Manila's Fort Bonifacio. Instead of trying to answer the specific charges, however, he shrewdly grabbed every opportunity to denounce the proceeding itself as "an unconscionable mockery," clearly aiming his remarks at the 200 newsmen and spectators who jammed the courtroom.
In a foolish tactical error, the prosecutor allowed Aquino's opening written statement to be made part of the record. It turned out to be a violent attack on Marcos' "new society" as a regime bent on "coercion, violence, human degradation, the total suppression of civil liberties and political processes, and the imprisonment of political enemies." Since the statement had been made in open court, it could therefore be freely reprinted despite martial law. Indeed, thousands of mimeographed copies were soon circulating all over Manila.
To dramatize his defiance of the court, Aquino dismissed his civilian attorneys, asserting: "I will not participate in these proceedings. I am requesting to be taken back to my cell to await your verdict." Last week a verdict of sorts was rendered—not by the befuddled judges, who had temporarily adjourned the trial to rethink their tactics, but by Marcos himself. Evidently unprepared for the fierceness of Aquino's rhetoric or the effectiveness of his unorthodox defense, the President dissolved the military court and called for a five-man committee to "determine whether really there is a reasonable ground" to believe that Aquino committed the offenses for which he was accused. Privately, Justice Department officials concede that some or all of the charges may eventually be dropped.
Although more than 91% of eligible Filipinos voted in favor of Marcos' "new society" in a national referendum last month, there is growing unrest over the continuation of martial law, the so-far unsuccessful military struggle against guerrillas in Mindanao and Sulu, and the prospect of the country's worst rice shortage in years. Quite clearly, the President is worried that the shrewd, ambitious Aquino, a member of one of the country's wealthiest families, might become a symbol of political dissent and persecution. Many Filipinos are well aware that the ex-Senator's grandfather was imprisoned by the U.S. during the abortive Philippine war for independence in 1899, and that his father was jailed by General Douglas MacArthur for collaborating with the Japanese during World War II.
"Don't drive too fast," Aquino told the lieutenant at the wheel of the car that took him back to prison last week. "You might deprive the firing squad of a victim." Apparently, Aquino also is well aware of the political advantages of persecution.
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- http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,907833,00.html
Yellow and Red for Aquino
Moderates and radicals unite for a statuesque tribute
All day they had rallied under the hot sun, a vast throng swelling to embrace 450,000 people. It had been a peaceful demonstration, but now as darkness fell, a few among the crowd became restless. Gathered in Makati, Metro Manila's high-rise business district, they began setting fire to automobile tires and piles of yellow confetti. With no police or soldiers in sight, predictions by the government of President Ferdinand Marcos that the daylong rally would culminate in violence seemed about to come true.
Suddenly a flatbed truck rolled into view, escorted by two motorcycle policemen and by lines of yellow-shirted marchers waving small yellow flags. Aboard the truck was a nearly 7-ft.-high, flower-bedecked bronze statue of Benigno ("Ninoy") Aquino Jr., the Philippine opposition leader slain by an unknown assassin at Manila International Airport on Aug. 21, 1983, on his return from exile in the U.S. As spotlights played on the figure, the crowd broke into cheers and then into the once outlawed nationalist anthem, Ang Bayan Ko (My Country). A few demonstrators even hugged the motorcycle cops. On such notes of strength and serenity, rather than with the violence prophesied by the government, Filipinos last week marked the first anniversary of Aquino's murder in the largest protest outpouring in Manila since his funeral.
In Year One, as some opposition leaders have come to call the period since the murder, Aquino has emerged as a rallying point for a wide range of anti-Marcos forces. Aware of the significance of the anniversary, the government spared no effort in trying to foil the tribute. Police had dealt harshly with smaller antigovernment rallies in preceding weeks, quickly breaking up the demonstrations with tear gas, truncheons and water cannons. The government also sought to deny a permit for the August Twenty-One Commemoration Committee demonstration, arguing that it would be used by subversive elements for an assault on the President. In a rare rebuff to Marcos, the Supreme Court ruled that the rally should be permitted.
Unable to stop the march, Marcos backed off. Police and soldiers stayed out of sight except around the presidential Malacañang Palace. Demonstration Organizer Agapito ("Butz") Aquino, Ninoy's brother, had feared that the centerpiece of the celebration, the statue, cast in Rome by Philippine Sculptor Tomas Concepcion and flown to Manila via New York City, would be deliberately held up by Philippine customs and had readied a similar statue made of plaster. But after a two-day standoff, during which the bronze was kept at the airport, Marcos ordered $3,970 in duties waived and the figure released.
As it turned out, the guard around Malacañang was not needed. The demonstrators stayed well away, moving peaceably from a Celebrated High Mass at Santo Domingo Church, where the funeral services for Aquino were held a year ago, to Rizal Park for a series of 23 speeches by opposition figures, and then on to Makati. Most of the marchers, including Aquino's widow Corazon, wore or carried yellow, the color of protest after the popular song Tie a Yellow Ribbon. But among the yellow shirts, flags and banners there were many flashes of red. Said Salvador Laurel, the head of the United Nationalist Democratic Organization, one of the key opposition groups: "This should serve notice to President Marcos that the yellow and the red, meaning the moderates and the radicals, have united in pursuit of Ninoy's dream."
In the year since Aquino's murder, the anti-Marcos movement triggered by his death has demonstrated remarkable staying power. The 1 million people who assembled for Aquino's funeral on Aug. 31, 1983, were relatively passive, perhaps even frightened, as they presented Marcos with his first real challenge in twelve years. Last week's crowds, in contrast, were not only confident but streetwise: many had brought along yellow scarves, towels and surgical masks to protect themselves against tear gas. More important, moderate oppositionists won 63 of 200 seats in last May's elections for a new National Assembly, forming a sizable antigovernment bloc.
But the movement also includes leftist student and labor groups, as well as Communist-front organizations that boycotted the National Assembly elections. They are committed instead to a "parliament of the streets" in the belief that Marcos can be brought down only by continued militant action. How long moderates and more radical forces can continue working together is uncertain. "The important thing to do now," said Businessman Noel Tolentino, one of the speakers at Rizal Park, "is to struggle toward finding a common unifying factor."
Delivering his anniversary homily at Santo Domingo Church, Jaime Cardinal Sin, Manila's outspoken primate, raised another question for Aquino's supporters: "Where do we go from here?" he asked. "Where is all this leading to? Marches, no matter how obstructed by tear gas and truncheons, must reach a destination. And rallies, despite the impassioned speeches, are meaningless if they do not attain their promised land."
Beset by a festering Communist insurgency in a number of the Philippines' 73 provinces and a gloomy economic situation—inflation at 50%, unemployment at 35%, an international debt of $25.6 billion—Marcos may find it politic to grant the opposition more maneuvering room. But his position could also harden, particularly if the findings of an independent commission, which has been investigating the Aquino assassination, implicate the government. In any case, Year Two promises to be a time of further testing, pitting an embattled Marcos against an increasingly bold opposition. —By Spencer Davidson. Reported by Sandra Burton and Nelly Sindayen/Manila
With reporting by Sandra Burton, Nelly Sindayen/Manila
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- http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,951285,00.html
An Interview with Corazon Aquino
On the eve of Philippine President Corazon Aquino's first official visit to the U.S. and a planned meeting with Ronald Reagan at the White House, Manila was rife with rumors that a military coup might take place during her absence. Despite persistent friction within her government between some civilian Cabinet members and Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile, who last week warned that he might react "like Rambo" if his colleagues continued their criticism, the President seemed unperturbed. Looking fresh and relaxed, Aquino had just finished giving a group of schoolchildren a tour as she greeted TIME Hong Kong Bureau Chief William Stewart at the Malacanang Palace guesthouse that serves as her presidential office. Excerpts from the interview:
On her greatest achievement so far. The return of our freedom, especially freedom of expression and freedom from fear. A close friend pointed out to me that nobody seems afraid of me. This is so unlike the previous regime, when so many people were afraid of former President Marcos. And there is also the restoration of credibility in our government.
On her most difficult challenges. Our biggest problems are the economy and the Communist insurgency. I believe you can't solve the one without working at the other. The Communist leadership here either misread or misjudged the last election. In effect, they worked against me. But the past is the past, and it is better for us to look ahead and work together because of the enormity of our problems.
On lack of focus in her government. I think that was in the beginning. Remember, we had no transition period. In fact, it was a question of trying to prevent the previous officeholders from doing any more damage. In your country you have at least 2 1/2 months to get ready for a turnover, and everybody cooperates. We had none of that. Given all the problems we inherited, I think we should be appreciated for being able to do all that we have done. People forget so easily. They think that getting rid of Marcos was something that came naturally, as if it came down from heaven without our having to lift a finger.
Sometimes I wonder what is wrong with Filipinos. They can never look on the positive side of things. In the past the great majority were of the opinion that the only way to remove Marcos was through violence. But we did something unique. It was the civilian population that defended the army. I sometimes wish the silent majority would speak up.
On her concerns about security. Perhaps it is a combination of my fatalism and my strong faith in God. I believe if there is something that I have to do in this world, he will take care of me. But if my mission is accomplished, then that is it. Working with that in mind makes it much easier. My security people tell me that they really worry about me, especially when I'm out in crowds shaking hands. I have explained to them that I cannot afford to be distant from my people because whatever power I have came from them. And I have to know what I am doing right and what I am doing wrong. If I just sit around here, I will never find out.
On staying in touch with the people. I encourage people to tell me exactly what they think, both bad and good. I usually find out things during coffee breaks, times like that. Also, when I drive out, it is usually in a car with tinted windows. People cannot see in, but I can see out. It really restores my confidence when I see people going out of their way to cheer me, giving me the party sign or just having smiles on their faces. It must be spontaneous because security will not give out in advance which streets I will be using. My daughter has told me, "Ma, when you start seeing angry faces, you know it is time to do something else."
On rumors of a military coup. I have visited many military camps; I have talked with officers, enlisted men and many wives. I am not one to base everything I know on the reports that reach my desk. I think it is time for me to lead the way and show that it is important for both the military and civilian sectors to get together. One of the ways to end the insurgency is for civilians to cooperate with the military. But I emphasize to the military that they have to earn the confidence and respect of civilians.
For 14 years we had a military that did not have a good public image. People like (former Chief of Staff) General Fabian Ver and other misguided elements thought the armed forces were a private reserve for Marcos and his cronies. I have gone out of my way to become closer to the military, trying to forget that in fact I was one of their better-known victims. My husband was incarcerated for seven years and seven months, and it was one of the military that shot him. But I am no longer just the widow of Ninoy. I am the President of the Philippines.
On her evolving foreign policy. Whatever will be for the greater good of the Philippines is what I want. I am a nationalist, and as far as I am concerned, nationalism means doing whatever is in the best interests of the great majority of the people. Since we are unable at present to generate more employment for our people, we need foreign investment and we have to make it attractive for these investors, or they will go elsewhere. I view the U.S. bases in the same way. First of all, I ask myself if I am convinced that they . will be in the greater interest of the Filipino people. Then I take it from there.
On Manila's $26 billion foreign debt. I have said all along that we will honor our debts. But I would like our creditors to look at it from our side. We inherited this debt when most Filipinos had no say on how this money was going to be spent. So when I meet with our creditor banks, I will ask them to give us more liberal terms. We have to be given the chance to grow, and we cannot do so if we have to continue paying 50% of our export earnings in interest payments.
I think that it's in our mutual interest that my views be listened to. We will be able to repay the principal that much sooner if we are permitted to grow. I cannot allow my people to suffer more. For the banks, it is a matter of being able to tell their stockholders that they will get their money back. But in our case it's a question of whether our people will have enough to eat. I will impress upon the banks that this is a different kind of government from that of Marcos, and we expect different treatment.
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Corazon Aquino
BY PICO IYER
Jan. 5, 1987
History, wrote Gibbon, is little more than a "register of crimes, sorrows and misfortunes." It is, equally often, a study in black ironies or the fatal mechanisms of tragedy. Sometimes history is even a cautionary tale, an Aesopian fable on the folly of blindness or greed or lust. But history is rarely a fairy tale, a narrative that instructs as well as inspires. Still less often is it a morality play, in which the forces of corruption and redemption, of extravagance and modesty collide in perfect symmetry.
In 1986, however, as all the global village looked on, history turned into a clash of symbols in the Republic of the Philippines, a nation long relegated to its dustier corridors. There is the Southeast Asian archipelago of 56 million people and more than 7,000 islands, life not only imitated are but improved upon it. In a made-for-television drama watched by millions, two veteran rulers, President Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda, stumbled and fell in their ruthless campaign to extend, with an immodesty broader than a scriptwriter's fancy, their stolen empire.
Moved Permanently
During the final years of his "constitutional authoritarianism," Marcos had effectively moved his country backward—from democracy to autocracy, from prosperity to poverty, from general peace to a widespread Communist insurgency. Treating the national treasury as if it were their personal checking account, the royal couple had looted their land of perhaps $5 billion. "Here in the Philippines," said Imelda, "we live in a paradise. There are no poor people as there are in other countries." Even as she spoke, seven in every ten Filipinos were living below the poverty level.
The sudden turn of fortune's wheel came when a confident Marcos, who had never lost a vote in his life, called a snap election. He was thus hoping to satisfy the Reagan Administration's demands that he become more democratic. But Marcos' plans for victory were upset by a slight, bespectacled mother of five, who had entered politics only two months earlier. When she went to fill out her application for the presidency, Corazon Aquino had nothing to enter under OCCUPATION but "Housewife." The last office for which the soft-spoken widow had been chosen was valedictorian of her sixty-grade class. In fact, her chief, if not her only, political strengths seemed to be her innocence of politics and the moral symbolism of her name. In Spanish, her first name meant "heart"; in Philippine politics, her second signified "martyred opposition," in memory of her late husband Benigno (Ninoy) Aquino, once Marcos' chief rival, who was slain on his return from exile in 1983, Cory Aquino, at 53, stood in effect on a platform of faith, hope and charity.
The outcome of the allegorical battle seemed pre-scripted, if not predestined. Marcos, who had once been an effective and even popular ruler, in recent years had gradually proved brilliant enough to rewrite the rules and brutal enough to enforce them. On election day in February, in full view of more than 700 foreign journalists, Marcos' men ripped up ballots, bought others and intimidated voters at gunpoint. As many as 3 million names were simply struck off the voter lists.
Then, suddenly, the implausible began to happen. Thousands of volunteer poll watchers, singing hymns and burning candles, formed a human barricade against the armed goons and carried their ballot boxes through the streets to counting stations. Thirty of the government's vote tabulators walked out in protest against the fraud. The country's Catholic bishops publicly condemned the election, and the U.S. Senate echoed the protest.
Soon the implausible turned into the improbable. Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile, the architect of Marcos' martial law, and Lieut. General Fidel Ramos, the deputy chief of the armed forces, broke away from the government, claiming that Aquino was the true winner. As the rebels barricaded themselves inside two military camps, first hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of common citizens poured into the streets to offer food, support and protection, if need be with their bodies, to the maverick soldiers and Aquino backers. As civilians, bearing only flags and flowers, took up positions to defend the military men, the world knew that it was watching more than just an electoral upheaval.
Finally, the improbable became the impossible. Marcos' tanks rolled toward the crowds, only to be stopped by nuns kneeling in their path, saying the rosary. Old women went up to gun-toting marines and disarmed them with motherly hugs. Little girls offered their flowers to hardened combat veterans. In the face of such quiet heroism, thousands of Marcos loyalists defected; many simply broke down in tears.
Less than 24 hours after Marcos had had himself inaugurated, he was being helped off a plane in Hawaii, sickly, exiled and bewildered. His former home, Malacanang Palace, was now a melancholy tableau of abandoned power, overrun by thousands of revelers. The new leader of the Philippines was the reserved housewife who had worn plain yellow dresses every day of her campaign. For her determination and courage in leading a democratic revolution that captured the world's imagination, Corazon Aquino is TIME's Woman of the Year for 1986.
Whatever else happens in her rule, Aquino has already given her country a bright, and inviolate, memory. More important, she has also resuscitated its sense of identity and pride. In the Philippines those luxuries are especially precious. Almost alone among the countries of Asia, it has never been steadied by an ancient culture; its sense of itself, and its potential, was further worn away by nearly four centuries of Spanish and American colonialism. The absence of a spirit of national unity has also made democracy elusive. Even Jose Rizal, a political reformer shot by the Spanish and a national hero, called the Filipinos "a people without a soul." Yet in February, for a few extraordinary moments, the people of the Philippines proved their bravery to the world, and to themselves.
Aquino's revolution with a human face was no less a triumph for women the world over. The person known as the "Mother of the Nation" managed to lead a revolt and rule a republic without ever relinquishing her buoyant calm or her gift for making politics and humanity companionable. In a nation dominated for decades by a militant brand of macho politics, she conquered with tranquility and grace.
By reviving the promise of democracy without bloodshed, all too rare in the past, the Philippine revolution also held up a candle of hope in some of the world's darker corners. Moderate South Africans, for example, could take some heart from the success of civil disobedience; nor could they fail to note the victory of a woman who was once her failed husband's ambassador to the world, much as Winnie Mandela works in the name of her imprisoned husband Nelson. In overthrowing Marcos, moreover, Aquino helped erase a whole volume of shibboleths. She showed that politics could be the art of the impossible; that force could speak softly and carry a small stick; that religion could be not the opium but the stimulant of the masses; that nice guys, whatever their gender, sometimes finish first.
Aquino's triumph inspired many overhasty and wishful predictions of sequels in Chile, South Korea or Pakistan to the Philippines' "People Power." None of those countries, however, suffer under the conditions that ruled in the House of Marcos. Their economies are not in shambles, their corruption is far from exorbitant, their armies remain unshakably loyal to their military leaders. The U.S., moreover, has shown no sign of wishing to help push their strongmen out the door.
Yet the symbol remains. After watching the smiling shots seen round the world, no dictator can sleep quite so easily. And dissidents everywhere now have a stirring precedent and talisman to invoke. Says Congressman Stephen Solarz, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Affairs: "I have found that from Poland to Pakistan and from South Korea to South Africa, those who are committed to democracy see in Aquino a sense of enduring inspiration. She is probably the most popular head of state in the world today."
Inevitably, the fairy-tale nature of Aquino's sudden ascension prompted some extravagant mythmaking. To some the woman in yellow seemed a Joan of Arc, a religious figure incarnating her people's hopes as she led them to freedom; to others she was a Cinderella, with one glass slipper instead of Imelda's 3,000 pairs of shoes. Indeed, as startling as it may seem in the secular West, millions of devout Filipinos viewed Aquino as a sort of Blessed Mother, a redeemer who came to resolve the passion play that had begun with her husband's death.
Yet the real world does not lend itself to fable for long. After the revolution comes the Realpolitik, and happy-ever-afters soon dissolve. The day after her victory, Aquino found herself in charge of one of the world's most desperate countries, saddled with a foreign debt of $27 billion. 20,000 armed Communist guerrillas and a pile of government institutions that bore her predecessors' monogram.
Soon enough the new leader's innocence and inexperience showed. She summarily dissolved parliament and, ruling by decree, had all the country's governors and mayors, regardless of performance, replaced with sometimes unqualified people of her own. She then switched to the other extreme, often dithering over critical decisions. Gradually, however, as the year wore on, Cory the Chief Executive and the Commander in Chief began to prove as surprising as Cory the Symbol. When challenges arose, the novice rose to meet them. While followers of Defense Minister Enrile unsettled Manila with constant threats of a coup, Aquino coolly went about her business. Then in late November, once she was absolutely sure of the military's support and confident of backing from Washington, she fired Enrile, the man who had helped put her in power. Four days later, she concluded the first cease-fire in the 17 years of the Communist insurgency.
At year's end, as the Philippines prepared for a nation-wide plebiscite in February on a new constitution, Aquino remained decidedly embattled. Yet her authority seemed as steady as her gift for confounding expectations. To come to power, Aquino had only to be herself, a symbol of sincerity and honesty. But to stay in power, she had to transcend herself. After ten months in office, it was not just her softness that impressed, but the unexpected toughness that underwrote it; not just her idealism, but a steely pragmatism that made it more rigorous; not just her rhyme but her reason. Aquino moved people, in both senses of the word, by making serenity strong and strength serene.
If Aquino's stunning rise allowed the world a rare chance to suspend its disbelief and exult, 1986 also gave it many more familiar opportunities to distrust its leaders and to weep. Late in the year, the Reagan Administration was suddenly shaken by the disclosure that it had been covertly selling arms to Iran in an attempt to win freedom for American hostages in Lebanon. That dubious policy flared into scandal with the revelation that some of the money received for the arms had been diverted, apparently in violation of congressional laws, to the contra rebels in Nicaragua. As questions multiplied with a velocity that brought Watergate to mind, a backpedaling White House seemed guilty, at the very least, of high incompetence. At the center of the storm was a little-known National Security Council staff member, Lieut. Colonel Oliver North, whose mysterious doings, and the questions they raised, threatened to enmesh many higher officials in a growing web of intrigue and deceit. At stake was nothing less than the viability of President Reagan's final two years in office.
The crisis of faith in the White House only counterpointed a new air of confidence in the Kremlin. In 1986 Mikhail Gorbachev continued his brisk public relations offensive by sweeping the cobwebs out of his foreign service and introducing a little fresh air into the long-closed rooms of Soviet public life. In September he managed to trump Washington when the KGB released U.S. News & World Report Correspondent Nicholas Daniloff in exchange for a proven spy. Just two weeks later, Gorbachev again seemed to outmaneuver President Reagan at their unofficial summit in Iceland. The two leaders came closer than ever before to an agreement on nuclear arms, then ended up back where they started.
The U.S. fared little better in its long battle against terrorism. After the Administration launched an air raid on Muammar Gaddafi's Libya in April, the masked face of terrorism was mostly absent from the world's airports and alleyways. Five months later, though, the threat was back with a bloody vengeance. Bombs erupted in downtown Paris, men and machine guns stormed a synagogue in Istanbul, four Palestinian hijackers held a Pan American plane hostage for 18 hours in Karachi, and 17 more foreigners were kidnaped in Lebanon. Many leaders looked to another kind of pressure—that of economic sanctions—to push the white-dominated government in South Africa toward reform. But neither trade embargoes nor the pullout of Western firms seemed likely to douse the flames of racial violence. Indeed, last week the unrest continued, with sporadic clashes with government forces, protests against a state of emergency and "black Christmas" boycotts.
The shadows cast by other menacing forces also lengthened in 1986. The disease known as AIDS (acquired immuno-deficiency syndrome) claimed its 16,128th American life and left millions more rethinking their private lives. The epidemic of drugs became more sobering than ever, as the young turned to an addictive and unusually noxious boiled-down form of cocaine known as crack. One atomic nightmare came true and others were awakened when a Soviet atomic power reactor at Chernobyl, 80 miles north of Kiev, exploded and then kept burning for several days, a man-made disaster that could cause as many as 5,000 premature deaths by radiation-induced cancer. It was history's worst nuclear accident.
The abuse of technology also sabotaged one of the last vestiges of heaven—bent idealism—the American space program—when the space shuttle Challenger turned into a fireball only 73 seconds after takeoff. While millions watched on television, the craft and its seven passengers, including Schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, disappeared in a sad trail of smoke. The tragedy only deepened when a presidential commission found that the accident had been caused by bureaucratic mismanagement and neglect.
None of these events, though, were quite so startling, let alone uplifting, as Aquino's almost cheerful revolution. And if the first woman President of the Philippines was the happiest symbol of a year of symbols, she was also the most human. She showed how one individual could inspire in others a faith so powerful that it vindicated itself and changed a country's history. She brought not only a new face into politics, but also a new way of thinking about politics and the virtues it demands. The victory of "People Power" made no dents in the larger issues that tower like Stonehenge sentinels over the planet. It has not shifted the superpower equation nor reduced the threat of nuclear war. But it has, perhaps, affected the people who affect the issues.
Corazon Aquino's first, ever so hesitant entry into the larger-than-life melodrama of recent Philippine history came when Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in 1972. One of the first people to be arrested without charge was Ninoy Aquino, Marcos' closest rival. The tough but charismatic Aquino had in quick succession become the youngest mayor in Philippine history (at 22), the youngest governor (at 29) and the youngest President too, as soon as Marcos' second and final term ended in 1973. Before that could happen, Marcos threw him in jail.
As Ninoy languished in prison, his diffident and devout wife became his eyes, ears and voice in the outside world, acting as his liaison with what remained of the Philippine opposition. For seven years and seven months, spending hours alone with her husband in his cell, the upper-class matron received tutorials in opposition strategies from a master of the political arts. In between, she had to smuggle messages to and from him, sometimes on scraps of paper, sometimes in her head.
During the early weeks of martial law, recalls Cory, she could not watch television lest she see Marcos or her husband's official Jailer, Defense Minister Enrile (the man who signed the arrest warrant was none other than General Ramos). In her conjugal visits, she had to share her husband with hidden cameras and bugs. Once, when Ninoy's guards simply removed him from sight for more than six weeks, Cory was forced to wander from prison to prison in search of him.
In 1980, however, Ninoy was released from confinement, and his wife from politics, when Marcos granted the ailing prisoner permission to travel to the U.S. for triple-bypass heart surgery. With a trumped-up death sentence over his head at home, Ninoy settled down after his operation in a red brick house in the affluent Boston suburb of Newton. There he returned to scheming for the overthrow of MArcos, while Cory resumed her favored routine of browsing through department stores, raising bonsai trees and relaxing over Falcon Crest and Dallas. Her American neighbors remember the President of the Philippines especially for her Peking duck.
The years in Boston were the most uneventful of Cory's adult life; she has also called them the happiest. In 1983, however, she had to look on stoically as her husband defied repeated warnings from Manila and decided to return to the Philippines to challenge Marcos, death sentence or no. Hardly had Ninoy's plane landed in Manila when he was met by a group of soldiers and hustled out of the plane. Seconds later, shots rang out, and Ninoy Aquino lay dead on the tarmac.
Ten days after the killing, up to 2 million people streamed into the streets in an unprecedented outpouring of sorrow and shock, transforming Aquino's funeral into the largest procession in the country's history. In the weeks and months that followed, street vendors and socialites, businessmen and radicals all awoke from years of resignation to cry out their rage. Yet the official opposition to Marcos remained fatally factious, divided into more than a dozen self-seeking groups, each of them tainted either by extremist positions, associations with the government or long years of failure.
It soon became obvious that the only person far enough above the political differences to unite the opposition was the martyr's widow. She was also, by no coincidence, the only one who did not seek the role. "I know my limitations," she said three months after the murder, "and I don't like politics. I was only involved because of my husband."
Still the pleas for her candidacy gained momentum. Finally, in October 1985,while delivering a lecture on "My Role as Wife, Mother and Single Parent" at a University of the Philippines sorority, Aquino conceded that she would stand for the presidency—provided that Marcos called a snap election and that 1 million people petitioned her. The very next month, prodded by the warnings of Senator Paul Laxalt, President Reagan's special emissary, that U.S. support for his regime was weakening, Marcos stunned even his advisers by announcing a snap election. One month later, Aquino was presented with her million signatures.
That unanswerable summons sent her into a soul-searching retreat. By the time she emerged, she was a candidate. In order to unite the opposition forces, she swiftly approached Salvador Laurel, who was planning to lead his own ticket against Marcos, with a deal. She would give up her affiliation with her brother's party, Lakas Ng Bayan (LABAN), or People Power, if he would give up his candidacy and be her running mate. Her magic, his machine. After days of bartering, the makeshift pair finally filed their candidacy papers only 90 minutes before the midnight deadline.
On the campaign trail, it soon became clear that Aquino's main asset was, quite simply, herself. Turning her appearances into what amounted to improvised prayer rallies, the small figure in yellow stood before crowds, voice quavering, and delivered heartfelt parables about her life under Marcos. Wherever she spoke, tens of thousands of worshipers came together in a sea of yellow, flashing the L sign of LABAN, and striking up chants of "Co-ry! Co-ry! Co-ry!"
By voting day Aquino had become a powerful political presence. Only eight hours after the election, in the face of widespread cheating by Marcos forces, she seized the initiative by declaring herself the winner. When Philip Habib, Washington's troubleshooter-at-large, came to Manila to suggest a compromise with Marcos, she icily informed him that she would accept nothing less than Marcos' removal from office. "This is my message to Mr. Marcos and his puppets," she declared with quiet fury as the confusion dragged on. "`Do not threaten Cory Aquino, because I am not alone.'"
An Enrile and Ramos staged their revolt in Manila, Cory, 350 miles away in Cebu, at first lay low in a Carmelite monastery. But as the revolution continued, she hurried back to Manila, ready to take charge. While her advisers collapsed in exhaustion around her suburban bungalow and a gunfight continued less than a block away, the President-elect serenely announced that she planned to take a shower and get changed. Then she had herself driven to her inauguration in her white Chevrolet van, stopping at every red light.
Demureness and determination; steel and silk. In Cory Aquino there has always been the sense of a confidence so strong that it does not need to proclaim itself. Aquino knows where she stands and is sure of the foundations below her: her family and her faith.
Cory's natural air of authority and her sense of noblesse oblige were, in a way, her birthright as a child, the sixth of eight, of Jose and Demetria Cojuangco. After coming to the Philippines from Fujian province in China just three generations earlier, the Cojuangcos had quickly parlayed a small rice mill and a sugar mill into the richest empire in Tarlac province.
For all its wealth, however, the clan was known for an unostentatious reserve, and throughout her childhood, as ever after, Cory preferred to be overlooked. At a series of the country's most exclusive girls' convent schools she was remembered, when she was remembered at all, as a bright, devout girl and the perennial class valedictorian. In 1946, when her family left war-torn Manila for the U.S., the 13-year-old Filipino with bobbed hair enrolled in the Ravenhill Academy, a Catholic girls' school in Philadelphia, and later in the Notre Dame Convent school in New York City. Cory's four college years passed with scarcely a trace at the College of Mount St. Vincent, a small Catholic women's college in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. The self-contained student occasionally entertained her classmates with Filipino dances but otherwise kept to herself, spending spare hours with an elder sister and returning home to the Philippines in the summers. Her classmates recall her only as a "shy little violet" who once played an angel in a college production of Green Pastures.
Aquino's upbringing was, in short, the classic, cloistered training in propriety that becomes a thoroughbred young lady of the upper classes. As a Cojuangco, however, she also grew up with as sharp a sense of power as, say, a Rockefeller heiress. For 13 years she was treasurer of the family corporation, Jose Cojuangco and Sons Inc.
Nor could she ever be oblivious to politics. Her father was a Congressman, her maternal grandfather a vice-presidential candidate, one uncle a Senator and another a Congressman. "Since she was a little girl, Cory has been accustomed to meeting the great personalities of the world," says Benjamin Brown, the former director of the fellows program that brought Ninoy to Harvard's Center for International Affairs. "She is comfortable and confident in those circles." Indeed, in 1954 when the well-bred young lady gave up her law studies at the Far Eastern University to marry Ninoy, the sponsor at the wedding was Philippine President Ramon Magsaysay.
If Cory is a singularly family-oriented person even for a family-oriented culture, she is also uncommonly devout even for a country that is 85% Catholic. And if Cory inspires faith, it is largely because she is inspired by it. Three of her closest advisers are Jaime Cardinal Sin, Archbishop of Manila; Father Joaquin Bernas, president of the Jesuit Ateneo de Manila University; and Father Catalino Arevalo, another Jesuit, who is her spiritual adviser. Addressing the governors of the Asian Development Bank and 1,200 international delegates two months after coming to power, she frankly declared, "I am not embarrassed to tell you that I believe in miracles."
The absoluteness of that belief gives Aquino a firmness that can turn into stubbornness. Indeed, her very real sense that she is an instrument of God's will prompts friends and relatives to refer to her career, again and again, as a "mission." Says her mother-in-law and confidante, Dona Aurora Aquino: "I think this is a mission for her, to put her country in shape. Then she can retire. Ninoy's assassination was his fate. The presidency is hers." Cory often says the same thing.
Faith is also the basis of her fatalism. "If someone wishes to use a bazooka on me," she once said, "it's goodbye. If it's my time to die, I'll go." In the meantime, she exasperates her security men by acting as if she were protected by some invisible shield. Her sense of religion accounts too for Aquino's uncanny patience, her willingness, while awaiting what she regards as the appointed moment, to hold onto a burning match until it singes her fingers.
Yet her piety is very farm from passivity. In 1984, returning to Mount St. Vincent College to collect an honorary degree, the mild, once bookish college girl surprised her former classmates with a forceful address. "Faith," she told them, "is not simply a patience which passively suffers until the storm is past. Rather, it is a spirit which bears things—with resignation, yes, but above all, with blazing serene hope."
That is the same quality noticed by Richard Kessler, a senior associate for U.S.-Philippines relations at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "She's a very biblical type of person," he observes. "But it's not from a Hallmark card. It's saintliness at in the Old Testament. On the one hand, you pardon your enemies; on the other, it's an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."
If Aquino's blaze of righteousness is partly responsible for her luminous, even numinous, magnetism, it also explains her unbending ruthlessness in applying an eye for an eye. "In some ways," says a close confidant, "she's an unforgiving person. She never forgets." When a former supporter, Homobono Adaza, went over to Enrile's camp, she not only stripped him of his $50,000-a-year position on the board of the San Miguel Corporation, a large state-controlled conglomerate, but replaced him with his archenemy Aquilino Pimentel. The flip side of her fidelity is inflexibility. "I have a long memory for people who have helped me," the President recently warned a group of subordinates, "but I have a longer memory for people who have stood in my way."
That air of discriminating toughness was hardened during her marriage, which was, as much as anything, a rhyming of opposites, a marriage of public and private. "She was a very supportive wife," recalls her mother-in-law Dona Aurora. "She was content to remain in the background. She did not meddle, she stayed at home." As it happened, she had little choice. "Let's face it," the President likes to say with a wry mixture of affection and realism, "my husband was the original male chauvinist."
Yet if Ninoy was the public center of the family, Cory was the moral backbone. "He decided that he would be the indulgent parent," she has written, "and I would be the disciplinarian." Often she extended that loving discipline even to her husband, telling him the difficult truths that his cronies preferred to hold back. "Cory was his highest conscience," says Harvard's Brown. "He valued her judgments enormously."
In its way, indeed, the Aquino marriage seemed to play out in miniature the central dialectic of Cory's life between politics and faith. As a traditional Filipino fresh presser, Ninoy regarded all politics as dirty politics and was content to join the rough-and-tumble system in order to beat it. Cory, however, disapproved of such chicanery, and in deference to her, Ninoy and his friends never discussed skulduggery when she was present. "The minute she entered the room," says one close family friend, "people put on their best behavior. Even Ninoy behaved when Cory was around. I was nervous when Cory served the coffee. She can be very cutting, and she will cut you in public. She has a dismissive gesture of the hand to indicate that she's tired of the discussion or the person. It's very un-Filipino, and it has unsettled a lot of people."
Some problems, though, she could not wave away. Ninoy's free- spirited ways, could never have been easy on his young wife. Yet it seems that her husband's private life exercised her no more than his public one. Wherever he was, Ninoy turned his home into a kind of 24-hour coffee shop in which the loquacious host and his associates would thrash out tactics through the night, while Cory waited on them. The ceaseless bustle must have placed a considerable strain on the retiring patrician woman. "Cory is an introvert, Ninoy was an extrovert," says Ninoy's favorite sister, Lupita Aquino Kashiwahara. "He thrived on people. She doesn't need them."
Those who have known Cory Aquino as wife and hostess are hardly surprised by her quiet authority—only by the suddenness with which she has steeled herself to her new role, transforming herself in 30 months from a self-effacing lady to a self-confident leader. Yet those who have just met her are often so disarmed by her softness that they overlook her ability to act with decisiveness.
The White House, to take one example, was markedly reluctant during the dying months of the Marcos era to accept the petite grandmother with a little girl's voice as a plausible leader of the country that houses the largest U.S. military installation abroad. Even after the election, a White House aide publicly complained, "How the State Department thinks that Aquino can govern on her own is just beyond us."
Since she came to power, however, Aquino has systematically gone about stilling many of those doubts about her ability to govern. Afterward, and ever since, the normally poker-faced Secretary has fairly glowed at the very mention of Aquino's name. When Cory spoke before a joint session of Congress, she received the most thunderous reception given any foreign leader in more than a generation. Indeed, the entire U.S. tour, observed a State Department official who accompanied her, was "staggeringly successful. She had hard-bitten politicians eating out of her hand."
In her first ten months as President, Aquino has already begun to freshen up the office with an honesty and humility rarely seen in political circles. Before her U.S. visit, for example, she exasperated Philippine couturiers, accustomed to the imperial Imelda, but refusing to spend more than $40 on any dress. She still prefers not to be called "Madam," an honorific she feels was stained by the former First Lady. In many ways, in fact, she seems as open as before. Upon learning that a local journalist had won a grant to study in the U.S., the President stunned the woman by calling her up to offer her an old winter coat.
That unassuming style reflects a person with a very precise sense of herself and her limits. Aquino recognizes the vanity of vanity. "I've reached a point in life," she says, "where it's no longer necessary to try to impress. If they like me the way I am, that's good. If they don't, that's too bad." It is that same kind of detached self-possession that enables her, in the midst of pandemonium, to remain as composed as a sermon. "A single word of anger from her or any suggestion of violence [at Ninoy's funeral] could conceivably have overtaken Malacanang Palace," relates Emmanuel Pelaez, the Philippine Ambassador to the U.S. "But she was very scriptural. `Vengeance is mine,' she must have said to herself."
Nor has the presidency yet smudged her sense of priorities. The eldest of Cory's four daughters, Maria Elena ("Ballsy") Cruz, 31, is still her private secretary, and her only son, Benigno III ("Noynoy"), 26, was one of her emissaries to the Communists. Aquino attends no more than three formal dinners a week, and the day on which the historic cease-fire with the Communists was signed found her marking what would have been her husband's 54th birthday with Cardinal Sin and her one-year-old-grandson Justin Benigno. Being a grandmother, she says, makes her happier than being President.
With her moral—even moralistic—strictness, Aquino can at times treat even her Cabinet colleagues with the kind of affectionate sternness she lavishes on her children. She allows no smoking in her office, and she expects all the President's men to be prompt and tireless. Once she told Chief Speechwriter Teodoro Locsin to dress less like a gangster. The faint air of maternalism is heightened by her habit of referring to "my people," "my Cabinet," and even, most disconcertingly, "my generals."
For all that, however, Aquino's leadership of her Cabinet has often been uncertain. She manages by intuition, observers say, which is perhaps why her government remains somewhat disorderly. So far, says one minister very close to the President, "she gives herself a B. Her political instincts are superb, but she needs a better balance of close-in advisers. What she really needs is a chief of staff."
At the center of the confusion, and the controversy, are the human rights activists, whom Aquino admires for their idealism and especially for the faithfulness with which they stood by her husband during the dark days of martial law. Ninoy's lawyer Joker Arroyo is her executive secretary; Ninoy's cellmate Jose Diokno is chairman of the Presidential Commission on Human Rights; Ninoy's friend Locsin is her speechwriter. Many people feel that Aquino is too protective of these advisers and that they are too protective of her. The prime target of these charges is the principled but overworked Arroyo, who sometimes spends as much as six hours a day huddling with the President.
The conflict between personal loyalty and public policy becomes even more vexing when it comes to Aquino's own large family. If ever the President moves, as promised, to redistribute national wealth, she can hardly afford to overlook the wealth of the Cojuangcos. More troublesome still are the activities of her younger brother and close adviser Jose ("Peping"), who has been accused of reaping personal profits from two new casinos in Manila.
Having changed the rules of Philippine politics, moreover, the self-professed housewife often finds herself judged by the old rules. In restoring her country's freedoms, for example, she is content to go about her business while marcos loyalists stir up trouble in the streets and Cabinet ministers speak their minds to the 26 daily newspapers in rumor-mad Manila. The resulting appearance of dissentious sound and fury is, she says, simply a sign of the government's self-confident strength: democracy in action. Others take it for weakness.
Likewise, her slowness to act while former Defense Minister Enrile was openly challenging her authority was widely seen as a symptom of her habit of praying and delaying. Yet her admirers point to the Enrile firing as an example of an inspired sense of timing. "She's an extraordinarily good judge of people and performance," says Republican Senator Richard Lugar, who led the U.S. team of observers at the February elections and returned to Manila in August. "She has instinctive feelings of loyalty and of who is pulling with her."
Certainly, her swift if belated stroke of decisiveness against Enrile dispelled in a single blow much of the turmoil that was unsettling Manila. And when she went on to ax four controversial ministers, while signing a cease-fire with the Communist rebels, Aquino pulled off a strategic coup of her own. Few could doubt that she had mastered the Napoleonic axiom that "justice means force as well as virtue."
That radical shake-up also succeeded in soothing, for the moment, some of the restiveness of the 250,000 men of the army. General Ramos, the head of the armed services, has declared himself repeatedly, in word and deed, to be fully behind the President. Nevertheless, as many as 6,000 young officers in the Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM), outraged at Enrile's ouster, may yet make trouble.
The
www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19870105,00.html
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/1794/167
|
| Title: | 1995 Honorary Degree - Aquino, Corazon |
| Other Titles: | Aquino Honorary Degree 1995 Corazon Aquino Honorary Degree 1995 |
| Authors: | University of Oregon. Office of International Affairs |
| Keywords: | International education -- International cooperation International education -- Oregon Aquino, Corazon Cojuangco University of Oregon -- Degrees Universities and colleges -- Administration -- Records and correspondence University of Oregon. Office of International Affairs -- Records and correspondence Honorary degrees |
| Issue Date: | 12-May-2004 |
| Abstract: | This set of records includes the correspondence, memoranda, planning, and reports to arrange the granting of an honorary degree to Corazon Acquino, former President of the Philippines, by the university in 1995. |
| Description: | 84 Microsoft word files, MAC format, converted to PDF. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/1794/167 |
| Other Identifiers: | ACCESSION 2002-54 |
| Appears in Collections: | Office of International Affairs |
scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/dspace/handle/1794/167?mo...
Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/1794/167
|
Full metadata record
| DC Field | Value | Language |
|---|---|---|
| dc.contributor.author | University of Oregon. Office of International Affairs | - |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2004-05-12T23:20:50Z | - |
| dc.date.available | 2004-05-12T23:20:50Z | - |
| dc.date.issued | 2004-05-12T23:20:50Z | - |
| dc.identifier | ACCESSION 2002-54 | - |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1794/167 | - |
| dc.description | 84 Microsoft word files, MAC format, converted to PDF. | en |
| dc.description.abstract | This set of records includes the correspondence, memoranda, planning, and reports to arrange the granting of an honorary degree to Corazon Acquino, former President of the Philippines, by the university in 1995. | en |
| dc.format.extent | 139020 bytes | - |
| dc.format.extent | 137935 bytes | - |
| dc.format.extent | 54508 bytes | - |
| dc.format.extent | 46043 bytes | - |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | - |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | - |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | - |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | - |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | - |
| dc.subject | International education -- International cooperation | en |
| dc.subject | International education -- Oregon | en |
| dc.subject | Aquino, Corazon Cojuangco | en |
| dc.subject | University of Oregon -- Degrees | en |
| dc.subject | Universities and colleges -- Administration -- Records and correspondence | en |
| dc.subject | University of Oregon. Office of International Affairs -- Records and correspondence | en |
| dc.subject | Honorary degrees | en |
| dc.title | 1995 Honorary Degree - Aquino, Corazon | en |
| dc.title.alternative | Aquino Honorary Degree 1995 | en |
| dc.title.alternative | Corazon Aquino Honorary Degree 1995 | en |
| dc.type | Other | en |
| Appears in Collections: | Office of International Affairs |
Files in This Item:
|
Contact Maureen Shine (541) 346-3129
EUGENE--Interested in hearing what former Philippine president Corazon Aquino has to say during her visit to Eugene, but you can't make it to the event? There's another option--watch a live satellite television broadcast of her speech.
Aquino will give a free public lecture on leadership when she returns to the University of Oregon April 23-25 as the 1997 Carlton Raymond and Wilberta Ripley Savage Visiting Professor in International Relations and Peace. She speaks at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 24, in the Ballroom of the Erb Memorial Union, 1222 E. 13th Ave.
Anyone on the West Coast with a satellite dish can watch her address free of charge at the same time at the following coordinates :
Ku-Band Spacenet 3
Transponder 23
Downlink Frequency 12080 MHz
Audio 6.2 MHz or 6.8 MHz
TCI Cable Channel 11 also will re-broadcast Aquino's speech in the Eugene-Springfield area at a date and time yet to be determined.
Aquino first came to the UO in 1995 as commencement speaker and received an honorary doctorate at the ceremony, the first honorary degree to be bestowed by the university in 49 years.
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A Filipino Linked to 'Love Bug' Talks About His License to Hack
Did Onel de Guzman create the ''Love Bug,'' the most destructive computer virus in history?
''I admit I create viruses, but I don't know if it's one of mine,'' he said in an interview here. ''If the source code was given to me, I could look at it and see. Maybe it is somebody else's, or maybe it was stolen from me.''
Mr. de Guzman, 24, understands that in the information age, fame is fleeting. With his notoriety vanishing like so many 1's and O's in cyberspace, this Filipino computer school dropout wants the world to know he is a brilliant hacker -- a mastermind who can turn a PC into putty.
But Mr. de Guzman has a problem. His claim to fame is the suspicion that he created a computer bug that hopscotched around the world, causing an estimated $10 billion in damage as it paralyzed computers from the Pentagon to the British Parliament. In many countries, that would have landed him in prison.
The Philippine authorities filed theft and other charges against Mr. de Guzman, but dropped them in August because of insufficient evidence. The case against him was weakened because at the time, the Philippines did not have laws governing computer espionage.
Now it does -- which means that if Mr. de Guzman confesses, he could wind up back in legal trouble. So this shy, spiky-haired young man is playing a risky game of wink and nod: giving occasional interviews in which he refuses to own up to the virus, but tries to cash in on the dark glory it confers.
''There are so many computer geniuses out there,'' said Mr. de Guzman, as his lawyer monitored his remarks. ''But I think I have become part of the history of the Philippines. That cannot be erased.''
Mr. de Guzman said he no longer hacked. But he still practices ''cracking,'' which he describes as gaining unauthorized access to passwords, serial numbers and other numeric codes. He said he used the technique to download unlicensed software from the Internet, rather than paying for it.
''Cracking does not destroy,'' he said. ''You know what effect you are going to have when you crack.''
Mr. de Guzman said he saw nothing wrong with purloining software, just as he has no moral qualms about the damage caused by viruses. He said software makers, notably Microsoft, were to blame for the Love Bug debacle because they licensed products vulnerable to sabotage.
''For programmers like us, it is not wrong,'' Mr. de Guzman said, speaking in Tagalog. ''I'm the user; I buy the product. If I use it in a wrong or improper way, why should I be blamed? I bought the product.''
People who follow the computer industry said such amoral attitudes were typical among computer hackers, whether they lived in the teeming neighborhoods of Manila or the low-rise sprawl of Silicon Valley. Indeed, until last spring, Mr. de Guzman was an unremarkable young man struggling to complete the requirements for a computer science degree at a technical college here.
On May 4, an e-mail bearing the title ''I LOVE YOU'' began popping up in computers in Asia. When opened, it destroyed graphics and other files. The e-mail program, commonly called a virus or worm, spread by sending itself to all the other e-mail addresses in a computer's database. Within hours, it had followed the rising sun to newsrooms, brokerage firms and government offices in Europe and the United States.
''I was at home sleeping,'' Mr. de Guzman recalled. ''When I woke up, I heard it on the news. It didn't mean anything to me.''
Manila quickly became the focus of a feverish worldwide hunt for the author of the virus. The police identified Mr. de Guzman as their prime suspect after a local Internet service provider traced an unusually heavy volume of data traffic to a computer in the home of his sister. Mr. de Guzman at first said he might have released the virus by accident. Now, he says, he does not know how it got out.
Mr. de Guzman said he became a suspect because of a thesis proposal he had submitted to his college. The proposal, which laid out a method for stealing passwords to gain free access to the Internet, was rejected. Mr. de Guzman said his professors were close-minded.
''They did not want to believe that I had created a program that exposed a hole in the operating system,'' he said. ''They couldn't accept that I was able to do that. I told them, but they didn't want to accept it.''
Did he unleash the virus to vindicate his thesis?
''I don't know if I was the one proving it,'' he said after a lengthy pause. ''I just showed them the thesis.''
Mr. de Guzman holed up at his mother's house for weeks after the police named him as a suspect. The few times he ventured out, he said he was pointed at by people. He has since cut his hair and gained weight, he says, from eating home-cooking and passing the time on a couch with a Sony Playstation.
These days, Mr. de Guzman said he could go out with his friends in relative anonymity. But his return to obscurity has dampened his job prospects. At the height of the affair, Mr. de Guzman said he was bombarded by job offers from computer companies. He ignored them to focus on his legal defense.
Now, the companies have stopped calling. Mr. de Guzman wants people to know he is in the job market. He said he would even consider Microsoft, whose Outlook software was one of the main transmission vehicles for the virus.
''If the offer is good, if they're not pressuring me, I think maybe I might accept,'' Mr. de Guzman said.
First, though, he has to stay out of trouble. Mr. de Guzman's lawyer, Rolando Quimbo, said that the Internet service provider that was used to launch the virus had petitioned to reinstate the case against him. While that seems unlikely, Mr. Quimbo wants his client to avoid incriminating statements.
In June, prodded by the Love Bug case, the Philippine government passed a law that bans hacking. By then, however, it was too late to prosecute Mr. de Guzman under its provisions. The senator who pushed the bill, Ramon Magsaysay Jr., said it was aimed at future hackers.
''Once the law is implemented, and a couple of people are sent to jail, they may think twice,'' Mr. Magsaysay said. ''But young people being who they are, I'm sure some will still try to break into databases.''
For his part, Mr. de Guzman insisted the thrill of hacking was gone. If he cannot find work with a software company, he said he would go into business -- perhaps opening a cybercafe. Longer term, he said he would like to write a software program impervious to hackers.
''But if somebody hacked it, I would just laugh,'' Mr. de Guzman said without a trace of a smile. ''I would admire them.''
halalan-2007.blogspot.com/2007/02/link-search-for-...
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| Peso seen rising to 39.10:$1 this year By Doris Dumlao Philippine Daily Inquirer MANILA, Philippines--American investment banking giant Lehman Brothers foresees the peso rising to 39.10 to a dollar by year's end before surging to 36.70 in 2009 but warned that remittances from overseas Filipinos could be a "double-edged" sword in this period of US-led global slowdown. Lehman expects Philippine domestic economic growth to slow down to 5 percent this year given a less favorable global environment but sees the country resuming a robust growth of 7 percent in 2009. "The rise in overseas worker remittances to $14.4 billion in 2007 buoyed domestic demand, lifting real GDP (gross domestic product) growth to 7.3 percent--a three-decade high," Lehman said in a global economic report dated March 14. "However, with 52 percent of the remittances sourced from the US, a deep recession there could weaken remittance inflows in 2008 and hurt consumption spending." Another concern, Lehman said, was the Philippine economy's high dependence on imported oil and rice, noting that food made up nearly half of the consumer basket used in measuring inflation. The investment bank expects the country's inflation rate to breach the government's official target of 3-5 percent this year to average at 6 percent, further rising to 6.5 percent next year. But Lehman said Asian central banks, including the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, would likely "focus more on weakening economic growth than rising cost-push inflation." The investment bank thus expects the BSP's benchmark overnight borrowing rate to be lowered to 4.75 percent this year from 5 percent, before being tightened to 6 percent next year. Overall, Lehman is upbeat on prospects for Asia's emerging markets, believing that the world's fastest growing region could attract more foreign investments as the US would likely avoid a deep recession. A better US economic picture, it said, should address woes about global risk aversion. "Over the next two years, we judge that emerging Asian economies will start to realize their full growth potential, underpinned by resurgent investment," the research said. It said China would still be the region's front-runner but India could start catching up. "The laggard economies have been Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. All three will have new governments in 2008, which we expect to result in pro- growth policies," it said. In the US, Lehman said there would likely be an extended period of slower growth as housing hits American consumers and credit dislocation crimps activity. "We see a 'W-shaped' trajectory, with a mild recession in early 2008 and weak growth in early 2009," Lehman said. However, Lehman said an aggressive fiscal and monetary easing in the US should prevent a deep recession. "Despite strong fundamentals in emerging markets, the world will not be able to 'decouple': we expect a slowdown across the board," it said. The US Federal Reserve would likely trim its targeted funds rate from 2.25 percent to 1.25 percent by June, which would likely be followed by a similar monetary easing by the European central bank and the Bank of England. "The dollar is set to fall against the yen and other Asian currencies but may regain ground against the euro and pound," it said. Heyphilippines. |
biz.yahoo.com/ap/080124/philippines_markets.html?....
Philippine Stock Index Jumps 2.9 Percent
Thursday January 24, 7:29 am ET
The Philippine Stock Exchange Index climbed 89.16 points, or 2.9 percent, to 3,147.42, extending Wednesday's 2.7 percent rise.
The index dropped from the day's high of 3,170.48, though, as some investors quickly pocketed gains on lingering worries over a slowing U.S. economy and its impact on global markets.
"We're still sailing rough waters," said Astro del Castillo, First Grade Holdings managing director.
Gainers outnumbered losers 101 to 24, while 40 stocks were unchanged.
Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. was the most actively traded stock, ending 3.3 percent higher at 2,670 pesos.
Ayala Corp., the Philippines' largest conglomerate, advanced 1.1 percent to 455 pesos.
Property developer Megaworld Corp. surged 3.6 percent to 2.90 pesos.
The peso rose against the U.S. dollar as risk aversion dissipated on rebounding global markets after the U.S. Federal Reserve's 0.75-point interest rate cut on Tuesday. The dollar closed at 41.18 pesos, down from 41.250 pesos on Wednesday.
From Dow Jones Newswires
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By Lawrence Casiraya
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 09:32:00 01/17/2008
MANILA, Philippines -- APAC Customer Services (APAC) is looking at building its next call center outside of Metro Manila starting this year.
The Illinois-based outsourcer currently employs around 4,000 workers in three sites in Metro Manila -- two in Alabang and its biggest facility located at the Araneta Center in Cubao.
James Griffin, vice-president for in