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THE ABS-CBN media behemoth is an anomaly that has made a mockery of our democracy. This started in the late 1950s, when the landlord oligarch clan, the Lopezes, added to their empire what was then a new medium, television, which proved to be more powerful in reaching the masses than their Manila Chronicle newspaper.

We are the only country in Asia to have such a powerful oligarch as the dominant player in broadcast media, the most effective venue in the modern era for molding the masses political consciousness and choices.

Japan has the mammoth NHK, South Koreas three major network are either government-run or funded, and Singapores broadcast and print media are subsidiaries of the government investment fund Temasek Holdings.

Here we have an oligarch clan (in ABS-CBN Corp.), a triumvirate of magnates in another (GMA7) and a foreign tycoon (Indonesian Salim in TV5).

Worse for our democracy, the Lopezes werent just ordinary oligarchs. They owned for many decades the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco), the monopoly electricity distributor in Metro Manila, whose fortunes were 100 percent dependent on government regulations.

When they were friends: Lopez patriarchs Eugenio and Fernando at the formers 68th birthday party in 1969.

The Lopezes ABS-CBN made presidential elections a farce.

While the outcome of presidential elections are determined by a complex of factors, ABS-CBN has been a dominant factor, a big kingmaker, as the masses are hypnotized by ABS-CBN as they watch the 6 p.m. news while waiting for their teleserye or comedy programs.

SantiagoMiriam Defensor-Santiago in 1992 had tapped the idealism not only of the youth, but of the masses on a scale rivaling that of Rodrigo Duterte more than two decades later. The Lopezes, though, backed Fidel Ramos, their patron Corazon Cory Aquinos anointed. It was enough for a dozen or so coverage by ABS-CBN showing Santiago in a tantrum, and spreading the meme (before that word was invented) of Miriam as Brenda for brain-damaged to get the dull general win the elections.

Despite medias portrayal of him as a dum-dum, Joseph Erap Estrada was politically astute and sent all his celebrity eraps like Fernando Poe Jr. and allegedly his studios starlets to the Lopezes to get ABS-CBN behind his presidential bid. The Lopezes also hated candidate Jose de Venecia for his alleged support of the Marcos regime.

Or, perhaps, Erap did what medieval kings did, which was to establish an alliance through their childrens marriage. We learned about that only a year after the elections, when Manuel Beaver Lopez Jr. married Eraps unica hija (at least with Loi) Jackie.

The Lopezes, however, didnt hesitate to abandon Erap loyalty hasnt been that clans strength when the going got tough, as the jueteng and other scandals gave the Yellows and Ramos who feared Estrada would prosecute him for the so-called Centennial funds corruption, more than enough issues to stage a second People Power uprising.

Gloria Macapagal Arroyo tried very hard to get the Lopezes to her side, when she assumed power by accident in 2001. As Arroyos chief of staff, I attended a few dinners with Oscar and Manolo at her familys Forbes Park home to shoot the breeze as they say, although after the main meal the two Lopezes would meet with Arroyo at her living room, with no other people there.

ArroyoThe Lopezes needed Arroyo badly at that time. While Cory was in power, they racked up hundreds of millions of loans from the Development Bank of the Philippines in the hope of quickly building up the empire they lost during martial law. However, they couldnt seem to put their finances and even their house in order, especially after their primus inter pares Eugenio Lopez Jr. died in 1999.

That was the worst time for the patriarch to pass away as the 1998 to 1999 global financial crisis hit, and the Lopez empire had accumulated substantial foreign debt, the peso equivalent of which more than doubled as the exchange rate zoomed form P26 in 1996 to P54 by 2003.

The biggest problem though of the Lopezes involved their family jewel, Meralco, since the so-called Electric Power Industry Reform Act (Epira) was passed in June 2001, but was implemented only starting 2007 due to delays because of the suits against it that dragged on up to the Supreme Court.

I was assigned both before the law was passed and after to help Meralco with a small group of Arroyos closest Cabinet members in getting their side into the Act and then having their side taken into account by the Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) that decides on how much Meralco could charge its customers.

With then Trade and Industry Secretary Manuel Roxas 2nd (who was believed to be very close to the Lopezes, his fellow Ilonggo), Energy Secretary Vicente Perez Jr. and presidential legal counsel Avelino Cruz Jr., we met several times in secret with Meralco Chairman Manuel Pangilinan and his vice president, a lady in charge of electricity economics.

UnbundledWe spent so many hours poring over the details of how the firms prices were to be unbundled (i.e., its costs made transparent), how the performance-based rating system which replaced the return on rate base method that had been in effect since 1986, would work in practice.

While purportedly aimed at encouraging private sector investment in the power industry, the new pricing system made electricity costs in the country one of the highest in the world, while turning Meralco into a cash cow for its owners.

For some reason I dont know though I left Malacaang in 2005 to become the ambassador to Greece Arroyo, or the Energy Regulatory Commission delayed the implementation of the new price system. With Meralcos costs zooming up because of the pesos devaluation, it was racking up so much losses to nearly keel over.

Coincidentally or not, the so-called Hello Garci scandal broke out in 2005 when Arroyo was recorded talking over the phone with a Comelec commissioner before the 2004 elections. The group of inane Cabinet members called the Hyatt 10 resigned and called for her resignation, Cory and Cardinal Jaime Sin demanded that the president step down. ABS-CBN became vicious in its attacks against Arroyo.

With their finances getting worse, the Lopezes sold Meralco to their ally, the Indonesian Anthoni Salim, in March 2009. A few months later, the ERC implemented the Epiras pricing system. Meralcos profits starting that year zoomed, with its dividends expanding from P1 billion in 2007 to P2.8 billion the year Salim took over and to at least P12 billion every year since 2013.

Aquino 3rdIn the 2010 elections, ABS-CBN went all-out for Benigno Aquino 3rds presidential bid, its huge corps of journalists throwing dirt on the main rival then, the magnate Manuel Villar, tagging him as Villarroyo and running investigative reports alleging how he got highways in Las Pias built near the vast subdivisions he was developing. Villar ended up third, with Manuel Lopezs in-law Estrada the runner up.

The Lopezes kingmaker role in the post-war era isnt really new, as a University of California doctoral dissertation narrated:

The Lopezes are the only family that has consistently stayed on the fringes of power since 1945, when they came to power with [Manuel] Roxas. Consistently they have been the manipulators of political balances in this country. When they abandoned Quirino and the Liberal Party in the 1950s, there was a stampede out. When they joined the Magsaysay bandwagon in the 1960s, they forced Garcia down.

Then Macapagal came; but in two years the Lopezes were able to bring about a crisis of major proportions against him, and so bring on his downfall. And it was the Lopezes who engineered the coup of Ferdinand Marcos against Senate President Rodriguez that started his bid for the presidency. They rode with Marcos (and supported his bid for the presidency in 1965, and then abandoned him in 1969). What makes them so deadly? One: their control of media. They have one of the best radio and TV networks in the country.

Now do you think that Sen. Miguel Zubiris complaint that with ABS-CBN closed he wont be able to watch ANC in the morning anymore, the sympathy that 2,500 of its employees (per BIR figures) will lose their jobs, or the fear we wont be informed about the pandemic anymore make any sense?

This Congress, the 18th, and this President, Duterte, the only president who won without ABS-CBNs backing, will go down in history as oligarch-killers, as builders of Philippine democracy.

Email: tiglao.manilatimes@gmail.comFacebook: Rigoberto TiglaoTwitter: @bobitiglaoBook orders: http://www.rigobertotiglao.com/debunked

Link:
ABS-CBN closure will strengthen our democracy The Manila Times - The Manila Times

In a funeral oration in 430 bce for those who had fallen in the Peloponnesian War, the Athenian leader Pericles described democratic Athens as the school of Hellas. Among the citys many exemplary qualities, he declared, was its constitution, which favors the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. Pericles continued: If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if to social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way; if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life.

A century later, Aristotle discussed democracy in terms that would become highly influential in comparative studies of political systems. At the heart of his approach is the notion of a constitution, which he defines as an organization of offices, which all the citizens distribute among themselves, according to the power which different classes possess. He concludes that there must therefore be as many forms of government as there are modes of arranging the offices, according to the superiorities and the differences of the parts of the state. Ever the realist, however, he remarks that the best [government] is often unattainable, and therefore the true legislator and statesman ought to be acquainted, not only with (1) that which is best in the abstract, but also with (2) that which is best relatively to circumstances.

Aristotle identifies three kinds of ideal constitutioneach of which describes a situation in which those who rule pursue the common goodand three corresponding kinds of perverted constitutioneach of which describes a situation in which those who rule pursue narrow and selfish goals. The three kinds of constitution, both ideal and perverted, are differentiated by the number of persons they allow to rule. Thus rule by one is monarchy in its ideal form and tyranny in its perverted form (see tyrant); rule by the few is aristocracy in its ideal form and oligarchy in its perverted form; and rule by the many is polity in its ideal form and democracy in its perverted form.

Aristotles general scheme prevailed for more than two millennia, though his unsympathetic and puzzling definition of democracywhich probably did not reflect the views of most Greeks in his timedid not. Aristotle himself took a more favourable view of democracy in his studies of the variety, stability, and composition of actual democratic governments. In his observation that the basis of a democratic state is liberty, Aristotle proposed a connection between the ideas of democracy and liberty that would be strongly emphasized by all later advocates of democracy.

Nearly 20 centuries after Aristotle, the English philosopher John Locke adopted the essential elements of the Aristotelian classification of constitutions in his Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690). Unlike Aristotle, however, Locke was an unequivocal supporter of political equality, individual liberty, democracy, and majority rule. Although his work was naturally rather abstract and not particularly programmatic, it provided a powerful philosophical foundation for much later democratic theorizing and political programs.

Link:
Democracy - The theory of democracy | Britannica

The Reading Room of the Library of Congress, one of the many spaces that students in the Democracy and Arts in Washington, D.C. course toured this January. Photo by Katie Anderson 20

During Interim, many Oles decide to travel off campus to learn in a new place and culture. While students often take advantage of these programs in order to go abroad, several courses allow students to explore a city in the United States. This past January, the Democracy and Arts in Washington, D.C. course provided such an opportunity for 24 students who traveled to the nations capital for an immersion in the world of arts funding and advocacy.

Led by St. Olaf College Assistant Professor of Music Louis Epstein and Assistant Director of Academic Civic Engagement Alyssa Melby, the course took students to museums, government offices, performance venues, and other arts facilities to talk to professionals and representatives about arts policy and advocacy.

These opportunities included visits to the offices of Minnesota senators Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar. The classs visit with Sen. Klobuchar was part of the senators Minnesota Morning program, in which Sen. Klobuchar invites Minnesotans to talk with her over coffee on Thursday mornings. In addition, several students in the course had the opportunity to describe their experience of being in D.C. during President Trumps impeachment trial in an interview for NPRs All Things Considered, and an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education featured Epstein and his approach to grades for the course.

Katie Anderson 20, one of the students in the class, applied an artistic eye as she captured photos of the many spaces and places the St. Olaf group visited throughout the month. Get a glimpse of what the class saw in the album below.

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The course culminated in a policy proposal assignment in which students drafted a new arts policy in an area of interest. Throughout the course, students shared their experiences on an online blog, including end-of-term reflections.

Here are some of their reflections of how their perceptions of arts and democracy changed during the month in D.C.

I dont want a career in the arts, and I certainly dont want a career in politics, but I think this trip has reaffirmed that I need both in my life. There are too many ugly things in the world not to do something about it, and there are too many beautiful things in the world not to take them all in. After my time in D.C., I feel better equipped to do both in a more evaluative, optimistic, community-oriented way. Hannah Summers 22

Do we keep performing art that perpetuates negative stereotypes of women, men, POC, LGBTQ+? The conversation is important. Its what comes after that I am concerned with now. Alina Villa 20

I misjudged and underrated how much art is able to intersect with civic engagement and how artistic citizenship is able to redefine what civic duty means. So many of the institutions and organizations we visited in Washington whole-heartedly believed that civic duty is inextricably combined with the arts. Anna Cook 22

This month has made this English major question dictionary definitions, especially definitions of words so abstract and complex as art and democracy. In this sense, combining these words during this course and evaluating each word in the context of the other made for a challenging, complicated, and innovative union. Katie Anderson 20

I came into this course knowing I wanted to help bring the arts to people, but I didnt know how to find a niche in that space. It is easy to say that Im passionate about the arts, but it is so much more powerful to be able to talk about why; to say that Ive seen the restorative power of the arts in action and want to protect that. I always knew those things were true because I felt them in myself, but the opportunity to see that happen in others and have those stories to tell alongside my own is invaluable. Now I am armed with the perspective and experiences I need to explain why equity in the arts is essential. Penelope Musto 21

I am leaving this trip with a call to action in my ears. Our month in Washington D.C. made clear the power that each individual holds in this country. This program reminded me not only of the point of democracy, but also the point of art. Democracy is what gives a voice to each person in this nation, but art is what allows that voice to be heard. The dynamic culture of the arts scene in Washington D.C. reflects the development of personal civic identity that is essential to the success of the democratic system. The residents of Washington D.C. firmly believe in the concept of showing up, an idea that is sticking with me as I go back to my community and reflect on how I can show up. Holly Beck 22

This is what Ive taken away from Democracy and the Arts in Washington D.C.: For the sake of community, for the sake of artists, and for the sake of art itself, everyone must be given the opportunity to create and enjoy art. This is how art survives. Elijah Leer 22

I have felt encouraged more than ever about my individual political voice and the importance of showing up. Our first full day in town, we met with a staff member in representative Angie Craigs office. The next day, we met with Minnesota senator Tina Smith. A number of us went on to meet Amy Klobuchar later in the month. Each time I entered a building on Capitol Hill, I was shocked by just how easy it was to get in and access our representatives. Walking through the hallways and passing by the offices of people whose names I hear or read daily felt surreal; being located in the nations capital really lets you be positioned among those who make choices to change the course of history. Claire Strother 22

Go here to read the rest:
Reflections on studying democracy and the arts - St. Olaf College News

As the two rivals dig in their heels, dormant threats are poised to rise anew. Agitators on either side of the rift were talking to each other not long ago with guns, Fazel Fazly, President Ghanis chief adviser, told me. During the Afghan civil war from 1992 to 1996, mujahedin armies waged such fierce and destructive assaults on one another that the rise of the Taliban was initially welcomed as a relief from the carnage. During that time, the offending warlords convened five major peace talks, and after each negotiation, they came back to Kabul and initiated a bloodshed, Fazly said. The animosity ran too deep; alliances were built and broken within days. Yet in the wake of 9/11, many of these same rivals came together to establish the post-Taliban state, which has tentatively survived to the present day. A key to its cohesion has been the abiding presence of a strong guarantorthe coalition of U.S. and international troopsable to compel adherence to shared terms. The one big change, Fazly said, was that the countrys strongmen, power brokers, and warlords now had to obey the rules of the game.

What happens, then, when you remove the guarantor? The question has dogged Afghanistans democratic endeavor since the beginning. In a recent statement, the Taliban scorned the arrogant Americans and recalled a proverb: You may have the watches, but we have the time.

Every democracy has growing pains, but not all get the chance to outlive them. Shaharzad Akbar helped found Afghanistan 1400, a youth-led movement devoted to liberal principles, nearly a decade ago. She recently told me, Afghanistan is still a battleground between democratic values and radicalization. After coming of age in Kabul, Akbar was accepted at Smith College in Massachusetts, where she graduated in 2009 and delivered the commencement address for her class. Living and studying in the U.S. had taught her that it was OK to be a woman, she said at the ceremony, and that to feel and act like a woman in public was a strength, not a weakness. In 2017, Akbar began to work for the Afghan government. Last July, she was appointed to the historic delegation that traveled to Doha to initiate talks with the Taliban. A new mother at the time, she prepared her briefings while her two-month-old sat on the conference hall sidelines, tended to by her husband.

At one point during the first days session, the baby boy stirred, as if wishing to add his voice to the discussions over his countrys future. In some of the lists circulating online, the newborns name was even published as a participant. Observers delighted in the symbolism, but the inclusion was an error.

Continued here:
Afghanistan May Soon Have Peace. And the Cost Is Democracy. - The New Republic

New report lists 142 serious attacks on journalists in 2019

In a statement issued ahead of World Press Freedom Day on 3 May, Council of Europe Secretary General Marija Pejinovi Buri calls on governments to avoid unduly restricting media freedom during the COVID-19 crisis.

Governments are facing unprecedented challenges during the COVID-19 crisis, but the situation must not be used to silence or hinder journalists, said the Secretary General. Media must be free to report on all aspects of the crisis. Journalists have a key role and a special responsibility for providing timely, accurate and reliable information to the public. They must be able to scrutinise the decisions of authorities in response to the pandemic. Through responsible reporting, journalists can also help prevent panic from spreading and highlight positive examples of solidarity in our societies. I have been personally impressed and encouraged by the many media reports I have seen of citizens helping each other and of carers, nurses, doctors and other heroes on the frontline of this crisis.

The Secretary General also expressed her concern at the findings of the annual report of the Council of Europes Platform for the Protection of Journalism and the Safety of Journalists, compiled by 14 media freedom NGOs, highlighting a trend of violence and intimidation against journalists over the last year.

Unfortunately, the worrying trend of violence and intimidation against journalists observed in recent years continues. Too many journalists are in prison and there are too many cases of impunity for the killing of journalists. I am also aware of the difficult economic situation that many journalists find themselves in today", she said.

The Secretary General encouraged member states to protect the role of journalists as watchdogs and as an important part of the necessary checks and balances in democratic societies. The 2020 annual report of the Platform for the Protection of Journalism and the Safety of Journalists, published yesterday by 14 international NGOs, lists 142 serious threats to journalists in the 47 Council of Europe member states. This includes 33 physical attacks against journalists, 17 new cases of detention and imprisonment, 43 cases of harassment and intimidation and two new cases of impunity for murder. The NGOs express concern over a total of 22 pending cases of impunity for the killing of journalists and state that at least 105 journalists were in prison by the end of 2019.

Press releaseSecretary General: Governments must protect the essential role of journalists in democracy, especially in times of crisis

Statement by the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights

Statement by David Zalkaliani, President of the Committee of Ministers

Link:
Secretary General: Governments must protect essential role of journalists in democracy, especially in times of crisis - Council of Europe