Coffee and Abortion

The title of this piece may be misleading and it actually is meant to be. Me and a couple of my friends coined this term "coffee and abortion" to refer to a time when we would have a coffee over a conversation about serious social issues. Being a guy, my age, I do have a group of friends who are into gaming. Most of our conversations will lean towards gaming.

However, many moons ago, one of my gaming friends posted on Facebook about the issue of abortion which I happened to disagree with. As with practically every single comment thread online, the discussion then involved other people and became nasty and there was no real resolution to it. Online anonymity is the enemy of intellectual honesty. My friend, the original poster, then politely asked me to drop it just to take the high road. I couldn't agree more with him at the time. Online discussions can be very fruitless and frustrating which is how I decided to ask my friends if they'd be open to have a gathering where instead of talking about gaming, we'd instead talk about these more serious issues.

Since that time, our list of topics had grown and we still haven't been able to gather enough people for our first gathering. The topic need not be about abortion. Among the topics we might take up are homosexual marriage, Duterte's war on drugs, transgender issues, and charter change. These friends of mine actually do have strong opinions on these matters and a face to face discussion most definitely encourages dialogue and a forced civility.

While we still hadn't had our first formal "Coffee and Abortion" gathering, we somewhat got an informal kind last night. My friend Faith, asked me when we'll have Coffee and Abortion and the people in our table looked at us weird and so I explained to them the origin of the term and just like that, people were giving their opinion on the matter. The discussion was very lively and though no minds were changed still, the end effect was that everyone took away someone else's point of view and took it respectfully.

I most definitely got something out of the conversation which is all I needed to know that they took something away from it as well. I guess my next post would be a set set of guidelines about how people can have their own Coffee and Abortion discussions. Here's what I think rule number 1 should be:

"You're not here to change minds. You're here to express your ideas and learn other people's ideas."

How I think we can end political dynasties

A former teacher and good friend of mine, Odick Abellanosa, wrote an opinion column tackling the issue of political dynasties and though his column wasn't what made me think about this issue, it was his column that made me want to write about it myself. I bounced my ideas off of his and while the solution I offer isn't perfect, it's one I think has some merit.

To solve a problem, we usually look at two things - the cause and the effect. Take a leaking roof. The cause if obviously the poor condition of the roof itself. The effect is that water enters the house and can cause damage to your property. We can opt to address the cause by plugging up the leak or replacing the roof which would make the most sense. Or we could opt to address the effect and put an umbrella inside the house to make sure the leak doesn't cause a slipping hazard.

Our problem with the issue on political dynasties is we see their existence as a cause we need to plug up to avoid their adverse effects. My take on this issue is that political dynasties is that it is an effect, the cause of which is what we need to address. Consider how many political dynasties start off. I'll illustrate below and you decide if the thing I painted is close to reality. I'll be using hypothetical couple Boy and Girlie and the hypothetical city of Lungsud (coz why not?):

• Boy is married and Girlie and he used to be the mayor of Lungsud City
• Girlie had not much interest in politics. She found it dirty and it wasn't something she wanted a part of.
• During Boy's last term as mayor, he realizes there isn't a more suitable replacement to his leadership. Either that or he simply doesn't want to give up the power he's grown accustomed to for his past three terms (that's 9 years).
• He may have engaged in some shady dealings which he needs to cover up. Enter the brilliant idea of asking Girlie to run in his stead while he runs as her vice-mayor.
• If Boy is popular enough, Girlie gets enough support to win and now you have the mayor and vice-mayor positions held by the same couple.
• Girlie now enjoys her power and decides to stick to politics.

The more I think about it the more I'm convinced that political dynasties are born out of the Filipino palusut attitude. Whatever law we put forth addressing political dynasties, the Filipino will find a loophole in it. Plus, let's face it. Pushing for an anti-dynasty law to come from politicians who come from political dynasties is NEVER happening. A genius law comes from looking like it serves these monkeys when in fact it serves the people more.

My proposal? It might be time for the Philippines to consider lifting term limits for local positions including congressional seats. In my view, what harm does it do to cities if good mayors stay in power longer? Lifting term limits also removes the incentive for family members from going into politics as the main politician in the family is still able to run for the position legally.

Now, I admit I could be totally wrong on this front and this could erupt into total chaos but it makes sense to me the most. I remember a former senator defend his poor performance as a lawmaker by saying the Philippines already has a lot of laws. He was mocked then but there may be some wisdom in his words. Many laws are good. Some are bad. Some are outdated. And a lot need revision. I think the laws on terms limits need some revision.

As it so happens, a draft of the new constitution does remove term limits from congressmen only. From my personal observation of Philippine politics, this rule needs to extend to mayoral races as well as these are they are the ones that usually spawn these political dynasties.

That's my take on this matter. Whatever the case, it would be beneficial to the Filipino people to see the end of political dynasties but the mechanism by which we end them should make sense as well.

What rallying taught me in UP...

"So aktibista ka?"

"So you rally on the streets?"

These are but the few reactions (of many) that UP students and alumni get when mentioning that they go or went to UP. I can certainly relate as almost all of my Ateneo friends would ask me when I last attended a rally and when the next one would be. Now, spoiler alert, I never attended a single rally in my stay in UP and many UP alumni share this experience. I know a few who attended a few rallies and that was it.

So how did rallying teach me anything if I never attended a single one? Simple. I had the chance to see their arguments and evaluate for myself what position I should hold. Whenever I see a group rallying for anything, I always feel I need to look into the issue more. I mean, if people are that upset over something, maybe I should be too! Then I look into the pros and cons of each position and take it from there.

A hot button issue during my very first year in UP was about the Tuition and Other Fees Increase (TOFI). The argument put forth by the activists was that UP is a state university and should therefore be free. The idea that we were paying for college tuition at all was abhorrent to them. On paper, this sounds great. Anything free always sounds good... on paper. TOFI passed that year and the new bacth of students were paying 3x more than what I was paying for tuition. We could see instant results in the first semester alone! In our chemistry lab (1st year subject), we had to make do with rusted iron rings. Our instructor had to use masking tape because the iron ring was too large. We had to cut litmus paper so we could use one strip for several experiments.

In the semester directly proceeding that one, we were using computers with motion sensors on our physics experiments. Now, I will admit that the university had raised the money in other ways to pay for the initial equipment. But for the school to continue using these things, they had to have other funds for their maintenance. Where else but lab fees and tuition fees? Our classrooms in Engineering suddenly underwent a makeover and for the better! Better tables, better white boards and altogether, better rooms.

I was, on certain occasions invited to join an educational discussion which in hindsight was good practice. It gave students the avenue to explore ideas not normally addressed in the classroom. My memory was vague but I remember them saying that college education should be free. As a freshman who had no idea about all these things, I considered their ideas until they invited us to stage a rally for greater state subsidy. I didn't agree in rallying for a cause. I believed that if we truly want the government to fund our education, we'd have to prove to them that our education is worth funding. As opposed to their view which was to demand free education regardless of merit.

This is what I learned from rallying in UP. There's a more nuanced ideology here and it's a hot button topic now on social media so I think I'll address it in a separate post.

Mahal kong Pilipinas (a post about inflation)

Everything is so dang expensive now! And while inflation is a natural occurrence in the economy, a 6.2% inflation is hardly natural. It had to be caused by something. In this post, I'd like to look at one thing whose price increase has the most effect on all Filipinos - rice.

I saw this one particular post which did make me think. It said that we're an agricultural country that imports rice. That in itself should give us pause. But it's not a new phenomenon. We've been importing rice since the time of GMA - or at least that's when I first remember it being an issue. No president since then has actually solved this problem and we're simply seeing the results now. So what is the problem?

Not enough people are going into farming. Since 2013, it's been news that the average age of farmers is 57 (source here: http://www.irinnews.org/feature/2013/02/26/filipino-farmers-dying-breed). Since this was news 5 years ago, I can only assume that the average farmer is a senior citizen! Why is this? We have so much land for agriculture and yet less young people are going into farming. Inquirer even reported as much way back in 2012! (see: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/223047/enrollment-in-agriculture-at-uplb-sharply-declines). What's happening?

I'll admit that the current administration has contributed to this by not addressing the core problem of the situation but let's not delude ourselves by saying this current administration is solely to blame. This problem was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode and it simply chose to explode now. Now, if this was a ticking time bomb, who planted it? The answer can be short and simple. This ticking time bomb's name is CARP. And it actually fits with all the things we see today. CARP passed in 1988 so that means CARP has been around for 30 solid years. (Yes, 90s kids, 30 years ago means 1988, NOT 1970). That means that back then the average age for the farmer would be a healthier 30-40 years old. The problem is simply that because of CARP, the profession of farming has never looked pleasing to the younger generation. Why? Sure, the farmers could get land, but without capital to make the land produce anything, you basically have a farmer who gets poorer and poorer. So you have children of agricultural families not going into agriculture because they see that farmers don't get rich and stray in poverty longer than any other profession. Can you blame them for not going into farming?

So why is rice so expensive these days? Some people point to TRAIN. I, on the other hand point to CARP and of the two, CARP is definitely more responsible for the inflation we see right now.

Mahal kong Pilipinas, we need to stop these useless laws which border on socialist policies. In my humble opinion, government should simply try to get out of businesses as much as possible and should only step in when it puts actual harm into its citizens.