Arnold "The Governator" Schwarzenegger will now not just be known for his action movies but as the Governor who nominated a Filipino American to be the next Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the most populous state in the United States. On July 22, he proudly presented Tani Gorre Cantil-Sakauye to a packed public gathering at the Capitol in Sacramento, a crowd which included the press, her family, friends and members of the Filipino-American community.  

When retiring Chief Justice Ronald George spoke and gushed that her nomination “will go down as one of the most exceptional legacies” of his administration, Gov. Schwarzenegger immediately blurted “I get that. I know that.”  

Chief Justice George described Cantil-Sakauye as "eminently qualified," "fully prepared" and a "strong woman who strongly commits herself to the statewide administration of justice."   When it was her turn to speak, the woman widely known in the Filipino community as “Judge Tani” approached the podium, flanked by the Chief Justice on her right and the Governor on her left, and thanked Schwarzenegger for bestowing "a great honor upon me and my family." Softly, she said, "I am humbled by the experience, I am grateful for the opportunity, and I am mindful of the public trust."   J

udge Tani then introduced her husband, Sacramento Police Lt. Mark Sakauye, and their two daughters, Hana, 14, and Clare, 11. She said her two daughters have one set of Filipino grandparents who worked in the fields as farm workers and another set of Japanese grandparents who were interned in a concentration camp during World War II.  

"And their mother,” Judge Tani continued as she smiled in the direction of the governor, “well, a man of tremendous vision  nominated her to lead the highest court in California. Is history remarkable or what?"  

Judge Tani understands history as a member of the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS) which was coincidentally holding the opening session of its national conference in Seattle on that very same day.  

I first met Tani Cantil more than 22 years ago when she had just started working as an Assistant District Attorney in Sacramento. She had driven up to San Francisco to attend a meeting of the Filipino Bar Association of Northern California (FBANC). At the meeting, Tani introduced herself as a graduate of the UC Davis School of Law who was inspired to become a lawyer when her mother brought her to an event where Fil-Am lawyer Gloria Megino-Ochoa spoke.  

Tani would recount this event on numerous occasions to stress the importance of community role models. She recalled that as Gloria spoke, “my mother threw me the elbow jab and said 'You could do that, too'. I didn't know what 'that' was, but I knew the elbow jab. And I knew that what Gloria was doing was important and good work for the public."  

The elbow jab from her second-generation Filipina mother and the legacy of her strong Cebuana grandmother inspired her to go to law school. “We were taught to see ourselves as leaders,” Tani recalls of her mother’s lessons. “I stand on the shoulders of my grandmother and my mother,” she would later declare in many of her speeches. “I am here for someone to stand on my shoulders.”  

Gloria Megino-Ochoa had broken a barrier by being the first Filipino-American in California to be elected as a Supervisor when she was elected to the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors in 1988. She narrowly lost her bid for Congress when her millionaire Republican opponent outspent her 50-1 in the general elections.  

Gloria graduated from UC Davis School of Law in 1976 and Tani would follow in her footsteps and enroll in the same law school without the benefit of a scholarship. To help pay for law school, Tani worked part-time as a blackjack dealer in Reno.  

After she graduated from law school in 1984, Tani couldn’t find a job as a lawyer. She had applied to the Public Defender’s Office but was considered too young. Fortunately, the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office didn’t take her age against her and accepted her application.   

While working as a Deputy District Attorney in 1988, her childhood friend, Kirk Louie, invited her to apply for his job as Deputy Legal Affairs Secretary to Gov. George Deukmejian. She did and was appointed to that position and then later as Deputy Legislative Secretary. In 1990, at age 30,  Deukmejian appointed her as a Judge of the Sacramento Municipal Court.  

After 6 years on the Municipal Court bench, Governor Pete Wilson promoted Tani to the Sacramento County Superior Court in 1997. In 2005, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed her as an Associate Justice of the California Third District Court of Appeal. After 20 years of serving as a judge, at the age of 50, on July 21, 2010, Schwarzenegger nominated her to succeed retiring Chief Justice of California Ronald M. George.  

At the July 22 public gathering in front of members of the California Supreme Court and the California Legislature, soon-to-be Chief Justice Tani vowed to uphold the rich tradition of California's justice system, which the public counts on to "right the wrongs, vanquish indignities and provide a forum for everyone," she said.  

As Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court (probably for the next 20 years), she will head an agency that has 1,700 judges (less than 12 of whom are Filipino-Americans) and 21,000 other employees with a $4 billion a year budget.  

"The public can count on me to look and learn from the past, to address the immediate needs and priorities of the present, and to plan and prepare for the future," she said.   Standing on Chief Justice Tani’s broad shoulders, many future Filipino American leaders will emerge.  

 (Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 or call (415) 334-7800).

                  Rodel Rodis, July 21, 2010

I was watching the morning news on MSNBC on July 19 when normally unflappable news anchor Tamron Hall appeared startled by what she was reading on her teleprompter. An 18-year old actress has just undergone Botox treatment to prepare for her role in the TV series Glee, she announced. With a look of utter disgust on her face, Tamron said “More, after this word from our sponsor”.

After the commercial break, Tamron reported that the cosmetic surgeon of Filipina singer Charice Pempengco had just revealed on Philippine television  that the aspiring actress had  undergone a 30-minute Thermage skin-tightening procedure and Botox injections on her jaw to make her “naturally round face” more narrow.

Tamron could not believe what she was reading. Why on earth would an 18 year old subject herself to Botox treatment, she wanted to know. What is this world coming to?

Tamron’s reaction was not unique. Throughout the day, I read similar “sign of the apocalypse” commentaries in New York Magazine, CNN, People, Us Weekly, Associated Press and dozens of blogs.

“SICK!!” celebrity blogger Perez  Hilton wrote. “Who the eff would do that to an effing teenager in good conscience?!”  

“She's already a successful singer, having received a major career boost from appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show and The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” Perez Hilton wrote, “but Charice - who, it bears repeating, is 18 years old! - feels enough pressure from Hollywood to have undergone a skin-tightening procedure last week, along with Botox meant to make her face look rounder.” In explaining why she underwent cosmetic treatment, Charice told a Manila TV reporter: "All people will be anticipating how will Charice look? Is she good enough to pit against Rachel Berry? So of course there is tremendous pressure," she said.

According to one news source, Charice had made an appointment to see Dr. Belo about some pimples on her face when Dr. Belo noticed that her face had gotten fatter. She told Charice that her “excessive gum chewing” had caused her face to expand.  

“You chew gum and it turns out to be a favorite super-exercise for these muscles, your chewing muscles. So we will show you, this muscle here it’s a bit protruding,” Dr. Belo said in her Manila TV show that showed Charice’s live treatment. “It’s like a ball, so we are going to Botox that in order to get it flat so she will have a cuter face. We want to give you the apple cheek look because it’s cute, right?”

 When word of the negative reaction to the Botox treatment reached Charice’s American publicist, she was quick to insist that the Botox was “absolutely not cosmetic” but instead was a treatment for muscle pain in her jaw, she said.   Too late. By then, thousands of people had already posted comments in various  blogs and websites chiding Charice and expressing concern that  teenagers would imitate her and ask for Botox treatment for any problems they see on their faces.  

Plastic surgeons like Dr. Milind Ambe of Newport Beach, California, denounced the practice of injecting Botox on teens as absolutely ridiculous. “Vicki Belo is delusional and she is making preposterous statements,” Dr. Ambe said. “I have never heard of such ludicrous treatments for such a young patient, especially for these reasons. There is no basis for these types of treatments being given to this young entertainer, and her surgeon is leading her down the path of no return.”  

Dermatologist Dr. Seth Forman of Tampa, Florida, also said that the idea of a teen actress getting Botox and Thermage treatments is ridiculous.“Teenagers should not receive Botox or any other anti-aging cosmetic procedures,” he said.

 “While some of these procedures are semi-permanent, teen patients are doing more harm than good getting facial injections at a young age.”   If these negative commentaries result in Charice becoming ridiculed in Hollywood and presented as the poster girl for a no Botox for teens campaign, the blame for this disaster should be assigned to Dr. Belo who only considered the commercial bonanza for her medical clinics that news of Charice’s treatment would draw.  

 It would be an unfortunate end to the promising career of the Filipina whom Oprah Winfrey once dubbed as “The Most Talented Girl in the World”. Charice doesn’t need a new face, she needs new advisers to warn her against the health dangers of Botox and Thermage and the career risks that taking such ill-advised treatments will cause.   But Charice is young and spunky enough that she should be able to survive this negative experience.  

As for Dr. Belo, in virtually the same week that she announced Charice’s Botox treatment to the world, she also disclosed that she was getting back together again with her former lover and associate, Dr. Hayden Kho, who is 24 years her junior and who is facing criminal charges for videotaping his sexual trysts with Manila starlets and posting them on youtube. He has been stripped of his medical license.  

 (Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 or call 415.334-7800).

Rodel Rodis, ESQ

July 19, 2010  

Shanghai, China- High on our Bucket List of things to do in life before you kick the bucket was to visit the Shanghai World Expo 2010 and we did just that, right after we accomplished another item on our list that we thought would be near impossible “Witness the inauguration of an honest Philippine president.”

Anywhere from 70 to 100 million visitors are expected to visit the Shanghai Expo that will last from May 1 through October 31, 2010. More than 190 countries and 50 international organizations have set up pavilions in this the largest, most expensive Expo ever.

China has poured $4 billion into this event – twice what it spent on the Beijing Olympics- and this figure does not even include the $50 billion it invested in infrastructure improvements for the Expo.

At this Expo, all delusions about the Philippines will vanish when you compare the modest Philippine pavilion with those of its rich Asean neighbors, Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia, and certainly compared to Japan, China and South Korea. The Philippine pavilion is rectangular-shaped structure built without any walls to divide the different sections – food court, bazaar, exhibits, and two music stages.

Right next door is the Indonesia pavilion which is easily four times the size of the Philippines and probably costs 10 times more to build. It is composed of several floors of exhibits of mineral resources, cultural legacies and Indonesia’s commitment to preserving its ecosystem. The Philippine pavilion offers live musical performances, likely the best at the Expo which doesn’t offer too many competitors in this category, and a free massage (hilot) to a few.

At least 20,000 visitors stream through the pavilion daily attracted by the live music, colorful lights, native food and handicrafts. The visitors are also enticed by a chance to win a free PAL round trip ticket to the Philippines that is offered daily to a lucky pavilion entrant. In my opinion, PAL shouldn’t offer a free RT ticket to the Philippines daily, it should offer 5 a day. The lucky winners will bring along friends and relatives and will tell everyone in their town or village about the Philippines which will attract even more visitors. As you wander through the 240 pavilions, you will hardly see any westerners (Americans or Europeans) and you will quickly realize why China is the most populous country in the world (1.3 billion).When I inquired as to why there were so few western visitors to the Expo, the explanations from both the Americans and Chinese I spoke to were the same: “it’s the economy”.

Americans and Europeans are still reeling from the global recession which deprives many of the means to go on trips abroad as they used to do in the past. However, in recent years, China has racked up a huge trade surplus with the United States and Europe, and, in the process, has accumulated over $1 trillion in foreign currency reserves. What this means is that westerners will not have the financial means to travel abroad as they used to and it also means that the Chinese will be able to travel abroad more because they have the means.

According to official statistics, 47.66 million Chinese went abroad in 2009 and this year the number is expected to increase to 54 million. . The China National Tourism Administration projects that in five years, 100 million Chinese mainlanders are expected to travel abroad where they are expected to spend US$100 billion. In short, what all these facts mean is that the future of tourism in the Philippines lies not with the west but with China. Japan, reeling from its prolonged economic downturn, understands this economic reality and seeks to cash in on new Chinese tourism. Starting July 1, 2010, the income requirement of Chinese applying for tourist visas to Japan was cut from $37,000 to $10,000 and Japan increased the number of consulates in China accepting applications from three to seven. Japan expects to increase Chinese tourists from 110,000 last year to 1.5 million this year.

According to the Philippine tourism attaché in Beijing, some 180,000 Chinese tourists visited the country last year, up 13.3 percent from 2008.  China is currently the Philippines’ No. 4 source of tourists but this will grow more in the years to come.

Newly appointed Tourism Secretary Alberto Lim does not seem to understand this new economic reality yet as he said in a recent interview with Agence France Press (AFP) that he wants the Philippines to “maximize its potential of being an English-speaking nation” to be able to attract more medical tourists who feel comfortable with English-speaking doctors and nurses. Lim’s focus on English-speaking tourists may be misplaced. Last year, the East Asia market composed of China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea and Taiwan accounted for 41.78% of the 848,518 tourists who visited and stayed in Metro Manila hotels and accommodation facilities. 

But Lim, who used to operate a high-end tourist resort in Palawan, may just be relying on his own limited experience. In due time, he may come to realize that teaching Filipinos some Mandarin may be the better way to go in the future. One thing that the Philippine pavilion can do right now is emulate the Peruvian pavilion which features a wall devoted to the Chinese in Peru and the Indonesian pavilion which showcases a tribute to Admiral Cheng Ho, the greatest Chinese explorer of the 15^th century. A vacant wall in the Philippine pavilion could be devoted to educating visitors about Chinese history in the Philippines and could feature bios of prominent Chinoys (Chinese Filipinos) like Dr. Jose Rizal and the current president of the Philippines, Noynoy Cojuangco Aquino, whose mother, Cory Aquino, once visited the ancestral village home of the Co family in China. Such a wall, which the Chinoy Museum in Intramuros could help set up, would entice many of the 20,000 daily Chinese visitors to the pavilion to visit the Philippines.  

Ni hao ma? (How are you?)  

(Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 or call (415) 334-7800).

Rodel E. Rodis

June 16, 2010  

A TV reporter asked me over the weekend if I would accept an appointment from President Noynoy Aquino. The question triggered a memory from 44 years ago when my father received a personal phone call from then President-elect Ferdinand Marcos. My father had actively campaigned for Marcos in the 1965 presidential elections (I supported Raul Manglapus) and he was being rewarded for his support with a presidential appointment.

  That night, my father discussed Marcos’ offer with the family over dinner. “The president wants to appoint me as Commissioner of Customs”, he told us. At that time, my father had just started his own insurance companies, Sterling Life and Filriters Guaranty, after years of working as the highest ranking Filipino in the Philippine-American Life Group of Companies (above him were Americans earning more than triple his salary for doing less than a third of his work).  

After a family discussion, my father made up his mind. The next morning, he called Marcos and told him that he could not accept his offer. “I cannot afford to raise my family on the salary of a Commissioner of Customs,” he explained.   I often wondered how long Marcos must have laughed when he heard my father say those words. The post of Commissioner of Customs was a coveted prize as businesses would pay a king’s ransom to pass their goods through customs, paying little or no taxes to the government.  

But my father, a devout Catholic, would have none of that. He would not accept bribes and, if he accepted the appointment, he would have to live on the paltry salary of a government official. He also couldn’t accept the appointment because he cared about what would happen to all the employees he hired in the two insurance companies he had just formed.  

After Marcos stopped laughing at the reason my father gave him for declining the post, he looked at his list and appointed the next person on it, one who, unlike my father, had actively campaigned for the appointment. He was my father’s friend and classmate at the Arellano University Law School, Juan Ponce Enrile.  

Enrile went on to be Marcos’ Secretary of Defense before and during the martial law era, got elected to the senate for numerous terms after that, including this last one, and is considered one of the wealthiest senators in the country. And he can thank my father for his good fortune.   But my brothers and sisters, all eight of us, can also thank our Dad, who passed away in 1996, for our good fortune.  

I remember having lunch in San Francisco about 25 years ago with “Tito Mel”, a close family friend whose home we often visited when I was a child. It was a mansion in Forbes Park, luxurious compared to the tract one we lived in at Philamlife Homes.   I was surprised when Tito Mel told me over lunch how much he envied my father. He regretted that none of his four children ever finished college, not one even coming close, he said, while my father made sure all eight of us finished college.  

As he spoke, I recalled how much as children we envied his Forbes Park mansion and how we wished we lived in one, without realizing then that by making sure we all had a college education, my father was building even better mansions for all of us.    

On Facebook, I recently became friends with “Thirdy”, whose full name is Manuel Abanes III. He had asked to be a Facebook friend and because his name sounded familiar, I accepted his request. Yes indeed, he wrote, he is the grandson of Manny Abanes. I remembered Manny as a young poor farmer’s kid from Sorsogon who had just migrated to Manila in search of work. My father hired him as our driver.  

My father sensed in Manny an honest, hardworking kid who just needed a break and he gave him one. My father sent Manny to night school, paying for his tuition and school book expenses, as he lived in our home and worked days as our driver. When he finished college, my father hired him to work as an insurance executive with his company in a branch in the Bicol province. That was the last I saw of Manny because soon after I left for the US.  

Thirdy told me that his grandfather did very well, marrying his grandmother and having four children all of whom went on to finish college, one of whom is a nurse in New Jersey. And Manny has told all his kids and grandkids that they all owe their good fortune to my father.   June 20 is Father’s Day here in America, a day I will fondly remember my father as I gratefully do every single day of the year.     

(Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 or call (415) 334-7800).

                                            MOCKED ELECTIONS

                               By Rodel Rodis, May 5, 2010

Miriam Webster’s dictionary defines “mock” as “to treat with contempt or ridicule” or “to disappoint the hopes of”. Either definition perfectly describes what the Comelec commissioners have done to the Philippine elections set for May 10, 2010 and to the hopes of the Filipino people for change.

On March 12, 2010, these Comelec commissioners unanimously passed a resolution to disqualify Vetallano Acosta charging that his presidential candidacy was a “mockery of the Philippine electoral process”. But they did so only after they had unanimously approved his inclusion as the 10^th presidential candidate despite the fact the leadership of his party, Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL), had never even heard of him before he submitted his late and unsigned application.

They disqualified Acosta only after it was too late to remove his alphabetically listed name from the printed Comelec ballots in a blatantly obvious move to bump Noynoy Aquino to the second slot of the first column and push Manny Villar from the bottom of the third column to the only spot of the final column. It was deviously clever.

The 2010 election mockery began when the Comelec decided to move ahead and change from a manual to an automated voting system in one election cycle which is something no other country in the world has ever done for good reason. The rest of the world realized that there are just too many technical glitches that could go wrong that need to be worked out first before embarking on such a radical change.

But the Comelec commissioners went on ahead anyway and awarded the P7.2-B pesos ($150-M) contract to the Smartmatic-TIM company of Juan Villa, Jr. and Cezar Quiambao, who are reportedly “golfing buddies” of First Gentleman Mike Arroyo.

One week before the May 10 elections, the Comelec and Smartmatic-TIM conducted “mock elections” in six towns in Occidental Mindoro. According to Nacionalista Party spokesperson Gilbert Remulla, who showed reporters a tally sheet from the Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines and manual count, “There were five votes for Villar, five votes for Aquino, but when it came out (in the machine), there were no votes for Villar, no votes for Noynoy and 10 votes for Teodoro.”

Since Gilbert Teodoro is the presidential candidate of Pres. Gloria Arroyo, who appointed all the Comelec commissioners, cynics may argue that the PCOS machines are working perfectly.

But to those who consider this a serious problem, the Comelec promised to correct it by recalling 76,000 compact flash (CF) cards, equivalent to a SIM card in a cell phone, that it said is “the heart of the counting machine.”

According to Smartmatic-TIM spokesman Cesar Flores, each of the 76,000 PCOS machines leased from Smartmatic contains a compact flash card which has the details on the specific precinct including the number of voters per precinct and the names of the candidates vying for national and local posts. “The wrong tallies stemmed from the memory cards,” Flores explained, which gave the wrong “instruction”.

Most of the 76,000 replacement cards, Flores said, are being flown in from Taiwan this week and each compact flash card will then have to be individually impressed with information about the national and local candidates and party-list groups before they are transported to 76,000 PCOS machines where they will then be installed before the elections.  

Despite the obvious glitches that are all pointing to an impending logistical disaster on May 10, the Comelec still refuses to prepare for a parallel manual count even as the clamor for it mounts as a way to “salvage the credibility of the elections.”

In explaining why President Arroyo supports the decision of the Comelec to reject manual counting of the ballots, her deputy spokesperson Rogelio Peyuan said, “The costs of holding the automated polls may run up to P10 billion and that’s why the Comelec cannot just scrap this.”

Is there another reason?

The polls conducted by Pulse Asia, the Social Weather Station, and even the Bayan Muna party-list group that supports Manny Villar, all showed Noynoy Aquino with a 17%  lead over Erap Estrada and a 19%  lead over Manny Villar. And these polls came out before the Iglesia ni Cristo, with its hardcore solid vote of 8 million, endorsed Noynoy Aquino. They all point to a landslide Noynoy victory.

Such a victory is unacceptable to Pres. Arroyo who will do everything within her considerable power to make sure that this will not happen because Noynoy, alone among the presidential candidates, has promised to investigate the Arroyo administration. And there is no group Arroyo hates more than the Hyatt 10 (members of her cabinet who resigned after the Garci tapes exposed the fraud of the 2004 presidential elections), a group which actively supports Noynoy Aquino.

A manual count would certainly “salvage the credibility” of the May 10 elections but why would Pres. Arroyo want the elections to be credible if Noynoy is elected?  If the glitch-ridden automated elections proceed as planned or as programmed, then either Villar or Teodoro – both acceptable to Arroyo - would be proclaimed president.

The defects in the May 3 “mock elections” were exposed because there was a manual count that showed observers what went in to the machines and what went out. But on May 10, there will be no such manual count to compare with the results of the automated elections. No one would know, except the Comelec and Smartmatic, if the 77,000 defective compact flash cards were actually replaced or what they were replaced with or what they are programmed to do. All Smartmatic’s representative Cesar Flores has promised is a “fast” result, not a clean or accurate one.

If glitches result in the failure of elections, then Pres. Arroyo continues to rule as holdover president. As Bayan Muna’s representatives warned, Oplan NOEL (No Elections) has been replaced by Oplan RAFAEL (Retain Arroyo through Failure of Elections).   

Heads or tails, Pres. Arroyo wins. That’s the plan for the mocked elections.

(Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 or call (415) 334-7800).

                                           JOE AND THE BACK HOE   

Rodel Rodis. March 17, 2010

       When Joe Robles retired from the San Francisco Police Department a few years ago, his future course was pretty much determined by a chance encounter in the past. While traveling through Europe in 1992, after recuperating from serious injuries incurred in the line of duty, Joe found himself regularly herded by airport authorities along with other Filipinos from the Philippines. It was racial profiling and he was outraged. After showing them his US passport and police badge, Joe would receive profuse apologies from the local officials who would explain that Filipinos were always posing immigration problems for them so they had to be specially singled out for examination.

     When he visited Malaga, Spain in that trip, Joe met local Filipinos who  told him about the tragic fate of an overseas Filipino worker (OFW) named Elena Sabado who had been brutally raped and killed (stabbed 14 times) by an unknown assailant many years before. The Filipinos told Joe their belief that Elena’s employer sought to silence her because she had stumbled upon his criminal enterprise and he was afraid she would talk. Joe inquired about the case from the local police authorities and he was told that the crime was still under investigation.

     But it was a cold case that would remain frozen. Haunted by her story, Joe composed a song ("Elena Sabado") about the wretched plight of OFWs. Elena Sabado, Ito ba ang araw mo? Ikaw na numero at pangalan lang sa merkado ng utusan.(Is this your day? You- just a number and a name in the market list of domestics.) Turing sa ’yo, Bagong bayani ng iyong bayan at kalahi Ngunit ngayon ikay api. Bakit sila pipi’t bingi? (Regarding you, new hero of the motherland and race but now oppressed. Why are they so deaf and dumb to you?) When Joe visited Manila on vacation in the years that followed, he regularly inquired about what was being done by the government to help many of the 11 million OFWs who remit more than $15 billion a year to the Philippines. He was discouraged to learn that government officials just pay lip service to the OFWs. “All the politicians care about is having photo ops with the OFWs”, he was told.

     After retiring from the SFPD, Joe decided that working for the welfare of  OFWs would be his life mission. He formed a group called International Alliance/Movement of OFWs (I AM OFW for short) and applied to the Comelec for registration as a party-list. With 21 chapters all over the world, Joe sought to focus government attention and resources to help OFWs.   With the endorsements  of Fr. Fernando Suarez (the miracle priest from Canada), former San Francisco Consul General Delia Rosal, UP Professors Mila Aguilar and Ben Valle and others, Joe submitted his party-list application to the Comelec (Commission on Elections).

      While he was waiting for a response from the Comelec, he was approached by an emissary of a Comelec commissioner who assured him that 10 million pesos would ensure Comelec accreditation of his party-list group. Joe refused the extortion demand and patiently waited for Comelec action on his application. The emissary contacted him again and this time lowered the demand to 2 million pesos while counseling that there would be no guarantees for this low amount. The higher the amount, the greater the likelihood of approval. When Joe refused again, a week later on November 9, 2009, the Comelec announced that it had rejected his party list application on the ground that he was “overqualified”.  Joe immediately appealed the puzzling denial to the Philippine Supreme Court where it still sits with less than two months to go before the elections. But while waiting for the Supreme Court decision, Joe decided to travel to his wife's home province of Southern Leyte to campaign for his presidential candidate, Noynoy Aquino. He quickly learned that the province was under the thumb of the Mercado family with one brother, Damian, serving as governor while another, Roger, serving as the province’s lone representative to Congress. Many of the towns also have members of the Mercado kin as mayors. It was clear to Joe that the Mercados are the undisputed Ampatuans of Southern Leyte. Once at a rally for Noynoy Aquino while former Gov. Rosette Lerias, an Aquino supporter, was speaking, a Mercado-backed Barangay Captain grabbed the mike from her and threw it to the ground effectively dispersing the Noynoy rally.

While campaigning with Noynoy volunteers deep in Southern Leyte, Joe said they received text warnings that they would be pushed off the road to a cliff at the next curb but they still persisted. What really scared the volunteers though, Joe said, was when Mercado men left a lone back hoe at the entrance of a village. The back hoe was used for digging mass graves for the victims of the Ampatuan massacre last November. According to Joe, his campaign experience in Southern Leyte was as dangerous as any he faced in 24 years as a San Francisco police officer or even in the four years he served in the US military during the Vietnam War. Joe has used his own personal funds to pay for his campaign work in Southern Leyte.  After three months of campaigning there, Joe depleted his personal resources and has returned back to San Francisco for a little rest and to raise funds to continue his work. A Casinoy fundraiser will be held on Sunday afternoon, March 21, at the Moose Lodge at 7535 Mission Street in Daly City to help Joe’s campaign. The public is invited.  

[Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com. If you can't make it to the fundraiser but would like to contribute to Joe's campaign work, please send your check in the name of “Joe Robles” and mail them to my law office at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 or call (415) 334-7800].

                      Hate the sinner, love the sin

Rodel Rodis, March 10, 2010   

     The Bible exhorts Christians to “love the sinner but hate the sin.” We are told to hate sin by refusing to take part in it and by condemning it when we see it. We are taught that sin is not to be excused or taken lightly. We are advised to love the sinner by speaking the truth in a spirit of love and to hate the sin by refusing to condone, ignore or excuse it. But that’s the theory.  

     For the last five years, especially after the “Hello Garci” tapes exposed the massive cheating in the 2004 presidential elections, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has been excoriated, vilified and reviled by politicians, media commentators and the Filipino people in poll after poll which rate her the worst president in Philippine history.  

     But this revulsion has been largely concentrated on her personally with some detractors criticizing her height (“pandak”), her voice and her facial expressions. Last year her critics had a field day denouncing the lavish celebration of her wedding anniversary in New York with a $20,000 dinner bill paid for by Leyte Rep. Martin Romualdez. This is an impeachable offense, according to her critics, because Philippine law (RA 6713)  provides that “public officials shall lead modest lives appropriate to their positions and income and that they shall not engage in extravagant or ostentatious displays of wealth.”  

     Pres. Arroyo has also been accused of “betrayal of public trust” for approving the National Broadband Network (NBN) telecommunications deal with China's ZTE Corp. that was allegedly overpriced by at least $130-M which was supposed to be divided between First Gentleman Mike Arroyo and former COMELEC chair Jun Abalos as a reward for his role in securing her election victory in the 2004 elections. But the NBN-ZTE deal was scrapped by Pres. Arroyo after it was exposed.  

    For the last two years, the polls have shown Pres. Arroyo to have a -39% approval rating, a number which is obtained by subtracting the number of people who approve of her from the number of those who disapprove of her.

And yet former Pres. Joseph Estrada, whom Pres. Arroyo pardoned after his plunder conviction, is running for reelection with 18% of the vote according to recent polls. Estrada was convicted of plunder after witnesses like his childhood friend, Carlos Arellano, whom Estrada appointed president of the Social Security System (SSS), testified that Estrada pressured him to invest $20-M (P900-M pesos) in Belle Corporation stocks owned by a crony.

Another Estrada appointee, Federico Pascual, president of the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), also testified that he was similarly instructed by Estrada to invest $25-M (P1.1-B pesos) in Belle stocks which have all turned out to be worthless.

      At his trial, Belle Corporation executives testified that Estrada’s take for facilitating government investments in Belle amounted to $4-M (P189-M pesos) which they paid to Estrada crony Jaime Dichavez who testified that he deposited the money in the bank account of “Jose Velarde” at the Equitable Bank where a bank manager, Clarissa Ocampo, testified that she personally witnessed Estrada sign the name “Jose Velarde” to withdraw those funds from his account.  

       Despite this overwhelming evidence of his personal corruption, Estrada is still loved by the people who apparently do not have any problem with the fact that 2-B pesos of SSS and GSIS funds have evaporated thanks to him.  

      Presidential candidate Manny Villar enjoys an even higher favorable rating despite the fact that a majority of his fellow senators have charged him with making the Filipino people suffer a loss in the total amount of P6.22 billion pesos ($129.6-M).  

      As senator, senate president, and as chair of the Senate’s Finance Committee, whose approval is needed for government funds to be disbursed, Villar caused the Department of Public Works and Highways to build a Las Pinas-Paranaque link highway (C5) that was diverted to pass through 23 subdivisions owned by Villar, substantially increasing the land values of his properties.

      Villar also caused the government to pay three times more than the market price to purchase his land for the roads that would pass through his subdivisions.  

      Another issue raised against Villar concerned the purchase by his company (Northwinds Prime) of 480 hectares of land purportedly owned by Santa Lucia Realty in Norzaragay, Bulacan for 120-M pesos. The property that was purchased turned out to be the ancestral lands of the Dumagat tribe whose title to the 480 hectares had been fraudulently seized in 1944 by Manila businessman Don Vicente Puyat, former owner of Manila Brickworks, Inc.     But the problem is that Villar’s Northwinds Prime then mortgaged the fraudulently titled lands to his bank, Capitol Development Bank, for 150-M pesos (a 30-M profit) and the Villar-owned bank then transferred its assets to another Villar-owned bank, Optimum Development Bank, which then used the lands as collateral for a P1.5-B pesos emergency loan from the government’s Bangko Sentral, which it then defaulted on.  

     As proof that their candidate believes in the principles of accountability, transparency, integrity and credibility (ATIC), Villar’s defenders cite the fact that Villar has never been convicted of fraud. Of course, neither was Ferdinand Marcos nor, for that matter, was Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.   But while Arroyo as a sinner is hated, corruption as a sin is generally tolerated, if not embraced, by supporters of Estrada and Villar.  

(Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 or call (415) 334-7800).

                           by Rodel Rodis, February 24, 2010

     In one of CBS reporter Bob Simon's telecasts from the Philippines when he covered the People Power revolution in February of 1986, he said “Often we Americans like to think that we taught Filipinos Democracy, well, tonight, they’re teaching the world.” It was the proudest moment for all Filipinos who suddenly stood ten feet tall in the eyes of the world.

     Every Filipino likely recalls where they were when they heard news of the downfall of the Marcos Dictatorship. I recall being in front of the Philippine Consulate demonstrating in solidarity with the people of the Philippines who bravely stood down the Dictator’s tanks at an avenue called Edsa for short.     When we heard word of the victory of People Power in Edsa, we headed to Union Square, just a block away from the Consulate, and spontaneously celebrated there. Five years before then, I was with hundreds of Filipinos in Union Square rallying against Marcos when he visited San Francisco and received the keys of the city from then Mayor Dianne Feinstein just right across the street at the St. Francis Hotel.

      This Sunday afternoon, February 28, I will be returning to Union Square for a celebration of People Power, the 24^th anniversary of the event but the first since Cory Aquino passed away in August of last year. At the rally, we will fondly recall the time when, as Time wrote, “Filipinos armed to the teeth with rosaries and flowers, / massing in front of tanks, and the tanks stop, and some of the soldiers who were the enemy embracing the people and their flowers.”

     As Time correspondent Roger Rosenblatt wrote: “In a short string of remarkable days, a crooked election was held and exposed; a dignified woman established her stature and leadership; a despot ranted, sweated, fled; a palace changed guard--all with a minimum of blood lust and an abundance of determination and common national will. Not since 18th century France have Americans approved so heartily of a rebellion.” But Rosenblatt wasn’t sure if our democracy would last. Quoting from Bertrand Russell, he asked: "If one man offers you democracy and another offers you a bag of grain, at what stage of starvation will you prefer the grain to the vote?"

     That is what Filipino voters are being offered today: hope that together they will work to rid the country of corruption and eliminate poverty, or money in exchange for their votes, money derived from corruption.  People Power vs. Money Power. Overseas voters, especially those of us in America, cannot generally be enticed with money. So the way to persuade us to support the candidate with money is to destroy the image of the icon of People Power, Cory Aquino. Leading the Villar attack dogs in the US is a veteran PR man based in Washington DC named Adolfo “Ado” Paglinawan who bills himself “The Noble Wolf” in his Filipino Image press releases. As a member of  dozens of list serves, he posts as many as 5 hit pieces a day against Noynoy Aquino whom he repetitively derides as “an empty shell”.

     In his February 15, 2010 posting (at 11:57 PM), Paglinawan wrote that  “investigative writers are now on the hot trail of both Ninoy and Cory whose mythical glass ceiling has been shattered by the autistic recklessness of their son's candidacy. There is now a lead that in exchange for returning to the Lopezes all those allegedly sequestered by Marcos from them, Cory Aquino is now the controlling interest of all those companies, including Meralco and ABSCBN, and new ventures like the North Luzon Expressway Tollroads.” Paglinawan described it initially as just a “lead” but in subsequent postings, he refers to it already as fact, something that even the most rabid PR hacks working for Manny Villar in the Philippines would not stoop so low as to claim because it just wouldn’t be credible. After all, if Cory Aquino had a controlling interest in ABS-CBN, would she allow Willie Revillame to continue to host Wowowee and use the popular program to openly campaign for Manny Villar? But the truth has never been known to stand in the way of Paglinawan’s vulgar propaganda attacks against “autistic” Noynoy. He subscribes to what Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels believed that if you say a big lie often enough, it will be accepted as gospel truth.

     One of Paglinawan’s clients, Bongbong Marcos, a senate candidate of Villar’s party, recently described People Power as a “failure” This is not surprising because Villar has promised Bongbong that, as president, he will declare Marcos a hero and restore all his ill-gotten wealth back to his family. Cory and Ninoy are being denigrated while Marcos is being hailed. If Villar wins, then Bongbong may turn out to be right.    Those wishing to prove Bongbong wrong are invited to come to Union Square on Sunday at 2 PM to celebrate People Power.

(Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 or call (415) 334-7800).

 TWO PHILIPPINES

Rodel Rodis

      A check of the Internet search engines for the concept of “two Americas”, will likely direct you to the famous 2004 vice-presidential acceptance speech of John Edwards who declared then that there exists “one America that does the work, another that reaps the reward; one America that pays the taxes, another America that gets the tax breaks; one America - middle-class America - whose needs Washington has long forgotten, another America - narrow-interest America - whose every wish is Washington's command.”

      But if you Google the Internet for the equivalent concept of “two Philippines”, you will get nada, zilch, nothing.

      And yet this is the only way to truly understand why Senator Noynoy Aquino and Sen. Manny Villar are in a virtual dead heat three months before the May presidential elections according to the results of the Pulse Asia poll survey that was recently released.  This is after all a country that toppled a brutal and corrupt dictatorship without firing a single shot through a People Power revolution that inspired the world from South Korea to Romania.

    But it is also a country with a deeply imbedded culture of impunity that allows a convicted plunderer the full opportunity to run for president. This is a country that has produced a Gawad Kalinga army of thousands of selfless volunteers all over the Philippines building homes for the homeless in thousands of GK communities which promote health, education and industries that provide income opportunities for their residents. But it is also a country that has 132 private armies at the beck and call of provincial warlords capable of inflicting atrocities on helpless people.

     In the 1960s a young politician who was embarking on the national stage observed this “two Philippines” first hand:  "Here is a land in which a few are spectacularly rich while the masses remain abjectly poor. . . . Here is a land consecrated to democracy but run by an entrenched plutocracy. Here, too, are a people whose ambitions run high, but whose fulfillment is low and mainly restricted to the self-perpetuating elite.”

     The words belong to Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, Jr. who later spent nearly eight years in solitary confinement after Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law in September of 1972 and imprisoned thousands of his political opponents. There were two Philippines during martial law, in one were those who willingly acquiesced to strongman rule including many who profited from it, and in the other were those who refused to kowtow to the dictatorship including many who resisted it at great personal sacrifice.

     One of those who mightily resisted the dictatorship was Ninoy Aquino who refused to participate in the kangaroo court that Marcos had set up to try him on trumped-up charges of subversion. . His refusal, he explained in a letter to his son, Noynoy, “is an act of conscience. It is an act of protest against the structures of injustice that have been imposed upon our hapless countrymen. Futile and puny, as it will surely appear to many, it is my last act of defiance against tyranny and dictatorship.” In that letter to his son, Ninoy wrote that “the only valuable asset I can bequeath to you now is the name you carry. I have tried my best during my years of public service to keep that name untarnished and respected, unmarked by sorry compromises for expediency. I now pass it on to you, as good, I pray, as when my father, your grandfather passed it on to me.” His military captors promised him that if he renounced all opposition to Marcos, he would be freed immediately. But, he told his son, “this I cannot do in conscience. I would rather die on my feet with honor, than live on bended knees in shame.”

     Ninoy believed that it only “takes little effort to stop a tyrant. I have no doubt in the ultimate victory of right over wrong, of evil over good, in the awakening of the Filipino.” Ninoy was eventually proved right but it would take 14 years to topple the dictatorship and it had to take his own assassination in 1983 to inspire People Power. Now, 27 years after his father’s assassination, Noynoy Aquino is running for president  on the promise to eliminate corruption with the slogan “Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap” (“If there is no corruption, there is no poverty”). But he is running against Sen. Manny Villar, a formidable opponent who has risen from poverty to amass a personal fortune estimated at $940-million (40 billion pesos).    

    Twelve of his fellow senators charged that Villar earned at least 6.5 billion pesos of that fortune by  causing the government to spend billions on a C-5 extension project and an eight-lane Daang Hari highway linking Cavite to Laguna to snake through Villar-owned or controlled corporations to provide ingress and egress for their 23 subdivisions. If he loses the elections, Villar may be required to return billions of pesos back to the government. But if he wins, there will be no refunds. So Villar can spend at least that amount and more to buy the presidency. And he can recoup it all back and more if he wins.

     Villar’s wife, the powerful Congresswoman Cynthia Villar, said that the Villars have never lost an election “and we certainly have no intention of losing this one.” They are prepared to spend whatever it takes to secure the presidency. Imagine the spoils of victory. If the Ampatuan warlords can own palatial homes in Davao and Makati and dozens of BMWs and Hummers on just being governor of the second poorest province in the country, how much more when one becomes the president of the Philippines?

     At an open forum where someone complained about the obscene amount of money he was spending to buy the presidency, Villar retorted back, “What are you complaining about? It’s my money.”  

     Is the presidency for sale at an auction? The two Philippines will collide in the May elections. Stark choices – forward to the future or back to the past.

(Please send comments to Rodel50@aol.com or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127. For past columns, log on to Rodel50.blogspot.com).

   When Maritess Salientes Bloom, a dual citizen from Boston, Massachusetts, appeared before the members of the Philippine Commission on Elections (COMELEC) in Manila on January 14, 2010 for a hearing, she was hopeful that the commissioners would grant her petition to extend the voter registration period for overseas Filipinos.  

     There was, after all, no opposition to her petition and the Comelec commissioners who heard her lawyer’s arguments expressed no reservations and actually seemed sympathetic to the plight of overseas Filipinos. Loida Nicolas-Lewis, a New York resident and long-time advocate for the suffrage rights of overseas Filipinos who accompanied Maritess to the hearing, called me right after the hearing to tell me “the good news”.   

    “There will be an en banc hearing of all the Comelec commissioners on Tuesday, January 19, but it is all but certain that the Comelec will extend the voter registration period for overseas Filipinos,” she announced.  

    I was attending a meeting in San Francisco when Loida called so I placed her on my speaker phone and all the overseas Filipinos in the room heard her announcement and her cry of “Hallelujah!” which everyone in the room joined in.  

     It seemed too good to be true. For the last several months, I have written articles advocating for the extension of the registration period for overseas Filipinos and I had personally e-mailed each of the Comelec commissioners but all my e-mails went unheeded. Not one of them bothered to even give me the time of day.  

    Then on December 8, 2009, the Philippine Supreme Court (SC) unexpectedly granted the petition of Roberto Palatino to extend the registration period for Philippine voters after his petition was denied by the Comelec. After reviewing the Palatino decision, Loida and I concluded that our best hope for securing the extension of the registration period for overseas Filipinos was with the Supreme Court.  

    Our Philippine lawyers, headed by Atty. Jose Amor Amorado, informed us that we first had to file a petition with the Comelec, which I was virtually certain the Comelec would reject, before we could take the matter up the SC.  

    So our lawyers prepared the petition on behalf of Maritess Bloom, an overseas Filipino who had not been able to register before the August 31, 2009 deadline but who wanted to do so. Her petition was filed on January 11, 2010 and the hearing was set for three days later.   

     At the January 14 hearing, Atty. Amorado argued that the deadline for overseas registration should be extended by 28 days because  the Comelec’s August 31, 2009 deadline  was 28 days shorter  than the deadline set by the Philippine Congress when it approved the Overseas Absentee Voting Act of 2003 (RA 9189).  

    The early deadline, Bloom’s petition asserted, “effectively deprived millions of the voting population twenty-eight (28) days of opportunity to register provided to them by the Overseas Absentee Voting Act of 2003, thereby actually amending the statute’s provision on the system of continuing registration of overseas absentee voters.” The optimism was short-lived.

    On January 19, 2010, the Comelec commissioners voted unanimously to reject Bloom’s petition by declaring that the 280 day "prohibitive period" applied only to the 2004 elections because Congress explicitly stated that "for the succeeding elections, the Commission shall provide for the period within which applications must be filed".

    What the Comelec failed to comprehend is that when the Philippine Congress passed the Overseas Absentee Voting Law in 2003, it set a 280 day “prohibitive period” because Congress anticipated that it would take a longer time to get the voter registration mechanisms in place for overseas elections as it would be the first time it was being done. After the basic mechanisms were set in place, Congress believed that it would take a considerably shorter time in future elections to register overseas voters so it left it up to the Comelec to set future deadlines. Instead of the shorter period anticipated by Congress, the Comelec went in the opposite direction. The 9-page Comelec decision explained that it would take a longer time for overseas voting because "for the first time, the Commission shall be implementing the nationwide automated election system". But overseas voting will be manually tabulated and not automated so this was totally irrelevant.    

    To explain why it didn’t have enough time to extend the registration for overseas voters, the Comelec cited examples of what it had to do to prepare for the May 2010 elections like “project precincts”, and "Board of Election Inspectors" and listing the candidates for local elections. But all of these examples don’t apply to overseas absentee voters who can’t vote for local candidates and who don’t require “Inspectors” or “project precincts” as consular officials will supervise the voter registration and the actual voting.  

    In its decision, the Comelec boasted that it had “done its best in ensuring the success of the overseas absentee voting system” by taking credit for all the actions of the consular officials to register overseas Filipinos with their limited resources without any financial assistance from the Comelec.  

     The Comelec defensively insisted that it “did not sleep on its job” of registering overseas Filipinos but the commissioners’ loud snores belie this empty claim. They’re all still asleep.   In its conclusion, the Comelec stated its duty "to balance the interest of the electorate with the end in view of ensuring that the right of suffrage of our people is not deprived of them." This is the key to understanding the attitude and mentality of the Comelec commissioners towards overseas Filipinos.  

     By “our people”, the Comelec is really only referring to the Filipino voters in the Philippines. It is only their “right of suffrage” that the Comelec cares about, reflecting a callous and total indifference to the suffrage rights of overseas Filipinos.   The Comelec decision will be appealed to the Supreme Court.  

(Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 or call (415) 334-7800).

Telltale Signs: PAULI’S DEBUT Rodel E. Rodis, January 20, 2010 My niece, Pauli, was only ten years old when Gene Cajayon’s feature length film, The Debut, was shown in mainstream theatres all over the US in March of 2002. Many years later, when Pauli was in her teens, she saw the movie on DVD about the Filipino American traditional celebration of an 18-year old girl’s debut and it inspired her to celebrate her own debut  just the way that her aunts recounted how they celebrated theirs in the Philippines.  It’s not a distinctly Filipino tradition of course. “Debut” comes from the word “debuter” which is French for “to lead off” and can be traced back to feudal England where it was the custom of the landed gentry to present their daughters to society when they reached “marriageable age”. When the middle classes began to accumulate large sums of money after the Industrial Revolution, the English aristocrats saw the need to cement their alliances with the new emerging entrepreneurial class by sponsoring their daughters for presentation to the Court of St. James and having their aristocratic sons marry entrepreneurial daughters. 

    The institution of the Debut eventually made its way to America in 1748 when 59 colonial Philadelphia families held what they called “Dancing Assemblies”, the forerunner of the Debutantes’ Ball that is still popular in the South. In the 1960s, it was the practice of many San Francisco Bay Area Filipino American community organizations like the Pearl of the Orient Club to sponsor annual Cotillion Balls where as many as two dozen Fil-Am debutantes were presented to the public during formal black tie balls.   This past three-day weekend, my family and I flew from San Francisco to Boston to trek to the cold, snowing city of Natick, Massachusetts to celebrate Pauli’s debut. 

     At the request of my sister, Loida, I served as the emcee and in my introductory remarks, I asked how many of the folks gathered there had ever been to a debut or had even heard of one. None of the non-Filipinos, who comprised the majority of the guests, raised their hands.  Each of my sisters, in one way or another, celebrated their debuts in the Philippines when they turned 18 but I was unable to attend any of them because they occurred during the period of martial law in the Philippines. I was “exiled” in the US at the time and because of my anti-martial law activism found my way to the “Blacklist” of Ferdinand Marcos, subject to arrest upon setting foot in Manila. So Pauli’s debut would be my first ever.   Because so many of Pauli’s guests had never heard of the Filipino Debut tradition, I presented them with a brief history, tracing not only its European origins but also its African essence.

     The heart of the Debut tradition is embodied in the ancient African proverb "It takes a village to raise a child." The basic meaning of this proverb from the Igbo and Yoruba regions of Nigeria is that raising a child is a communal effort, the responsibility for which lies not only with the parents but also with the extended family and the entire community. The debut offers the community an opportunity to formally come together to celebrate the achievements of the 18-year old girl and to wish the best of good fortune to the 18-year old woman as she embarks on the journey of her life.  A highlight of any Debut is the cotillion waltz where nine couples dance a traditional waltz.  What made Pauli’s debut somewhat unique was that the debutante personally choreographed her own Cotillion dance, enlisting 18 of her friends and cousins to commit to several weeks of arduous practice.

      After the Cotillion dance comes the traditional presentation of the 18 candles, (or 18 roses in some circles). In Pauli’s debut, friends, relatives and past teachers provided glimpses of her past similar to the popular 1950s TV show “This is your life” as they each lit a candle.   Among the candle lighters were Pauli’s soccer and rugby coaches who each expressed their awe of Pauli’s physical prowess on the field while a wrestling coach spoke of her awesome executive abilities as the manager of his 18-man high school wrestling team.   Other uncles and aunts shared vignettes of Pauli’s youth and of her guts to fly off to San Francisco by herself to spend several summers with her cousins and of her easy ability to forge friendships anywhere and everywhere.    

   As her oldest uncle. I expressed my delight at having Pauli spend several summers with my family and allowing my three sons to experience the joy of having a sister around. I also shared  some practical lessons I’ve learned in life that I thought Pauli could learn from: 1) Change the oil in your car regularly; it will save you a lot of money later on.  2) Lefty loosey, righty tighty. Turn to the left to loosen it and to the right to tighten it.  3) Never, but never, put any photo on Facebook  or any message on Twitter that you don’t want the world to see, because, trust me, they will be seen eventually.

     After all 18 candles had been lit, Pauli called on her youngest cousins, Andrea and Ricky, to help her blow out all the candles.  After that came the traditional cutting of the cake followed by the very untraditional dancing with her two fathers (Rambu until she was one and Jon for the next 17 years) while 18 years of photos of Pauli were projected on the screen.  “Thank you all for making my Debut a truly special night,” Pauli said as the brief program concluded. Then the real bogeying party began. 

     Many parents who can afford it offer their daughters the choice of either a car or a debut secretly hoping their daughters would pick the less expensive choice, a car. But in the course of one’s life, a girl will have many cars but only one opportunity to have a debut. Welcome to the rest of your life, Pauli. 

(Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127.)

Telltale Signs: WHAT DO AL GORE AND MT. PINATUBO HAVE IN COMMON? Rodel Rodis, January 17, 2009 The end of 2009 found Mt. Mayon, in the Southern Luzon province of Albay, on the verge of erupting as molten magma flowed half a mile down from its crater and dark plumes of ashes filled the sky causing the evacuation of more than 20,000 residents in and around the 8,070 ft. volcano. But the feared eruption never came and the villagers returned to their homes.

  Many feared that Mt. Mayon would go the way of Mt. Pinatubo which erupted on June 15, 1991 and which was considered the most powerful volcanic eruption in a century. As University of Chicago Prof. Stephen Levitt and New York Times Magazine editor Stephen Dubner describe it in their best-selling book on global cooling, Superfreakonomics, “within two hours of the main blast, sulfuric ash had reached 22 miles into the sky. By the time it was done, Pinatubo had discharged more than 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere.”

       The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo devastated the Central Luzon provinces of Zambales and Pampanga causing the deaths of hundreds and the displacement of thousands of people. It also resulted in the decision by the US government to abandon its military bases in Olongapo (Subic Naval Base) and Angeles (Clark Air Force Base). While the eruption caused severe damage to the rice fields and other crops, it was not a  total environmental disaster. “As it turned out,” according to Levitt and Dubner in their book which has already sold 4 million copies, “the stratospheric haze of sulfur dioxide acted like a layer of sunscreen, reducing the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth.

      For the next two years, as the haze was settling out, the earth cooled out by an average of nearly one degree Fahrenheit, or .5 degrees Celsius. A single volcanic eruption practically reversed, albeit temporarily, the cumulative global warming of the previous hundred years.” Because of Mt. Pinatubo, Levitt and Dubner concluded that carbon dioxide is not poisonous and not the culprit in global warming. They are joined in this belief by Intellectual Ventures CEO Nathan Myrvhold (former Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft) who agreed with them that “all the heavy-particulate pollution generated seems to have cooled the atmosphere by dimming the sun.”

     In their book, they posed these questions: Do the future benefits from cutting emissions outweigh the costs of doing so? Or are we better off waiting to cut emissions later — or even, perhaps, polluting at will and just learning to live in a hotter world?  

    Their conclusion - found in the book’s most controversial chapter entitled “What do Al Gore and Mt. Pinatubo have in common?”- has been heavily criticized by scientists and economists including New York Times columnist and Nobel Laureat Paul Krugman and the Union of Concerned Scientists. The answer to the question above is that Al Gore and Mt. Pinatubo’s eruption both suggest a way to cool the planet, but with different cost-effective methods.

     The authors propose creating a “garden hose to the sky” to duplicate or replicate what Mt. Pinatubo achieved by funneling carbon dioxide directly into the stratosphere just as Mt. Pinatubo did. They believe this is a cheaper more cost-effective way than to cap carbon emissions as Al Gore and virtually all of the world’s leading scientists recommend. The authors do not dispute the reality of global warming. In an interview that was given after the book was released, Dubner clarified their position: “If global warming is a big enough problem to worry about, and we think it is, then the current proposed solutions (primarily carbon mitigation) will be too little and too late to solve the warming problem.

    That is a fundamentally different argument than what the carbon activists make. I don't blame them for attacking us: They have a lot at stake. What I'd like readers to walk away with is a better understanding of the scientific complexities of global warming as well as the economic realities — and, most of all, to understand how it would be a good idea to get a seat at the table for some other proposed solutions, including geo-engineering.” Prof. Joe Romm, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) physicist questioned the authors’ enthusiastic embrace of geo-engineering and their dismissal of solar power as an effective tool to lower pollution.

   Romm criticized their contention that solar panels are ineffective “because they’re black” and thus generate heat that contributes to rising temperatures. In fact, as Romm points out, most solar panels are blue and the clean energy they generate greatly reduces the need to burn dirty coal or other hydrocarbons.  

   Their primary source for their belief that “carbon dioxide is not the villain” is Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution Department of Global Ecology but Caldeira disputes the quote attributed to him. According to Caldeira, "carbon dioxide emissions represent a real threat to humans and natural systems, and I fear we may have already dawdled too long.”  

   The authors of Superfreakonomics endorse the proposal of Myrvhold to create the garden hose to the sky they call “Budyko's Blanket” to reverse global warming at a total cost of $250 million which they contend is much cheaper than the estimated $1.2 trillion that capping carbon emissions would cost.  

     In response to their proposal, Al Gore responded: "If we don't know enough to stop putting 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the atmosphere every day, how in God's name can we know enough to precisely counteract that?" The debates continue.

      While the people around Mt. Mayon are anxiously waiting to see when, not if, the world’s most perfectly coned volcano will erupt and wreck havoc on their lives, there are people actually hoping that it will erupt just like Mt. Pinatubo did. Bust for the locals but a boon for the globals.  

(Please send your comments to Rodel50@aol.com or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127, or call (415) 334-7800).

Intellectual pulse of the time: Gibo, a "pawn" for GMA to be the Prime Minister?

by Granville Ampong for Nevada Examiner, California Examiner and Manila-US Times

      Gilberto "Gibo" Teodoro may have just felt his knees stronger than ever as he wields his political clout.  He is seen by many as the "most competent and most intelligent" of all the presidential candidates vying in the race to succeed President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) and to  inherit the task of fighting poverty and the insurgency and pushing the country's economic development.

      And, Mark Melliger, a political analyst from Washington, D.C. who happens to sit down with this writer  at the Starbucks in Santa Monica last Thursday, believes Gibo "has the most impeccable record and executive skills to run the Philippines especially in this time of economic turmoil".

      Gibo, a Harvard Law School graduate for his Master of Laws in 1997 who was also admitted to the State Bar of New York in the same year and whose three terms in office in the first district of Tarlac as Congressman, "rendered him a blameless scroll, notwithstanding his immaculate performance as the Secretary of the Department of National Defense", according to Melliger, a former Political Science Professor at the University of Michigan.

       "His academic prowess makes him a likable figure to the young generations and would make himself a "good case" for a stronger representation of the Philippines in the international relations, suggesting  that the formidable task at hand for a president is to be able to convey the interests of the Philippine government in the light of the United Nations and the United States of America."

     Melliger, a Harvard lawyer, sees the  paradigm shift coming off in an international perspective.

     "What I see for a modern Philippines to develop is elect a presidential candidate who has the required intelligence and charisma to keep its  steering wheel on the right direction," he adds.

      But, the question is: Is it not Gibo  a  "pawn" for GMA to be the Prime Minister?

      Many observers keep their heads high as that potential shift is easing without reluctance.  Once GMA, who has ended months of speculation and has filed his certificate of candidacy for congressional seat of Pampanga's second district, gets elected, the House Speakership is not far from her grab. It's going to be her trophy from the  Malacanang Palace.  Charter change will have its way.

      Yes, even more faster on its take to both  Congress and the Senate than what was believed since the time of the Ramos administration.

      Our recent experience with the Arroyo administration teaches us that change merely whets the appetite for more change, that  reform in one sphere calls for reform in others, which in this case can become a good study of what platform of government Gibo is heading in the years ahead once he gets elected.

      As we search for the better pages of the Philippine history, we can sense the cries of a non-violent revolution are calling for sobriety and calmness. It's a kind of  intellectualism that fits the era of a gradual and less swift change in the hearts of the Filipinos who have been seeking for a better governance.

     Mellinger has his points. Indeed, we rather seek for them than just mere emotionalism.

     Whether or not Gibo is a "pawn" for GMA to become a Prime Minister, we must decide whether we should be the masters or victims of change.

by Rodel Rodis

Almost a century after Christopher Columbus stumbled upon the Bahamas Islands on October 12, 1492 and claimed for the king of Spain what would later be called “the Americas”, Spanish Captain Pedro de Unamuno “discovered” California on the other side of the continent. Although Columbus’ discovery is celebrated as a national holiday in the United States, in Spain, and throughout South America, no such honor is bestowed on de Unamuno for his discovery of California on October 18, 1587.

      In fact, de Unamuno’s historic voyage has been largely ignored by historians and is only commemorated by the Filipino American community and only because de Unamuno reported in his ship’s log that his crew was composed of “Luzon Indios”.

     This historical fact was revealed in Henry R. Wagner’s Spanish Voyages to the Northwest Coast of America in the Sixteenth Century which was published by the California Historical Society in San Francisco in 1929. The book included an English translation of de Unamuno’s account of his voyage to California.

     The Spanish interest in finding California stemmed from the development of the Manila-Acapulco trade route, through which Chinese goods were ultimately delivered to Spain. In 1565, with Father Andres Urdaneta at the helm, a return route to Acapulco was found that passed by what we now know as the California coast. On the way back, Urdaneta sighted land, but lost sight of it in the mist.

     Over the next 20 years, Urdaneta’s route was used by more Spanish vessels- mostly Manila galleon ships made in Philippine islands - and staffed by crews of “Luzon Indios.”

     In 1585, Archbishop of Mexico Pedro Moya de Contreras dispatched Spanish Captain Francisco Gali to proceed to Manila from Acapulco and, on his return voyage, “to reconnoiter down the coast” in hopes of finding the land that Urdaneta and others reported sighting.

     Archbishop Contreras also instructed Gali not to stop by China, mindful of the intense interest by Acapulco merchants in establishing direct commercial trade with China instead of having to go through the Spanish “middle men” merchants in Manila.

     The Acapulco merchants had given money to Gali’s second in command, Pedro de Unamuno, to make the trade connections with China.  Fortuitously for the merchants, Gali died while in Manila, giving command of his two ships to de Unamuno. Before leaving Manila in 1586, the Spanish authorities there reminded de Unamuno again of the Archbishop’s order not to go to China under any circumstances.

     De Unamuno’s crew on his return trip to Acapulco was composed mostly of Luzon Indios who were conscripted by the Spanish authorities in Manila to build the galleon ships and to man the crews that would sail on those ships.

     The church authorities in Manila were concerned that if the merchants in Acapulco established direct trade relations with China, they would not need to go to Manila to pick up Chinese goods and the Spanish colonial outpost in the Philippine islands would be abandoned.

     Despite repeated warnings, de Unamuno disregarded the instructions of the Acapulco Archbishop and the Manila authorities and proceeded to Macao, a destination he later claimed was due to “bad weather and lack of supplies.”

     The Portuguese authorities saw direct Spanish trade with China as inimical to their own trade interests so they confiscated de Unamuno’s ships and reported his China incursion to the Spanish authorities in Manila.  The Royal Audiencia in Manila dispatched Captain Juan de Argumedo to Macao to arrest de Unamuno and his cohorts and to recover the two Spanish ships. The penalty for de Unamuno’s insubordination was death.

      But de Unamuno and his men were able to elude capture and managed to connect with two Franciscan priests who wanted to return to Mexico. One of the priests, Father Martin Ignacio de Loyola (the nephew of the founder of the Jesuit order), loaned de Unamuno money to buy a small Portuguese-built ship in Macao, which de Unamuno christened “Nuestra Senora de Buena Esperanza”.

      With his new ship loaded with Chinese goods purchased with the funds provided by the Acapulco merchants and with his crew of Luzon Indios, a few Spanish soldiers, and two priests, de Unamuno sailed for Acapulco from Macao on July 12, 1587.

      En route to Acapulco, the mast of his ship broke which compelled de Unamuno to dock in the nearest land to replace the broken mast and to replenish his food supplies. When his crew sighted land on October 18, 1587, de Unamuno entered the bay of what he called “Port San Lucas”. He took possession of the port and the land in the name of the Spanish king much as Columbus did on the other side of the continent a century before.

      De Unamuno dispatched his Luzon Indios to act as his scouts as he explored the new land. Two days later, on October 20, his crew encountered natives who attacked them. In the battle that ensued, a Spanish soldier and a Luzon Indio were killed, before de Unamuno's crew was able to safely return to their ship.

      On October 21, de Unamuno decided to leave and continue on to Acapulco. About a month later, de Unamuno wrote: “We entered the port of Acapulco on November 22 whence we wrote to Your Excellency and reported at length on the events and hardships of our voyage.”

      After researching navigational maps of California and the geographic descriptions provided in de Unamuno’s narrative, members of the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS) determined that de Unamuno’s “Port San Lucas” is the city of Morro Bay.

      On October 18, 1995, Morro Bay City Mayor William Yates officially dedicated a historical marker to commemorate de Unamuno’s landing. In part, the marker reads: “ A landing party was sent to shore which included ‘Luzon Indios’ marking the first landing of Filipinos in the Continental United States.”

      On September 25, 2009, the state of California officially declared October as “Filipino American History Month” to honor the first Filipinos to set foot in California.

(This article, in its original form, first appeared in the Op-Ed page of the San Francisco Chronicle on October 17, 1997. Please send your comments to Rodel50@aol.com or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 or call (415) 334-7800. For past columns, log on to Rodel50.blogspot.com). 

by Rodel Rodis, Esq.

Rodel Rodis, September 9, 2009

       The Philippines seems to have been spared the worst ravages of the economic crisis roiling the world’s most advanced countries –its unemployment rate is hovering around 7% compared to the 9.7% in the US, and the country’s gross national product (GNP) of about $186-B recorded a phenomenal 4.5% growth in 2008. 

       Moreover, while the US economy contracted, the Philippine economy managed a growth rate of 4.4% as of the second quarter of 2009. The cause of this phenomenal economic performance is that when the world’s economy suffered a great recession, the tough overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) - laboring in all continents of the world except Antarctica - somehow man aged to send more money home.

       According to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (Central Bank of the Philippines), remittances from January to June 2009 totaled $8.5 billion, of which $4.5B came from North America.  When annualized for 2009, this translates to at least $17-B. 

        Though the pace has slowed this year from the almost 10% annual growth rate recorded for the most part of this decade, the final year-end tally will likely be higher because November-December figures show a rise during the holidays.  It should be noted that the BSP figures only take into account those money flows which go through the formal channels – i.e., money which flow through banks and non-bank financial institutions engaged in money transfer services.  

       What would the total figures be if they included the value of goods and services which flow to the Philippines using the informal channels and methods – e.g., the colorum” remitters; the padala system or the cash hand-carried by balikbayans; and the pasalubongs stuffed in balikbayan boxes? 

       What monetary value can be placed on the hundreds of medical missions conducted by Fil-Am doctors; on those donations to charitable organizations like Books for the Barrios and similar organization which advance Filipino causes; and on those tourists who visit because of the encouragement, whether passive or active, from their Filipino co-workers and friends? 

       The figure may not also reflect the heavy investment in the hundreds of skyscraper condominium buildings that have sprouted all over Metro Manila that have targeted overseas Filipinos, particularly Filipino Americans, who wish to retire in the Philippines. In her report, “Poverty in the Philippines: Income, Assets, and Access,” Karin Schelzig, a Social Development Specialist for the Asian Development Bank, cited a World Bank study which estimated actual remittances to be as high as $21 billion in 2002. 

        In that year, the official BSP figures only showed total remittances20to be around $7.6B.  Applying the rudimentary rules of ratio and proportion, this means that the 2009 figure may be as high as twice the $17-B estimated 2009 figure - $34-B. Or more.  Given that the Philippine government’s budget for 2010 is about PHP 1.541 trillion, or roughly about $32-B, this means that after financing the operation of the entire Philippine government for the entire year – e.g., after paying for the services of the President, every government worker serving at her pleasure, every teacher, every soldier, and every Congressman/Senator and all his/her pork barrel projects – the OFW remitters still have a couple of billion dollars of change left.  A 2008 research study by two University of British Columbia professors, Dr. Michael A. Goldberg and Dr. Maurice D. Levi, and financed by credit card giant MasterCard, reveals that as a percentage of GDP, remittances account for 13.5% of the Philippine economy and that they have become more substantial than the combined impact of foreign direct investments (FDI) and official development assistance (ODA) funds.   

       The study also found that in large recipient countries like India, China, Mexico and the Philippines which are characterized by income inequality, volatility, and an absence of developed credit and insurance markets, “remittances can serve as a substitute for financial markets, for example, allowing households to finance investments, including investments in human capital, and in this way spur economic development.”   

       Further, the study disclosed that “remittances might help investors circumvent the constraints of the financial system to take advantage of high economic returns that are inaccessible to them because of the20lack of credit and savings vehicles. In this case, remittances are more strongly associated with investment and growth when financial development is poor.”   But economics is not called “the dismal science” for nothing.  For every economist saying “good,” there’s another saying “bad.”  

       A 2009 International Monetary Fund Working Paper entitled “Do Workers’ Remittances Promote Economic Growth?” postulates that “[t]o the extent that remittance inflows are simple income transfers, recipient households may rationally substitute unearned remittance income for labor income” and that remittances “may be plagued by severe moral hazard problems.”   

       The children and other dependents of OFWs may choose not to work because the remittances they regularly receive from their OFW parents may be enough to cover their needs. The remittances may also feed their drug habits and vices especially when their parents are not around to personally oversee their conduct and welfare.   

       The study concludes that “[p]art of the reason why remittances have not spurred economic growth is that they are generally not intended to serve as investments but rather as social insurance to help family members finance the purchase of life’s necessities.”  

       The study revealed that “there is very little evidence that decades of official transfers have contributed much to the growth of developing economies. Similarly, our findings suggest that decades of private income trans fers—remittances—have contributed little to economic growth in remittance-receiving economies and may have even retarded growth in some.”  

        According to this study, the most persuasive evidence in support of this finding is “the lack of a single example of a remittances success story: a country in which remittances-led growth contributed significantly to its development.”   The IMF study seems to suggest that by helping the poor financially, you are making them worse off and dependent on you.

        I suspect that tens of thousands of OFWs who have seen their remittances send their kids through college, finance the purchase of jeepneys and tricycles, and fund the start of sari-sari stores and other small businesses, will disagree with the IMF.  =0 A The main flaw of the study is the starting premise that the role of remittances is to promote economic growth.  It is undisputed that remittances contribute to the economy, but they are not intended to promote economic growth – only sound government policies can do that.   It is high time that the Philippine government be held accountable to the millions of OFWs remitting nonstop year in and year out, crisis or no crisis, always reliably bailing out the government despite the endemic and systemic corruption at its core.   That is the goal of the 6^th Global Filipino Networking Convention set to take place on January 21-23, 2010 at the Waterfront Hotel in Cebu City (6thGlobalCebu.com). It will be a forum for the 11 million Pinoys in the global diaspora to voice their opinions on what the Philippine government should be doing with their money which continues to be the singular, most reliable source of support for the Philippine economy. 

       Since their funds virtually finance annual government operations, their voices should be heard loud and clear.  

(Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 or call (415) 334-7800).

Telltale Signs

Rodel E. Rodis

Of the 195 countries existing in the world, only three do not currently allow for divorce and that number will be further reduced by one next year when Malta officially adopts a divorce law.

This total includes all 53 countries in Africa, 52 out of the 53 in Asia, 47 out of the 48 in Europe, all 13 in South America and all 7 in Central America. Each of these incredibly diverse countries - whether Christian, Muslim or Buddhist, democracy or dictatorship - have adopted some form of divorce law except for the Philippines and Vatican City. 

Included among the vast majority of countries is Italy, the home base of Roman Catholicism, which amended its Civil Code on December 1, 1970 to permit the granting of divorces.

Also included is Spain, the country which brought Christianity to the Philippines, which passed a divorce law in 1981. Ireland - the country that has sent more Catholic priests to the Philippines than perhaps any other country - prohibited divorce in its 1937 Constitution but repealed this prohibition in 1995.  

All over the world, people and nations have accepted the wisdom and justice of providing for some form of dissolution of a state-sanctioned marriage except understandably for Vatican City, the eternal bastion of total male=20 superiority, which will never need to pass a divorce law for its assorted priests, bishops, cardinals and its Holy Father Pope. 

And, inexplicably, for the Philippines, which has had two women presidents and where women comprise the majority of its population.    

There it is, in the first article of its Family Code, the Philippine state declares that marriage is an "inviolable social institution, a special contract of permanent union between a man and a woman."  

But critics point out that it is a “permanent union” only for the women as the men have had no problems engaging in “unions” with other women. One Philippine senator openly brags about siring 82 children with dozens of women. One former president openly acknowledges his relationships with various mistresses who remain actively involved in his presidential quest.  

While divorce is not legal in the Vatican and in the Philippines, both provide for the nullity of marriage.  The canonical law of the Vatican provides for ecclesiastical declarations of nullity. The Philippine Family Code has provisions on Declaration of Absolute Nullity, Annulment and Legal Separation which substantially coincide with the Vatican’s canon law provisions on Nullity while the Family Code provision on Legal Separation is essentially the same as the Catholic Church's provision on Canonical Separation.   Annulment or nullity refers to a process of invalidating what was previously valid. A legal fiction is created whereby the state officially declares a marriage void “ab initio” - from the beginning.

If the marriage never existed, then there is no need to dissolve it.   The grounds for nullity in the Philippines are: minority (a party below 18 even with the consent of parents), lack of authority of the solemnizing officer, absence of a marriage license, bigamous/polygamous marriage, mistaken identity, incestuous marriage and psychological incapacity.  

Psychological incapacity, according to one legal authority, “contemplates downright incapacity or inability to take cognizance of and to assume the basic marital obligations; not a mere refusal, neglect or difficulty, much less, ill will, on the part of the errant spouse.”  

This “nullity by psychological incapacity” is the Philippine version of divorce. In the United States, the grounds for nullity are all based on conditions that were in existence at the time of the taking of the marital vows=2 0(bigamous marriage, minority, physical incapacity, mental incapacity and fraud).  

Divorce, on the other hand, is based on conditions that occur after the marriage.  

In the Philippines, married parties were always able to file petitions to have their marriages annulled based on the same pre-existing conditions that are the grounds for nullity in the US. A significant change occurred in the Philippines 1988 where parties were now able to file for nullity based on conditions that occurred after marriage where one errant party has displayed conflicting personality, emotional immaturity, irresponsibility, or has engaged in physical abuse, habitual alcoholism, sexual infidelity or perversion, and abandonment. Or even, in at least one case, “habitual lying.” These are normally grounds for divorce in the United States.   More than 21 years later, the practice and procedure for obtaining a “nullity by psychological incapacity” has expanded , even p roviding  for instances where the respondent spouse is out of the country or could not otherwise be served with the legal papers by allowing for summons by publication.  

While divorce by any other name is still a divorce, in the Philippines, it is only because it came by another name, “nullity by psychological incapacity”, that it exists. How it came into being is a story filled with serendipity and irony.

When Cory Aquino became president on February 26, 1986, after People Power ousted Ferdinand Marcos, she abolished the 1973 Constitution that Marcos enacted by dictatorial fiat and replaced it with the 1986 “Freedom Constitution”. She then appointed 50 commissioners to draft a new constitution that would be presented to the people for ratification in February of 1987.

Under Cory’s “Freedom Constitution,” there were only two branches of government, the Executive and the Judiciary where the power to make laws was vested in the Executive branch.  

Cory had three legal advisers, all women, who were concerned about the inequity in cases where Filipino women were divorced by their foreigner husbands who were able to remarry while their Filipino wives could not do so about cases where the Filipino husbands were abusive or otherwise sick in the head.  

Cory’s advisers knew that a Congress would never pass such a law that would be favorable to women and which the Church would consider “contrary to Philippine culture and tradition.” 

With Cory’s power to enact laws by her decree under the Freedom Constitution about to end, the advisers hurriedly drafted a Family Code which included provisions for this Philippine divorce by another name.  

Cory signed it into law on July 6, 1987 before the Philippine Congress was re-established and convened on July 27, 1987.  

While officially, the Philippines is the only country aside from Vatican City to not allow for divorce, unofficially, the Philippines is in step with the rest of the world on this issue.

Ironically, this was accomplished by the most devoutly Catholic president the Philippines has ever had.  

(Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 or call (800) 518-0761. For past columns, log on to Rodel50.blogspot.com.)

Rodel Rodis, July 29, 2009

Although I met distinguished African American historian and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates about 10 years ago when he was our commencement speaker at City College, I am certain he does not remember me. But he may soon learn about me and my lawsuit against San Francisco police officers when he consults Harvard Law School Prof. Charles Ogletree about suing the Cambridge officer who arrested him at his home on July 16.

Gates is a summa cum laude graduate of Yale, a MacArthur genius grant awardee, a PBS documentarian, the holder of 50 honorary degrees, and one of Time Magazine’s “25 Most Influential Americans” in 1997.  But all his honors didn’t mean a thing last week when he was arrested at his Cambridge home by a white police officer who was responding to a possible break-in at his home.  The officer had demanded to see identification from Gates who produced his driver’s license and his Harvard ID.  The officer seemed to doubt that a black man like Gates could live in that upscale neighborhood.

When Gates demanded to know the officer’s name and badge number, the officer asked him to step out on to the porch. After Gates complied, the officer thanked him and then placed him under arrest for disorderly conduct. The officer later wrote in his police report that Gates had become “belligerent” and had called him a racist. The officer, later identified as Sgt. James Crowley, placed Gates in handcuffs and brought him in a squad car to the police station where his fingerprints and mug shots were taken and where he was locked up for four hours until he was released.   Gates disputed the allegations of Crowley’s police report which stated that he was engaged in “a loud and tumultuous behavior”.  "That's a joke," Gates said. "It escalated as follows: I kept saying to him, 'What is your name, and what is your badge number?' and he refuse d to respond. I asked him three times, and he refused to respond. And then I said, 'You're not responding because I'm a black man, and you're a white officer.'"   Five days after the arrest, the county District Attorney announced that he was dropping all the charges against Gates stating that it was “a just resolution to an unfortunate set of circumstances.’’   When asked about the Gates arrest at his July 22 White House news conference, Pres. Barack Obama said “ I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played…But I think it's fair to say, No. 1, any of us would be pretty angry; No. 2, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and, No. 3 ... that there's a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportion ately.”  
Gates will consult his attorney about possibly filing suit against Crowley and the Cambridge Police Department and Prof. Ogletree will likely discourage him from filing the suit after informing him that the police officer may prevail on a claim of “qualified immunity” because of a March 9, 2009 Ninth Circuit decision in the case of “Rodis vs. City and County of San Francisco et al” that is currently on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.   The Decision's recitation of the facts of that case begins as follows: “On February 17, 2003, Rodel E. Rodis, an attorney and a locally elected public official, entered a drugstore near his office to purchase a few items. He tendered a 1985 series $100 bill, which lacked the security thread, watermarks, microprinting, and other anti-counterfeiting features of current $100 bills…” The cashier used a counterfeit detector pen on the bill which showed it was au thentic but nonetheless called her manager, Dennis Snopikov, for assistance. The manager used the pen again and it yielded the same result but he still called 911 to report a possible use of a counterfeit bill.   The first police officer to respond was Sgt. Jeff Barry who knew me from a verbal argument we had a few years before concerning a City College policy not allowing campus police officers to carry firearms on campus.  He charged that our policy (I was an elected College Board Trustee at the time) endangered the life of his brother-in-law who was a campus police officer.   When Barry stepped into the store and saw that I was the suspect, he chose not to speak with either Snopikov or myself.  Instead, he waited for Officer Michelle Liddicoet and another officer to arrive. When Liddicoet arrived and asked him what was going on, Barry pointed to me and told her: “It’s that lawyer. He=2 0hates cops.”     Liddicoet then assured Barry, “Don’t worry Sarge, we’ll take care of him.”  She then proceeded to arrest me without checking to see if the bill was counterfeit.  I was placed in handcuffs behind my back and paraded through the store before other customers and brought by a squad car to the police precinct where I was handcuffed to a bar in a holding cell.  After the police officers checked with an official of the US Secret Service who verified that my $100 bill was genuine, I was released.   After I sued police officers Barry and Liddicoet for violating my civil rights, they filed a motion for summary judgment claiming that they were entitled to qu alified immunity because they believed the bill was counterfeit.  The federal judge denied their motion which the officers appealed directly to the Ninth Circuit before the trial was set to begin.   On August 28, 2007, the Ninth Circuit ruled in my favor holding that “arresting Rodis without any evidence he intended to use the bill to defraud the store or that he knew (or believed) the bill was fake was a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights.  Further, it was clearly established at the time of the arrest that Defendants’ conduct was unlawful.  Thus, both arguments Defendants put forth are without merit” and they were not entitled to qualified immunity.   The officers then filed a writ of certiorari to the US Supreme Court which granted the writ on January 29, 2009, vacating the Ninth Circuit decision, and remanding the case for further consideration in light of its recent decision in Pearson v. Callahan.   After my case was remanded back to the Ninth Circuit, the judges reversed their earlier decision on March 9, 2009 holding that "Although the arrest was unfortunate, we cannot say that the officers' belief that (the bill) was fake was plainly incompetent... The arrest, therefore, was not clearly established as unlawful." 

Instead of viewing the case objectively as they did earlier - whether under the “totality of circumstances” the arrest was reasonable, the judges now applied the subjective test of whether the officers ’ belief that the bill was fake was “plainly incompetent.”   Under this new standard, the issue that Prof. Gates would face if Sgt. Crowley claimed qualified immunity is whether Sgt. Crowley’s arrest of him for disorderly conduct was “plainly incompetent”. If it was incompetent but not "plainly" so, then Crowley wins.    This new test accords virtual absolute immunity from liability to abusive police officers who use their badges to settle personal scores or show uppity minorities exactly who’s the boss locally, even if the president of the US is Barack Obama.   (Send comments to http://us.mc590.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=Rodel50@aol.com or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 or call (415) 334-7800. For past columns, log on to: Rodel50.blogspot.com).
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Telltale Signs/ NO FILIPINOS ALLOWED?
Rodel Rodis, July 8, 2009

It was as representative a cross-section of the Filipino community as I had ever seen at a protest rally. There were WW II veterans (some in wheelchairs), young school kids, college students, professionals, clerical employees, Republicans, Democrats, even press representatives from both ABS-CBN’s The Filipino Channel (TFC) and GMA’s Pinoy TV. Among the powerhouse attendees were Greg Macabenta of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations (NaFFAA), Dennis Normandy of the Filipino American Political Action Committee (FAPAC), Marily Mondejar of the Filipino Women’s Network (FWN), Boots Chavez of the Philippine American Press Club (PAPC), and Baylan Megino of the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS).

They were all there gathered in front of San Francisco’s City Hall on June 30, 2009, in magnificent solidarity with each other, to protest the exclusion of Filipino non-profits from the $9-M NOFA city fund for disadvantaged families and to specifically urge the City’s Board of Supervisors to include the West Bay Pilipino Multi-Service Center (West Bay) in their July 1 Board meeting to reconsider the funding for non-profits. 
Five Filipino South of Market (SOMA) community non-profits led by West Bay had collaborated to submit a $317,000 proposal for funding under this $9-M Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) fund from the City’s Department of Children, Youth and their Families (DCYF) budget for non-profit partners.  When NOFA directors announced their recommendation of 23 non-profit community agencies, Rudy Asercion, Executive Director of West Bay, was shocked to learn that not one Filipino community agency was included in the NOFA list. Did “NOFA” mean “NO Filipinos Allowed”?
Rudy and leaders of the other Filipino non-profits issued a call for support from the Filipino community and the community responded with strategy meetings, online petitions, emails and phone calls directed to the Supervisors and to the Mayor.
Reacting to the public barrage of emails and phone calls, David Carrington Miree, Deputy Director of the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Services (MONS), disputed the allegation that the Filipino community was not covered by the $9-M NOFA fund. Miree pointed to two agencies - of the 23 recommended for funding- which had included West Bay as a subcontractor. One of them, South of Market Child Care, Inc. (SMCC), had earmarked $60,000 of its funds to West Bay. After it received the funding recommendation, however, the SMCC director informed Rudy that because SMCC did not get the full funding it wanted, he would not disburse any funds to West Bay. The other agency, Asian Pacific Islander Family Resource Network, (APIFRN), designated $30,000 to serve Filipino families through West Bay, its subcontractor. But this small fund was further reduced to $17,000.

The Mayor’s deputy wanted the Filipino community to be satisfied with receiving a measly $17,000 out of $9-M? Don’t we pay taxes too?
That’s why the Filipino community solidarity rally was called for the day before the crucial Board vote.  Would this unprecedented display of unity by all the various segments of the Filipino community be enough to convince South of Market District Supervisor Chris Daly to fund West Bay after he single-handedly caused West Bay to lose $487,000 in approved city funds in 2005?
Remember the old tale about the crabs who were working furiously to get out of the basket they were dumped into? Aren’t you worried, Supervisor Daly, that those crabs may get out of the basket? “Nah,” Boss Daly would snarl, “those are Filipino crabs! As soon as one of them is about to get out, the others will pull him down. It’s their nature.”
Sure enough, while the solidarity rally was set to take place outside City Hall, Roy Recio, a clerk in the SF Sheriff’s Department who reportedly got his job through Daly, was busy hacking away in his computer (at 2:47 p.m. while still at work) imploring all the members of the Board of Supervisors, as “a San Francisco resident”, to ignore West Bay's plea by asserting that “they do not represent the entire Filipino community” and that “West bay has been ineffective in handling the growing and ever-changing needs of the community.” Sure, especially after his patron Daly cut off its funds and caused the lay-off of 30 West Bay Filipino employees in 2005.
In his email to the Supervisors, Recio charged that “It is strikingly offensive and totally misleading for Mr. Rodis and Mr. Asercion to falsely claim that no Filipino service agency is being recognized for doing solid work in the community when there are many agencies meeting standard grant criteria, routinely meeting outcome goals and providing impactful and dignified services to the community at large.”   If Recio had bothered to read anything I wrote or what Rudy said, he would realize that all we charged was no Filipino non-profit was included among the 23 agencies approved for NOFA grant funds. Of course there are numerous Filipino agencies doing solid work in the community, but are any of them getting funded by NOFA?
Baylan Megino immediately responded to Recio by telling the recipients of his email blast that “this isn't about West Bay.  It is about our community's ability to help its own with the resources we rightfully should have directly available to us.” 
Recio responded to Baylan’s email by spending the first paragraph of his pithy reply bragging about his many personal accomplishments. “So, this is what I was doing in the last twelve years in the Filipino community mostly as a volunteer,” Recio wrote. “Where were you? I don't intend to sound craps, but until you approach me as an equal than (sic) we probably don't have much to talk about.”
Whether Recio’s email had anything to do with it is uncertain but the Supervisors did not reallocate NOFA funds to West Bay at their July 1 Board meeting. Perhaps Recio can add this “accomplishment” to his growing list.
NaFFAA national chair Greg Macabenta sent out a notice to all NaFFAA members and chapters throughout the US: "I urge all Filipino Americans to raise their voices so that those who cannot see us CAN HEAR, and let us be present at every important forum so those who do not hear us CAN SEE. And I urge every qualified Filipino American to VOTE so that those who can neither see us nor hear us can FEEL OUR POWER."
(Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis @ 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127 or call (800)518-0761. For past columns, log on to Rodel50.blogspot.com. This column was completed at 12:34:56 a.m. on 07/08/09).    

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By Joel C. Atencio

MANILA, June 23  – Malacañang on Tuesday afternoon said resiliency will win over recession.

This after Malacañang officials said they were getting tired of so many economic forecasts, the latest of which was that of the World Bank (WB).

Malacañang was reacting to a statement of the World Bank, which forecast that the Philippines was heading into a recession.

”“There is no recession. Resiliency will win over recession. We have to move on and move forward instead of paying attention to these economic forecasts,” said Deputy Presidential Spokesman for Economic Affairs Gary Olivar during today’s press briefing at the New Executive Building (NEB) in San Miguel, Manila.

Olivar also said Filipinos had to look towards positive times as the Philippine economy goes into a rebound with the help of the remittances of Overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), the ability of the government to rely on the stimulus package and the continuous expansion of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).

”The Philippine economy grew only by 0.4 percent in the first quarter of the year. This makes the International Monetary Fund (IMF) right so far with its last forecast made last May putting the Philippine Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth at zero this year,” Olivar said in the briefing.

He said that for the second quarter, only a third of the period or one month remained.

Given that nothing much had changed in the second quarter, it might also be safe already to say that the quarter would register a similar performance of almost zero economic growth or flat GDP, Olivar said.

The World Bank has warned that the Philippines would slip into recession this year, saying government efforts to stimulate the economy would not be enough to revitalize foreign investments as the global turmoil continued to push businesses to the sidelines.

WB has projected that the Philippines would post a 0.5-percent contraction in its gross domestic product this year and thus join its neighboring countries that earlier reported a contraction of their economies.

WB said there was nothing extraordinary about the Philippines that would keep it immune from the crisis gripping the world economy, which it projected to contract by 2.9 percent this year.

The bank’s forecast on the Philippine economy contradicted with the government’s projection that the economy would escape a recession and grow anywhere between 0.8 and 1.8 percent this year.

This would be slower than last year’s actual growth of 4.6 percent, but the government said it would be much better than forecasts for other developing economies.

But the Philippines would avoid a recession this year with second-quarter growth expected to outperform the first three months of the year as the government accelerated spending to rev up the economy, Olivar said

“We expect things to be better than the first quarter,” Olivar said as he echoed Rolando Tungpalan, deputy director general of the National Economic and Development Authority and also Deputy Presidential Spokesman for Economic Affairs in an earlier statement.

Olivar and Tungpalan said barring external shocks, annual growth should gather speed in the second quarter, with government and consumer spending picking up, supported by modest remittance flows.

WB, in a report released Monday, said that “for several countries – including Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines – outright recession was anticipated this year.

The report, titled “Global Development Finance 2009: Charting a Global Recovery,” said developing countries, including the Philippines and others in the East Asia and the Pacific region, would face steep declines in the inflow of foreign capital this year.

Anemic investments will drag down their overall economic growths, it said.

WB projected that combined inflows of foreign, private investments into developing economies would be slashed to US$ 3 billion this year, just about half of the US$ 7 billion registered last year when the crisis was punctuated by the failure of several financial giants in the United States and Europe.

It noted that last year’s foreign capital inflow to developing nations was already a sharp decline from the US $ 1.2 trillion recorded in 2007.

While it noted that banks in the Philippines were less exposed to toxic assets that fueled the recession in industrialized countries, the bank said that developing nations could not avert the spillover effects of the crisis because of their links to the industrialized ones.

Rodel Rodis, June 16, 2009  

BOSTON – The most popular misconception about Gawad Kalinga (GK) is that it is just about building homes for the poor, an image that may have been generated by GK’s previously announced goal to build 700,000 homes in 7000 communities throughout the Philippines in 7 years.

But the 800 delegates attending the First GK Global Summit (June 12-14, 2009) at the Cambridge suburb of this city harbor n o such illusions because we learned that GK is more ambitious than that.   For three days of plenary sessions at the Cambridge Marriott Hotel and workshops at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and at Harvard University, we heard speakers flesh out the details of GK’s Vision 2024 platform: a 21-year timeline (2003-2024) aimed at “eradicating homelessness, hunger, and poverty for the millions of impoverished Filipino families all over the Philippines.”  

Before skeptics scoff at GK’s ambitious agenda, they should visit any one of the more than 2,000 GK villages (200,000 homes) that have been established all over the Philippines from Aparri to Jolo just in the last six years.

These homes were financed by the donations of governmental and non-governmenta l entities, profit and non-profit corporations and individuals in the Philippines and overseas, including thousands of Filipino-American and Filipino-Canadian donors throughout North America. They were built by legions of volunteers and by the homeless squatters themselves who invested their “sweat equity” into the homes they would own and reside in.   GK’s founder, Tony Meloto, had often preached that “slum conditions breed slum mentalities” and that to get rid of the slum mentalities, you have to get rid of the slums and replace them with decent housing and more.

To that end, throughout the country, GK has built colorful, durable and secure homes for the poorest of the poor. Its TATAG program provides pathways, drainage systems, water and toilet facilities, a school, a livelihood center, a multi-purpose hall and a clinic. In some GK villages, basketball courts and libraries have also been constructed.   Each GK village sets up a SIBOL program for its pre-school children and a SIGA program to provide after-school counseling for its students. GK also provides a LUSOG community health care program for its residents with a clinic staffed by volunteer physicians and paramedical practitioners. Its GAWAD KABUHAYAN program conducts livelihood and skills training, start-up capital and materials for microfinance and micro-enterprises, and assists in the marketing of the products created by the GK communities.   

Among the Summit speakers who discussed the GK way of governance were two provincial governors (Luis Raymond Villafuerte, Jr. of Camarines Del Sur; and Sally Lee of Sorsogon), five mayors (Sigfrido Tinga of Taguig, Rizal; Sonia Lorenzo of San Isidro, Nueva Ecija; Tito Sarion of Daet, Camarines Norte; Jojo Binay of Makati; and Rico Rentuza of Guinsaugon, Leyte), two senators (Kiko Pangilinan and Miguel Zubiri) and one vice-president, Noli de Castro.0A   O

ne speaker at a GK Harvard workshop, Alex Lacson, used Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore as an example of how an idea can transform a nation. When he became the leader of his country in 1959, Singapore was one of the poorest countries in Asia. Without natural resources, how could Singapore ever hope to become a rich and prosperous country, Lee Kuan Yew asked.   “There is only one way, he told his people.

And that is through discipline. Lee Kuan Yew challenged his people that if they learn to become a disciplined people, Singapore will become rich and prosperous.

When Lee Kuan Yew stepped down from power as prime minister of Singapore in 1990, almost 31 years since he rose to power, Singapore was already the second richest and most prosperous country in the whole of Asia, second 0to Japan. He proved to the whole world that a country, through discipline, even without natural resources, could become rich and prosperous.”  

The Philippines has abundant natural resources but presents a more formidable challenge with a population of 88 million (compared to Singapore’s 5 million) spread out over 7,108 islands, and a history of colonial and neo-colonial subjugation that has imbedded what James Fallows called a “damaged culture” on its people.   “Culture is destiny,” Lee Kuan Yew said. “Your set of beliefs will determine how far you can get in life.” The challenge for GK is to transform the Filipino people’s set of beliefs about themselves, about their innate greatness and goodness as a people and as a nation ca pable of doing anything and everything to improve their lives.  

At the core of Gawad Kalinga’s mission is its founder, Tony Meloto, who provides the personal example to GK supporters throughout the world. His ideas and his vision for the Philippines can be found in his newly-released book called “Builder of Dreams”.

In the back of the book is an essay written by Dr. Jose Abueva, founding president of Kalayaan College, who wrote:   “At the heart of Tony’s transforming leadership and example and the inspired efforts of his legions of co-leaders, followers and supporters, is his conscious and determined fusion of his religious faith and his secular idealism. He combines God’s teachings to love and help the poor among us with the secular vision20of building a just and humane society in which all enjoy their human rights through good citizenship, good leadership and good governance.”   “He demonstrates that through community self-help, cooperation and solidarity, this unity and integrity of faith and practical reason can lead to the transformation of people, communities and leaders from different spheres of life.”  

The GK Global Summit was the perfect antidote to anyone in despair about Filipinos and the Philippines. But even those who did not attend the conference can still rid themselves of despair by joining GK and supporting its 2024 vision to transform the Philippines and the Filipino people. Check out http://www.gawadkalinga.org/.   (Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94127.

Speaking Out
By Ignacio R. Bunye

MANILA, June 7  -- In last week’s column, I discussed the initial Congressional deliberation on various bills that seek to strengthen the powers of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).

The bills, specifically House Bills 6334, 5958 and 174, propose the amendment of Republic Act 7653 or the New Central Bank Act of 1993.

The Bangko Sentral considers the following as priority areas -- Strengthening the conduct of the BSP’s monetary policy; Boosting BSP’s supervisory and regulatory capabilities; and Improving BSP’s overall capability to perform other central banking functions.

Last week, I discussed proposed measures to strengthen the conduct of monetary policy.

In this column, I will tackle the recommended changes in the BSP Charter that would boost the BSP’s supervisory and regulatory capabilities.

At the core of these proposals are the need for the BSP to get timely and relevant information on the banks and financial institutions which are under supervision.

It is also important to enable the BSP to act effectively and in a timely manner to safeguard the banks and their clients.

Need to require prior approval over the transfer of substantial equity shares in banks

This is has been one of the legislative advocacies of the Bangko Sentral since the 13th Congress. The recent closure of some local banks, found to have engaged in unsafe and unsound practices, underscores its urgency.

The BSP’s role in bank ownership transfers will ensure integrity among bank owners. A stronger BSP, with the power to approve or disapprove the transfer of substantial ownership of banks, could have prevented Legacy group owners from buying ailing rural banks that were eventually used to victimize depositors.

In the case of Legacy, not only did the (Celso) De Los Angeles group not seek BSP approval of the acquisition of such banks. The acquisitions were even keep secret!

Authority to subject bank owners to the "fit and proper rule"

This proposal is corollary to the first. At present, only bank officials, or members of the bank’s management, are subject to the "fit and proper rule" to ensure that they have all the qualifications and none of the disqualifications be in such positions.

But even more important are the owners and substantial stockholders as they are the ones who really shape and influence the decisions.

Power to issue quick resolution actions

This proposal provides the Bangko Sentral with an additional tool to prevent distressed institutions from failing.

This would empower the BSP to direct a distressed bank to infuse additional capital within 90 days and failing to do so, BSP can direct the distressed to either merge with another institution or to accept new investors.

Under the present law, the matter of additional capital infusion is practically left solely to the decision of the bank owners. As experience has shown, this has led to the eventual collapse of some distressed banks.

Ability to impose a higher capital adequacy ratio (CAR) requirement for banks capital adequacy ratio (CAR) is a measure of the amount of a bank's capital expressed as a percentage of its risk weighted credit exposures. It is used as an indicator of a bank’s ability to absorb a reasonable amount of loss.

The Bank of International Settlements, the central bank of all central banks all over the world, sets CAR at eight percent. The BSP, on the other hand, requires a higher 10 percent.

However, the BSP now sees the wisdom in imposing a higher CAR requirement for banks that take on greater financial risks. These are usually big banks that use and promote more sophisticated products and engage more in non-traditional banking practices.

The BSP believes that for these banks, it is not enough to merely comply with the present standards on CAR. Extra steps should be taken to protect and further improve prudential standards for the banking system.

Telltale Signs/ MY RACIAL PROFILE

Rodel Rodis, July 30, 2009

I may have been more prone to emphasize the race aspect of the July 16 arrest of Harvard Prof. Henry Louis Gates by Cambridge Sgt. James Crowley because of my own personal experience. When I was arrested on February 17, 2003 by two white San Francisco police officers who responded to a 911 call from a white Walgreens manager who thought I might possibly be using a counterfeit $100 bill to purchase items, I believe I was racially profiled. If I had been white, would I have been arrested that night?

I expressed this viewpoint after the police had handcuffed me and hauled me off to the police precinct where I remained cuffed to a rail in the holding cell before the officers verified from the US Secret Service that my bill was genuine and released me. In an article that appeared in AsianWeek, I wrote that if this had happened to San Francisco Supervisor (now Mayor) Gavin Newsom, the Walgreens manager would never have called the police and the officers would never have arrested and handcuffed Newsom or taken him to a police station to verify the authenticity of his $100 bill.

Two weeks after my article appeared, I received a phone call from Gavin Newsom who was quite upset. “Rodel, why did you use my name? Do you have an axe to grind against me?” he asked.  “No, Gavin”, I replied, “I only used your name to emphasize a point. If I had used some other white elected official who wasn’t as well known as an example, it wouldn’t have been as effective.”

Newsom then told me it was “ironic” that I picked him because “what happened to you happened to me”. Shocked, I asked him what happened. Newsom then related an incident that occurred when he was still in the private sector when he brought the daily earnings of his restaurant (Balboa Café) to the bank to deposit. He said the teller began counting the money and applied a counterfeit detector pen to a $100 bill which she found suspicious. The result confirmed that it was fake – unlike in my case where the pen applied by both the Walgreens cashier and manager showed that my $100 bill was genuine.

“So what happened next?” I asked Newsom. “Well, she returned the $100 bill to me and told me to be careful next time,” he answered.

“Gavin, what happened to you didn’t happen to me. If it had been me, she would have called the cops!” I told him. That was precisely the point I was making in my article and Newsom had just confirmed it. 

In my 2003 Walgreens incident, Sgt. Jeff Barry, the police officer who was the first to respond to the 911 call, immediately recognized me because our sons were classmates in a parochial school and because of an argument we had about a City College policy (I was then an elected City College Trustee) of not allowing campus police to carry their firearms on campus which, he said, posed a risk to his brother-in-law who was a campus police officer. Barry was very agitated about the issue and demanded that we change the policy.

Because I didn’t agree with his opinion, Sgt. Barry seized the Walgreens opportunity to provide me with a “teachable moment”.

Although he was the first to arrive at the scene, Sgt. Barry remained at the Walgreens entrance, careful to ensure that I didn’t see him. When Officer Michelle Liddicoet arrived and asked him what was happening, Sgt. Barry told her, pointing to me, “It’s that lawyer. He hates cops.” Liddicoet then replied, “Don’t worry, Sarge. I’ll take care of him.” So she proceeded to arrest me, place me in handcuffs and transport me in the back of a police squad car to the Taraval police station.

I did not learn of Barry’s presence at the scene or of his role in my arrest until I read his name in the police report. Barry wanted to teach me a lesson and so I decided to also teach him a lesson. I sued him and Liddicoet for wrongful arrest and for violating my civil rights.

In his July 27, 2009 New York Times op-ed piece, Randy Cohen encouraged Prof. Gates to sue Sgt. Crowley because “filing suit can be a way to pursue social justice.” As Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union explained, lawsuits can be “an important tool for reform when coupled with advocacy and public education efforts and when the circumstances are conducive to change.”

With that perspective, I had also sued Walgreens and it resulted in Walgreens apologizing to me, firing the manager who called 911, and hiring a long-time Filipino American employee to replace him. My lawsuit against the San Francisco Police Department resulted in a major clarification of police departmental policy - officers could no longer arrest suspects who possess suspected counterfeit currency unless there was some probable cause to believe that the suspect was aware that the currency was counterfeit.

My case against Barry and Liddicoet has gone up the Ninth Circuit to the US Supreme Court and back down to the Ninth Circuit and up again to the US Supreme Court. It has resulted in two published Ninth Circuit Court opinions on the issue of whether police officers have qualified immunity to be “immune” from civil lawsuits for their abuse of police powers (“Rodis v. City and County of San Francisco”). 

The Supreme Court decision on my case will affect the lawsuit of the 72-year old grandmother in Texas who was tasered by a highway patrol officer for refusing to sign a speeding ticket and thousands of other cases filed by individuals who have sued police officers for the abuse of their police powers.

After more than six years of litigation and expending tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees to press a lawsuit against two officers represented by a City Attorney’s office that has spent and can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers’ money to defend the suit, I often wonder who was really taught a lesson.

(Send comments to http://us.mc590.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=Rodel50@aol.com or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco, California 94127 or call (800) 518-0761 or (415) 334-7800. For past columns, log on to Rodel50.blogspot.com).