Palompon Institute of Technology........38th Charter Anniversary

A weeklong activity will be held from August 31, 2010 to September 3, 2010 at the Palompon Institute of Technology in connection with their 38th Charter Anniversary with the theme: "PIT Doing Great at 38".

PIT which is located in Palompon, Leyte serves the people of Region 8 comprising about six provinces now under the able leadership Dr. Delia T. Combista, current President of the institution which started operating since August 31, 1964 as the Palompon School of Arts and Trades (PSAT) with the enactment of House Bill No. 1106 unto RA 3394.

Supporting Ms. Combista in managing her daily activities at the said school are Drs. Jacinto P. Balunan, Vice President for Academic Affairs, Norberto C. Olavides, Vice President for Administration, and Flordeliza M. Sison Vice President for Research, Extension and External Affairs.

Day 1   - Tuesday, August 31, 2010 is the Grand Opening Day wherein the following activities were held: 7:00 a.m. - Concelebrated Thansgiving Mass at the PIT Gym by Rev. Fr. Jaime Villanueva as the main celebrant, Vicar Generalm Archdiocese of Palo tpgether with Rev. Fr. Albert Opiniano, Parish Priest of Palompon, Leyte and Rev. Fr. Jubal Meneses, Parish Priest of San Miguel, Palompon, Leyte.

Immediately after the Thanksgiving Mass a parade of all those involved in the 38th Charter Anniversary of the PIT was made in the main thoroughfare of the town showcasing their achievements and talents. being proud to be a part of the school's tradition of excellence in technological, maritime, teacher education and allied courses in these part of Northern Leyte and beyond.

Of course a parade would not be complete if there are no beautiful and amiable ladies being paraded and ogled at by the ever admiring parents, co-students, and kabayans from all over Leyte. The marshalls - NROTC Officers and colors above preceded the morning parade which was immediately followed by the High School Drum and Lyre Corps.

Comes now the College of Maritime Education where students of BSMT, BSMarE and of course the faculty of the said college together with Miss COMEd an aspiring candidate for Miss PIT 2010.

Immediately following the College of Maritime Education were the Laboratory High School students and faculty, Miss LHS, BSHTE and BSET students, BSED and BEEd students together with the faculty and Miss COEd who is also a candidate for Miss PIT 2010.

After a short wait the College of Technology and Engineering bannered by BSIT, BSIT, BSEng students and the faculty together with their muse Miss COTE who is also a front runner in the Miss PIT 2010 contest.

Of course the College of Arts and Sciences would not be left behind. BSSM, AB Communication students and the faculty  were all present to boost their candidate for Miss PIT 2010.

As the name implies, College of Advance Education  would not surrender. Though they are the smallest contingent in the parade they don't want to be left behind. They have the fighting spirit to go along and be recognized. Sabi nga nila "Manalo, matalo, lalaban tayo".

Just what the picture says, it seems they are all alone. not even one companion, but who knows, at the end of the day only a "major, major" problem can also make your day.

At the end of the parade are the Feild Presentation participants composed of Dagimbao Dancers, Maritime Students, and DANS-PIT after which other employees, the Administrative staff and the float of Miss PIT 2009 followed

The much awaited opening of Commercial Booths and Exhibits and the Open House of College Shops/Laboratories was made at around 8:45 a.m. and at 10:00 a.m. or immediately after the parade the Declaration of the Formal Opening of the 38th Charter Anniversary Celebration was made by Dr. Delia T. Combista, College President after the inspiring message of Hon. Bernard Jonathan M. Remandaban, Sangguniang Panlalawigan member of the Province of Leyte as guest of honor.

In the evening, the much awaited Miss PIT 2010 Beauty Pageant was held at the PIT Gym with the President of the school as guest of honor. To be awarded are winners in the following competition: Best in Swimwear, Best in Talent, Best in Long Gown/Formal Wear and lastly the Best in Question and Answer Portion. The best of them all is of course Miss PIT 2010............Long Live Palompon Institute of Technology, which I believe, eventually would become the first university in this part of Northern Leyte. It's about time..................

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Bata, Django go for 3rd World Cup title

Cedelf P. Tupas

 Philippine Daily Inquirer

 

Efren Reyes posing with fan after he won a historic US$200,000 at the 2005 IPT King of the Hill Shootout

              MANILA, Philippines—Just how comfortable is Efren “Bata” Reyes with 

              Francisco “Django” Bustamante?

              So comfortable that he can joke about his bosom buddy even without him around    If you make it to the Hall of Fame, you’re game deteriorates,” Reyes said         

              with a laugh.

              Reyes, of course, was referring to the entry of Bustamante, the reigning              

              World 9-Ball champion, in the Billiards Hall of Fame in June. “Bata” made    

              it to the  elite roster earlier in 2003.

              With a partnership built on confidence in each other’s game, the two   

              legends will defend the PartyPoker.Net World Cup of Pool crown against 

              31 other international pairs next month at Robinson’s Place Midtown in  

              Manila.

              Reyes and Bustamante, who also topped the maiden edition of the event 

              in 2006,   ruled the tournament last year by stunning Germany’s Thorsten            

              Hohmann and Ralf Souquet, 11-9, in an enthralling final at the SM North.

              Dennis Orcollo, who reached the semifinals together with Ronnie Alcano,      

              last year will have a new partner in 2007 WPC finalist Roberto Gomez in the other Philippine team.

“We were surprised we won last year. It’s not going to be easy defending the title,” said Reyes during a recent press launch of the event at the Solar Century Tower in Makati.

Chinese-Taipei aces Ko Pin-yi and Chang Jung-lin, Englishmen Daryl Peach and Karl Boyes and the German pair of Souquet and Oliver Ortmann lead the foreign charge in the $250,000 event which dangles a $60,000 purse for the champion duo.

Super "SWAT" was kept out of the loop

By DJ Yap Philippine Daily Inquirer Most Read MANILA, Philippines—At the Manila Police District (MPD), there’s a faction within the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) unit known mockingly as “Super SWAT,” an elite squad composed of veteran marksmen and arms experts. But Super SWAT was kept out of the loop during the Aug. 23 hostage drama at the Luneta Park that left eight tourists and the hostage-taker dead, much to the frustration of its leader, Senior Insp. Jonathan dela Cruz. “That’s not the SWAT I know,” he said of the unsure, bumbling unit of men whose assault on the bus taken hostage by former Senior Insp. Rolando Mendoza was captured live by cameras and made the subject of international derision. “It’s embarrassing. We’re going to be used as an example of what not to do in a hostage situation,” he said Thursday night in an interview with some of his team members in a Manila restaurant. Dela Cruz was supposed to have taken command of the MPD SWAT on Aug. 23, but a petition by some existing members—those who did not belong to his trusted circle—succeeded in retaining Chief Insp. Santiago Pascual as commander and keeping Dela Cruz and his team out of the action. Pascual was later relieved with three other SWAT leaders as a result of their handling of the hostage crisis. “Everybody here knows that it’s Dela Cruz who’s good. It’s a shame he wasn’t in command,” an MPD official not connected with SWAT nor with Dela Cruz said in a separate interview. “Politics did him in,” said the official, who did not want to be named for lack of clearance to speak on the subject. Watching in frustration At the height of the crisis, Dela Cruz said he was relegated to the sidelines, watching in frustration as the events unfolded. “I kept getting calls from people, from SWAT units in Metro Manila and my SWAT friends in the United States and Australia, and even British reporters, asking me what I was doing. They thought I was in command,” he said. “I just told them: ‘I’m not there.’” He said even his young daughters asked him, “Nandon ka (Were you there)?” and he felt embarrassed. He would do it differently Dela Cruz, 46, said he was not in any position to criticize and point out mistakes the SWAT members committed during the hostage crisis. However, he said he would have done things differently. First, with regard to intelligence work, he would work closely with the negotiators and interrogate hostages who had been released to determine the positions of those inside the bus, he said. Once their positions were known, the next step would be to determine the entry point and where to breach the vehicle. He said he would deploy only three people to storm the bus, but all of them must be fully decked in “Level 4” gear with bullet-proof vests and kneepads, Kevlar helmets, flashlights, M-16 rifles and handguns. “Then we would decide on what action to take during the worst case scenario. If the worst case scenario is that the hostage-taker starts shooting at the hostages, then we go in,” he said. Breach the front Dela Cruz said he would order his men to use a detonating cord to blast the front part of the bus, which, in his opinion, was the ideal place to breach. The three men would storm the vehicle, with halogen lights in position behind them to momentarily blind the hostage-taker. Their M-16 rifles would be equipped with flashlights to immediately zoom into the suspect and shoot him if necessary. “The most damage he could have done was to shoot one of us, but he wouldn’t be able to take all three of us down,” he said. “This would have been a good opportunity for Manila SWAT to show what it’s made of,” he said. “If the operation was successful, and I or one of my men died as a result, it would be worth it,” he said. Glory days Dela Cruz was commander of the MPD SWAT from 2007 to 2008, a period his subordinates liked to consider the “glory days” of the unit. “At that time, we were the ‘Best of the Best SWAT’ in the country, according to the SAF (Special Action Force),” he said. Super SWAT earned the moniker from its members’ penchant for wearing Level 4 gear all the time—decked out in bullet-proof vests, helmets and kneepads and carrying top-of-the-line M-16 rifles and handguns. “Some people thought we looked arrogant because we were wearing all our equipment. That’s when they started calling us ‘Super SWAT.’ They said we were elitists,” Dela Cruz said. One of his men chimed in: “It was not meant to be a compliment.” Improvise But Dela Cruz said: “We would need all that gear and equipment if we’re going to walk into a situation with confidence.” He said confidence was crucial in dealing with potentially deadly situations, citing one hostage-taking incident when his squad was called in. “When the hostage-taker fired a shot, the men from other units ducked for cover, but we remained standing. Then we walked over to get to the suspect.” He said his team, composed of less than 20 members, was a tightly knit family bonded together by a common interest in weapons and tactics. Dela Cruz said a good SWAT unit did not need astronomical funds to be effective. The commander just has to be resourceful in finding equipment for his team, he said. He said this was what he did when he was SWAT commander, constantly on the lookout for new devices and equipment and would improvise based on the resources they had. “In SWAT you don’t buy your equipment, you make your own,” he said, noting that the MPD SWAT currently uses Kevlar helmets and kneepads that he helped design when he was still commander. “But more than the equipment and gear, the most important thing in a SWAT unit is the people. These are the people behind you and in front of you. You want men who are skilled and you can trust,” he said. Trimming the fat Which was why as SWAT commander, Dela Cruz trimmed the unit’s personnel down from 100 to 25, provoking an outcry from those who did not make the cut. Dela Cruz said with scarce resources, he did not need 100 men to run a capable and efficient SWAT unit. “One bullet can give you experience ... It’s not about quantity of the manpower. It’s about the knowledge that your men have,” he said. He said his team was composed of men mostly in their 30s, unlike those deployed during the Luneta hostage crisis. “Those guys looked like they were still courting girls. They didn’t look like men raising families and building a future.” Floating status In 2008, Dela Cruz left the MPD SWAT to join the team of his former boss, Roberto Rosales, who was then just recently appointed director of the National Capital Regional Police Office (NCRPO). He was assigned to the NCRPO’s Light Reaction Unit. Then early this year, he was recommended to resume duty at the MPD SWAT. If he had been allowed to re-assume command, he would have trimmed the bloated personnel again. This was probably why the current SWAT members were reluctant to have him on board. The complaining members sent a petition to Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim asking him to retain Pascual as commander, a request that Lim granted. “I was put on floating status as a result,” he said. US-trained Sought for a reaction, Lim said he did not know Dela Cruz and was not privy to the internal workings of the MPD SWAT. Now, Dela Cruz said he had been recommended anew to head the MPD SWAT. But he said he was not confident that he would be reinstated. “With this interview, I don’t know if I’ll be allowed to go back. But I’m OK with that. I just felt somebody had to say something. Now is the time for everyone to evaluate what went wrong and what should be done,” he said. A civil engineering graduate of the Technological Institute of the Philippines, Dela Cruz joined the police force in 1987. “I rose from the ranks. I was PO1, PO2 and so on,” he said. From 1991-1996, he received training in counterterrorism strategy and tactics from specialized police forces in Louisiana, US. The training was sponsored by the US Embassy. Hostile encounters As MPD SWAT commander, Dela Cruz had faced a number of hostile encounters with criminal elements, from hostage dramas to hijacking incidents and pursuits of fugitives. But none were of the scale of the Aug. 23 incident at Luneta. By reputation, Dela Cruz is seen as something of a loose cannon. He often terrified subordinates by “trying out” bulletproof gear while they were wearing it, that is, he would shoot it to demonstrate that the bullet would not penetrate it. He also liked to experiment with explosives as a breaching tool. He admitted that a civilian was injured during one such experiment. “I took care of the hospital bills,” he said Published in Philippine Daily Inquirer August 28, 2010..

Obscene

Philippine Daily Inquirer

Most Read

THE NEWS that Malacañang has slashed the subsidies of government-owned and -controlled corporations in the proposed P1.645-trillion national budget for 2011 is the first concrete response by the government to the problem of runaway salaries of GOCC officials.

From P32.3 billion this year, the proposed subsidy has been cut to P23.3 billion. The difference—as much as P16.016 billion—is a huge amount, and represents a welcome dose of fiscal sanity in a system that looks very much like institutional highway robbery.

It’s a good initial step, but Malacañang must not stop there. The revelation that executives and employees of these GOCCs are the highest-paid workers in the government payroll prompts the question: What do they need the government subsidies for?

The Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System, for instance, must have, in Sen. Franklin Drilon’s wry formulation, run out of letters of the alphabet to call its laundry list of bonuses. The perks come with the most commonplace names, but the amounts they guarantee, and the fact that they repeat themselves in ever more desperate-sounding variations, ensures the generosity of the largesse. Just for the holiday season, the MWSS dispenses three kinds of bonuses to its board of trustees: the Traditional Corporate Christmas Package (TCCP), Traditional Christmas Bonus (TCB), and Additional Christmas Bonus (ACB).

 Pray tell, how are they different from each other? There are also bonuses for such milestone events as the “anniversary of the privatization of MWSS,” “family week celebration” (separate from the “family day” bonus) and “government corp/employees week,” on top of the “collective negotiation agreement incentive,” “rate rebasing incentive,” “educational assistance” and “additional educational assistance,” among other things.

Since the MWSS and other firms like it are swimming in so much money that they have to employ absurd nomenclature to justify giving the cash away, why do they still receive subsidies from state coffers? Ah, their executives will tell you: because their charters say so. GOCC charters not only grant these companies fiscal and administrative autonomy, they also require the government to provide automatic allocations for them in the national budget.

And there is the gaping loophole Congress and Malacañang must plug if they are serious about reining in these outrageous emoluments.

The Department of Finance has also announced it is studying the creation of a centralized body that will streamline GOCC operations. Any office established for such purpose will have its work cut out for it. Its first task is to find out whether maintaining all these corporations at crippling government expense is still worth it. Part of the 158 or so GOCCs “are no longer operating,” Finance Undersecretary Jeremias N. Paul Jr. said. Why hasn’t anyone looked into abolishing such costly deadwood?

Congress, too, must revisit the charters of these organizations, and root out esoteric provisions that, over the years, have only managed to shield these companies from the glare of public accountability and transparency. The defense that such charters exempt GOCCs from the ambit of regular governmental oversight has allowed these corporations to make short shrift of the normal rules on rational pay and auditing practices, directly giving rise to the problem of astronomical bonuses.

A memorandum order issued by former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2001, for example, explicitly barred any GOCC executive from receiving salaries twice the regular pay of Cabinet secretaries (about P69,000 monthly, gross). But documents submitted to the Senate show that board members of the Government Service and Insurance System were paid as much as P6 million each annually, or P500,000 every month. Their work? Attending two board meetings a month.

Officials of the Social Security System were even more handsomely rewarded for their efforts. Four of them reportedly raked in millions as designated board members of Philex Mining Corp., where the SSS holds some P14.3 billion in investments.

What happened to the GMA memorandum? Ignored just like that?

This is unacceptable—a completely anarchical state of affairs that, in time, would drive the country to penury. Obscene is the word, and that describes both the staggering amounts that have changed hands, and the people who have had no compunction receiving them.

Published in Philippine Daily Inquirer August 28, 2010.

Francis Kong’s winning attitudes for success

BUSINESS OPTION

By FLOR G. TARRIELA

August 23, 2010, 3:32pm

At the recent PNB’s Business Managers convention for all the managers of its 324 branches, motivational speaker Francis Kong spoke on the “Winning Attitudes for Success.”

Francis’ engaging talk identified some winning attitudes of an excellent salesman to the business managers:

1. Always make good impressions. Be a sight for sore eyes.

Excellent sales people create make good first impressions. They arrive on time. They are genuine, pleasant, and easy to talk with. The best salespeople have a neat and well-groomed look about them.

Note that he does not suggest buying expensive branded clothes especially if you cant afford it.

If you go to the client selling, you are a salesman. But if you go to your client with information that can help him, then you are a consultant. Guess what? A consultant wins over a salesman 100% of the time.

2. Like people and be likeable yourself.

Excellent salespeople are liked. They want to please their customers. They go the extra mile, learn customers' preferences, and work to educate their customers and keep them informed. Generally, before you can like other people, you need to be likable your self. One way is to have a positive attitude. Who likes to be with negative, whining and cranky people?

3. Be a good listener.

Excellent sales people carefully listen to what their prospects are saying. THEY DO NOT SELL BUT THEY LEAD THE CUSTOMERS TO BUY. They are patient with prospects--not pushy. They understand the most important key to successful selling is not THE SALE TODAY but THE RELATIONSHIP TOMORROW.

4. Behave professionally.

Excellent people will always point to the product pluses and advantages they offer but will not verbally tear down their competitors. There is no need to put the others down to be up. Focus on the positive side of your product. Respect the intelligence of your clients. Moreover, excellent salespeople never bring their problems to work and let them affect their attitudes.

5. Be product and service oriented, be an expert of the products you market.

Great salespeople know their product inside and out. They can answer even the most complicated and or trivial questions from customers without having to refer them to someone else at the company.

This is why you will never see a great salesperson who is sloppy and careless. They embrace non-stop learning. Excellent sales people devote a great deal of time improving themselves.

6. Be competitive and success driven

Excellent sales people exhibit CREATIVITY and ASSERTIVENESS. They are energetic and they have a very strong work ethic and you see them putting in more hours than their co-workers because they are extremely competitive.

They do not compete against others but they compete against themselves. They have passion.

Champions are so busy prospecting, making calls and appointments, brushing up on their presentations instead of focusing on their commissions. Losers on the other hand, use their calculators all the time to compute their estimated commissions.

Commissions for winners are just by products of their passion.

7. Be customer-focused.

One thing that distinguishes great sales people is that they are able to step outside themselves and see things from the customer's point of view. They focus on the mission of their work – which is to meet the needs of their customers. Francis said that Excellent Customer Service is simply: ‘inconveniencing one’s self for the convenience of others'

We are always selling, our products, services and even our ideas. Not only the sales people of a company has customers. Everyone in the organization, directly and indirectly, affect the final customer.

We all know that change is all around us and customer needs are changing all the time with expectations rising. To meet customer demands, we need to continuously develop and improve on products and services offered.

PNB’s 2-day business managers convention led by Retail Banking Head Joven Hernandez focused on business planning, learning and fellowship in line with PNB’s continuing thrust to develop service excellence in the organization. For the key to meet and satisfy customer is the people factor, having the right people, the most important asset of any organization.

Ms. Tarriela is Chairman of Philippine National Bank. She was formerly Undersecretary of Finance and Vice President of Citibank, N.A.

Published in Manila Bulletin August 24, 2010.

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52 Practical/Scientific Reasons to go to

Church...

besides the obvious ones.

 Reason No. 2 - Answers to Prayers

People go to church to pray and worship God, but is there any evidence that prayer works? A number of experiments have been conducted on hospital patients, showing substantial evidence for the positive effects of prayer.

One such study was conducted by R. Byrd at San Francisco General Hospital. He studied 339 coronary patients over a ten-month period. The double blind study divided the patients into two groups. The first group was prayed for by church members of various denominations (Judeo-Christian). The people assigned to prayer were given the first names of the patients and asked to pray for them regularly throughout the ten-month period. The control group was well matched to the test group as to seriousness of illness, age of patient, etc.

According to Byrd, the prayer group had "less congestive heart failure, required less diuretic and antibiotic therapy, had fewer episodes of pneumonia, had fewer cardiac arrests, and were less frequently ventilated." The patients, doctors, nurses and hospital staff had no knowledge of the purpose of the study. Subsequent studies have confirmed this result.

Byrd, R.C., "Positive Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer in a Coronary Care Unit Population," Southern Medical Journal 81 (1988): 826-829.

SALN—a weapon of good governance

By Rodel Rodis
INQUIRER.net

CALIFORNIA, United States—Soon after the dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his family fled to the US in the aftermath of the 1986 People Power uprising, the Philippine comedic duo of Noel Trinidad and Subas Herrera (“Champoy”) embarked on a comedy tour of the US.

One line that always drew howls of laughter was Subas’s comment about how much he felt right at home in the US "because this is where our taxes have been spent."

Subas was referring to the widespread news in the US press that Imelda Marcos had purchased five prime Manhattan properties such as the Crown Building as well as the vast Lindenmere estate in Long Island. It was also reported that she had bought about 200 choice properties in California including at least 30 holdings in Los Angeles.

How much did Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos plunder during their two decades of rule from 1966 to 1986? Estimates may vary from $20B to $50B but suffice to say that when they began, the Philippines was one of the top economies of Asia and when their kleptocratic reign ended, the country was reduced to one of the region’s most impoverished. Despite massive evidence of their brazen plunder, none of the Marcoses have ever been convicted of corruption.

Even the $310M worth of jewelry seized from Imelda Marcos by the Cory Aquino government in 1986 was ordered returned back to Imelda by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales on June 13, 2009 because he concluded that the government could not prove that it was illegally obtained.

This was not the intent of the forfeiture law (Republic Act 1379) that was enacted on June 18, 1955. Although it has been ignored, especially during the Marcos era, the law allows the Philippine government to forfeit any property found to have been unlawfully acquired by any public officer or employee. This means that "property acquired by any public officer or employee during his/her incumbency which is manifestly out of proportion to his/her salary" can be seized by the government.

To implement this 1955 law, Congress passed the SALN law, Republic Act 3019, popularly known as the Statement of Assets and Liabilities and Net worth law on August 17, 1960 requiring "every public officer, within thirty days after assuming office and, thereafter, on or before the fifteenth day of April following the close of every calendar year (to submit) a statement of the amounts and sources of his income, the amounts of his personal and family expenses and the amount of income taxes paid for the next preceding calendar year."

Half a century later, the SALN law lies moribund because there has been no mechanism to verify the SALNs and no penalty for committing perjury in the SALNs.

An example of the weakness of this law was presented on national TV on September 3, 2009 when GMA son Representative Mikey Arroyo was asked by Winnie Monsod to explain how his SALN could show a net worth of P5 million ($100,000) in 2002 and P99 million ($2.2M) in 2008. Mikey’s answer: “You know, first of all, I got married. I received lots of gifts. Then in the election campaign, somehow, many people helped me.” Is it legal to pocket the money given by campaign donors?

In that TV interview, Mikey reluctantly acknowledged that he partly owned the property at 1655 Beach Park Boulevard in Foster City in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. Although the $1.32M residential property was listed in San Mateo County records in 2009 as owned by his wife, Angela Montenegro Macapagal, it was not listed in the 2008 and 2009 SALNs of Mikey Arroyo.

Power grab: The story behind the Jan. 20, 2001 : EDSA People Power 2 conspiracy that swept Vice President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to power

Despite his admission, Mikey still asserted that there was no proof that he violated the SALN law.

Winnie responded: “You know what, the law is very clear. If there is a problem, when there is a question of unexplained wealth here, the burden of proof is with you, with the government employee. It can’t be that (we) have to prove that (you) are guilty. No, the government employee should prove that he is innocent. That’s precisely the whole objective of having a statement of assets and liabilities.”

Representative Mikey Arroyo, who returns to Congress as the representative of the Ang Galing party list of the marginalized tricycle drivers, technically complied with the law when he filled out his SALN forms and submitted them. But how is the veracity of his SALN verified? And what happens once it is established that he has other undisclosed (Foster City) assets?

Responsibility for the enforcement of the SALN law rests with the Office of the Ombudsman headed by Merceditas Gutierrez, a GMA appointee who was the Ateneo Law School classmate of former First Gentleman Mike Arroyo. Understandably, she has shown no desire to investigate the Arroyos.

The Ombudsman would have to be compelled by a court order to enforce the SALN. Unfortunately, the Philippine Supreme Court—all GMA appointees—has exempted itself and the entire judicial branch from having to comply with the SALN law, a clear violation of a law enacted on February 20, 1989 (RA 6713) that expressly includes members of the judiciary as among those required to submit SALNs.

When the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) wanted to investigate reports that certain judges were charging P500,000-P750,000 to issue a restraining order or injunction, it could not obtain the SALNs of the judges because of the Supreme Court's exemption ruling.

After 50 years, the SALN law may be on life support but it isn’t dead yet. Since Congress will not likely pass any law that will put more teeth into SALN, President Noynoy Aquino should just sign an executive order designating officials in each agency of government to compile the SALNs of public officials and to review and verify them and post them online. The Department of Justice should then go after the public officials with unexplained wealth and place the onus on them to prove their innocence as Winnie explained to Mikey. That’s the way the SALN law was envisioned 50 years ago this week. It’s time to finally enforce it and use it as a weapon of good governance.

Send comments to Rodel50@aol.com or mail them to the Law Offices of Rodel Rodis at 2429 Ocean Avenue, San Francisco or call 415.334.7800

Published in Philippine Daily Inquirer August 15, 2010

Survey finds Cebu City 'most honest'

CEBU City was awarded as the most honest and transparent city among metro growth centers outside Metro Manila.

It also fared well in a survey on the quality of life, cost of doing business, dynamism of the local economy, human resources and training, infrastructure, and responsiveness of local government units (LGUs) to business needs.

Cebu City, along with Dagupan and Cagayan de Oro, was named the most competitive city outside Metro Manila in the Philippine Cities Competiveness Ranking Project 2009 (PCCRP) of the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) Policy Center.

Cebu City was also recognized as the Best in Disaster Preparedness, Best in the Dynamism of its Local Economy and Best in Infrastructure.

According to the AIM Policy Center website, Cebu City figured in all the award categories, which included Best Compliance with Government-Mandated Plans, Entrepreneurs’ Award for Most Supportive to MSMEs, Entrepreneurs’ Award for Most Honest and Transparent Cities, Dynamism of Local Economy, Infrastructure, and Quality of Life.

“I’m very proud of this and I’m proud our city government. At least, I have something to show to our critics and I can just laugh at them,” said former Cebu City mayor Tomas Osmeña, who received the award last week.

The PCCRP study was based on government data, a perception survey among business owners, and interviews with local chief executives and local business group’s representative.

It also classified the cities into three groups: metropolitan growth centers, growth centers and emergent cities.

According to the summary of findings and a report published by Newsbreak Online, Cebu City bested Davao in the metro growth center category, which refers to cities with an average of P3.05 billion total income and average population of 1.08 million.

The city received the Entrepreneurs’ Award for “Most Honest and Transparent in its Dealings” among metro growth cities.

It was credited for disclosing financial accountability, as well as using participation in its planning and budgeting processes.

Cebu City was also named the top performer in disaster preparedness.

It was commended for its City Disaster Coordinating Council, disaster preparedness plan and documents on tracking of informal settlers. It also met the minimum ratio for the number of firemen for every 100,000 residents.

The city also bested other cities for its dynamic economy, measured in terms of per capita income, number of commercial and universal banks, building construction area, membership in local chambers of commerce and industry, access to finance, level of foreign interest, number of Department of Tourism accredited establishments and historical sites.

It bested Davao City in infrastructure for the reduced travel time to its seaport, reduced travel time for road maintenance, commercial water connections, subscribed telephone lines and reliability of water service.

Cagayan de Oro, meanwhile, topped in the growth centers category, which included the cities of General Santos, Baguio, Lapu-Lapu, Zamboanga, Olongapo, Batangas, Iloilo, Bacolod and Mandaue. These cities have an average income of P1.2 billion and population 421,165.

Dagupan City is the most competitive among the emergent cities.

It bested the cities of Angeles, Butuan, Cotabato, Lucena, Naga, Legaspi, Pagadian, Puerto Princesa, Ormoc, Iligan, Tagum, and San Fernando in La Union, Surigao, Tuguegarao, Tacloban and Santiago.

AIM conducted the study with support from the United States Agency for International Development and the German foundation gtz. (GAC)

Published in the Sun.Star Cebu newspaper on August 14, 2010.