Shift in Sports, Shift in System

Philippine Progress: Shift in Sports, Shift in System
Posted by Orion Perez Dumdum on 07 July 2010
http://antipinoy.com/philippineprogress/

At the time of this writing, millions of people around the world are obsessing about the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa and the noise of the annoying Vuvuzela horn. From every continent, people speaking almost every language, coming from practically every race, creed, and color are excitedly watching the game called “Association Football.”  Unfortunately, there’s been relative calm in the Philippines, as hardly anyone, save for a few die-hard soccer fans, actually watched the World Cup closely.

Soccer, (coming from the word “association” in the sport’s full-name “Association Football”), called “Football” by everyone else, is also known as the world’s Beautiful Game. It is one of the most democratic sports ever – as Time Magazine recently described it. Anyone can play and excel in it: Rich or poor, light-skinned or dark-skinned, and most importantly, tall or short.  That last one is of utmost importance, considering that we Filipinos, most of whom are not very tall, are crazy about basketball – a sport that obviously favors tall players.

It has caused numerous ceasefires in many conflict zones as Israelis and Palestinians (Soccer is the biggest sport in the Middle East) or Rebel guerrillas and Government troops in continents like Africa or Latin America, often stop fighting just to watch the World Cup or other high-profile soccer matches on TV or listen to live commentaries on radio. During World War I, an informal Truce on Christmas Day in 1914 witnessed one of the most amazing displays of human fraternity as warring sides – British & French versus the Germans came together and played Soccer. After having played the game, made friends, and exchanged names & addresses, the soldiers simply could not shoot at each other once the truce ended, forcing their respective angry generals to send all of them to other fronts to fight against other enemies.

It’s a real shame because while Filipinos were glued to the NBA Finals at about the same time that the World Cup was just about starting, one unfortunate fact continues to be ignored by basketball-crazy Filipinos: We are never going to excel in sports that require height. Unlike most basketball-loving Filipinos, millions of average-height, barely middle-class, or even impoverished Africans and Latin Americans who play and practice soccer can actually dream of one day playing professionally for local or internationally-famous professional teams such as Manchester United (England), Juventus (Italy), Real Madrid (Spain), or Galatasaray (Turkey) – to name a few – and live a life of fame and fortune. These are dreams which are feasible as long as whoever plays and practices the sport has the competence, talent, and commitment, because the game-dynamics of soccer simply does not require height. It needs to be said that soccer legend Diego Maradona of Argentina became a soccer superstar with his very Filipino height of 5 ft 4.

In stark contrast to the meritocratic nature of soccer which does not care much about being born with the genes for height, the fixation that Filipinos have for basketball creates so many shattered dreams. Millions of young Filipinos are raised to love a sport that does not love them back. Many waste inordinate amounts of time practicing the game, wishing that they would be just like Kobe Bryant when they grow up, only to grow to their full height which might be just a few inches taller than Diego Maradona – a height that is just not cut for competitive basketball.

Filipinos even love to watch the NBA play-offs, but even if the Philippines is perhaps the most basketball-crazy country in the World (Americans are more obsessed with American Football and Baseball), countries with much more diversified sporting interests such as Mainland China and the former Yugoslav republics of Serbia, Croatia, etc, who all watch more soccer than they do basketball, have successfully sent players to the NBA. The Philippines has never sent a Filipino to the NBA!

Numerous honest discussions and debates have erupted about the need to shift the Philippines’ team sports focus from the excessively height-centric basketball towards the more height-agnostic soccer in order to focus on a sport in which every ordinary Filipino can excel. However, the rebuttals to the contrary range from such excuses as “The cultural temperament of Filipinos makes them prefer basketball because it has a faster-pace of point-scoring while soccer’s scores are low and goal-scoring is rare” to other excuses like “soccer requires a huge field in order to play while basketball needs a much smaller space.”

Both excuses fall flat considering that Filipinos are ethnically and even temperamentally similar to the Malays of Malaysia and Brunei (except in religion), both of whom enjoy and excel in soccer within the ASEAN region. It can be argued too that most Latin Americans, with whom Filipinos share common Spanish colonial history vis-à-vis Hispano-America and a very similar Iberian heritage with Portuguese-speaking Brazil, are somewhat culturally similar to Filipinos (especially in their sense of humor) and yet they too enjoy the sport immensely and are perhaps among the most excellent players of the Beautiful Game in the World. Most importantly, millions of impoverished Latin-Americans and Africans often practice playing soccer just about anywhere, be it on a small field, a dusty road, or even a small backyard. Some of the world’s highest-paid soccer stars come from such an impoverished background and they often cherish their childhood memories of growing up, playing soccer barefoot with plastic bottles or anything they can kick around as their ball, drawing lines on the ground to serve as their “goals.” It is just not true that Filipinos cannot shift to soccer.

The unfortunate fact is that Filipinos prefer to stick to whatever status quo they’ve grown used to. The real problem here is Inertia: the resistance to change.

Resistance to Change

Indeed, there is something really flawed about the situation, and Filipinos have to immediately correct it. Unfortunately, there seems to be something about us Filipinos that exacerbates our resistance to change: We have a tendency to refuse to admit that a problem exists, and often prefer to just ignore it and sweep the problem under the rug. In case that problem stares squarely at us, thereby making it impossible to ignore, quite often, we just outright refuse to do the work that would fix that problem and just endure the resulting mediocrity. Worse, many Filipinos prefer to make excuses that seek to justify such refusal to fix the problem, oftentimes reasoning – using intellectual dishonesty – that trying to fix the problem would actually make things worse.

We need not look far to see that this problem is not solely confined to the world of sports, in which increasing attention is being placed on the Soccer versus Basketball debate. Just recently, journalist and current Ambassador to Greece, Rigoberto Tiglao, recently wrote a two-part special on why Filipinos are not into Soccer.

In it, he likened the need for Filipinos to carefully consider shifting from basketball to soccer and the difficulty in convincing Filipinos to do so, with the fact that many Filipinos still stubbornly refuse to at least attempt to consider the objective merits of the Parliamentary System as a possible option to replace the current Philippine Presidential System. It has been observed that the Philippine Presidential System’s skew towards popularity and name-recall , coupled with the Philippine Electorate’s preference for form over substance that unfortunately brought about perhaps the most embarrassing stain on the Philippines’ international reputation in 1998, when celebrity actor Joseph “Erap” Estrada won as President of the Philippines. The Philippines had another close call in 2004 when his fellow celebrity actor and close friend, the late Fernando Poe, Jr. almost won. And just recently in May 2010, the convicted-of-plunder ex-President Estrada who was deposed in 2001 ran again and took second place.

In the meantime, numerous politicians aspiring for the Presidency jockey for positions in the equally useless and non-representative Philippine Senate (whose Senators do not represent constituencies unlike in the USA, where Senators are elected per State), and as a result, the Philippine Senate has numerous “Senactors” (Senators who are actors) as well as politicians married to actresses or celebrities.

We continue to be a basketball-crazed society that is isolated from the soccer-loving rest of the world and yet we can’t even excel in this game we so love, nor can we send talented Filipino players to the NBA because basketball is a game that clearly favors height and we simply do not have the height that would at least give us a fighting chance.

In almost the exact same way, we continue to clamor for improvements in our lives, our economic livelihood, and the quality of our politics, yet because of a system of government whose electoral procedure (choosing the name of an individual candidate running for President) clearly favors “winnability” (popularity and name-recall) over competence, we end up with incompetent people who become President only because of their celebrity status or famous surnames. At other times, we also end up with leaders who – though sometimes competent – are forced to pander to the public lest they risk being unable to govern if they fail to play the popularity game.

When will we Filipinos realize that for us to excel in team sports, we need to choose a sport where competence and real talent are much more important than one’s height?

When will we Filipinos realize that for our society to be better-run, more efficient, and more responsive to our people’s needs, we need to choose a system of government in which quality policy-making, platform relevance, and competence take overwhelming precedence over petty traits such as celebrity-status, personal popularity, and name-recall?

Knowing that both basketball and the current Presidential System are not good for us, why then do we Filipinos continue to insist on sticking it out with the both of them instead of making the necessary changes that would correct the problems that these two Problematic American Imports continue to cause?

Once upon a time, Albert Einstein said that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results”...

Kongreso bilang "Electoral College"; mga Kongresista ng Distrito bilang mga "Pledged Elector"

The article on Electoral College, written in Tagalog, explains why indirect elections under the American electoral college system may be applicable to the Philippines with some modification. It shows that indirect elections for president under a modified presidential system, with Congress acting as the electoral college, is essentially the same as indirect elections for prime minister under a parliamentary system.

The article may be downloaded from the following link:

http://www.deszr.com/archive.html?section=files&task=download&cid=84_aed68ac41530496d02b3c8b7abf84794

Congress as Electoral College; District Representatives as Pledged Electors

The article on Electoral College explains why indirect elections under the American electoral college system may be applicable to the Philippines with some modification. It shows that indirect elections for president under a modified presidential system, with Congress acting as the electoral college, is essentially the same as indirect elections for prime minister under a parliamentary system.

The article may be downloaded from the following link:

http://www.deszr.com/archive.html?section=files&task=download&cid=83_622d0fc3712d098cc2f611212d62d0e7

Are the people really sovereign in this country?

Here's a sad commentary about the people's so-called "sovereignty". This blogger just has one note on the "overwhelming" approval of the 1987 Constitution. He almost voted NO during the plebiscite, primarily because he didn't like the bicameral structure of Congress, among others. At the end of the day, he still voted YES because he thought political stability was the most pressing need at that time. He thought we could always amend the Constitution later. More than twenty years later, we still could not amend the Constitution. Dodong aka Ka Kiko

It will fail again
FROM A DISTANCE
By Carmen N. Pedrosa
(The Philippine Star)
Updated January 09, 2010 12:00 AM

Charter change advocates were asked to be patient. Let’s talk about it after 2010. Then there was the long standing debate of what mode should be used to introduce the reforms pulled out of the hat time and again. Should it be by constituent assembly, constitutional convention and people’s initiative as prescribed by the Constitution? All have been tried without success. There was always an excuse to block it.

All presidents after Marcos one way or another, if for different reasons, wanted to reform the Constitution. That includes Cory Aquino herself but she was clever enough to keep it away from the public.

But facts do not lie and neither do archival documents (even if removed from the Congressional archives, I already have copies) that she certified the implementing law of the people’s initiative in the last days of her term. This was combined with the implementing rules and regulations for the Comelec headed by her appointee. This was the chosen route that would have used her ‘popularity’ as the icon of democracy to stay in power.

FVR was more forthright and also attempted constitutional reform but he was stopped dead on his tracks by a warning from the establishment and their foreign protectors. Unlike Cory though he did have a vision and a program that he wanted continued to put the country on a more stable path. It was not so much for an extension of term than it was for the continuation of his program.

Erap also tried but with no mind of his own he did not understand the substance of reform and limited his actions to the commercial aspects.

And now, we have President GMA who openly espoused constitutional reform during the entire period of her term. She understood the substantial defects of 1987 Constitution and that in time, after the euphoria of victory, she will face the same blank wall other presidents before her did.

Experts, both foreign and local derided the Constitution as “baroque”.

It could have done better with simple principles, not a tract of administrative details. In the end many important provisions were simply left hanging “just to get the Constitution done with asap”. And when time ran out, the saving words to very important provisions were “subject to an implementing law”.

That means worthy provisions such as a people’s initiative, anti-dynasty could not be implemented. More horrific, we have a Constitution that cannot be amended. The framers claim they forgot to put the word jointly or separately on how the Senate or Lower House would meet and vote to submit proposals for amendment. Is that an acceptable excuse?

We now have an authoritarian government by error. Although a constitution is subject to the people’s approval, we would never reach the point to exercise that sovereignty. We can not reject or accept proposals for reform so long as the Senate and the Lower House are at odds with each other. That renders the sovereignty of the people useless. Therefore it is not even a democratic Constitution.

It was merely a reaction against the Marcos dictatorship without thought and deliberation on how the country could be restructured for good governance and to foster its ability to give a better life to majority of its people.

Yet it was approved overwhelmingly by a people who did not comprehend its shortcomings. As one polling expert said some 90 percent of the people who approved it later said they did not know why they did.

* * *

Despite this history, constitutional reform will fail again. All efforts toward the reforms have depended on reasonable dialogues.

There are still those who believe constitutional reform can be done in this country. They think it will happen so long as some consensus is reached for the two Houses to meet. Among those who have harbored this kind of thinking are the members of the House Committee on Constitutional Amendments in the Lower House headed by Chairman Cong. Victor Ortega, and Vice-chairmen Cong. Pedro Romualdo. Edelmiro Amante, Georgidi Aggabao, and Elipdio Barzaga Jr. They had worked hard on House Bill 6975 incorporating seven concurrent resolutions calling for a constitutional convention instead of a constituent assembly. The seven concurrent resolutions were HB 4075, HB1752,HB 3149, HB 3473, HB 5564, HJR 28 and HB 5700.

Briefly, HB 6975 that is now under attack simply calls for the election of delegates to propose amendments to the 1987 Constitution and appropriating funds thereof. It was co-authored by 51 lawmakers, both pro-government and with the opposition. The elections would be held simultaneously with the barangay polls on Oct. 25. Curiously, some of the same lawmakers (getting cold feet?) that voted for it are now said to be recalling their signatures. Why?

* * *

Members of the committee are wasting their time and should not have bothered about an acceptable alternative to a constituent assembly.

I was in one of their committee hearings and remember them say adamantly “we will just have to bite the bullet in performing a paramount duty as representatives of the people.” Can they go against the establishment who want no reform, no change, not ever on a moribund constitution at whatever cost to the people? A bishop has called President GMA’s decision to run for a congressional seat a “hidden agenda” even if it is in full public display. He does not say how this hidden agenda will play out.

Another bishop banking on the ignorance of the masses said “we should watch and pray. The devil is like a roaring lion ready to devour its prey.” What? Again? It reminds me of a cardinal who called constitutional reformists devils during Ramos’s time.

They blame President GMA but this music has been playing since we were granted our independence. The trouble is there are those who do not believe in our independence and self-determination.

Just as in Spanish and American times, sectors of the Church have again taken the lead against government. Naturally, the Upper House of vested interests cannot be far behind. Senate President Pro Tempore Jinggoy Estrada and Sen. Francis Pangilinan said the Senate would not agree to any Cha-cha initiative during President GMA’s time. Someone should tell them there would be a different administration by the time delegates are elected in October 2010. It does not matter. They do not like reform period, and we have a constitution that gives them the last word. But is that democratic? Are the people really sovereign in this country?

"Delete Option"

Here's an interesting article on economic reform. While I do not share the writer's pessimism about related political reform, his proposed approach in pursuing constitutional amendments appears practical and doable.

Delete
FIRST PERSON
By Alex Magno
Updated December 13, 2008 12:00 AM

Some groups here have made a cottage industry of resisting constitutional reform at every instance and for any reason at all. These groups constitute a volatile alliance of churchmen, ideologues from the usual movements of rage and whichever politician feels at the moment to be at the cusp of the next presidency.

This creates a predicament for those of us who feel strongly that constitutional reform is in the national interest.

I have outlined, in previous columns, the main reasons I feel that Charter change ought to be at the top of the national agenda. The sum of these arguments is that, under the present constitutional framework, we have a set of institutions that are vulnerable to capture by the domestic oligarchy and powerful vested interests.

But the Charter change agenda always seems to be trapped in the politics of the moment. If it is undertaken by way of a constituent assembly, the interests of the sitting politicians come into play. If it is done by way of a constitutional convention, the process would be open-ended, creating too much uncertainty and opening up too much political space for ideologically-driven players.

Those rabid opponents of Charter change who marched in the streets of Makati yesterday would not yield to the prerogative of elected representatives to begin consideration of a mode of Charter change. Whatever they propose, railroaded or not, will have to be, at any rate, submitted to the people in the plebiscite. That is the more appropriate time to debate the reforms submitted to the people for consideration.

Yesterday’s march was, from the standpoint of representative democracy, grossly premature. It preempts any discussion of reforms by duly-elected representatives who are acting within their proper mandate.

Yesterday’s march was an event of bigotry. It was undertaken in the spirit of rejecting even a mere discussion of proposals for Charter change. It is act trapped in the presumption of malice. It does not enrich our democratic culture.

I did say, in one televised interview, that I have lost hope constitutional reform will ever happen in my lifetime. A freshly-elected administration has no incentive to surrender its electoral victory to Charter change. A sunset administration, when it does initiate a constitutional reform process, will always be suspect.

We saw that in the case of Pirma at the end of the Ramos period.

We see that today.In one recent public forum organized by civic groups sympathetic to constitutional reform, I suggested that if there is anything that is politically feasible it has to be narrowing down the debate to only the economic provisions in the 1987 Charter.

Forget about reforming our institutional arrangement. That will always be divisive because there will always be vested interests finding themselves on opposite sides of any political question. The Senate will always oppose any shift to a unicameral assembly. Oligarchic interests will always oppose a shift away from the presidential system because any other option will be a lot harder for them to control.

The only possible aspect of the constitutional reform agenda where some amount of consensus may be forged is that section that “constitutionalizes” our nation’s economic policy.

That section is anomalous to begin with. A constitution should never prescribe economic policy. Economic policy ought to be an evolving thing, shaped by the continuing process of legislation and policy-making. (emphasis supplied)

In the scenario I propose, the House majority could simply pass a resolution deleting the provisions in the 1987 Constitution that preempt economic policy-making. With a limited scope, the Senate has to agree with the revision. No one, except the ideologically blinded, wants our economic policy to be fixed like religious dogma. (emphasis supplied)

I call this the “Delete Option.”

Because the provisions to be removed will not be replaced, there is no need to debate wording. The debate on economic policy, henceforth, will occur where it must: in both chambers of Congress.

It is a simply, surgical operation that will not disturb the institutional arrangement. It will not endanger the political ambitions of those who now so vociferously oppose constitutional reform.One might call it Constitutional Appendectomy.

The necessary reform of our economic architecture has been delayed because deleting the economic provisions has been tied up with the other messy political issues in the Charter change agenda. There is an immediate benefit in liberalizing the economic architecture the soonest to help us cope with the global recession.

We will likely debate the reform of our institutional arrangement forever and ever. But let us not hold our economy hostage to the endless bouts of partisan positioning.

The commission that gave us this Charter, which we hurriedly ratified in the context of political fluidity, debilitated our capacity for economic growth. Over more than two decades, our people incurred immeasurable opportunity costs because of the restrictive constitutional provisions.

Let’s do what can be done in the area of constitutional reform. Forget about lifting term limits or shifting to a parliamentary form of government. Only a revolutionary government can manage to reinvent our government so that the oligarchs will finally cease to control it.

In the meantime, let us align Charter revisions with the urgent effort to save our economy in these uncertain times.

White Paper on the MILF Peace Talks; Implications on Constitutional Reform

The paper entitled Comments on the GRP-MILF Peace Process opines that the MOA-AD is constitutional. Nonetheless, it strongly disagrees with its wisdom.

Part I seeks to analyze the rational, purpose, implications and constitutionality of the scrapped GRP-MILF Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD).

Part II identifies the fundamental flaws of the agreement and the underlying negotiation process, and recommends appropriate pre-emptive and corrective measures for any revival of the failed process.

Part III proposes bold alternative consensus points, guided by the standard of the common good of all the people concerned.

Among other reforms, the paper proposes or implies constitutional amendments for the: (1) establishment of regional governments based on culture and geography rather than religion; (2) grant of titles of royalty to the southern sultanates; and (3) liberalization of foreign investments.

Please see the following link: http://www.deszr.com/index.php?option=com_jotloader&section=files&task=download&cid=8_72624422e5f78977b04c6f7616306817&Itemid=61

Liberalization of Professional Practice

The article below may provide the rational for the liberalization of the practice of professions in connection with the pursuit of constitutional economic reform.

Professional concerns
MY FOUR CENTAVOS
By Dean Andy Bautista
(The Philippine Star)
Updated October 17, 2009

As in any public policy debate, there are pros and cons in allowing foreigners to practice their professions here.

The main point raised against liberalizing the practice of professions is the potential unemployment that may arise among the local professionals. Critics argue that the “work-pie” in the Philippines is so small that allowing foreigners to come in would further crowd an already crowded market.On the other hand, the benefits of opening up the professional services sector are apparent.

First, the resulting competition will encourage if not compel local professionals to improve their know-how to be at par with their foreign counterparts.

Second, there is a view that the entry of foreign professionals would not cause dislocation but actually create more jobs as foreign professional firms operating here will be on the lookout for Philippine professionals to work with. This has been the experience of Asian countries such as Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong where the entry of foreign professionals spurred direct foreign investment which in turn led to an expansion, instead of a contraction, of the “work-pie.”

Third, allowing foreign firms to set up shop in the country will lead not only to a transfer of technology and skills but also to higher wages that reflect industry standards. Cases in point would be the Metro Manila BPOs of Baker & McKenzie and White & Case, two large international law firms, which employ thousands of Filipinos. Parenthetically, this move may also stem the exodus of Filipino professionals abroad.

Finally, by allowing foreigners to practice their professions in the country, the Philippines will be complying with its treaty obligations as a member of the WTO and its being a signatory to the General Agreement on Trade and Services as well as the ASEAN Framework Agreement on Services. And aside from the advantage of being a good global citizen, the country should face the reality that globalization is here to stay and the earlier we accept this fact, the more we can benefit from it...

As a young boy learning how to play table tennis, I was advised that the best way to improve your game was to play with players better than you. A similar principle applies in this case. Needless to say, Filipinos are, by and large, naturally competent and predisposed to hard work. All they need is the opportunity and right atmosphere to flourish. My four centavos is that liberalizing our professional services sector will contribute to the creation of such opportunities and an atmosphere conducive to growth.