By Carlos H. Conde
International Herald Tribune
Published: July 30, 2007
MANILA: More than 1,700 civilians have been killed or injured in bombings and other attacks by Islamic extremists in the Philippines since 2000, the highest death toll in Southeast Asia, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch released Monday.
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By Carlos H. Conde
International Herald Tribune
Published: July 23, 2007
MANILA: President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo highlighted on Monday what she called her administration’s successes in the past year, saying that these accomplishments - most of them infrastructure projects like roads and airports in the provinces - would play a crucial role in achieving her vision of turning the Philippines into a First World country within the next 20 years.
In her State of the Nation address, which opened the first session of the 14th Congress of the Philippines, Arroyo also called on Congress to pass laws that would “reserve the harshest penalties for the rogue elements in the uniformed services” who are found guilty of killing or torturing political activists. “It’s never right to fight terror with terror,” she said.
Arroyo was referring to the killings of hundreds of political activists that have blotted her administration’s record and attracted widespread condemnation here and abroad. The military has been blamed for the killings and Monday’s speech was the first time Arroyo, who had always defended the armed forces, acknowledged this. “We must wipe this thing from our democratic record,” she said.
Arroyo devoted much of her speech to thanking politicians in the cities and provinces outside the capital of Manila, whose support in the elections last May were a key factor in her administration’s dominance in the races for congressional and local positions.
“Our investment in vital infrastructure is already bearing fruit,” Arroyo said after citing dozens of projects her administration is overseeing.
Arroyo’s list of accomplishments seemed intended to counter complaints by her political opponents and critics, who continue to charge her administration with human rights abuses, election fraud and corruption.
“It is my wish that the Philippines become a developed country in 20 years,” Arroyo said in her hourlong speech, which was interrupted at least 80 times by applause from the administration-controlled House of Representatives. By 2027, she said, “We will have achieved the hallmarks of a modern society.”
“The state of the nation,” she told the Congress, “is strong.”
By most accounts, the Philippine economy has been doing well in the past few years - first-quarter growth this year was 6.9 percent, the peso is now below 45 to the U.S. dollar from a high of more than 50 early in the year, and unemployment and inflation are manageable. Poverty, however, remains widespread, terrorism is still a problem, communist and Islamic insurgencies are hampering development in the countryside, and corruption in the bureaucracy is a major concern.
Arroyo said her administration remains committed to fiscal reforms, pointing out that fiscal discipline was a key administration objective in the years up to the end of her term in 2010. Arroyo and her financial managers are hoping to balance the budget by 2008, relying mainly on improved tax collections.
Concerns have been raised by the government’s missing its tax-collection target for the first half of the year, but Arroyo tried to assuage those fears by firing the head of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, the tax-collection agency.
She said the government would invest more in physical infrastructure to improve business confidence as well as expand social services. A top goal for the coming year, she said, was bringing peace to Mindanao, the main island in the southern Philippines where the communist and Islamic insurgencies are strongest.
Arroyo also asked the legislators to pass a law that would modernize the country’s outdated election system.
Posted on July 24, 2007, and filed under International Herald Tribune, Stories | Comments
By Carlos H. Conde
International Herald Tribune
Published: July 20, 2007
MANILA: An Italian Catholic priest who was kidnapped in the southern Philippines was freed after 40 days in captivity, government authorities said Friday. They denied that any ransom had been paid for the release of the Reverend Giancarlo Bossi.
Bossi, 57, of Milan, was recovered by the police Thursday evening after his captors left him on a road in Karumatan, a Muslim town in Lanao del Norte Province, in the southern Philippines.
Although it was not yet clear what group was behind the abduction, officials said the kidnappers probably were “rogue elements” of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the main Islamic separatist group.
“Father Bossi is now in good hands,” President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said Friday. “We pray that he could soon gather his strength and recover from his ordeal.”
At a news conference Friday, Bossi said his kidnappers had identified themselves as members of Abu Sayyaf, a Filipino terrorist group. The priest, who belongs to the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions, was kidnapped June 10 in Zamboanga Sibugay Province.
Efforts to recover him proved costly to the government. On July 10, 14 members of the Philippine Marines who were checking reports that Bossi had been sighted in Basilan Province were killed in a firefight with gunmen suspected of being Muslim insurgents. Ten of the slain marines were found to have been beheaded, prompting the military to send more troops to the south.
“From the beginning, they told me they were Abu Sayyaf,” Bossi said. He said the kidnappers merely wanted “to have some ransom,” although he did not know whether money changed hands.
The Philippine authorities said the release was facilitated by a former town mayor who negotiated with the kidnappers. Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno, who was with Bossi at the news conference, said that demands for ransom were ignored. Earlier reports said the kidnappers wanted more than $1 million.
Bossi said he was unharmed, although he lost considerable weight. He complained about the rice and dried fish that he had to eat every day.
If anything good came out of the ordeal, he joked to reporters Friday, it was that he had to stop smoking. “I told myself if I want to survive, I have to keep my breathing. Better stop smoking - and I stopped smoking.”
Although Bossi said it never occurred to him that he would be killed, he braced himself for a longer ordeal. He noted that two other priests from his group - Giuseppe Pierantoni, kidnapped in 2001, and Luciano Benedetti, kidnapped in 1998 - were held much longer.
On Friday, Bossi said he would go back to Payao, a fishing town in Zamboanga Sibugay where he was based. “I have to go back to Payao,” he said. “My heart is still in Payao.” Bossi has been in the Philippines for nearly 30 years.
Posted on July 20, 2007, and filed under International Herald Tribune, Stories | Comments
By Carlos H. Conde
International Herald Tribune
Published: July 17, 2007
MANILA: Nurjana Dones is bucking a trend in the Philippines. Now eight months into her first pregnancy, she decided early on that she would breast-feed her baby.
“I’m convinced this is the only way to feed my child,” said Dones, 21. “I don’t care about what all those television advertisements are saying: that formula milk will make my child smarter,” she said, while waiting for a checkup at a government health center in Quezon City.
Besides health, another factor is money: Dones, who is jobless, cannot afford the $50 a month that formula costs. Her husband works at a warehouse, earning the minimum wage of less than $200 a month.
Filipino and UN health authorities are heartened by the resolve of mothers like Dones, who make up a dwindling minority as breast-feeding rates decline in the Philippines and throughout Southeast Asia. As economies develop and more women take on full-time jobs outside the home, they have less time to breast-feed and more cash to spend on formula.
In the Philippines, the proportion of babies who are exclusively fed on breast milk in their first six months dropped from 20 percent in 1998 to 16 percent in 2003.
Throughout Southeast Asia, only 61 percent of women breast-feed their babies up to four months and 35 percent up to six months, according to the World Health Organization, or WHO.
But what has health authorities here most concerned is the role of aggressive advertising by formula producers. Now the long-running battle over what companies can say and do to promote commercial substitutes for breast milk has reached the Philippine Supreme Court.
“Infant formula has been glamorized to the point that many mothers are now convinced that it is superior to mother’s milk,” said Dr. Nicholas Alipui, the Unicef representative to the Philippines. He was referring to advertisements that claim formula milk and follow-on milk - for children one year old or older - make babies smarter.
For instance, Wyeth, a pharmaceutical and nutritional company based in the United States, has been running television advertisements for its Promil brand that feature child prodigies who can paint or play the piano. The ads have become so well known that a Filipino who shows above-average intelligence is often teased as a “Promil kid.”
Nothing, Alipui said, could be further from the truth. He said that about 82,000 children under 5 die each year in the Philippines, mainly because of poor nutrition. He cited a WHO statistic that said 16,000 of these deaths are caused by “inappropriate feeding practices, including the use of infant formula.”
He and other health officials are concerned that, while infant mortality rates remain high, the benefits of breast milk, such as enhanced immunity for the child, are being lost.
To encourage breast-feeding, the Philippines government enacted a Milk Code in 1986 that regulates the marketing of formula. The code bans advertisements and other promotional activities for formula intended for babies up to 1 year old. Last year, the Philippine Department of Health, concerned about the steady decline in breast-feeding and arguing that formula companies had been violating marketing regulations, revised the code, extending the promotion ban to milk substitutes for children up to 2 years old.
Posted on July 18, 2007, and filed under International Herald Tribune, Stories | Comments
By Carlos H. Conde
International Herald Tribune
Published: July 11, 2007
MANILA: At least 14 government troops were killed in some of the heaviest fighting with Muslim insurgents in the southern Philippines in recent months, officials said Wednesday.
Military officials said they had recovered the bodies of 14 marines after clashes with suspected Abu Sayyaf militants late Tuesday in Tipo-tipo, a hinterland town on Basilan island, and that at least 10 of them had been beheaded.
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By Carlos H. Conde
International Herald Tribune
Published: July 8, 2007
MANILA: When Imelda Marcos, the flamboyant widow of Ferdinand Marcos, the former Philippine dictator, celebrated her birthday last week, the festivities took place at a mansion that used to be one of her husband’s guest houses, a building that has since been confiscated by the government.
She and her children had “beautiful memories” of the mansion, Marcos told reporters during the party, at which she distributed fake jewelry made of cheap plastic because, as she put it, “I see beauty in everything, even garbage.”
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