Sunday, June 03, 2007

Why They Kill.

I LIKE GOOGLE EARTH. With Google Earth, I can view satellite photos of anywhere in the world, and anywhere in the Philippines.

I can see roads, bridges, and buildings that are supposed to be there. Strangely though, there seem to be a lot more roads and bridges in local government maps than satellite pictures reveal.

Where have these roads and bridges in official maps gone?

Ever noticed how in some rural areas the pavement of a secondary road ends fifty meters from a highway, or how an otherwise continuous road has an inexplicable ten meter gap somewhere in the middle?

Locals explain the gap as "the commission," or the part of the road that didn’t get built because someone pocketed a portion of the road’s budget.

Try another trick with Google and Google Earth: Look up the Metro Manila (or Metro Cebu) addresses of some provincial mayors, then zoom into their palatial residences. Pay particular attention to the exclusive villages.

Where does all of this money to build these mansions come from? Surely, the Mayor of a small town can’t be earning this much!

The Asian Development Bank warns that too many of our local government are overly dependent on the Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) provided by the National Government, rather than finding ways to raise funds for themselves.

The IRA is intended to be used for development projects of the local governments: TO BUILD roads, to build schools, to undertake projects for the improvement of the community.

It can amount to hundreds of millions of pesos a year, enough to build farm-to-market roads, hook up the town to the Internet, build a community college, a sports center; or it can be diverted and used for personal profit.

Local Government Units are fully capable of raising their own funds, which they can do in three ways: Real Estate Taxes, Business Permits, and use of the town’s patrimony.

But, in many small towns real estate taxes are inexplicably low; at least until one understands that in many small towns the local officials are also the town’s largest landowners.

Message to the ADB: Some small towns don’t raise real estate taxes because the Mayor doesn’t want to tax himself.

How some get to be the largest landowner is a story in itself because under the Mayor’s office is the local land registry.

Of course, at some point the real owner is going to notice a problem, but this process can take decades, and in the meantime, the property can be leased or even sold to an unsuspecting buyer.

That’s why it’s always prudent to check with the National Land Registry in Quezon City when offered a rural property with a local registry title.

A friend returned from overseas to find a palatial mansion built on her family property in a small town up north. They still held the National Registry title, but lo and behold, the local registry listed the mayor as the owner.

When confronted, the mayor offered to return the property and correct the local registry, but only if they paid for "improvements!"

When the local ruling family owns many of the businesses, attracting competition is the last thing on their minds, so don’t expect much from business permit fees. When a town is underdeveloped, with few roads, and little human capital from an absence of a decent community college, there won’t be many businesses there.

The town’s patrimony are another gold mine for corrupt local officials.

Some exploit the town’s natural resources for themselves, possibly explaining why we have thousands of hectares of denuded mountains. Another is to use the towns’ property for personal agriculture and commercial activity. It’s good to use idle land, but the revenues should go to the town’s coffers, not personal pockets.

Then there’s jueteng and other local rackets. Where it still exists, whoever is elected is assured a large chunk of the profits, shared, of course, with whoever is needed to keep things running smoothly.

These kinds of things show what a profitable endeavor running a small town can be.

With funds from the IRA running to a hundred million added to land grabbing via the local registry plus personal exploitation of the town’s assets and whatever else can be obtained from illegal rackets, it’s easier to understand why there are those willing to kill in order to win a local election.

It’s the business model of corrupt local politicians: Clear out the competition with guns, goons and gold, and reap the spoils if you’re successful.

Another Google company I like is YouTube.

Anyone with a video camera (and that includes many cellphones) can take videos and post them online for anyone to view. Videos of the family, friends, interesting happenings; and videos of political promises, campaign speeches, and blatant electoral fraud.

I expect to see hundreds of these videos popping up on YouTube very soon, if they haven’t already been posted. I’m especially looking forward to a video done by Pinikpikan’s Carol Bello, which earned her a couple of death threats in Abra.

Because YouTube is global, these videos will certainly be reviewed by foreigners, those referred to as "not understanding the Filipino electoral culture." Understanding our culture of guns, goons, and gold is always a challenge.

It’s not a challenge to Filipinos to understand, our challenge is choosing not to have any part of this stupidity. That’s why many of us simply move somewhere else, or work overseas, so we can earn enough to move our families somewhere else.

Foreign rights organizations will no doubt have something damaging to say again about all the deaths.

So will foreign investors, who we all hope will "understand Filipino culture" so they can bring their billions here.

The body count in the last election is close to two hundred. It’s troubling that political partisans are killed, but it’s horribly disgusting when teachers, the stewards of our youth, become targets because of their "required" role in our antiquated electoral processes.

DepEd’s Jesli Lapus blames Comelec’s failure to automate elections as the reason teachers are put in harm’s way. The plan to automate elections has been around at least as long as that unopened Airport Terminal, yet neither seems nowhere near resolution. There are just too many issues with hundred million peso contracts that we can’t seem to get anywhere with them.

We market ourselves as a leading outsourcing center with a large pool of technical talent, yet we can’t even automate our own elections to keep teachers out of harm’s way.

Why hasn’t the Comelec consulted with the DoST, the National Computer Center, and the University of the Philippines?

There’s already such a shortage of teachers that we can’t afford to lose a dozen or so with each election because some crook is so desperate to win at all costs.