If I may suggest sir Boo. This thread could be used to air/inform our fellow PHM members of the merits and demerits of our candidates. From the discussions, we could form our own conviction on who to vote for.

Coming from ordinary pinoy folks like us, our opinions and discussions would be free of gimmickry and politicking, and hence would be sincere and would purely reflect the country's genuine sentiments. IMHO

, that was my plan 🙂 ... ordinary people like us have limited sources of information (e.g. news, forums, social groups/network, personal experience) to know all the candidates. but even with this limited resources, with the use of a little common sense, which DIYers have a lot 🙂 he he he, one should be able to identify which candidate is best for our country based on a set of criteria - integrity, competence, and performance.

just take note of this whenever you read/hear about a candidate and before you make your own conclusion to agree (believe) or not with it. this will help you either to verify the story (if needed) or make your own conclusion ...

any news/article/feedback/comment you read or hear from any sources related to the coming election will always have these things that you need to be aware of ...
a. writer's perception ... the one making the report
b. the person's perception ... the one being reported
c. factual info or data either coming from (a) or (b) ... to justify their respective position
d. as an ordinary person with no access to sensitive info, it would be impossible to know 100% who is telling the truth. the best a person can do is combine (c) with his/her common sense to have an idea of what is the truth which can be totally different from what (a) and (b) are convincing you to believe 🙂 he he he

as whatmentioned, 'gimmickry and politicking' is a result of (a) and (b) in order to achieve whatever their goal of reporting the story - good or bad. what people normally missed out are the 'little' factual info in a story, which when combined with a little common sense will give you some sense as to who is telling the truth - the writer of the report or the one being reported. and by gathering this 'little' factual info from all of the stories that is being bombarded to us, the voters, one will be able to realize the big picture and see who is the best candidate for the position.
in addition, i just want to mention something very important that filipinos tend to disregard ... the best candidate may not always be the best to your personal/family interest ... if your in this situation and if you want 'real progress' the good of the country comes first before anything else.

as with any decision making process, business or personal (e.g. a person voting for the right candidate), with a lot of options available, the logical approach is to weed out each of the bad options (who you don't want to vote) based on the info you have, until your left with one ... with this in mind, in my next posting, let me explain my point, why voting for BINAY (president) and MARCOS (vice-president) will be the biggest mistake a filipino can do for his country ... the worst options available for me in the presidential and vice-presitial list 🙂 ... cheers

Boo!

Philippines Worst Nightmare ... BINAY as President after May 2016 Part 1 ...

as the saying goes ... power corrupts and it corrupts absolutely ... it's how best to describe binay's (and his family) rise to PH politics from a human rights lawyer during the martial law years to the corruption allegations or cases he and his family are facing right now.
too much power is intoxicating, especially to a person who is not use to having such power. the end result is the abuse of authority and the corruption that goes along with it.

the big question to ordinary citizen then is ... is it true or not?

binay's camp say's it's all fabricated (gawa-gawa lamang) by his political enemies as part of a demolition job to destroy his credibility for this election.
honestly, having seen PH politics all these years, i tend to agree that there might be some politics involve to it - discredit his integrity.
but still, the basic issue on hand is not the politics (all trapos in PH are doing it) but if the allegation or charges are true or not?

let's look at all the things that has been reported in the news for the past 2+ years. there are a lot of allegations against binay (e.g. BSP land, hotel/bliss bldg, etc) but the biggest is the parking lot and the school in makati. to make my point simple, i'll focus on these two. you can google the others to have a better understanding of the cases :-).

1. the ombudsman (conchita carpio morales) has already filed a corruption case against his son jun-jun binay. they also plan to file a case against binay after his term of VP ends. FYI, my understanding from the new article/s is that the constitution right now does not clearly state the immunity of the VP position against court cases. just take note, for a highly sensitive case like this, the ombudsman will not dare file the case if the evidence is weak, otherwise it will backfire on her.
binay's camp is saying that they are surprise as to how fast the case has proceeded. when the wheel of justice is slow, people complain. when the wheel of justice is fast, people still complain. i guess it depends on which side of the wheel you are in a case 🙂 he he he

2. COA already sent out a document of the result of their investigation against the project and it has shown that a lot of anomalies has been committed for the project.
binay's camp is saying that the COA report is quite old. whether the COA document is old or another new updated document is out there that we don't know, the fact that it exist means that COA made it's investigation and the findings points to some anomalies in the project/s. if binay's camp has already responded to contest the findings, then we will just wait for the news to come out, maybe after the election depending on who wins the presidency :-).

3. AMLC has frozen around 262 bank accts that are linked to binay related to these corruption charges. for a suspicious account to be frozen, the paper trail of the bank transaction resulting from the illegal activity must be really solid based on the bank's records.
binay's camp is saying that the AMLC report is confidential and should have not been leaked out to the media. i have to agree it's confidential. for an ordinary citizen like us, we'll just have to wait for the next development in the news during the trial of the case.

4. a senate inquiry that lasted for more than 1 year in which binay has not attended any of the hearings.
binay's camp is saying that this is part of the demolition and they will just wait for the cases to be filed in court.

5. in one news, binay's SALN states that his net worth is around P600M if my recollection is correct. someone should publish his SALN or ITR before the time he first became mayor of makati to really see the difference if there are any :-).

6. just to add my personal note ... political dynasty is one way to cover up corruption if it's there, because control of the situation, is always within the family.

to assume that all these 4 institutions (Ombudsman, COA, AMLC, Senate) orchestrated all their actions in order to fabricate their findings to demolish binay's credibility is really to hard to comprehend for a person just looking at the facts - a lot of the people (govt employees) who worked, investigated, and prepared those findings/reports are professionals in one way or another and i don't think that all of them will sacrifice their credibility just for the sake of destroying another person's credibility. if it's true, then this would be a good conspiracy novel for tom clancy or robert ludlum to write 🙂 ha ha ha ... it just does not make sense, no matter how you look at the facts that has been presented in the news ... remember the saying in tagalog ... kung saan may usok, tiyak may sunog din.

in a nut shell, binay's best option to quell the corruption cases against him/family right now is to win the 2016 presidential election. otherwise it would be difficult, costly, and time consuming for him to defend the cases in our court of law after his VP term.

continuation in next posting ...

Philippines Worst Nightmare ... BINAY as President after May 2016 Part 2 ...

his constant stand to all this accusations or charges ... a demolition job to reduce his chances of winning in the election ... is a common response by almost all politicians accuse of corruption whether here in PH or anywhere else. unless he shows some other proof, then it's quite hard to believe that what his saying is true.
to distract the voter's attention away from the corruption issues against him, the strategy of binay's campaign is to shift the focus to the plight/issues of the poor and/or the working (e.g. blue collar jobs) class people, because these are ...
(1) the people who will likely vote for a candidate if they know that they will have some actual benefit if he wins ... the carrot binay is dangling in his campaign to the voters is a promise of no taxes for people earning http://www.manilatimes.net/raise-vat-or-excise-if-income-tax-cut/250797/

(1) the current govt and some private group (e.g. Tax Management Association of the Philippines - TMAP) knows about the high income tax problem we have right now ...
'there are several income tax reform proposals pending in both houses of Congress. Among those are Senator Ralph Recto’s Senate Bill (SB) 716, Senator Benigno Aquino 4th’s Senate Bill 1942, Senator Juan Edgardo Angara’s Senate Bill 2149, Rep. Romero Quimbo’s House Bill (HB) 4829, and Rep. Neri Colmenares and Rep. Carlos Zarate’s House Bill 5401'

(2) all this bills address to resolve the same issue which is to reduce the current max personal income tax rate of 32% to something lower that is more or less the same with other Asean members. the high rate + the 'bracket creep' results in PH taxpayers paying more income tax compared to other countries ...
'the phenomenon of bracket creep, simply put, occurs when employees income increases over time as a result of inflation. This pushes them to pay higher taxes, but their purchasing power remains the same. The Philippines has not adjusted its personal income tax system since 1998' ...
their only difference is in how much to adjust the tax bracket - some are high and some are low.
Senator Benigno Aquino 4th’s SB 1942 (not sure if his the president's cousin or nephew) is even better than what Binay is promising as it will exempt incomes below P60,000 and raise the top bracket income threshold to P12 million.

(3) the reason why none of this legislation has ever been approved is because the DOF (Finance Dept) and the Legislators are still quarreling as to where to get the loss revenue as a result of the lower tax to maintain the status quo - more or less same level of govt expenditure. a solution to the problem is another long posting to explain how our govt can do it 🙂 ha ha ha ...

so you see, even without binay winning, the lower tax rate at some point will be implemented one way or another as govt knows how important it is to the filipino taxpayers.

binay is so desperate to win the presidential election that like any trapo (traditional politician), he will promise the voters anything and everything under the sun just to get the vote ... i had a good laugh reading an article about binay saying the he will revive the sabah claim of PH (sultan of sulu) with malaysia ...

seriously, to all who agrees with my understanding of why binay wants to be president, we need to spread the word why we should not vote for binay.

what will be the implications if binay wins the presidency this may 2016 ...

(1). most obvious one, no one can't file any corruption case against him during his term as PH president for the next 6 years.
he can be impeach, but the chances of that happening is quite remote ...
maybe do another EDSA 3? give me a break :-(, a better solution is to just not vote for him ...
a nation with too many people power (i already had 2 in my lifetime :-)) happening in one generation (e.g. 25 years) is not good ... it means there is something wrong with us and with our society ...

(2). he will be appointing 10 of the 15 SC justices during his term. if the case against him is still intact by the end of his presidential term, i leave it to your imagination what will happen to his case if it reaches the SC, and believe me, it will reach the SC for a final decision. also note, those 10 SC justices will be there for a long time after binay steps down from the presidency.

(3). just a thought ... a 6 year term is a long time. and sure enough, the case filed against his family (e.g. jun-jun binay) will take it's course. the single act of winning the presidency can be use by binay's camp to show that all the charges against him/family was fabricated because the filipino people did not believe in it ... it's like being absolve of the charges because the people still voted him as president ... jun-jun binay use this for his defense and the ombudsman raise an issue about this with the SC, i just could not find where i save that news article.

(4). personally for me, ang dating ng binay as our next president is like ... filipinos telling the whole world that it's ok for us to have a corrupt president ... its how it has been in the past and it's how it will be in the future ... we had marcos who got away with billions (US$), we had erap who was found guilty and was pardon by the next president (arroyo), we had arroyo whose corruption case trial is still pending up to now for so many years ... maybe binay will pardon her once he is the president, he did mention that he is ok to giving arroyo a house arrest while her case is on trial.

sorry for the long posting. i just had to explain clearly why i believe binay is not the right person to be our president ... cheers

Boo!

Philippines Worst Nightmare ... MARCOS as Vice-President after May 2016 ...

there is not much to tell about the marcos family and the martial law years as enormous news, articles, and books has been published over the past 30+ years documenting everything about the plunder of the country, human rights violations and atrocities that happened during that time.
being a martial law baby (i was 11 years old when matrial law was declared) and seeing first hand as an adolescent what is happening to our country then, those who say that it was one of PH golden years is a lot of bull shit - they may be the ones who benefited (e.g. cronies and friends) from the abuse and corruption that has been institutionalized by the marcos government.

some facts:
(1) up to now, we the filipino people are still paying for the govt debts that was plundered during martial law. we still have to pay it until 2020.
(2) up to now, only a small portion of the ill-gotten wealth (estimated to be from 5B-10B USD) of the marcos has been recovered. the chances of recovering the rest is close to nil given the difficulty of proving it in our current judicial system.

it was mentioned by imee marcos in a magazine (tatler) interview that their come back into politics was primarily due to when a 'friendly' PH administration came into power ... when erap became VP in 1992 and then president in 1998. for those who don't know, erap is the only PH president convicted of plunder and was subsequently forgiven by arroyo when she became president - as the saying goes, birds of the same feathers flock together.
imee marcos also mentioned in that interview that it was also the right time because most of the government people they worked with during the martial law days are already in the high level positions in government.

as expected, the year 1992 was also the time when bong-bong marcos (BB) returned into politics as congressman of ilocos norte. before that, he was vice governor of ilocos norte in 1980-1983 during the martial law years. in 1998-2007 he became governor of ilocos norte and in 2007-2010 back again as congressman of ilocos norte. in 2010 he became a senator up to this time.

i have to admit, BB is really a shrewd and intelligent person for meticulously planning his political comeback since 1992 - governor for 9 years, then congressman for 3 years, and then senator for 6 years ... and now running for vice president.

BB knows that running for president in this election is out of the question. he knows that it's not the right time for him to run for president. it would be difficult for him to win with an a aquino sitting as president. his run for VP in this election is primarily more of a test for him to determine if his belief/perception of the young voters (e.g. millennial babies) has some basis - (1) totally forgotten or really unaware of what happened during the martial law years (2) with that, they will be more open to the idea of 'unity' that he is dangling to the voters given that they never had any direct link to the martial law years.
personally, i think he can afford to do this test right now, because it will not cost him anything ... with his 290M (last SALN) and imelda's 900M (SALN) it's highly probable that what his spending right now for his election was taken from the 'kaban ng bayan' 🙁

i have to agree that the crimes of the parents should not be blame on their children. but for BB to claim that he is not aware of any wrong doing that his parents committed during martial law is a lot of bull shit because he knows that the act of apologizing for the things his parents did during martial law is an admission of their crimes to the filipino people. what he failed to realize up to know is that the apology (being sorry for an action) is a sign of humility and true reconciliation with the past. there can really be no true unity with the filipinos unless a person like BB learns to admit to himself the crimes that was done by his parents.

how can BB not know the crimes that his parents committed? he was already 28 yrs old when the marcos family fled to hawaii in the 1986 peoples power revolt. he was a vice-governor of ilocos norte from 1980-1983. ano siya tanga? is he really that dumb not to know or have any inclination of what his parents are doing?
it would impossible for him not to know or have a feeling of what his parents are doing to our country then ... i guess he has never seen any of the dazzling jewelries and shoes of her mother when he goes to her bedroom in the presidential palace ... or it could be, his intelligence only came to him when he turned 29 when they where already leaving in hawaii 🙂 ha ha ha

seeing that he is really adamant in NOT making an apology for her parents actions, then what does that show us, as to his real intention of being a vice-president and ultimately becoming a president of PH in the future?
it's simple, (1) to cleanse the marcos name and bring back it's glory when he is president and (2) to ensure that the remaining ill-gotten wealth still in their family possession now is protected from current and future claims.

a win for bong-bong is like filipinos saying to the world and to BB and the marcos family, sige, puede mo na uli kaming lokohin at matagal mo na kaming hindi na loloko ... cheers

Boo!

NOTE: For Issues why Binay should not win, see previous postings ...

worst nightmare is filipino selling their votes and their services. bakit ba may mga taong dikit pa rin kay Binay? dahil sa pera at pabor di ba? sila ay nagbubulag bulagan lang sa katotohanan. When filipinos are ready the right president will win. Pag ayaw may dahilan pag gusto may paraan. Kahit anong kalampag mo di pa rin yan magigising kasi gising na e. nagtutulotulogan lang.

, pre, it's all true. there are filipinos who indeed benefit (one way or another) from the corruption we have in govt right now, besides the corrupt elected politicians. if you look at it, their (mga nakikinabang) percentage is quite small, not that big compared to the rest of 54M filipino voters (if i remeber the stats i read in the newspaper before).

for the non-deserving politicians and their supporters (mga nakikinabang), tama sabi mo pre, ... 'Pag ayaw may dahilan pag gusto may paraan. Kahit anong kalampag mo di pa rin yan magigising kasi gising na e. nagtutulotulogan lang.' ... pointless to convince them, as their minds are already set on who to vote to preserve their own interest.

personally for me, the primary reason why they (mga nakikinabang) have some control on the result of the election, apart from cheating (a little harder to do now), are:
(1) a lot of the voting filipinos, for one reason or another, do not take the time to know for themselves who deserves to be voted. media people call this attitude ineptness which to me is really wrong and degrading - hindi tanga ang mga pinoy noh!!!.
a lot of voters are simply indifferent to the election process as they don't see the relevance/importance of it to their normal daily lives.
(2) because of this indifference, the massive dis-information that non-deserving politicians do, together with their supporters, becomes effective in swaying the voters with the wrong information to get their votes.

THIS ATTITUDE OF INDIFFERENCE CAN BE REVERSE WITH THE RIGHT COMMUNICATION AT ALL LEVELS OF OUR SOCEITY ...

to neutralize what these non-deserving politicians (and their supporters) are doing, all it takes is to remind and convince the rest of the 54M filipino voters how important it is for them, to know (awareness) on their own, the right candidate, with integrity, competence, and experience, that really deserves their vote.
- the govt is really doing it's part to spread this awareness (e.g. thru debates).
- the media and other social groups, even religious groups has been doing this in every election.

so it's also important that each filipino (ako at kayo), in his/her own little way, must help to spread this awareness. we cannot just leave it to others the burden of this important task. for change to take effect, it needs to start with each individual filipino to make an effort to do his/her part. a lot is at stake - our future and our country ... cheers

Boo!