Babble On by Kelvin Lee

A Guess at What Some Prominent Filipinos Want for Christmas

(Babble On, for the Sunstar Davao, Friday Dec. 21, 2007)

It’s that time of the year when people are accustomed to getting Christmas presents from their loved ones.

The thing is though, we always think of what we want for Christmas, or perhaps what our family and close friends want to get on Christmas day. Yet we seem to forget about what politicians and prominent Filipinos could possibly want as Christmas presents. It probably never even enters our minds.

But it’s something to ponder. What do you think personalities like Trillanes, Pres. Arroyo, Erap Estrada, Jose de Venecia and others want as gifts, all wrapped up and ready for them under the Christmas tree?

Here are a couple of wild guesses.

Senator Trillanes – this one’s easy to figure out. He’ll want a pardon for Christmas. Or at the very least, a get out of jail free card. Anything, so he can finally fulfill his mandate as Senator. Unfortunately, since the Senator has been somewhat naughty this year (remember the Peninsula?) it’s unlikely Santa Claus will give him that pardon. Read more »

Trillanes Says Sorry

(Babble On for the Sunstar Davao, Dec. 14, 2007)

Like every other Filipino out there, I’m fairly forgiving.

In fact, Filipinos have seemingly developed a reputation for forgiveness. How else can we explain the pardon for former President Erap Estrada and the return to political and social prominence of the Marcos clan?

But even I would draw the line at Senator Trillanes’ apology in the court room of Judge Oscar Pimentel last Tuesday.

According to the Philippine Star, Trillanes and his companions, in a letter to Pimentel, said that: “It was never the intention of (the) accused to cause a commotion, much less a walkout,” and that they “meant no disrespect for the court.”

No disrespect? They walk out of the courtroom in what was clearly a pre-planned event, took over a hotel and called for the people to rise against the government, and they’re saying they “meant no disrespect” and didn’t mean to “cause a commotion?”

A lot of people would disagree, especially the Peninsula hotel’s staff and personnel.

Read more »

She smiles at me as I slide into the seat in front of her. She shifts in her seat, adjusts the table and prepares to dig into the rice and beef stew from the cafeteria.

Though she’s dressed in a power suit, one wouldn’t think she was a valedictorian. One wouldn’t have thought there was anything extraordinary about her, except perhaps for that pretty and very friendly smile on her face.

Her name is Patricia Ngo Chua. People call her Tracy. And she is the Class Valedictorian for the Ateneo School of Law, Batch 2007.

Nothing special? Please.

Not only was she class valedictorian, but she also got best thesis, was a member of the Ateneo Law Journal and part of the Jessup Team representing the Philippines in 2005. She also received the St. Thomas More award, which is the highest award given to an Ateneo Law graduate. I’d say she was something special, yes sir.

I ask her about all her achievements, and she shrugs, as if to say it wasn’t much. She seems a bit shy to answer questions about all her accomplishments in law school. She takes another bite of her food, as though trying to change the topic.

Read more »

I just had my first  Negotiation Seminar class tonight under Atty. Aguinaldo, and it was an amazing learning experience.

We went through an exercise where classmembers were paired off boy and girl, and then each play-acted a specific role. I had the role of an erring but prominent politician about to run for the Senate. This politician had an affair and gave his wife a venereal disease.

He was now trying to negotiate a quiet settlement with his understandably angry wife who wanted an annulment of their marriage. One goal was to ensure that news of the affair, disease, and annulment wouldn’t leak out. So the politician would be negotiating from a position of great weakness.

Although only a simple initial exercise, today’s negotiation allowed me to realize a few basic points about negotiating in general:

1.) Be polite and use nice words - always be polite. Especially when negotiating from a position of weakness. Because of the words I used (conciliatory but firm, polite but clear on what I could and could not give) I was able to somehow convince my “wife” to reconcile. It’s amazing how far being nice and polite can get you. Unfortunately, since reconciliation wasn’t the point of the exercise, we still had to forge a settlement agreement. But the spirit of reconcilitation was in the air, and it definitely helped smooth the rest of the negotiations.

2.) Get into the other person’s head: Understand their point of view - the parameters of the exercise said that the politician had somehow given the wife a venereal disease from his affair. With that in mind, I tried to empathize with my “wife,” and saw that she wouldn’t be happy with some of the settlement offers I made. I understood that, because in a sense, the annulment was the fault of the politician I was playing. So I had to improve the settlement offers. Read more »

Hmm….

I was pleasantly surprised today. In a post written shortly after the Makati Standoff, I predicted that Trillanes would make our upswinging economy go down, and make our stock market and peso fall. Turns out I was wrong.

Though Trillanes did affect the international perspective of our country, it didn’t slow our economy down. Thank goodness for that. Based on Monday’s stock market performance, everything seemed to be going up up up. Investors are upbeat, and the peso strong. Even the Peninsula is upbeat after last week’s Makati standoff. We’re back, they announced today as that grand hotel reopened.

Perhaps people were impressed at how quickly the government handled the crisis, with no fatalities and little to no extra damage, save for a damaged hotel and a controversial incident where a number of journalists were hauled off to a faraway camp.

But even with those as negatives, government is already making amends to the Press, with no less than the President telling government units not to rile the media. In fact, that controversy with the Media may have a positive effect as well, because now government and the Media are meeting to discuss “rules of engagement” in order to avoid a repeat of that incident.

For the first time in what seems like a long time, things seem to be looking up for the Philippines. Despite everything, we remain strong and hopeful and bullish on the future.

I have never been so glad to be as wrong as I am now.

We still have to make sure to keep Trillanes and company away from five-star hotels though.

An Angry Media: The Arrest of the Peninsula Journalists

A Quick Word on the Arrest of the Makati Standoff Journalists.

If there’s one thing the government may soon be sorry about, it is this: the arrest of the journalists who were in the Peninsula during the Makati Standoff.

That arrest twisted what was an otherwise triumphant moment for the administration into another foolish defeat. The story of the day was no longer just Senator Trillanes’ takeover and subsequent surrender at the Peninsula hotel. It soon focused on the “abuse” of the government and its supposed attack on the freedom of the press.

According to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Maria Ressa, the head of the network’s Current Affairs department, said in an official statement that, “We in ABS-CBN News strongly condemn the illegal arrests of our reporters and our colleagues in the media and decry the atrocious treatment [they were] subjected to in the hands of the police.”

Looks like the victory party for the administration is short-lived. The government may now have to contend with an increasingly hostile and pissed-off press.

ABS-CBN is even mulling the filing of charges against the PNP for their treatment of their journalists.

According to a report, the National Press Club also condemned the PNP’s actions. “The police simply went overboard. There was no reason for the arrests to begin with. And there was absolutely no reason to handcuff or tie the hands of journalists with plastic. They were treated like they themselves were suspects in a crime,” the NPC said in a report from the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

The story is now shifting and changing. It has twisted into something the government didn’t want and didn’t need, and most of all, the government could have avoided, if they had simply acted with a little more discretion. Instead they went overboard. They may soon reap what they have sown at the Peninsula.

The Media is mad. And it looks like they aren’t going to take this sitting down.

Well its more or less over. Trillanes decides to “face it,” and walk out of the hotel with his compatriots General Danilo Lim and others, in order to ensure the safety of the civilians with them and to protect the media people in the hotel covering the event.

Yeah right.

Just admit it sir. You didn’t expect that the government was this serious about taking you down. Just admit that you weren’t prepared to fight it out tooth and nail. Just admit you couldn’t handle the thought of hundreds of soldiers gunning after you, nor the smell of tear gas.

You took a big political gamble and tried to rally the people again. Well you should have figured it out the first time. If the masses didn’t come out for you during the Oakwood mutiny, they aren’t coming out for you during your Peninsula mutiny. If people didn’t support the first movie, they aren’t coming for the sequel.

Read more »

Trillanes Takes Over the Peninsula

Here we go again.

The right honorable Senator Trillanes is showing us how much he respects the rule of law in our country by walking out of the courtroom where his case was being heard by Judge Oscar Pimentel. He is now holed up in the Peninsula Hotel over in Makati.

Pundits are calling this another coup attempt, like the Oakwood Mutiny fiasco a few years ago. Which, by the way, was led and masterminded by the SAME guy. Good old Trillanes. Except back then, he didn’t have the Senator tag on him yet.

I respect our leaders. The people voted for him and made him Senator. I disagreed greatly with him being voted into power because I believed that he had no qualifications to be Senator, aside from being a would-be coup leader. But he won, and that was that.

So far his performance as Senator has been less than exemplary though. Since being voted into power, he has used his position to call for countless hearings against the government, virtually blamed the administration for the explosion at Glorietta as part of some sort of conspiracy (where he cited confidential sources which, to date, he has refused to name), and now he has tried another coup attempt of sorts.

Read more »

What Do You Want For Christmas?

(Babble On, for the Sunstar Davao, Nov. 30, 2007)

It’s that time of the year when you have to start shopping for Christmas gifts for your friends and loved ones. And it’s also that time when you receive gifts from all over.

I used to love getting gifts during the holidays. I remember staying up during Christmas eve, all excited about the gift-wrapped presents lying under the Christmas tree, just begging for me to open them.

As kids, I guess we somehow learned to value material things greatly by events like Christmas. I’m sure your family is no exception. We wind up looking at Christmas as a time to get gifts.

But the best memory I had of Christmas wasn’t of the gifts I received as a kid, but of the experience of giving gifts to my loved ones.

I still remember how I scrimped and saved to be able to buy my mother a necklace from a jewelry store in Insular Hotel (now the Waterfront). I remember handing it to her, her opening the present, and then wearing it proudly in front of me. Of course, I never figured out until much later that Mom wasn’t fond of jewelry, and rarely, if ever, wears any.

Read more »