Monster behind the monster: the story beyond the IDFA-nominated Pinoy documentary "Kano"

Originally published at The ProPinoy Project.

Filipina filmmaker Monster Jimenez’s documentary debut “Kano: An American and his Harem” premiered to the world last Saturday in Amsterdam, and is one of the 16 finalists in the First Appearance Category of the International Documentary Film Fest Amsterdam(IDFA), the largest non-fiction film festival in the world with more than 300 entrants. I sat among the sold-out audience of the 80-minute film where Monster unveiled the story of a monster, or is he simply a broken human being?

Update: The IDFA Award for First Appearance (€ 5,000) was presented to Monster Jimenez for Kano: An American and His Harem (the Philippines). YAAAY!! :)
 

The woman, the law and the unborn child: the abortion ban in the Philippines

A report released by the Center for Reproductive Rights revived an ongoing debate about reproductive health, particularly abortion. Now the Philippines whirls in a Roe-v-Wade-type of environment: to ban or to decriminalize? Pro-life advocates bill abortion as a desecration of the human dignity of life. The CRR report bills the ban on abortion as an abuse of human rights. So, who’s got it right?

The Gathering Storm, Part II: How we get there

Continued from Part I: How we got here

The Beginning, Part 2

"I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship." -- Louisa May Alcott

Many have argued, some convincingly, that despite Arroyo's faults, we need a strong leader with an iron hand, a "noble dictator" so to speak (albeit oxymoronic). Possibly one in the style of Singapore's Lee Kwan Yew. The early Marcos years were, after all, quite progressive. One Filipina posited to me at a cafe in politically dull Holland that if martial law never happened, then maybe Filipinos could deal with a noble-dictator type of leadership.

Perhaps. But martial law and People Power, and everything else, did happen. The Filipino psyche will not be able to live with an iron hand again. A Filipino present in our cafe conversation said that Filipinos would rather be miserably poor than be miserable under martial law.

The point is: history happened. We cannot change that. National psyches, sensitivities and proclivities are shaped by the socio-cultural context as well as historical legacy. Not to mention that martial law is a living memory to many Filipinos, and that is a major force in how they choose to write the next chapter of the story.

Any other candidate could arguably have made a good president. But we do not live in a vacuum. There are forces set into motion in the generations before us that we must contend with, that have shaped who we are, why we are, where we are today. And why we seek to go where we seek to go. In other words, now is not their time. Now is not their place in history.

Chris Tio, quoted in a TIME article on the Philippine elections, could not have said it better: "We're in a fight for the soul of this nation." 

The Gathering Storm, Part I: How we got here

Originally published on Propinoy.Net


"To foretell the destiny of a nation, it is necessary to open the book that tells of her past." - Jose Rizal

The last nine months was a watershed moment for Philippine history; it brought a nation full circle and face to face with itself.

In 1986, a new kind of revolution sprung forth from a small country. This people’s revolution would send ripples across the globe that would rock, shake and ultimately help reshape the prevailing world order. It set a precedent to the Eastern European revolutions in the late 80s and early 90s, including the one that would topple the Berlin Wall and end the Cold War, which had held the world prisoner to the threat of total war for half a century.

Nearly 25 years after the People Power Revolution, history repeats itself, albeit in a more democratic form: the 2010 national elections. And it is how Filipinos deal with the presence of the past in the present that will determine the direction the Philippines will be heading in the years to come.

This is the first of two parts.

The economics of integrity: the connection between Poverty and Corruption

Here’s an interesting thought:

“Integrity is something that’s not just nice to have, it’s something that we have to have…. Without integrity, the economy would not work…. That makes integrity the most valuable asset ever created.”

It’s from the book "The Economics of Integrity" by New York Times finance columnist Anna Bernasek.

On page 15, this graph comes up (red marks mine):

According to Index Mundi, the GDP per capita of the Philippines in 2008 was US $3,400. (In 2009, it was $3,300)

The Philippines ranked 141st among 180 countries in Transparency International's 2008 CPI, at an index of 2.8, making us among the most corrupt countries in the world. (In 2009, we ranked at 139th most corrupt, dropping to an index of 2.4).

That said, the Philippines falls in the bottom left corner of the chart.

The caption on the graph says:

"While a nation's integrity is not readily measured, one measure may be corruption. Using the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) calculated annually by Transparency International, it can be found that the higher the CPI for a nation, the greater the perceived integrity. A chart of the 2008 CPI for 180 countries against each one's GDP per capita reveals a strong correlation between corruption and wealth."

It struck me as the visualization of Noynoy Aquino’s campaign slogan: “Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap.”

Anna Bernasek writes:

"Doing whatever it takes to get ahead doesn't automatically make the economic pie bigger. Too often, grabbing a larger slice of the pie for oneself comes at the expense of someone else. Investing in integrity is a way of making the pie bigger so that everyone is better off. It's a new way of thinking about the economy. By investing in our shared integrity asset, we can find a new way forward."

What the farmers told me in Hacienda Luisita

This entry comes at the heels of increasing protests against Noynoy Aquino and his family over the tragedy at Hacienda Luisita in 2004.

In the last week or so, representatives of farmers from the hacienda have asked the Supreme Court to lift a TRO (temporary restraining order) that has prevented the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council (PARC) from distributing the land to the farmers, and have also staged protests against the Cojuangco family. Student groups joined the ruckus.

The question is – do these political leaders, the farmer representatives, and the students, give justice to what is stirring in the heart and minds of those inside Hacienda Luisita?

Last month, I wrote against a series by GMA News on their treatment reporting the Hacienda Luisita saga, arguing that one farm-worker’s version of events does not do justice to a complex – even convoluted – legal, corporate and social dispute that necessarily has multiple sides to the story.

The parties accused of wrongdoing were hardly given an opportunity to respond, and the series’ editor defended the treatment by saying that court documents are primary sources indeed, and presumably, should suffice.

I think he’s wrong.

While documents are indisputably important, I am of the persuasion that even these can be fudged, or lost/destroyed. The human voice is the most powerful testimony to any human experience.

With this in mind, I went to Hacienda Luisita in mid-March with a camera to ask the residents of Hacienda Luisita – those whose fates hang in the balance – what they really thought. I sought out those who, as a result of the 2004 protests, were left unemployed.

Where GMA News went wrong

This is the lede of Stephanie Dychiu's series on Hacienda Luisita:

Senator Noynoy Cojuangco Aquino has said he only owns 1% of Hacienda Luisita. Why is he being dragged into the hacienda’s issues?

This is one of the most common questions asked in the 2010 elections.

To find the answer, GMANews.TV traveled to Tarlac and spoke to Luisita’s farm workers and union leaders. A separate interview and review of court documents was then conducted with the lawyers representing the workers’ union in court. GMANews.TV also examined the Cojuangcos’ court defense and past media and legislative records on the Luisita issue.

The investigation yielded illuminating insights into Senator Noynoy Aquino’s involvement in Hacienda Luisita that have not been openly discussed since his presidential bid. Details are gradually explored in this series of special reports.

A background on the troubled history of Hacienda Luisita is essential to understanding why the issue is forever haunting Senator Noynoy Aquino and his family.

Jay Salazar, in his impressive analysis, says:

The use of phrases such as “being dragged”, “one of the most common”, “troubled history”, and “forever haunting” ... should have been excised from a piece of straight reportage. Not only are they tonally charged, they also pivot on undisclosed assumptions about how Senator Aquino is bound up with and implicated in the issue of Hacienda Luisita.

The announced intention of discovering why Senator Aquino is “being dragged” into the issue, for instance, is, at bottom, predicated on a spurious hyperbole: because the issue is supposed to be “forever haunting” him, though it was previously stated that this same issue is the root of “one of the most common questions asked in the 2010 elections." 

"Why the issue is forever haunting" assumes that the issue is in fact haunting the senator. (Her report also shows she never talked to the senator, so how would she know if he is in fact being haunted? A silly but fundamental question. Journalism is, after all, concerned with facts and the fair interpretation thereof.)

The 5-part series, Jay concludes, is a lengthy report based on a question for which that writer already has a blueprint or outline of answers to. That is, Dychiu's search for answers was guided by a question she already, in her mind, had concluded. Her research, and thus reporting, process was flawed from the get-go.

This is what the legal community calls "begging the question," petitio principii, assuming the initial point. It is a logical fallacy. In journalism, it is called sloppy reporting.

This piece takes off where Jay ended: RESPONSIBLE JOURNALISM?

Did GMA News do the justice to the truth, the public, and above all, the farmers of Hacienda Luisita?