Journalists hold picket outside Congress vs Reply Bill

The National Union of Journalist of the Philippines (NUJP) together with the College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP) held a picket outside the main gates of the House of Representatives last March 21 to protest the Right to Reply Bill. 

The Right of Reply Bill (Senate Bill 2150) authored by Sen. Aquilino Q. Pimentel, Jr. was passed by the Senate in July 2008. A counterpart bill (HB 3306) in the Lower House of Congress is now pending for deliberation.  

The NUJP and the CEGP criticize RORB for it will allegedly violate the freedom of the press by imposing prior restraint on media.  If ever passed, the RORB will mandate the media to publish or air the replies of any person subject to criticisms or accused of any crime or offense in the same space of the publications or in the same program on radio, television, website or through any electronic device where the issue first came out.

The NUJP has released a petition in February calling for the withdrawal of the bills in both Houses and for the media and public to oppose its passage. Over 700 journalists hav signed the petition as of date.

According to the NUJP petition the RORB would legislate what the media ought to publish or air, while casting a chilling effect that could dissuade the more timorous from publishing or airing what they should.

NUJP alongwith the CEGP held a dialogue with House Speaker Prospero Nograles by 12 noon. However, it appears that the House of Represetatives is not likely inclined to withdraw the said bill. 

“Campus journalists have as much reason as our colleagues in the mainstream press to reject the Right of Reply bill. Its provisions would violate campus press freedom, more so because campus publications are already generally repressed under normal circumstances”, Vijae Alquisola, National President of CEGP said.

Media to Congress: No Negotiation on the Right of Reply Bill

The message of the members of the press to House Speaker Prospero Nograles was clear: No bargaining on the passage of the right of reply bill at the Lower House.

Leaders of media institutions attended a dialogue called by the Speaker this morning at Melo’s Steak House in Quezon City.

“The bill is an abridgement of our freedom. This is not something open to negotiation,” said Vergel Santos, a journalist since martial and now Chair of the Editorial Board of the daily broadsheet Business World and Trustee of the media monitoring group Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility.

At the same forum, Rep. Bienvenido Abante Jr. of the 6th District of Manila and chair of the committee on public information said his committee is planning to amend their version of the bill and water it down to something, he believes, is acceptable to the working press.

Nograles added that “there is pressure because it has been passed in the Senate.” He said the bill will be open to floor deliberations when Congress reopens in April, claiming they have no choice because it was transmitted to them by the Senate as soon as it was passed on July 28, 2008.

However, National Union of Journalists of the Philippines vice-chairperson Nonoy Espina said these were nothing but bargaining chips being dangled to the press.

“Although we respect the House processes, we just want to reiterate that our stand is final. We don’t want the bill, we want it totally scraped.”

In its signature drive against the right of reply bill, the NUJP has garnered close to 300 signatures from across the country in just a span of two weeks.

Other media leaders at the dialogue included Joe Pavia, ecxecutive director of the Philippine Press Institute, Isagani Yambot and Neal Cruz, publisher and columnist of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Nine
Cacho-Olivares, publisher of the Daily Tribune, Dr. Cris Icban, editor-in-chief of the Manila Bulettin, Charie Villa, head for news gathering of ABS CBN, Alwyn Alburo, senior desk officer of GMA 7 and NUJP deputy secretary-general, Ed Lingao, head for news operations of ABC TV-5, and Marichu Villanueva, news editor of the Philippine Star.

69th National Student Press Convention (NSPC)

College Editors Guild of the Philippines

Office: 701-A City Tower, N. Domingo street, Cubao, Quezon City 

Email: cegphils@gmail.com

31 March 2009

Editor-in-chief
Official Student Publication

Fellow campus journalist:

Greetings from the National Office!

The College Editors Guild of the Philippines will hold its 69^th National Student Press Convention (NSPC) on 16-20 May at Ouan’s Worth Farm and Resort, Lucena City, Quezon.

The Guild is the oldest and largest intercollegiate alliance of student publications in the country. This year, CEGP celebrates its 77^th year of existence committed to the advancement of campus press freedom.

The NSPC will provide lectures and workshops on basic, intermediate and advanced journalism skills. Likewise, trainings in different literary genres will be given. And as part of the Guild’s dedication to educating student journalists regarding the plight of the country, various socio-political discussions will also be featured. 

Also, the following awards will be given to outstanding publications:

10^th GAWAD ERJ      Named after CEGP President Emeritus Ernesto Rodriguez Jr. This is the search for outstanding student publications in the country. The contest has two categories: major (tabloid, broadsheet, magazine,) and minor (website, alternative form, literary folio). In the major category, a publication may join only one form. In the minor category, a publication may join all the forms.

5^th GAWAD Beng       In honor of the dedication of martyred CEGP Vice President for Mindanao Benjaline “Beng” Hernandez in protecting and promoting human rights, Gawad Beng is the award given to the publication with an exemplary program on human rights. Beng, who also worked as a human rights volunteer, was murdered by soldiers while conducting a fact-finding mission at Arakan Valley, Cotabato on April 5, 2002. In this award, a particular program on human rights accompanied by photos, narrative report or video is to be judged (you can use any of these materials). 

GAWAD Marcelo H. Del Pilar                      This is the highest citation given by the Guild to its              outstanding alumni. 

In this regard, we invite your publication to attend the 69^th NSPC. Registration fee is pegged at P2,300 per delegate, which is inclusive of food, lodging and convention kit for each participant.

For inquiries, you may contact Karla (09273930753) or Trina (09104803098).

We look forward to your publication’s participation in this noble activity.

For a free press,

Vijae Alquisola

National President

Trina Melissa Federis

National Secretary-General

Chair, Organizing Committee

7 OUT OF 10 FILIPINOS REJECT ECONOMIC REVISIONS TO CHARTER

IBON Survey / 27 March 2009

Majority of Filipinos do not favor amendments to the economic provisions of the 1987 Constitution, according to the latest nationwide survey conducted by research group IBON Foundation, Inc.
 
Of the number of respondents who are aware of current proposals for Charter change (Cha-cha), 87.7% said they do not favor reforms to the Constitutional provision prohibiting foreign ownership of land. Meanwhile, 85.7% opposes the revisions allowing foreign ownership of utilities and natural resources extraction.
 
Amendments to the economic provisions of the Constitution are among the proposals under House Resolution 737 filed by House Speaker Prospero Nograles. The committee on constitutional amendments approved Nograles’s resolution in February.
 
Respondents also opposed other proposed amendments to the Charter. Almost 58% said they are not in favor of local government autonomy through a federal system, while 55% opposed the shift from presidential to parliamentary system.
 
Asked if they were in favor of removing the provision prohibiting foreign troops, 60.5% said no. Meanwhile, 67.7% said they are not in favor of removing the nuclear free provision in the Charter.
 
The latest IBON survey was conducted on January 7-16 among 1,500 respondents across various sectors and regions nationwide and has a margin of error of plus or minus three percent.
 
Below is the tabulation of results of the people’s perception on the proposed amendments to the Philippine Constitution.
 
 
Do you know the Arroyo administration has a proposal to amend or change the 1987 Philippine Consitution (Cha-Cha)? 
 

 
 
The following items are some of the filed reforms to the Constitution. Are you in favor of each of these?
 
Local government autonomy through a federal system                                                                                            
 

 
                                           
Presidential to parliamentary system
                                                                                                                                                                          

                                            
                                          
Foreign ownership of land                                                                                                                                     
 

                                            
                           
Foreign ownership of utilities and natural resources extraction companies                                                               
 

                                            
                                                                                                                                            Removal of nuclear free provision                                                                                                                           

                                            
                                                                                                                                 Removal of prohibition of foreign troops
 

IBON Foundation, Inc. is an independent development institution established in 1978 that provides research, education, publications, information work and advocacy support on socioeconomic issues.

Comelec’s poll automation will make fraud more dangerous

ISSUE ANALYSIS No. 05
Series of 2009

OMR creates the danger of placing the fate of the elections in the hands of a profit-oriented multinational company – the winning bidder – and on the Comelec which remains ill-prepared to run an election technology let alone in checking fraud.

By the Policy Study, Publication, and Advocacy (PSPA)
Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG)
March 25, 2009

When at most 70 percent of some 50 million voters go to the polls on May 10, 2010, they won’t be able to track how their votes are counted or canvassed. Winners in the national and local elections led by a new president will be declared two or three days after – and the whole nation will be at a loss in knowing whether the election results are real. Protests may probably be hard to file not only because of a lack of paper trail but also for lack of time.

The trouble with the Precinct Count Optical Sensor (PCOS) adopted by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) for use in the 2010 elections is that it does not guarantee an open, transparent, and credible automated system. Under the PCOS, the voter shades a ballot which s/he then drops inside a ballot box. Because voters are unfamiliar with the new technology voting will be slow and is extended to 6 p.m. after which all ballot boxes are brought to the precinct counting center – about 80,000 of them all over the country. Here, the ballots are fed into the optical mark reader (OMR) for counting and an election return (ER) is generated. The ERs are then electronically transmitted via the OMR simultaneously to the municipal, provincial, and national canvassing centers and, voila, the winners are proclaimed.

Engrossed with implementing RA 9369 which mandates the automation of elections, the Comelec appears to have glossed over the fact that Filipino voters have been looking for open, transparent, and credible elections. Making the counting and canvassing of election results fast may be a positive move which the poll body claims to be addressing. But unless elections are credible – which previous polls have been bereft of due to widespread fraud – then more and more voters will shy away from the polls.

Machine vulnerability       

Poll automation feeds the wrong impression to the public that elections will be clean and credible. Because it is a machine, it is powerless against any fraud that takes place before, during, and after the elections. And, because it is just a machine, it is vulnerable to human intervention such as software attack, glitches, and other technical problems that could result in wholesale electronic cheating. (See www.cenpeg.org for papers and powerpoints on election automation.) The high stakes in the 2010 elections, including choosing a new president, administration attempts to make sure that the next president is friendly to Gloria M. Arroyo, as well as the 17,000 national and local seats up for grabs by some 90,000 candidates will make fraud machineries sabotage the whole electoral process using both the traditional and modern technology.

If pilot tests determine what technology makes for credible elections, then the conduct and results of the August 2008 Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) should make the OMR machine not suited for the coming polls. In that automated election, at least 23 common errors and other deficiencies were recorded in relation to the use of OMR and the Digital Recording Electronic (DRE). Based on the tests, the Comelec Advisory Council (CAC) in its October 2008 report found the poll body technically ill-equipped to meet the complexities of an automated election system (AES). Meanwhile, ARMM poll watchers conceded that open cheating was rampant in many precincts thus effectively influencing the outcome of the elections. Incidentally, multinationals Smartmatic and Avante whose technologies were tested in the ARMM polls are again making a bid for the P11.3 billion election automation equipment to be used in the May 2010 polls.

Given the expected operations of fraud machineries in the coming elections, one way by which the present Comelec can at least minimize cheating is to make poll automation open, transparent, credible, and participatory. It does not make sense that the poll body has chosen the OMR which makes counting and canvassing of votes invisible to the eye with Comelec perhaps hoping that the poll officials, machines, vendors, software developers, electronic transmission systems, and other technical services can be trusted.

The technology’s lack of transparent procedures and mechanisms make OMR vulnerable to fraud. Some Comelec commissioners admit that their schedule is tight thus making it inevitable that any delay in any of its calendared activities could damage the whole process. What this implies is that all the technological, human requirements and safeguards for the automated elections may not be in place on the eve of election. Serious technical and political implications are not remote.

Lacks transparency

The Comelec itself lacks transparency. Its hardline predisposition to adopt the OMR has prevented other groups not only from adequately presenting their critique of this technology but also from proposing other technologies which they believe is suitable to Philippine conditions while being compliant with RA 9369. According to sources, Comelec Chair Jose Melo has overruled the Open Election System (OES) being endorsed or supported by a former Comelec head, IT specialists, academic experts, and some political parties simply because it is not legally compliant with RA 9369 as far as full automation is concerned.

Had any of the commissioners and advisers given the OES proponents more time, then they would have found that, compared to the PCOS, this technology is more compliant with the AES law. OES uses manual voting and open counting at the precinct level and uses tested computer technology developed by Filipino software programmers for the encoding, transmission, canvassing, and consolidation of election returns. Its added advantage is the use of a public website where election data is constantly updated and posted for public tracking and monitoring; where figures can be verified against ERs not only by voters but also poll watchers, candidates, and political parties.

Aside from being cheaper and “cost effective” (P4 billion versus the PCOS’s P11.3 billion), it conforms to RA 9369 which promotes the use of “the most suitable technology of demonstrated capacity” as well as “transparency, credibility, fairness, and accuracy of elections.”

OMR creates the danger of placing the fate of the elections in the hands of a profit-oriented multinational company – the winning bidder – and on the Comelec which remains ill-prepared to run an election technology let alone in checking fraud. It even makes poll watching harder if not futile. Voters want to see the next polls entirely different from previous rigged elections – one that is people-participator y and where they can decide on the outcome. The open and transparent features of the OES at least make it equal to the voters’ democratic expectations.

Reference:

Bobby Tuazon
Director, Policy Study, Publication and Advocacy (PSPA)
Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG)
TelFax +63-2 9299526; mobile phone: 0915-6418055
E-mail: issueanalysis2009@ cenpeg.org, cenpeg.info@gmail.com
http://www.cenpeg. org