Category: Online Research

MoneyPolitics Online update: Profiles of 2013 winners

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

PERHAPS you know them well enough to elect them. But really, how well do you KNOW them?

The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) has recently updated its MoneyPolitics Online site with more data on the candidates who won in the May 2013 midterm elections.

Under the site’s Public Profiles tab, a visitor may find the complete list of winners in the 2013 elections, from district and party-list Representatives in the 16th Congress, to Governors and Vice-Governors, Provincial Board Members, Mayors and Vice-Mayors, and Councilors.

MP

More importantly, the sub-tabs bring up more information on the assets of many of these local officials: Their real and personal assets, their liabilities, and their net worth. These are grouped according to the year these information were filed.

A visitor however would notice that the data contained in the sub-tabs are uneven, or may at times be completely blank. Despite constitutional guarantees to access to information, and despite the requirement set by Republic Act 6713 or the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees that public officials must publicly divulge their assets, few public officials really make these data available.

For example, many of the entries in the PCIJ database on the assets and liabilities of District and Party-List Representatives are based, not on the actual statements of assets, liabilities, and net worth (SALNs), but on the summary asset reports made available by the House of Representatives. These summary asset reports are condensed and abridged reports of the assets of legislators, which give total figures but lack meaningful details.

The House of Representatives has refused to release SALNs of the 15th and 16th Congress to the PCIJ and other requesting parties, insisting that permission needs to be obtained first from the official involved.

So, how well do you really know the people you elect? Well, we wish we knew more about them too. And with the PCIJ’s MoneyPolitics Online project, we would like everyone else to know all about them.

DATA A DAY: The BangsaMoro

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

ON MARCH 27, Thursday next week, the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) sign the Comprehensive Agreement on the BangsaMoro (CAB), a political settlement between the government and the MILF rebels that hopefully would bring peace to Mindanao.

MILF

The signing comes almost two decades after an earlier administration, under then President Fidel Ramos, signed a peace agreement with the Moro National Liberation Front. That agreement, called the Final Peace Agreement (FPA) of 1996, was also envisioned as the settlement that would bring peace to the region. Eighteen years later, the region would still be witness to numerous conflicts, including an all-out war against the MILF and the resurgence of the MNLF that resulted in last year’s siege of Zamboanga City.

Next week’s peace deal, like its predecessor, may give the rebel group a measure of control over what is now the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao or ARMM, an autonomous region created by law and ratified in a plebiscite in 1989.

In the September 2 1996 peace deal with the MNLF, the government guaranteed that rebel group control over the ARMM by ensuring that MNLF chairman Nur Misuari would run unopposed as governor of the ARMM. Curiously, this element was not even specified in the peace agreement signed by both parties. What the FPA really did specify was the creation of a Southern Philippines Council for Peace and Development, a coordinating body controlled by the MNLF that would oversee peace and development efforts in the region, and a few other coordinating bodies that would supposedly empower the MNLF. Government also committed to push for a plebiscite that would expand the coverage of the ARMM beyond the four provinces then included in the region.

Misuari’s faction of the MNLF has since disassociated itself from the 1996 pact, saying the government has failed to live up to its promises. The MNLF lost control over the ARMM after Misuari was jailed for rebellion in 2001.

The MILF, a rebel group that broke away from the MNLF in 1979, for its part negotiated for the same territory that now comprises the ARMM.

While the Comprehensive Agreement on the BangsaMoro is not likely to contain any guarantees of control by the MILF over the BangsaMoro territory, it does spell out several key concessions that make the territory unique and autonomous, if not controversial.

Bangsamoro-map

For one, the BangsaMoro entity will take the place of the ARMM, which now comprises Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Sulu, Basilan, and Tawi-Tawi, the same region that was “given” to the MNLF in 1996. The BangsaMoro also provides for a ministerial form of government within a country that has had a presidential form of government for more than a century. The agreement also provides for a power-sharing and wealth-sharing formula that is envisioned to empower the BangsaMoro government with more resources and internal control.

The whole agreement however also relies on a process that is mandated by the Philippine Constitution, and as such, is vulnerable to both political pressure, clan dynamics, and public opinion. Once the CAB is signed next week, the government will push for the passage of a BangsaMoro Basic Law which would be ratified in the proposed area of coverage of the BangsaMoro. Only those provinces and cities opting to join the new political entity will be included; other provinces, towns, and cities that may want to join can do so, through a resolution for inclusion or through a petition signed by at least ten percent of the registered voters of the area.

Once the BangsaMoro territory has been constituted through the plebiscite, local elections will then be held for the BangsaMoro regional government, which as earlier mentioned, will be ministerial in form. This means that the region will be governed, not by a governor, but by a chief minister who is elected from within the BangsaMoro parliament.

Both the MILF and the government have said that there is no guarantee that the MILF would be handed automatic control over the parliament; however, the MILF is expected to turn itself into a political party in hopes of gaining an influential, if not a controlling voice, in the BangsaMoro parliament.

For more details on the BangsaMoro issue, check out the PCIJ’s Data a Day site, or visit the PCIJ’s MoneyPolitics Online website.

 

DATA A DAY: Which names dominate ARMM politics?

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

FOR TODAY’S Data A Day, we take a peek at the politics in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Since the ARMM was created by virtue of Republic Act 6734 in August 1989, a select number of families have dominated the local elections in Muslim Mindanao. Scholars say this is hardly surprising, given the traditional influence of Mindanao’s royal families over their communities that have historical been their constituencies.

However, with government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front preparing to sign a comprehensive agreement for peace that would pave the way for the creation of a BangsaMoro regional government, the ARMM as a political entity would soon be a thing of the past. The question that remains, however, is whether the families of old, the clans that have held sway, not just throughout the short history of the ARMM but through the centuries of the rule of the Datus, would still emerge as the dominant political figures in the BangsaMoro.

For today’s Data A Day, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism’s Research section used a word cloud generator to give us a quick and clearly visible answer to the question of which political families have dominated ARMM’s elections. The word cloud generator gives greater prominence, in terms of size, to words that appear more frequently in a document. For purposes of the word cloud below, the PCIJ used the list of official candidates in the last eight elections in the ARMM, as supplied by the Commission on Elections.

And as anyone can see below, one name stands out very prominently in the word cloud.

ARMM WORD CLOUD

For more details on the political clans that have ruled the ARMM, visit the PCIJ’s MoneyPolitics website, or go straight to the site’s Data A Day site.

DATA A DAY: Which names dominate ARMM politics?

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

FOR TODAY’S Data A Day, we take a peek at the politics in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Since the ARMM was created by virtue of Republic Act 6734 in August 1989, a select number of families have dominated the local elections in Muslim Mindanao. Scholars say this is hardly surprising, given the traditional influence of Mindanao’s royal families over their communities that have historical been their constituencies.

However, with government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front preparing to sign a comprehensive agreement for peace that would pave the way for the creation of a BangsaMoro regional government, the ARMM as a political entity would soon be a thing of the past. The question that remains, however, is whether the families of old, the clans that have held sway, not just throughout the short history of the ARMM but through the centuries of the rule of the Datus, would still emerge as the dominant political figures in the BangsaMoro.

For today’s Data A Day, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism’s Research section used a word cloud generator to give us a quick and clearly visible answer to the question of which political families have dominated ARMM’s elections. The word cloud generator gives greater prominence, in terms of size, to words that appear more frequently in a document. For purposes of the word cloud below, the PCIJ used the list of official candidates in the last eight elections in the ARMM, as supplied by the Commission on Elections.

And as anyone can see below, one name stands out very prominently in the word cloud.

ARMM WORD CLOUD

For more details on the political clans that have ruled the ARMM, visit the PCIJ’s MoneyPolitics website, or go straight to the site’s Data A Day site.

DATA A DAY: The Ombudsman and the Executive branch

Ed Lingao Leave a comment

THE PORK BARREL SCANDAL has gotten quite a lot of attention from several government institutions. On Thursday, the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee resumes its probe into the scandal, while the Justice Department and the Office of the Ombudsman conduct their own investigations.

With the gush of data coming out of all the investigations into the scandal, many who are unfamiliar with the structure of government have been left wondering which agency reports to whom, and whether these institutions are working or coordinating their probes.

For today’s DATA A DAY:

TRUE OR FALSE: The Office of the Ombudsman is under the control of the Executive branch of the government.

Check out the answer to today’s question by visiting the Data A Day site, or just browse through the PCIJ’s MoneyPolitics Online website.