Category: Paper Chase

Gender divide in the PH Senate: 207 males, 18 females in 88 years

mcmangahas Leave a comment

By Rowena F. Caronan

THE PHILIPPINE SENATE is 99 years old this year. Its roster enrolls the names of 225 senators, including only 18 or less than 2.2 percent who are women,

By all indications, to this day, the gender divide in the Philippine Senate remains wide and deep.

Seasoned male politicians, have always dominated the chamber. The first woman senator was elected in 1947, or a decade after Filipino women won suffrage in 1937.

From 1947 to 1965, only one woman completed the 24-member Senate. Geronima T. Pecson, the first woman senator, served from 1947 to 1953. Pacita Madrigal-Gonzales became the second woman senator in 1955. Maria Kalaw-Katigbak came in third in 1962.

In 1986, the number of women Senators quadrupled when Kalaw-Katigbak, Senators Eva Estrada-Kalaw, Magnolia W. Antonino, and Tecla San Andres-Ziga were elected. This number slid back to two in 1970, and barely improved in the next elections.

Over the last 30 years, on average only three women had served in the Senate.

Drag image to the left to see full table.

In the 2010 elections for the 16th Congress, however, voters sent six women to the Senate, the highest number ever obtained by women.

Senator Pilar Juliana ‘Pia’ S. Cayetano, and Miriam Defensor-Santiago are completing their terms until 2016. Senator Lorna Regina ‘Loren’ B. Legarda was re-elected, while Senators Maria Lourdes Nancy S. Binay, Grace Poe, and Cynthia A. Villar won seats in the 2013 senatorial elections.

Nancy Binay is the eldest daughter of Vice President Jejomar C. Binay, while Poe is the daughter of the late Fernando Poe Jr., the “King of Philippine Movies” who lost his bid for the presidency in 2004 to Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

A PCIJ story in 2013, however, highlighted a bleak picture of women’s participation in the country’s electoral process. Feminist experts interviewed for the story stressed that a rising number of women in politics does not necessarily reflect progress in representation for women. They pointed to an emerging trend of women candidates running only as benchwarmers or substitutes for father, brother, or spouse who belong to political clans. In fact, this case seems to apply to many of the 17 elected senators.

For starters, Pacita Madrigal-Gonzales was the daughter of Senator Vicente Madrigal. Vicente lost his re-election bid in 1953 and later supported his daughter’s candidacy in 1955.

PCIJ TABLE by Rowena Caronan

PCIJ TABLE by Rowena Caronan

Both Magnolia Antonino and Luisa Ejercito Estrada replaced their husbands whose political careers had just ended. In 1969, Magnolia ran in lieu of husband Senator Gaudencio Antonino, who died a day before his re-election bid. Luisa ran and won as senator after the ouster of her husband, then President Joseph Ejercito Estrada.

Similarly, Pia Cayetano inherited the Senate seat vacated by her father, and Cynthia Villar, by her husband. Pia became a senator in 2004, following the death of her father Sen. Renato Cayetano, in 2003.

Cynthia took the place of her husband Senator Manuel B. Villar Jr., whose second term ended in 2013.

Meanwhile, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, daughter of President Diosdado Macapagal, continued her father’s political career. The election of Nancy Binay, daughter of Vice President Jejomar Binay, to the Senate was considered a move to widen her family’s political influence beyond Makati City.- PCIJ, March 2015

The Aquino Gov’t & Yolanda: A lot of money, impact too little too late

mcmangahas Leave a comment

WITHOUT A DOUBT, the Philippine government has tried to match nearly peso for peso the massive amounts of donations that foreign governments, donor agencies, corporate entities, and citizens of the world have raised for the victims of super typhoon Yolanda.

In fact, when the nation marked Yolanda’s first anniversary on Nov. 8, 2014, the government proclaimed that it had released at least PhP52.06 billion for relief, rehabilitation, and reconstruction work for the victims and affected communities.

The government has estimated that it would require PhP167.9 billion to complete the work until 2016. But this does not worry Budget Secretary Florencio ‘Butch’ Abad. At a recent assessment forum on Yolanda, he bad guaranteed that full bill would be made available in the 2015 and 2016 budgets — PhP80.31 billion and PhP38.93 billion, respectively, or a little bit more that the projected expense.

“Money is not a problem,” Abad said. “The problem is the assessment, preparation, execution, and delivery (of aid).”

When PCIJ sat down to unpack and parse the government’s numbers, the big data did seem impressive. The small data, however, tended to belie the government’s claims that public funds have so far been released quickly, efficiently, and for all the right purposes, to the communities ravaged by Yolanda.

Among our findings:

* Beyond the mercy missions — or humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations, with publicity stunts for public officials tucked in between — a big portion of the funds released for Yolanda did not flow as promptly and many projects did not roll out as quickly.

* The government sought and secured from Congress a P14.6-billion supplemental appropriation in January 2014 “for relief and rehabilitation services, and the repair, rehabilitation and reconstruction of permanent structures, including other capital expenditures for disaster operations and rehabilitation activities in areas affected by disasters and calamities, both natural and man-made.” The tone of urgency that marked the request soon shifted to sluggish release of funds. Government’s first billing on the supplemental appropriation came only on March 4, 2014, or three months later. Yet again in December 2014, government sought and secured a second P22.5-billion supplemental appropriation from Congress.

* The bulk or 61 percent of the Budget department’s total releases for disaster relief are listed as having gone to Maintenance and Other Operating Expenses (MOOE), which by nature are difficult to account for; only 39 percent are recorded as having gone to Capital Outlay (CO) projects, which are more concrete and require full project documentation.

* Other than data regarding which line departments received how much, the DBM disbursements trail turns thin and cold. There is hardly sufficient information on the identities of the final beneficiaries (towns, provinces, villages, etc.), or more importantly, the exact location and final deliverables or outcomes of projects.

* DBM documents are couched in sparse and general language that does not reveal useful information about the projects. In fact, at least 11 percent of releases under the supplemental appropriations for Yolanda had no project description. About PhP2.3 billion of the other disaster funds had entries of just “rehabilitation and reconstruction program” as project description.

* Of the first PhP14.6-billion supplemental budget, less than a fourth or just PhP3.39 billion were released for the communities ravaged by Yolanda. The bigger balance of about PhP7.5 billion actually went to all sorts of unnamed communities in the provinces visited by a long parade of typhoons with names few people would still remember – Dante, Emong, Isang, Jolina, Kiko, Labuyo, Vinta, Maring, Quedan, Ramil, Santi, Zoraida, Odette, “previous disasters and aggravated by Typhoon Yolanda,” Habagat, “monsoon rains,” and “flashfloods” in 2013, which received PhP3.761 billion or more than that allotted for Yolanda-affected areas.

* At least six of these so-called “calamities” — tropical storms Carina, Quedan, Ramil, Dante, Emong, and Kiko — neither made landfall nor directly affected the Philippines. Funds have also been provided for episodes of “monsoon rains” and “flashfloods” that are by now usual occurrences most everywhere in the nation.

* Traces of the controversial Disbursement Acceleration Program or DAP – which the Supreme Court ruled in July 2014 to be unconstitutional in part – have crossed over to government’s work on disasters. The last DAP tranche, PhP4.1 billion in all, was released by DBM on Dec. 27, 2013. Interestingly, on that day, Special Allotment Release Orders (SAROs) included over PhP3 billion for “Calamity-Related Rehabilitation Restoration Project and Other Priority Projects” coursed through the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP), Tourism Infrastructure and Enterprise Zone Authority (TIEZA), National Dairy Authority (NDA), National Irrigation Authority (NIA), and Philippine Coconut Authority (PCA). The last DAP tranche also included direct assistance worth PhP23.33 million provided to the mostly Liberal Party-affiliated mayors of towns in Eastern Visayas and Northern Luzon.

* The government did not only underspend, it also spent slowly and even, by many accounts, inappropriately and with not so good results. It has authority from Congress to use up to PhP127.6 billion of public money from various special-purpose funds for calamities and disasters in 2013 and 2014. As of November 2014, however, only PhP31.3 billion, or less than a quarter of the disaster monies, had been released by DBM. That amount included a substantial portion for recovery efforts from damage wrought by almost a dozen typhoons and calamities three to four years past.

The third set of stories and relevant data tables from PCIJ’s Disaster Aid: The Money Trail project follow:


* The Government and Yolanda: Too much money, impact too little too late
* A throng of typhoons
* Spinning a good project: Reconstituting civil registry records

For related video, photos, data tables, and documents, check out Disaster Aid: The Money Trail.

Yolanda’s donors: Who, what, why?

mcmangahas Leave a comment

EXACTLY three months after Yolanda struck central Philippines, the government launched a worldwide campaign to thank everyone who had rushed to the country’s aid in the super typhoon’s aftermath.

Print and TV ads, as well as billboards in nine famous cities across the globe – New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Toronto, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, and Sydney – expressed the Filipinos’ gratitude for the hand extended to them by people all over the world.

Indeed, while Filipinos themselves rushed to help their countrymen in need, the global response to the tragedy was overwhelming.

The United Nations itself has monitored, through its Financial Tracking Service (FTS), a total of US$845 million (PhP37 billion) of Yolanda aid being raised and donated to the Philippines in the period between November 2013 and October 2014.

Some 22 percent of this amount came from private individuals and organizations. The rest came from various donor-countries.

The latter includes at least 58 foreign governments and the European Commission alone that, according to donor documents, have already given some PhP29.84 billion or US$667.5 million as of October 2014.

The UN said the donations were coursed through 120 operational relief agencies from within the UN system, the international components of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and some international non-governmental organizations (INGO) and faith-based groups.

To track the trail of aid in cash and in kind for Yolanda’s victims, PCIJ moved 188 letter requests for data and documents to a great majority of these donors. The letters included 117 sent to INGOs, NGOs, and private entities; 59 to donor countries and foreign embassies; and 12 to government agencies.

To be sure, a significant amount of the donations might have been reported twice or thrice; some donor agencies themselves had also served as conduits or channels of the donations.

In a number of cases, pledges were bundled with donations that had already been raised and disbursed.

In yet other cases, donor reports were not specific as to their intended beneficiaries (i.e. towns and cities, number of persons, etc.), or even what the general purposes of the funds mean in terms of actual goods and services (i.e. “child protection” or “Water, Sanitation, and Health Services or WASH”).

The database that PCIJ has organized for all the reported numbers and information is a massive file with 53 columns and 994 rows of 14,310 cells or data entries — for the donors alone.

Meanwhile, the database for the PhP52.06 billion in public funds that the Philippine government said had been disbursed for Yolanda’s victims, a year after the disaster struck, is another matter altogether. This second database consists of 26 columns and 780 rows of 15,629 cells or data entries.

Combined, the two databases come up to 79 columns and 1,774 rows of 29,939 cells or data entires.

Yet still, the PCIJ has launched only a seminal effort at retracing the money trail of Yolanda and other recent disasters. Because such funds could spell relief, rescue, and survival for families and communities, integrity and efficiency in their use and release have become a common concern of citizens, public officials, and donor agencies.

The latest PCIj stories for Disaster Aid: The Money Trail follow:


* Yolanda’s donors: Who, what, why, how much?
* Tacloban: Disaster & politics a bad mix
* Relief protocols and rules

For the full data tables, as well as related video, photos, and documents, check out Diaster Aid: The Money Trail.

Disaster aid, the money trail: Or why Yolanda lingers still

mcmangahas Leave a comment

DISASTER AID in the time of super typhoons like Yolanda has fortuitously flowed richly, quickly, and from a bounty of donors without fail to assist Filipino families and communities in need. On parallel stream, public funds devoted to relief, recovery, and reconstruction have surged just as abundantly.

But as many as 20 tropical cyclones visit most of the nation’s 7,107 islands every year. Some make a mess, many others destroy. And as the disasters follow in short succession, hopefully, too, disaster aid would come incessantly.

Now more than ever, transparency and accountability in the use, release, and results of disaster aid resonate as legitimate public goals and goods. To document the story of disaster aid and how deficits of integrity or efficiency in the use of donations and public funds could send the victims and the survivors to even worse calamity, the PCIJ staff launched a major investigation project, Disaster Aid: The Money Trail.

This project enjoys support from Christian Aid, an international non-government organization, through its Philippine Country Office that focuses on “resilience and justice to address the persistent poverty and inequality aggravated by disasters and the risks of climate change.”

Christian Aid funded the project “as our contribution to the interest of the public’s right to know how the Yolanda funds are managed and used and that the findings and recommendations are meant to feed into the policy discourse on Republic Act No. 10121 (The Philippine Risk Reduction and Management Plan of 2010) review and the Yolanda budget process.”

Across a two-month period, nine PCIJ editors and writers worked on strong>Disaster Aid: The Money Trail. This was how we did it:

* Gathered, sorted, and analyzed 626 megabytes of 688 research files;

* Sent 188 request letters for data and documents, including 117 sent to international and national nongovernment organizations and private entities; 59 sent to donor countries and foreign embassies; and 12 sent to government agencies;

* Conducted dozens of interviews and three focus group discussions with the affected residents, aid workers, donor representatives, local and national officials, and expert sources;

* Attended and covered eight public briefings, dialogues, and forums on the status of rehabilitation work for victims of Yolanda;

* Wrote and produced a dozen stories; a full-length documentary; nine video shorts; and 12 “Voices” video featuring aid agency and NGO leaders; about 100 photographs; and a microsite that aggregates these editorial products and primary documents from aid and government agencies.

Today, eve of the visit of the Holy Father, Pope Francis, to Manila and Tacloban City on 15-19 January 2015, we are launching PCIJ’s Disaster Aid: The Money Trail microsite to draw focus back on the nation’s huge, unfinished task of recovery and reconstruction from Yolanda, the disaster that lingers still.

For related video, photos, data tables, and documents, check it out!

It’s here, it’s now: #IJAsia14,marketplace for muckraking

mcmangahas Leave a comment

By: DAVID E. KAPLAN, Global Investigative Journalism Network*

FIRST, the big news: In just over two weeks we’ll convene Uncovering Asia, the region’s first investigative journalism conference. Excitement is building, and we’ve got an extraordinary array of the best journalists from Japan to Pakistan coming our way – heading to Manila for a World’s Fair of muckraking from Nov. 22-24.

GIJN has teamed up with two great partners to help give Asian investigative journalism a boost: the Asian Media Programme of Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, the German foundation; and the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. We’ll have journalists from 25 countries talking about setting up networks, collaborating on stories, and sharing tips and data.

Why Asia? Why Now?

So why are we heading to Asia? That’s easy. It’s where most of humanity lives, and the demand for quality investigative reporting is enormous. More than 4.3 billion people call Asia home – that’s 60% of the global population. It has the world’s second and third largest economies, and its share of global GDP is expected to double. But the region is also among the weakest links in an emerging global community of investigative journalists.

Asia is home to 4.3 billion people, 60% of humanity.

GIJN is a network of networks. We have more than 100 member organizations from nearly 50 countries, and many of them have their own memberships across nations and regions. Over the past 20 years these groups – which today form the backbone of global investigative journalism – have spread to every continent. In North America we have Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Investigative News Network, and dozens of other nonprofits. In Europe we have Journalismfund.eu, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, Scoop, and also many more independent groups. In Africa there’s the Forum for African Investigative Reporters and, more recently, the African Network of Centers for Investigative Reporting. In the Middle East and North Africa there’s Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism. In Latin America we have the annual COLPIN conferences, growing networks like Connectas, and strong national associations like Brazil’s Abraji.

And in Asia? Not so much. No investigative networks. No annual conferences. No fund for investigative journalism. Of GIJN’s 107 members, only 5 are in Asia. All that needs to change.

Well, here’s the good news – it is in fact changing, and quickly. Our colleagues around the region tell us that Uncovering Asia is the right event at the right time. Fueled by the same forces that have made investigative reporting a force to be reckoned with elsewhere – globalization, computing power, mobile phones, and determined journalists — there are signs from Seoul to Islamabad that a new era of muckraking is at hand.

Sure, we’ve got huge challenges. Criminal libel laws are still on the books in many countries. China and Vietnam are among the world’s leading jailers of journalists. Traditional media are driven toward poorly reported scandals and sensation, not careful watchdog reporting. Journalists lack training and resources for in-depth reporting. Owners are too often in cahoots with the very people the media should be investigating. And it’s bloody dangerous out there. Too many of our colleagues from the Philippines to Pakistan have lost their lives simply for reporting the truth.

But history is on our side. A global marketplace means countries need to open up in order to compete. Smart leaders know that if they really want to fight corruption and promote public accountability, they need an investigative news media. Meanwhile, the Internet is bringing tools and techniques to our colleagues everywhere, and connecting journalists in unprecedented ways. Secrets are much harder to keep, while public records are more accessible than ever.

Asian investigative journalism nonprofits: A growth industry?

Major media plays a critical role in spreading investigative journalism around the world. But it is the nonprofits that have served as training centers, incubators, and models of excellence in the rapid growth of muckraking. And for years there was only one IJ nonprofit in Asia – the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, founded in 1989.

This is another reason we are heading to Manila – to mark and celebrate PCIJ’s 25 extraordinary years. In that quarter century, the Philippine Center has published more than 1,000 investigative reports, produced scores of documentaries, and launched some two dozen books. Its staff have run more than 120 seminars for journalists across Asia, and won 150 awards for their dogged work. PCIJ’s investigation in 2000 of then-President Joseph Estrada, which led to his impeachment, is taught in journalism schools as a case study in modern muckraking. Equally impressive, the PCIJ staff showed that an independent nonprofit could not only survive but thrive in a developing country, and its work over the years has served as a model for scores of nonprofit journalism centers around the world. That is worth heralding.

PCIJ helped inspire the Nepal Centre for Investigative Journalism, launched in 1996, which has been rejuvenated and is back doing first-rate work. And now look what has followed:

A Promising Start

These nonprofits and networks are, of course, in addition to the extraordinary work being done by mainstream media, both local and international. To name but a few: the New York Times work on the corrupt wealth of China’s leadership; Reuters’ projects on mistreatment of Myanmar’s Rohingya minority, and its Connected China data project; the Japanese media’s digging into the Fukushima nuclear disaster; the gutsy reporting by Chinese journalists from Caixin, Southern Weekend, and CCTV, among others; and a growing force of world-class reporters across South Asia, who refuse to accept government press releases and corporate payoffs as real journalism. And don’t forget the Philippine Daily Inquirer‘s exposés of pork barrel politics, determined digging by Indonesia’s Tempo magazine and Taiwan’s CommonWealth, and watchdog reporting by Malaysia’s Malaysiakini and Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post – these are but a few of the noteworthy efforts in recent years.

Journalism professors are playing a critical role, as well, training a new generation of journalists in how to dig, analyze data, and find documents. We’ve had tremendous response from top “J schools” in the region to Uncovering Asia. Among the schools which will be represented at the conference: the Ateneo de Manila University’s Asian Center for Journalism (Philippines), Asian College of Journalism (India), Chung-Ang University’s School of Journalism & Mass Communication (Korea), Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (U.S.), Hong Kong University’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre (Hong Kong), and Waseda University’s Journalism School (Japan).

So, come join us in Manila if you can, and hear first-hand the reporters involved in charting the future of in-depth journalism. We’ll have more than 30 sessions ranging from tracking assets and dirty money to the latest data tools and how to set up your own investigative team. If you can’t join us, you can follow it all on Twitter at #IJAsia14. And don’t’ worry if you miss much. This isn’t the end of something big – it’s the beginning.

*Story originally titled “Why Asia? Why now?”