Social Protection, Pensions, and Mental Health Integration
By Karl Garcia
Context and Rationale
The Philippines faces intersecting challenges in social protection and mental health. Despite economic growth, a large segment of the population—especially informal workers, Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), and rural communities—lacks adequate safety nets. Informal and gig-sector workers face financial insecurity and limited access to pensions, healthcare, and mental health services.
Studies indicate that financial insecurity and lack of social protection are directly linked to increased stress, anxiety, and depression. By integrating pensions and social protection with mental health services, the government can reduce systemic vulnerability, promote social inclusion, and strengthen community resilience.
Key drivers for integration:
- Aging population: Rising elderly population increases the need for pension coverage and mental health support.
- Informal sector growth: Roughly 40% of Filipino workers operate in the informal economy.
- Geographic isolation: Remote and rural areas experience limited access to mental health services and financial institutions.
- OFW dependence: Over 10 million Filipinos work abroad, sending remittances that contribute over USD 40B annually, yet face discontinuity in social benefits.
Proposed Architecture
- Universal Pension Floor
- Definition: A guaranteed baseline pension for all citizens, irrespective of employment history, providing financial security in old age.
- Mechanisms:
- Funded through social insurance contributions, general revenue, and targeted levies (e.g., sin tax, digital transaction tax).
- Indexed to inflation and adjusted periodically to maintain purchasing power.
- Automatic enrollment to ensure coverage for all eligible citizens.
- Means-tested supplements for the poorest households.
- Expected Impact: Reduces financial stress and poverty-driven mental health issues among the elderly.
- Portable Benefits for OFWs and Gig Workers
- Definition: Social protection entitlements (pensions, healthcare, insurance) that remain active across employment types, sectors, and national borders.
- Key Features:
- Digital pension accounts for tracking contributions across jobs and locations.
- Integration with reskilling programs to link social benefits to economic mobility.
- Portable insurance coverage, including health and disability benefits.
- Real-time tracking using secure digital platforms, potentially blockchain-based, for transparency and fraud reduction.
- Expected Impact: Enhances financial security, encourages formalization, and supports workforce flexibility.
- Barangay-Level Mental Health Programs
- Scope: Embed mental health services at the community level, particularly in rural and underserved urban areas.
- Components:
- Train barangay health workers as first responders in mental health, capable of screening, referral, and basic counseling.
- Conduct awareness campaigns and workshops to reduce stigma.
- Establish referral systems linking local clinics with hospitals and telepsychiatry providers.
- Expected Impact: Early intervention reduces acute mental health crises and promotes community resilience.
- Telehealth Services for Remote Regions
- Scope: Leverage technology to overcome geographic barriers in mental health access.
- Components:
- Secure teleconsultation platforms connecting local clinics to licensed psychologists and psychiatrists.
- Mobile applications offering self-assessment tools, mindfulness exercises, and crisis support.
- Partnerships with private providers to share resources and scale services efficiently.
- Expected Impact: Increases accessibility of mental health services, especially for rural populations, OFWs’ families, and isolated communities.
Global Case Studies
- Japan – Community Mental Health Integration
- Model: Local governments employ mental health officers to provide counseling and crisis intervention, supported by telehealth outreach.
- Outcome: Reduced hospitalization rates for mental health issues, improved early detection, and stronger community-based support networks.
- Singapore – Portable Benefits for Migrant Workers
- Model: Centralized digital platform linking pensions, insurance, and skills certification for migrant workers.
- Outcome: Workers maintain financial security and labor mobility; governments can track contributions and entitlements efficiently.
- South Korea – Integrated Social Protection
- Model: Universal pension schemes combined with local mental health services and digital platforms for benefit tracking.
- Outcome: Improved mental well-being among older adults and informal sector workers; higher pension compliance rates.
Implementation Strategies
- Digital Infrastructure:
- Centralized digital accounts for pensions and mental health tracking.
- Integration with national ID systems for verification and portability.
- Capacity Building:
- Train barangay health workers and social welfare officers in mental health first aid.
- Upskill government personnel to manage digital pension systems and monitor utilization.
- Public-Private Partnerships:
- Partner with fintech and telehealth providers to scale digital pension management and remote counseling.
- Incentivize private companies to co-fund benefits for gig workers and informal sectors.
- Monitoring and Evaluation:
- Develop KPIs for poverty reduction, mental health outcomes, and informal worker inclusion.
- Periodic evaluation to adjust pension floors, telehealth capacity, and training programs.
Expected Outcomes
- Reduced Poverty-Related Stress – Universal pensions and portable benefits reduce financial insecurity for vulnerable populations.
- Improved Mental Health Metrics – Early intervention and telehealth services increase access to counseling and psychiatric care.
- Greater Inclusion of Informal Sector Workers – OFWs, freelancers, and gig workers gain formal access to social protection, reducing inequality.
- Resilient Communities – Barangay-based programs create local mental health networks, enhancing social cohesion and disaster preparedness.
Policy Recommendations
- Legislation:
- Enact a Social Protection and Mental Health Integration Act mandating universal pensions, portable benefits, and barangay-level mental health programs.
- Funding:
- Explore hybrid financing models: government subsidies, social insurance contributions, and earmarked taxes.
- Capacity Development:
- Equip barangay health workers with mental health training.
- Implement digital skills training for government administrators to manage portable benefits.
- Technology Enablement:
- Create secure, interoperable platforms for pensions and telehealth services.
- Use AI to monitor fund disbursement and mental health service demand patterns.
- Stakeholder Engagement:
- Include civil society, local government units, and private sector partners in program design and oversight.
- Conduct awareness campaigns to encourage enrollment and reduce stigma around mental health.
The Society of Honor by Joe America 
if the shoe fits! it appears oman has to be protected from filipino tourists and is now asking that filipinos tourists bound for oman must have HIV certificate before they can board the plane, or they will be denied entry. it appears also that the new rule applies to filipinos and not to other nationalities.
por bida, I did not know we filipinos are that hazardous to omani public health. omani health authorities had better present epidemiological data to support this like how many filipinos have priorly been found to be HIV positive while in oman.
All these things would likely be very hard to pay for.
Filipinos often like to have stuff for free, at least the stuff they don’t want to pay for which happens to be mostly “needs” rather than “wants.”
Regressive taxes like VAT, sin taxes and the like are a diminishing funding source because 1.) Poor people pay the bulk of regressive taxes 2.) Poor people have a lot less money to be taxed, and regressive taxes reduce money they otherwise would need to support their material needs.
When starting from a relatively clean slate it is much easier to take in lessons learned from a multitude of successful examples in order to craft a new system. In the US healthcare and pensions are a mix-match of public-private systems that originally started as employer-run programs. The Philippines has a chance to just make everything publicly run which has other benefits like portability. Private insurers do not have an incentive to create positive outcomes, they have the incentive to deny, deny, deny claims. Portability forces the insurer to seek positive outcomes in order to reduce costs, so preventative healthcare would be prioritized.
Hard choices here but I don’t think mental health, as important as it is, will be considered with any amount of seriousness anytime soon in the Philippines. And besides there are other programs that may need to be addressed first with the limited monies.
Informal workers don’t pay taxes if they are paid in cash or e-wallet. Even though they’re supposed to pay taxes. So if the Philippines wants to increase the tax base, and if Filipino tycoons want to increase the consumer base, it sure seems like a no-brainer to create more formal jobs that can be taxed and provide stable salaries. It would even be called “common sense.” Well…
P.S. Karl you may want to explore public health and social programs of ASEAN countries. Using Japan, South Korea and Singapore as benchmarks usually causes Filipinos to think it’s too hard to even try… Thailand has a decent, if uneven public health and social programs. Vietnam’s integrated health and social programs might be worth taking a look at for bang-for-buck of a country that is currently about as wealthy as the Philippines.
the best things in life are free! sunshine and lots of fresh air, fantastic vistas, and smiles which we give to almost everyone, greeting everyone, enemies excluded! the freedom to move and do what we like, to go where we like, worship any god we like, happy and healthy, yay! there is so much in life to be thankful for.
that’s why we rarely talk about money, big spoiler yan even though it is the biggest thing that undermine almost anything! who needs mental health when we have big time teleseryes, and bini, and sb19, and fiestas, and festivals all year long! and to punish our excesses because we filipinos have overbearing conscience hard to ignore, we crucify ourselves and do penance excessively on lent, but then gorge until we virtually burst on christmas. and we have many konsintadores like our friends, our families, our neighbors and our community all supportive of our species whims and caprices.
though mental health is always default when things get a bit tight. may problema raw sa pagiisip, dont we all! bite more than we can chew. though a few certified disorders of the mind need medication to function normally.
tax the rich not the poor! many uber rich politicians are not keen to show their salns for public scrutiny, sara duterte is one. the rich has so many tax perks, else they take their money away and invest elsewhere.
anyhow, once the working poor reach a certain threshold of income, they are required to pay tax. those who failed to reach the threshold, no need for them to pay tax.
anyhow again, it would be hard for the working poor to dodge paying tax even if they are making enough money but has no paper trail to show for it coz they are being paid under the table. apparently, banks these days (online specially) are obliged to keep tract of depositors both rich and poor, how much money going in and how money going out, and then send end of financial year report to tax office. then tax office do some cross checking and to make matter worse, AI is now helping tax office to track and detect tax cheats.
If only many other people look at life the way you do KB (and the way I try to do), they’d probably be a lot happier appreciating the simpler things.
While mental health was always an overlooked aspect of health, I really do think social media has made everything worse.
So many people are mental slaves to the algorithm whether they believe it or not. A housecat does not know it is caged.
Then there are those who in seeking to become special and unique adamantly claim to have some mental illness or health condition, not to share their experience but to go fishing for sympathy and validation, hurting the legitimate cause of true sufferers.
The solution is simple yet most governments do not have the courage to move forward: go to the source of the problem and regulate algorithms. Some legal proposals have been done in social media bans for children, but it is not enough. Like other harmful products, the harm must be mitigated through regulation.
It seemed to me that growing up in the 1980s despite being poor as dirt, people around me were just happier and upbeat in their idea of the future. We did not have social media back then. Nowadays kids can’t even speak to others in public without looking down at their shoes.
“Filipinos often like to have stuff for free.” Is this a criticism, compliment, or condition of the condition? There is a legitimate reason for everything. These kinds of statements seem to me to deny that. Everyone likes freebies, even Jeff Bezos.
Put another way, greed is a human drive.
A little bit all of the above; I was feeling sarcastic.
You’re right though, there is a reason for everything. I personally think that Philippine elites often look at problem solving the wrong way.
Philippine problems are often approached by the elite thinkers in a wholly antiseptic manner, relying on second-and-third-hand accounts relayed through other elites when the people the problem affects can be interviewed right there.
The other problem I see is the insistence on understanding and therefore trying to craft solutions in not even a Westernized mindset, but a Western mindset because the enclaves are effectively mini First World countries.
It might be more helpful to follow the threads explored by Filipinologists like Ferdinand Blumentritt, William Henry Scott, Laura Lee Junker, Linda A. Newson, H. Otley Beyer, and Peter Bellwood. Interesting to me that these “foreigners” seem to understand more about Filipinos than Philippine elites who often try to force nationalist mythology understand.
Anyway, about the “stuff for free,” looking at this statement through Western lenses is probably wrong. The distribution of goods (services may be seen as a form of “goods”) is central to Austronesian society. The politician who brings home and shares the bacon gets the vote; no one is thinking “what if the politician stole the money?”
I do not know what would be the solution to the “problem,” because ultimately it might not even be a “problem” at all as it is a cultural expression. However, if it is desired to have people behave differently, they need to be given different incentives that suit the cultural context. There is no need to change the habit that causes a Filipino to want “stuff for free” as long as it is something taken “outside of their community.” After all a Filipino who may litter profusely along the sidewalk or riverbank would not litter around his own home and his own neighborhood. There needs to be some kind of transformation where the sense of community is expanded to the nation.
However those are complicated things that while it may be worthwhile to figure out a way to encourage that change, as I said it is much more beneficial to simply create more formal jobs. And coincidentally formal jobs can be taxes right out of the payroll for stuff like PIT, SSS, PhilHealth, etc. etc.
Ahhh, sarcasm, the angry man’s irony, haha. I deploy literature myself from time to time. 🙂 Thanks for the brief, all of which makes good sense to me.
I think a lot of times the “Philippine problem” seems intractable because: 1.) the discussion is often Manila-centric, 2.) the discussion is Manila-centric AND a discussion between Westernized thinkers.
For that reason even stuff like industrial development tends to gravitate towards Manila, in the recent decade Manila-adjacent like Calabarzon. A lot of that has to do with the difficulty of building out transportation and infrastructure in an archipelago, which is a problem of distribution.
I wonder then, if the solution can be a distributed architecture for the Philippines.
Aside from the basic services like utilities, each region can focus on clustered industries that support each activity within the cluster. RoRo would facilitate the bulk of transportation within the distributed architecture. Harder to do for sure, but I think Filipino elite thinkers insisting that the Philippines be a top-down society is not quite correct and clashes with the fundamental underlying culture which is just below the foreign-influenced paint at the surface.
It is not sustainable in the long run for Manila to keep expanding first into Metro Manila, and now into Calabarzon, Rizal, Nueva Ecija, Tarlac and Pampanga while the rest of the country can barely keep heads above the water.
I was an advocate of Federalism when I entered TSOH but I now think that would be too much as prone to abuse, maybe regionalism similar to what Italy has with certain areas having similar autonomy like the Sicilian and Sardinian regions.
I see here in Germany how Federalism (which is way less Federal than in the USA, as we don’t have different laws per state, just ordnances for instance noise pollution but no “pot allowed here, not allowed in the next state” rules, even if Bavaria is trying to block legalized marijuana that Germany has now thanks to “Berlin” as they say over here) makes for strong regional development, even as for instance Lower Bavaria sometimes complains that “Munich gets everything”..
MLQ3 I think wrote about the Regions reform of Makoy as something not fully pushed through, maybe build on that basis?
Federalism would be my preference too if I were to be a convention delegate.
However my preference is to first use the Constitution and laws that exist, yet are not being used fully. The “parchment guarantee” nature of the Philippine Constitution (the Soviet Constitution was similarly called as such) is because while rights and obligations were explicitly written down, many are not followed. Aside from that when stuff is written down with such precision, flexibility is reduced when conditions change.
Are you referring to the 1972 Integrated Reorganization Plan (IRP aka PD 1) that created NEDA and the 11(?) NEDA administrative regions?
Whatever the decentralization scheme, whether that be from Marcos Sr. to during the last Constitutional Convention to the various cha-cha proposals — to me the main problem appears to be somewhere along the lines of the decentralized governmental unit can get money without really doing anything at all. There is no public accountability for how LGUs spend the money; LGUs will assert devolved powers, while Manila would be wary of angering locals who are diehards for the local dynasty.
Like a teenager who is given an allowance upfront and a bunch of reminders of what to spend the money on, are we to think the teenager is going to abide by the rules? They’re already holding onto the money and will soon go on a spending spree while giving all their friends libre.
The simplest solution would probably be to aggressively use COA to audit and publicly shame wasteful spending. COA until now is basically a joke organization that has no power; ditto Ombudsman. The powers are defined and delineated by law and the Constitution, so those offices need to be empowered to do their jobs, with DOJ backing up prosecutions when wrongdoing is uncovered. Name and shame public officials who do wrong. Pillory them in court and force them to explain themselves to the public. Then hand down appropriate and meaningful punishments to deter.
But here we hit a Catch-22… what if many members of the government, including the Executive department, are also corrupt and are not above-board? It kind of makes it hard to throw the first stone when one’s house is made of glass…
My tri capital proposal was a hint that I might have some leanings if not for our inherent fragmentation like CV said my proposal might cause further division.
If one were to think both it this way, the Philippines had 6 Constitutions, 5 Republics and a Commonwealth of chances to move to a more decentralized system of government such as federalism — but each time chose unitarianism. There were actually 7-8 or more constitutions if one includes the Biak-na-Bato Constitution and the various Organic Acts. All had a model of the primacy of Manila vis a vis the provincial afterthought of the hinterland. Alas, outside of exceptional circumstances, which as calamity that results in a reset (new constitution), one must work with what one is given…
There are ways to close the urban-rural and Manila-provincial divide — the main way would be to have more connective infrastructure so economy activity does not concentrate in Manila, then Metro Manila, then Calabarzon. There is a certain mental block that derives from the spectacle of progress rather than of actual progress. The worship of concrete, such as the class Edifice Complex, and a preference for large mega-scale infrastructure where the funds may not be available or the technology may not yet exist, but is seen as “the only way.” Well a greatly expanded and modernized RORO network is a mega-scale distributed infrastructure that can handle nearly all if not all of what visibly mega-structures would accomplish. RORO would both allow the development of outlier provinces while facilitating the movement of people and goods. Combined with air travel, ultimately there would be no need for a tri-capital anymore, while being a lot more interconnected and complimentary than an isolated unitary capital, or an isolate set of tri-capitals.
Thanks Joey.
Investing in robust RORO could also be like building a bridge to nowhere if major corporations don’t want to distribute their activities to the boonies.
Other way around Joe. Private businesses will only invest where it makes business sense to do so. What I’m proposing is the government create a public RORO network, similar to that the government would be the one building the roads and bridges. Over time when private operators join in with competing services there may be a discussion on partial or full privatization. But for matters of public interest and public goods, the government will always be required to be the first mover.
Bam Aquino authored a port upgrade legislation his previous term in office if I remember correctly. The defining term is “over time”. Your argument is correct, but where you spend money short-term is weighed against many other needs. The ferry system is much more robust than 15 years ago. Demand drives it, not government subsidies. Oil shortage because of lunatic US President Trump, ferries are cancelled. Reality bites.
Yes what you say is true here, but it is an example of organic development within the private sector. I have a strong guess that the incentive for private development was that outlying provinces had more cash to spend from monies sent home from OFW or BPO. Government however can define strategic objectives and provide the necessary incentives to jump start moving the country in different directions.
I’ve said it before, but if the Philippines is happy and comfortable with this speed of progress, there’s nothing wrong with that. Personally I find happiness sharing in that simpler life when I visit. The problem is without strong government intervention and monitoring, the Philippines should also be prepared to deal with the corruption, backsliding that goes along with development, calamities that are more destructive than it has to be, and so on.
I have not visited Sub-Saharan Africa for quite a while but do have plans sometime later this year to visit a Nigerian friend and will explore around to Kenya and other places. South Africa. All I’ll say is Visayans from Mindanao were incensed at Heydarian’s Sub-Saharan Africa comparison, thinking Africa is a land of backwards apes, but in many ways Africa is zooming to the future. And in a few decades Filipino elites will be thinking “How did Africa pass us,” just like they wondered why Vietnam passed, Indonesia passed, malaysia passed, Thailand passed, South Korea passed, and so on.
What is the point of a government (executive, legislative, and judicial) if the government doesn’t seem to care about running a government?
I have no argument on that. The dimensions are the realities of the Philippine social/political dynamic, poverty, and time. Karl’s current article, out today, is on this topic.
Hmmmm, I’ve long viewed COA as the one uncorrupted source of professionalism in the Philippines, because their job demands it. It is leaders who ignore or bury the data that are the problem, not COA. COA is not a joke in my view.
COA may be professional (I share your sentiment here), but they are a joke if their findings are ignored and buried by leaders. Another example of performative over substantive. So my suggestion is that COA’s findings be made aggressively public and used as a ”bunal” to figuratively beat offenders over the head with. Utilize the Filipino concept of ”hiya” to do so. Then if offenders don’t comply the DOJ must be vested with the backing and power to fully prosecute major cases as examples to deter. Anti-corruption is super popular in the Philippines. That’s the slogan DDS always trots out. The side of pro-democracy can seize the slogan and show that the side of good is actually doing something about it by getting results.
To call COA a “joke” is just unnecessary and wrong if the joke is agency heads or legislators.
I think we are talking past each other here despite having the same beliefs. I am simply in favor of a more aggressive, even militantly aggressive approach. And yes, when COA and even Ombudsman findings can be completely disregarded however correct, great, and a feat of legal performance the findings may be, it is a complete joke. Because everyone is taking it to be a joke. So fix it by taking the findings and prosecuting the wrongdoers. On its own the COA only has the power to refer cases to the Ombudsman, and the Ombudsman only has the power to file criminal cases in the anti-graft court. Have them work with DOJ to provide real threat of legal accountability. Then make the accountability consistent.
COA is not a joke. The Philippines is woefully deficient in many respects and will never get to capable if professional organizations are thrown under the bus of unbridled criticism. Recognize the capability. Promote it as you suggest by enlarging findings. The Philippines is not wholly inept. Build on the strengths, don’t trash them. My view.
If COA is doing a job, no matter how competently, that then is ignored in whole by the ones who can act with the information, then COA is a joke because it’s being treated as a joke.
The Philippines way of governance is often performative. COA. Ombudsman. Theatrics in Congress. Public unveilings. Everyone hyped up then… crickets. How many transparency initiatives and transparency agencies? Create transparency agencies to investigate the transparency of the transparency agency even!
Sorry to be harsh here, but I think it’s more important to extract progress within the legal framework rather than to preserve virtue and lose to the march of authoritarianism that promises results. Let’s push for results, not performances. Use the COA and Ombudsman findings for actual prosecutions by having DOJ work closely with those offices, so that when someone or something has real teeth thus bared, will no longer be seen as a joke.
I disagree. The fact is, for its role in government, COA is not a joke, but an island of durable professionalism. That you unload your frustrations on the earnest workers in COA would be like me blaming the poor for Philippine government’s inability to make them rich.
Please re-read my last couple of replies on this sub thread. What you think I said, I definitely did not say.
My criticism isn’t toward COA, either. It is those who have power to do something about cases that make offices like COA and Ombudsman a joke, not the work of those specific offices themselves. And I have suggested possible solutions that were in fact intended in the original enabling law and in the constitution. The solutions have always been there out in plain view. Many were enumerated in the Constitution even, like land reform, anti-dynasty law, CHR, and so on and so on. All thwarted by how “as may be defined by law” is interpreted by those who can afford lawyers, not taken up by weak courts, while the other branches sit idly by.
So what I insisting on is “just follow the law.” Arm COA findings and Ombudsman referrals with DOJ prosecutions. But then accountability would encroach into the power of many political families. It turns out almost everyone is a sinner. Therefore we are faced with a Catch-22.
“COA until now is basically a joke organization that has no power; ditto Ombudsman.”
You can contextualize it to clarify it is made a joke because it is not empowered in today’s government. My point on it is to respect the organization and people within it who have waded through Duterte’s shit honorably as far as I know. It is not a joke organization. It needs to be raised up as an example of honor under fire not denigrated as if failed. Ombudsman failed. COA is instrumental in laying the foundation for VP Duterte’s impeachment case. It seems to me the Philippines will be better off when people give flowers rather than brickbats to people who have earned flowers. I got thrown out of GRP for making this case. I won’t get thrown out here.
Well that’s what I’ve been saying. And it has not just been today’s government, it has been nearly all governments from after Cory Aquino until PNoy to varying degrees. It was way worse under Duterte of course. And Marcos Jr. should be commended for bringing back some semblance of decency.
I am not really someone who favors a soft-hands approach. I think the truth should be told, unpleasant as it may be, and paired with possible solutions. I also think the ones proposing solutions should at least be grounded in reality rather than perfect ideals, preferably drawn from personal experiences.
I also think the impeachment case, which is a political process, must be separated from criminal prosecution. Good that Sara Duterte is undergoing impeachment (soon, I hope). It is threatening enough that Robin Padilla is bleating at the Supreme Court about something, when impeachment is a power of the House, not the Senate which he sits on.
As for COA being a government entity for accountability and good governance, if criminal activity is uncovered COA and DOJ both must be empowered to work together to quickly bring the wrongdoers to justice. That is my point. Doing so would make the whole process no longer a joke to bad actors, who until now often skate away scot-free with no punishments unless they were on the opposing political team.
I agree, empowering a capable arm of government would magnify good works.
I wrote a bit in multiple article comments about how COA might be used more effectively. So how about in addition to investigating wrongdoers and being able to work with DOJ closely to bring the wrongdoers to justice,
COA can also be tasked with highlighting good works: the good, the compliant, and the successful businesses and organizations.
Just like I proposed publicly shaming bad actors, good actors should be praised publicly as to become models of desired behavior.
fully agree. But we all KNOW how Filipino politics work. PEOPLE are pilloried, not SYSTEMS analyzed and corrected.
A lot of people, including GRP and many of my high school batchmates – representative of a large portion of the B class I fear – latched unto criticism of Aquino, nitpicking everything, even as the problems they were pointing out were systemic.
And do you think they applied the same measures to Duterte? No they didn’t. Meanwhile, parts of yellow went overboard in cricitizing Duterte. For instance the conditions in Philippine jails ALWAYS have been that way. Even as I empathize with Leila de Lima’s jail time, thousands had unli jail time in literal toilets even when she was at DOJ. And now we have PARTS of yellow and DDS nitpicking Marcos. The idea is always replace the datu, not fix the system.
Just be VERY careful to not accidentally give ammo to people who like PNoy’s critics didn’t really want improvement to world class standards.
The idea of giving COA teeth at least avoids the Pinoy trap of putting COA people personally on the spot – which is what I expect even 60% of my high school batchmates, Pisay grads, the 240 best of the best of the best (Men in Black quote) of our year to do. 80% would say get another President.
It is like my father once told me, even if he might NEVER tell his Pantayong Pananaw “disciples” this: “words aren’t about the truth here, they are weapons”. Joe would say they are about face and power. And Joey, you will find people agreeing with you, seeming to spit facts but actually pushing their agenda and they will NOT care the moment they have removed from power or diminished the one they target. How to teach such a culture SYSTEM THINKING? You tell me.
One of my drafts.
Whataboutism and the Erosion of Accountability in Philippine Politics
By Karl Garcia
In Philippine political discourse, few rhetorical habits are as common—and as quietly corrosive—as whataboutism. It rarely announces itself. Instead, it appears as a reflex: a familiar pivot from criticism to comparison, from accountability to deflection.
“Eh noong isang administrasyon mas malala.”
“Bakit yung kabila hindi niyo pinupuna?”
“Lahat naman sila ganyan.”
On the surface, these responses sound like context. In reality, they often function as escape routes.
Whataboutism is not unique to the Philippines, but it finds fertile ground here because of how political memory, trust, and accountability have evolved. In theory, democratic debate should sharpen responsibility: officials are evaluated based on their performance, and citizens adjust their judgment accordingly. In practice, however, political evaluation is frequently replaced by comparative fatigue—less “Is this working?” and more “Mas okay ba ito kaysa dati?”
That shift matters more than it seems.
When every criticism is met with a counter-example from the past or another actor, the standard of governance quietly changes. Performance is no longer judged against principle or expectation, but against the lowest available comparison. Corruption is not condemned, but relativized. Policy failure is not addressed, but contextualized away. Accountability becomes conditional: always dependent on someone else’s greater fault.
This is how whataboutism becomes politically useful. It doesn’t need to deny problems. It only needs to dilute them.
In electoral politics, this shows up as “pare-pareho lang sila” cynicism, which paradoxically coexists with intense personality-based loyalty. In governance debates, it appears as constant deflection between administrations, as if public office were a continuous blame relay rather than a succession of accountable mandates. In social media, it thrives in comment sections where outrage is met not with answers, but with counter-outrage.
The deeper consequence is not confusion, but normalization. If every wrongdoing can be balanced against another, then nothing is ever truly exceptional—and nothing ever demands urgent correction. Over time, this creates a political culture where failure is expected, and accountability feels performative.
Yet it would be too simple to dismiss whataboutism as mere bad faith. At times, it reflects something more uncomfortable: the lived reality of repeated disappointment. Citizens who have seen cycles of unfulfilled promises may reach for comparison not to evade truth, but to make sense of it. When institutions fail to consistently enforce standards, people begin to substitute their own informal metrics—however flawed.
Still, understanding why whataboutism arises is not the same as accepting its effects.
Because democracy depends not only on participation, but on evaluation. And evaluation requires boundaries: a willingness to say that a problem is a problem, regardless of who else has committed it, or what happened before. Without that boundary, public discourse drifts into moral equivalence, where distinctions blur and responsibility becomes endlessly transferable.
The challenge, then, is not to eliminate comparison from political debate. Comparison is necessary. It provides context, continuity, and perspective. The challenge is to prevent comparison from becoming a substitute for judgment.
A functioning political culture must be able to hold two thoughts at once: that others may have failed in the past, and that present failures still matter. That a system may be imperfect, and still be accountable. That no one is exempt just because someone else is worse.
Whataboutism, at its core, asks us to look sideways when we should also be looking directly. The task ahead is to ensure that “what about them?” does not permanently replace the harder, more necessary question: “What about us—and what are we going to do about it?”
maybe Karl, the question is what is defined as US, and my father is right, the sense of TAYO as all Filipinos should first be established in people’s minds.
because whataboutism is “palpak din naman SILA, gago din naman SILA” whoever that sila is – instead of “lahat TAYO kawawa sa bandang huli if we continue”.
I also don’t know what will make that switch turn in people’s heads – maybe building a car industry will help practice it, not that it will be easy.
You said it best.
My dad is an accomplished man. Former commando, managed to dispatch his captors and escape the bamboo cage with his bare hands (allegedly), double Masters, piloted a boat across the South China Sea during the exodus of the boat people. Rebuilt his life in the US, helping literally thousands of people, still maintains political and business connections. But he has one irrecoverable flaw: his childhood trauma of being a (minor) noble whose family became poor for a time due to bad financial decisions caused him to carry an insecurity of being looked down upon despite all his accomplishments that is prone to sipsip. In many ways I’m the complete opposite to my dad in personality. My personality is IDGAF unless I care about that person, and I care not for praise.
At times Filipinos certainly tried to sipsip to me for this or that reason; it never worked. One must keep eyes on the goal.
Here I will say that in my short foray into politics as a congressional page and working for a state party there are two types of politicians: the first is a public servant type, who happens to have a bit of an ego; the second is the charlatan who has a massive ego but masks it behind a polished image. Ah there is a third type too, which is a pure public servant type whose patriotism is mostly self-sacrificing.
The first and the third are vulnerable to being pilloried because they are susceptible to feeling shame whether guilty or not. The second probably borders on sociopathy and thus has no shame. Which one is more performative the way Filipinos love performance? The sociopathic one, like Duterte.
I guess a different way to think about it is that pure public servant types need to stay in the bureacracy, where they do best. While politicians need to have enough humility to entertain the advice of the technocrats in the bureaucracy, while being able to translate advice into performative action which is the job requirement of being a politician anywhere (even more so in the Philippines).
So someone like Mar Roxas might seem perfect to us who reason out stuff logically, but his ability to perform is insufficient for Philippine politics.
There is no need for the culture in general to understand system thinking. That is the realm of technocrats in the bureacracy who must advise legislators and executives on new legislation and implementation. The job of the legislator is to legislate based on good advice, while the job of the executive is to implement based on good advice. Well that has been working out well for the Philippines given who is elected, hah.
Anyway probably the likely way to start getting some change moving is by electing a President who exhibits the above qualities with a Congressional majority and Senate supermajority to implement sweeping change. So far the only groups that are able to accomplish this from time to time are dynastic coalitions.
The opposition in Hungary who just won teaches us some interesting lessons that has the pro-democracy Americans abuzz: The Hungarian opposition won a landslide supermajority in a totally rigged system by going out to the regime strongholds in the rural areas and talking to those regime supporters about their concerns, then convincing the former regime supporters that the existing system is in fact harming their lives. Which is what I long believed had to be done in the rural US and rural Philippines. I won’t take credit here because if someone crosses between the “two worlds” the problem is readily apparent. It is impossible to win by holding big rallies in metro areas then wonder why on election day why the rural areas that were written off voted the way they did. Currently the only organization in the Philippines that is doing something like this provincial outreach is Angat Buhay. There needs to be more.
he reminds of of former Bavarian PM Stoiber, who has often been mocked for his stiffness and perfectionism. Stuttering often because of that, getting into full rhetorical flow, classic Bavarian beer house or beer garden style, only when he got mad and started talking a bit louder. He was forgiven for being like that in this often ALSO performative society as he acceded to power in a period of extreme prosperity built by his predecessors.
The one for whom he did the detailed work, the populist postwar Bavarian PM Franz-Josef Strauss, was allegedly so impatient of how Stoiber who did the detailed work for him took his time with his files that he often had the driver start the car and Stoiber just barely managed to get in. Might be an urban legend – or not.
I still recall meeting Strauss supporters celebrating his 25th death anniversary at the 2003 Oktoberfest, sitting at their table and soaking in their vibe. The Bavarian way is tolerant, you can sit at their table, talk to them, or sit with them in a pub, just don’t cross certain lines that’s it. I have sat in beer gardens with the rich of Grünwald, in pubs with the roughnecks of the wholesale market, and at the Oktoberfest with supporters of a man some called a “fascist”.
MY work and travel experience, especially the 30 years of it in SAP, has shown me that one can see how long a country has been used to industrial thinking. It does become part of the habits of the people. Oh one can also see how digitalized a culture is – Germany for instance because it has 150 years of industrial thinking in it has a hard time adjusting to digital, I do not even exclude myself from that.
but here in Germany voters UNDERSTAND that a train system takes some time to build, that maintenance is needed and all that, unlike those blaming yellow for MRT malfunction caused by decades of neglect – while Berlin voters KNEW that the S-Bahn once neglected by the Communists needed heavy fixing and months of closing. Or that water from dams can be released preemptively before a storm, something workers from Munich understand, but some of my Pisay batchmates didn’t during Ondoy.
There are even studies about how Germans got used to following modern, industrial timekeeping back in the 19th century. I think part of the problem in the Philippines is that some live in a very modern world, while some like the Mindanao rubber tappers you mentioned live in almost another day and age.
the Pink campaign also tried to do that, but it was started a bit too late IMO.
kasambahay was part of that door to door in Cebu and doesn’t want to talk about it in detail, I respect that. Maybe it was like DOH people who had difficulties talking to people in depressed areas who had been brainwashed by anti-Dengvaxia propaganda – and got stuff thrown at them even.
There is a difference between a Bavarian who might be in your face, but you can be in their face too (except in the Munich meatpacking district in some places, totally different turf, different rules) and people prone to maoy and whatever other variants of it exist. Hungary ain’t too different, they say Central Europe starts in Bavaria, or that this is the border between Western and Central Europe. Hell why do I still care at all about the Philippines, I wonder.
Oh the Philippines is very much a digital-first country. Until now the Philippines ranks at the top, or near the top, of the most online time by country. Data is relatively cheap. Decently spec’d Chinese Androids are affordable on home credit while secondhand iPhones are commonplace. Algorithmic addiction in the Philippines is very real and very extreme. I did write in a comment somewhere (maybe 2 years ago?) that babies are introduced to TikTok as a babysitting device, while family meals are no longer family meals when everyone except the lola is mindlessly eating with one hand while scrolling their phone in the other hand. Those who don’t believe this happens widely, well, they have not been out to meet poor Filipinos recently. The digital medium is rife with propaganda which is cheaply pushed there compared to old fashioned hung banners, motorcades with loudspeakers, and physical rallies. That was shown most effectively by Duterte’s campaign in 2016, and to a degree by the UniTeam campaign in 2022.
Have we considered that in Germany and other countries that have actually built stuff that while a voter might not know directly of building and maintenance, but they might know someone who did experience those things. Stories about how things were built survive at least a two or more generations, let’s say 40-60 years, before the knowledge fades if it is not renewed. By then Germans would’ve embarked on building something else. Or maintaining what had been built and can still be refurbished.
In the Philippines? What has been built? Hardly anything, which unfortunately is the harsh truth. Every higher level of expertise is a Dutch foreign consulting company, South Korean foreign engineering company, an American materials consulting company, with the local “joint venture partner” just being there for legal purposes and stamping their name on stuff. When Chinese stuff is involved, a Filipino doesn’t even have the opportunity to be a laborer carting away loose gravel in a wheelbarrow as the Chinese workers are imported, paid by the Chinese state loan…
I read this fascinating Quora answer by retired Engr. Leonardo Gutierrez who now lives in New Jersey. Engr. Gutierrez is a FEATI (WOW!) graduate, practicant with the Eastern Bavaria Power Company on West German scholarship, and who worked for NEA. According to his post, he was involved in the Rural Electrification Program (REP) and Sitio Electrification Program (SEP). The Engr. gives due credit to his NEA colleagues and for the help of his USAID American colleagues. Contained within his humility there is substance. Who nowadays with such humility would be praised and honored in the Philippines? The Philippines had builders before, and can get back there again. Whatever molded the mindset of Engr. Gutierrez and his colleagues, it was not there before, was formed, and thus can be rediscovered again.
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-the-Philippines-use-220-V-even-though-its-electric-grid-is-developed-by-the-US-who-uses-110-V
(Engr. Gutierrez has other interesting Quora answers pertaining to the Philippines of the late Third Republic).
https://www.quora.com/profile/Leonardo-Gutierrez-23
Well in short that is the main problem… Most Filipinos are living a practically indigenous life out in the province though they might festoon themselves with cargo cult-type external accoutrements. While the Filipinos, while few, who have most of the power of change want to create a simulacrum of what they think is First World modernity, and expecting the Filipinos who have not quite caught up yet to simply understand everything. Btw, most of the elites also don’t understand what it takes to do this or that, having never done it themselves before… It’s all theoretical… rarely practiced. I think the more effective way is to start upgrading the Filipinos who are furthest behind and do not understand the insistence on top-down. Top-down has been tried for … over 100 years, and it hasn’t worked, because governments rise up from below not trickling down from above.
The Pink get-out-the-vote effort was much too little, much too late. I have been listening to African American political thought leaders and the leadership of Civil Rights and the organization building required is highly instructive. The basic lesson I got from there was that organizations need to be built, then sustained with consistent effort and voter contact. The Philippine tendency towards waiting until the last moment then making a huge show effort and hoping for the best usually always fails, yet the few successes are lauded as repeatable. Chamba is not repeatable.
From my observances the influence of the local dynasties and radyo hosts (who are usually connected to the dynasty) is not very large in number, but it is always present somewhere in the background. A classroom’s desks with the name of the “donating” politician behind every seat backrest in pyrogravure. Campaign tarps that otherwise would be banned handed out and hanging from the sides of supporters’ houses. A relief goods handout event with sacks of delata. And so on. Then people will adopt whatever the politician believes in, anti-vaccine or what. Social media memes only made things worse.
Maoy is probably a cultural echo of youngsters acting out being a warrior or auditioning to become datu. Of course, maoy has a performative aspect, where everyone acts afraid to the guy’s knife-waving threats, while the guy gets to feel mighty before he passes out drunk. The last guys who tried maoy on me got punched in the face, or whacked with a dos por dos, so no one tries to maoy on me lol.
Annoying or not though, stuff like maoy are part of Philippine culture. I guess the hard question is which parts of the culture to keep, which parts to adapt using foreign ideas, and which parts to de-emphasize. The Singapore Model had often been attractive to educated Filipinos because it is a system of competence. But those Philippine elites either did not recognize or willfully ignored the fact that the three major Singaporean ethnic groups basically decided to adopt British English culture as the common medium with some influences from Confucianism, while keeping the ethnic aspects they were previously fighting about in race riots in areas like food and festivals. So either the Philippines would need to evolve slowly and organically while probably getting left behind. Or Philippine elites would need to figure out how to adapt better practices from abroad to something regular Filipinos can understand and willingly adopt.
You are right. I sometimes compared the Philippines to the Rhineland after the Romans left, when the Germanic tribes of then who hadn’t of course built the Roman aqueduct from the Eifel mountains to Cologne didn’t know how to maintain it or rebuild it.
The former Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippina became a dirty medieval town. But then again, people learned to improve things even if it was centuries later – doesn’t have to take THAT long now. Took the Turks until this century to figure out the Greek math, building and masonry techniques that made the Hagia Sophia survive a millenium of earthquakes, but they did and yes today information is everywhere if used properly.
Germany adopted a Constitutional Provision (in 1949) in the budget part that “equivalent living conditions” are a goal of the Federal Republic.
Though it was hard to get former East Germany up to speed. The attached real estate value map shows the AfD heartland in dark blue.
It is a place, I have been told, where during the week it is mostly pensioners and jobless young men in the towns. Not good at all.
one can see the pockets of call centers and tourism along the Baltic sea, Berlin and surroundings to the right.
the three centers of industry around the dark blue zone are Jena (Zeiss optics), Leipzig and Dresden (BMW plant).
we have discussed the Japanese model often, but by the time of after WW2, they had long stopped the samurai practice of beheading commoners who looked at them – though there was a relapse into beheading conquered peoples, something that my father saw done in Bikol to suspected partisans, my mother once told me.
the Philippines still had the likes of Mindanao’s Norberto Manero not too long ago – or is this just me, the Luzon “elitist” wary of “Terra Incognita”?
P.S. having looked at Filipinism and Pantayong Pananaw, yes of course the Philippines I know is lowland Christian, Luzon- and Tagalog-centric. Nothing against giving more recognition to others in the mix, but the Duterte years DID make me kind of resentful towards those who saw everything from Manila – the literature, the music, the movies – as by default “elitist”. Because I can never identify with a lowest common denominator kind of Philippine identity.
Appendix: I am just trying out the now regenerated (by Claude) charts for the Sunday article to see if they are sufficiently legible.
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Joey,
I have been writing about fruatrations and some headscratchers and head shakers,but I am defensive at times, just ask Irineo.
Yes whataboutism is another headshaker but in the PH it is same same ism.
I will try to heed to Joe’s reverse Aikido or Judo of finding strengths.
Filipinos feeling defensive, or rather perhaps more correctly termed as feeling sensitive, is a natural extension of Philippine cultures. Of which one of the expressions for that is “tampo.” It probably doesn’t help that there are a group of elite Filipinos that constantly bash their own country and Filipinos “below them,” while at the same time not accepting constructive criticism in order to grow.
I don’t always agree with Boo Chanco for example, but I find him his columns to be well-thought out, well-reasoned, and full of possible solutions. Yet Boo Chanco is constantly dismissed as a “pessimist” when he is actually offering constructive criticism. The constant need for a hype-up and ego-boost is totally not helpful and more importantly, not constructive. A child who is still unsure of himself can be encouraged with positivity but most children one day they no longer require constant validation; but some children will always actively seek validation, continually make mistakes and never learn any better. Because no one has the heart to have a point out the error.
Improvement comes from learning from mistakes, whether that be from one’s own mistakes or by watching others facing their own mistakes. If every constructive seed is dismissed as pessimism and a downer, and every screw-up needs more and more positivity boosting, soon one enters a spiral one cannot escape from.
These unhelpful traits I have found mostly in the AB classes, while those who are trying to create positive change like you Karl are a handful against a cacophony of unhelpfulness. Which is probably why I prefer to just stay with poor Filipinos who are much more interesting, even in their mistakes, heh.
Again many thanks.
I visit Cebu a lot and think heads are definitely above water. The Philippine island structure is a reality which is why the Subic/Clark/Manila region will continue to develop on a sound train and expressway backbone. I’m familiar with Cagayan de Oro and Tacloban and they are good sized regional hubs but don’t have the mass for much more, given the logistics challenges of island geography. So I think you are unreasonably harsh with your criticism. Islands are islands.
Cebu is a highly urbanized first-class city, so I’d not compare to Cebu which I also visit a lot (though perhaps not as frequently as you do).
The places I’m referring to are the “forgotten places,” third, fourth, fifth-class cities and municipalities with no rating at all.
I guess to clarify my point the Philippines is still a very rural country despite urbanites feeling like it is the opposite. The rural people form a huge, if not always cohesive, voting bloc. Lack of access to opportunity is why they continue to vote for bad politicians who promise fantastic things, which is why the Philippines is constantly feeling stuck on the progress front. They are “getable” voters, and they don’t ask for much, only improvements to their lives.
But political calculus aside, don’t those people also deserve to have a chance for a livelihood closer to home that doesn’t require them to become an internal migrant to Davao, Cebu, Manila, or to migrate abroad becoming an OFW? Better infrastructure connections can be a start here. Vastly increased and faster RoRo service would be the most obvious option for people and goods transport.
That’s a different issue than economic in a macro sense. Certainly everyone deserves a chance, but rural is rural. It is not an economic force. The Left would agree with you, but I’m inclined to think capitalism defines where jobs go, not government.
Capitalism has decided the area surrounding Manila is where the jobs will go, because the government decided to build up infrastructure in that area.
The left would argue for giving everything for free, with no one needing to work.
What I’m advocating for is for the government to become the impetus. Which is how modern regulated capitalism works. Unless the Philippines enjoys laissez faire capitalism, in which case the underclass gets exploited. Then we shouldn’t be surprised when that underclass keeps grasping out looking for saviors who likely turn out to be charlatans, thieves, and liars.
The barangay structure and dynastic lords have more to do with driving votes to lunatics than infrastructure. Same same as in the US, with its marvelous infrastructure, which has a more destructive government than the Philippines. Voters’ choice. Philippine infrastructure is sound and getting moreso, for where the country has been. One slow step at a time, negotiating with lords and poverty.
I disagree here. The US is becoming more like the Philippines, not the other way around. The noticeable difference is due to the wealth and resources of the US the destruction is more apparent when bad people run amok.
And no, the dynasties in the current form are very recent creations of mostly minor players who divided up the power of Marcos Cronies among themselves. So something relatively new can be broken and dismantled if there is a plan to do so in targeting where the power actually lies, which is in the utang na loob feedback loop.
Well, we get back to the problem, who’s going to drive that change? The dynasties are hardly minor players, and the Philippines, to a large extent, is federalized in a non-productive way because of them. My point is that a huge investment in ROROs will not give provincial residents jobs or promote better voting. Infrastructure is a slow build if you are not a rich nation.
Point #1: Dynasties may not be minor players now, but they were when they were local politicians who took advantage of the power vacuum in Manila to collect power for themselves. In a very pinoy and pilosopo way they can even argue that the ant-dynasty provisions in the Constitution do not apply to *them* as it was targeted at the *previous* dynasties that Marcos Sr. broke up. Which is course is constitutionally incorrect, but they’ll try it for sure.
So what to do? Not insisting on anything else but applying the laws as the laws exist is basically giving up. The American leftists do this. Philippine liberals AND leftists do this. Throw the baby out with the bathwater, hoping for a chance to reset everything because fixing stuff is hard. Well they got that chance in 1986, and this is what we have to work with. Nearly every issue the Philippines faces is due to not applying the constitution or the law.
Point #1: Who will drive the change? Well, the politicians and the political party/coalition will. If they do not even try then they are either 1.) don’t care about anything except the title itself 2.) intend to be corrupt as well. Either way they would have no business being a “public servant.” Okay, parties are weak there, there isn’t a funding mechanism, etc. etc. Then new organizations need to rise up and address those inadequacies in order to build strong party organizations to reach the desired goals.
Investment into RoRos isn’t the only part but it is a part of the whole picture. That the another major issue the Philippines faces, which is an inability to see stuff outside of a very narrow tunneled view. There is no consideration for how one effort may help another effort, or harm another effort. Everything is “one and done.” No wonder why when predictable problems arise everyone is confused. The Philippines government is already in the business of big investments. It’s called sending money to LGUs controlled by specific dynasties who then steal a good portion of the money. Perhaps it’s time to invest in other things. My policy is never to give someone I want to help money. If they can’t accept advice and tangible help, then they were probably not serious to begin with. Let’s focus on serious leaders to solve serious problems.
Idealism is not analysis, it is hallucination. All the things you suggest are correct except there is no way to get there. The political parties are personality based. Platforms don’t get them elected, just the opposite (ask Mar Roxas). The best opposition candidate, Leni Robredo, will not jump on things constructively like you suggest. She waffles. Angat Buhay isn’t driving that kind of change, so there is no bottoms up as you advocate. The way forward is one step at a time, slowly, in history’s ebb and flow, not in demanding “better” work across the board and slandering everybody because they aren’t listening.
This is exactly the work that Angat Buhay is doing. So it is bottom’s up. Angat Buhay is an NGO, it is not a political organization.
Who is slandering who? I am not a Filipino, nor am I a passport bro, nor do I have family in the Philippines. What I do have are good friends who are Filipinos I’ve met over the years. I have always told them, it is their country, and it is up to them. If the Philippines is happy with the way things are now, shown by inadequate effort to get to where the Philippines envisions herself, then so be it. That is fine also. I enjoy that Philippines and don’t mind hanging out in poor places urban-dwelling Filipinos would never go to. But if a future where X, Y, and Z are desired, then steps A, B, C need to be looked into and worked on consistently to get to the goal.
Well,
I even proposed a ferry by rail even if our financiers will say ten foot pole or moon shot.
That is why I laughed at myself when I proposed a propossl triage and I keep on proposing stuff.
By the way cheers! Bottom’s up.
Cheers, Karl. Thanks.
Thanks, Joey will take a look at those.
Karl, have you been following EDCA developments and the full PH/US alliance? There seems to be a lot going on with the US driving it and Philippines (DOD/Teodoro most likely) welcoming it. The US Marines are evidently using CDO in Mindanao as a major heavy equipment and logistics staging base. It’s out of range of intermediate missiles and integrates AFP and local transport to be able to move goods north. Plus there is a 4,000 hectare free trade zone under US management that will develop manufacturing, minerals, and supply chains (think ammunition). Subic/Clark/Manila triangle. A big deal I think. Sovereignty is the big point of conflict. It seems to me the US sees the Philippines as “theirs” to use to stage militarily and even commercially against China.
Yes, Joe thanks.
The planned big oil depot in Davao for US is getting the NIMBY and stay out treatment.
In Luzon where Marcos is proposing an economic security for a Taiwan alternative perhaps because semi cons were highlighted.
I do not know if we will be sanctuary when the Basi channel is the next escalation point or flash point.
Like I blogged here more than once.
I was surprised by Hormuz, so who knows?
Ah, I didn’t know about Davao. Not surprising. A hive of anti-nationalists there. The economic security zone is being postured as a huge deal, economically, for the Philippines. Could be US propaganda for all I know. Or it could be a contingency outlet for Taiwan’s tech businesses if Trump decides he should “give” Taiwan to China. Eye popper.
Trump Xi.Summit in May …hmmm
The economic zone is related to the “Pax Silica” policy, which does not concern solely the Philippines. Pax Silica is a Trump State Department direct rebranding with few changes of a post-Covid Biden era initiative to achieve the following:
… translated from State Department-speak, in short the initiative is to move the computer chips supply chain away from China’s ability to impose coercive dependencies, including in the supply chain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Silica
Here are the countries that signed the Pax Silica initiative (note, Pax Silica is not yet a formal treaty):
Nearly all silicon semiconductor manufacturing technology originates from the US or the Netherlands, with the remaining (small) fraction being South Korean. Yes, even the Chinese and Russian semiconductor manufacturing technology require US, Dutch, or Korean technology to even operate their very far behind manufacturing nodes.
Here the Pax Silica observer countries and supranational groupings:
The Davao Defense Fuel Support Point (Davao DFSP) is not a base, but rather a refueling depot that is Philippine-owned and privately operated by Filipino companies, but where the USN will contract services to store US-owned fuel and lubricants. In the EDCA context, this storage of US-owned stuff means “our Filipino friends can use it also” though the Davao DFSP isn’t an EDCA site AFAIK. Why not though? Refueling depots usually spawn other services like ship husbandry (maintenance) services and chandler services. More jobs to Filipinos, more security to Philippine sovereignty, a win for all.
Win win not equal to everybody happy.
Local Government Opposition: The Davao City government has formally opposed the plan, stating they do not welcome foreign military facilities within their jurisdiction. Local officials have questioned whether the facility will lower local fuel prices or improve living conditions for residents.
Civilian Concerns: Advocacy groups like Bayan-SMR and fishing organizations have criticized the plan, arguing it violates national sovereignty and turns the region into a potential target in global conflicts.
Makabayan are communists who will complain about anything yet never offer any solutions. The exploit the real concerns of the poor, like fisherfolk and farmers.
Davao’s kleptocratic criminal government also has no leg to stand on, as sites owned by the AFP are under Philippine sovereignty. National interest overrides other concerns, and besides the city does not own the land or facility.
All screwed up by the Middle East escalation
This is not going away soon even if Iran submits and cries “Uncle”
Yeah it is a huge concern to be honest Karl. But part of me wants Trump to keep screwing up now that his diehards are starting to realize they may have been lied to. The worst Trump acts, the higher the chance democracy will be saved in Germany, France, and UK. Hungary already was taken back by pro-democracy parties. Authoritarian parties in Europe are running away from Trump. I hope it will have an effect of lower Sara’s chances as well. Everything is connected somehow. The democratic world must move away from fossil fuels once and for all after this episode.
Speaking of which I was toying with analyzing distributed grids in the Philippines, but I got busy with the startup. I’d love to somehow have a conversation with the engineer I shared in my other comment. The Philippines grid is still built on 1970s tech, and it was always a patchwork to begin with. But I don’t know, perhaps the government only has energy to do one big thing at a time and right now it is to save the Philippines from the pro-China side.
There are defectors but they are not yet welcomed if I base it on a CNN panel.
Do update us with the grid project.
Fossil fuels would not go away.
China is the biggest mover on renewables yet they are the biggest oil importer, that says a lot, no matter how I feel about the Chinese government.
Even plastic could not go away no.matter how you ban them.
Now the US is the biggest oil producer, why would they get away from the position.
Senator Trllanes agrees with you on Fossil Fuels. The first part of the interview with Richard Heydarian was Geopolitics, Next is about stopping the Dutertes because they are young and I am now ubderstanding the advantages of devlaring presidential.intentions early.
Here’s a clear, no-frills summary and analysis of that interview between Antonio Trillanes IV and Richard Heydarian on The View From Manila:
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🔍 Core Message
Trillanes is sounding an early warning:
👉 The 2028 presidential race could be more dangerous, more organized, and less forgiving than previous elections—especially if the opposition repeats old mistakes.
—
⚠️ Key Arguments
1. Sara Duterte as a Bigger Risk
Sara Duterte is framed as potentially more politically effective and strategic than Rodrigo Duterte.
Not necessarily “worse” in rhetoric—but possibly more disciplined and harder to counter.
Implied shift: from chaotic populism → more calculated power consolidation.
👉 Translation: the opposition can’t rely on the same playbook used against her father.
—
2. “Very, very dangerous” elections ahead
Trillanes warns of:
Disinformation at scale
State power being leveraged politically
Institutional pressure (legal, financial, security)
This echoes patterns seen in:
2016 Philippine presidential election
2022 Philippine presidential election
…but suggests 2028 could be more intense.
—
3. Opposition’s Core Weakness: Late Coalition Building
His biggest critique is internal:
Opposition waits too long to unify
Relies on personality over machinery
Avoids hard decisions early (who leads, what platform)
👉 Result:
Fragmented vote
Weak narrative
Poor ground game
—
4. Ambiguity = Defeat
Trillanes argues:
Being “neutral,” “soft,” or “vague” does not win elections
Voters respond to clarity, strength, and organization
This is a direct rejection of:
“Wait and see” strategies
Loose alliances without structure
—
5. Urgency of Early Organization
His prescription:
Build coalition now, not in 2027
Establish:
Clear leadership
Shared platform
Coordinated machinery
👉 Essentially: treat politics like a multi-year campaign, not a last-minute sprint.
—
🧠 Underlying Strategy Insight
Trillanes is pushing a shift from reactive to proactive politics:
Old Opposition Pattern What He’s Arguing For
Late unity Early coalition
Personality-driven System + machinery
Moral messaging Strategic messaging
Fragmentation Discipline
—
⚖️ Reality Check
Some of his points are strong—but not all are uncontested:
✔️ Where he’s likely right:
Early organization does matter (historically proven)
Fragmentation has repeatedly cost the opposition
Ground machinery often beats online popularity
⚠️ Where nuance is needed:
Labeling one candidate as “more dangerous” is political framing, not objective fact
Elections aren’t just machinery—they’re also:
Economic conditions
Public sentiment
Unexpected events
👉 Over-strategizing without a compelling message can also fail.
—
🧩 Big Picture Takeaway
This interview isn’t just about personalities—it’s about timing and structure.
Trillanes’ core warning:
> The opposition doesn’t lose because it lacks good candidates—it loses because it organizes too late and too loosely.
Here’s a structured, systems-level explanation of your questions, focused on the Philippine power grid evolution, fossil dependence, and transition pathways (including nuclear).
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1. How “ancient” is our power grid system?
Global origin (context first)
Modern electric grids are actually not ancient:
Late 1800s: first commercial grids (Edison DC systems)
Early 1900s: alternating current (AC) grids become dominant
Mid-1900s: national grid expansion + large fossil-fuel power plants
So the “core architecture” of today’s grid is ~100–140 years old, not ancient—but still based on industrial-era design assumptions:
Centralized generation (big plants)
One-way power flow (plant → consumer)
Fossil-fuel base-load dominance
—
2. History of the Philippine power grid
Early stage (1890s–1930s)
Electricity began in colonial-era Manila (1890s) via private concessionaires
Early systems were fragmented local grids
No unified national system yet
State-building phase (1930s–1970s)
Creation of the National Power Corporation (NPC, 1936) to expand electrification
Expansion of:
Hydro plants
Early thermal (oil-based) plants
Grid remained Luzon-centric and limited
Oil crisis era shift (1970s–1980s)
1973 oil crisis forced countries (including PH) to rethink energy security
Philippines invested heavily in:
Oil-fired plants
Coal imports
Nuclear attempt: Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (never operated)
This is when fossil dependency structurally locked in.
Liberalization era (1990s–2000s)
EPIRA law (2001) broke NPC monopoly
Created:
Wholesale electricity market (WESM)
Privatized generation
But also reinforced reliance on private fossil investment
—
3. Current grid condition (why it needs retrofit badly)
Structural reality today
The Philippines grid is still:
Coal-dominated (~60%+)
Around 75–80% fossil-based overall
Increasingly dependent on imported coal + LNG
Key weaknesses
(1) Aging & fragmented infrastructure
Weak interconnection between islands
Transmission congestion (especially Luzon–Visayas–Mindanao imbalance)
High technical losses compared to OECD grids
(2) Centralized fossil design in a decentralized energy era
Grid was not designed for:
Solar rooftops
Distributed wind
Battery storage
EV charging load spikes
(3) Energy security vulnerability
Coal imports mostly from Indonesia
Oil imports fully exposed to global shocks
Gas (Malampaya) is declining → LNG dependence rising
(4) Climate stress
Typhoons damage transmission lines regularly
Increasing outage risk + repair costs
👉 In short: the grid is not “broken,” but it is architecturally outdated for 21st-century energy systems.
—
4. Do we still use fossil fuels? (Yes—and heavily)
Electricity sector
Coal remains dominant base-load fuel
Natural gas + LNG used for balancing
Oil used for peaking and islands
Transport sector (even bigger dependency)
Oil dominates mobility (diesel, gasoline, shipping)
Industrial sector
Cement, manufacturing, logistics still fossil-reliant
👉 Fossil fuels are still the system backbone, not just a backup.
—
5. Do we still refine oil and import coal?
Yes—both continue:
Oil refining
Philippines has limited refining capacity (~180,000 barrels/day class scale historically)
BUT:
Domestic refining is insufficient
Large share of petroleum products are still imported refined
So the country is:
> “partially refining, but structurally import-dependent”
Coal imports
Coal is heavily imported (mainly Indonesia)
It is the dominant generation fuel
—
6. So why not just stop fossil fuels immediately?
Because the system is still locked in by 4 constraints:
1. Grid inertia (plants built for 30–50 year lifespans)
2. Demand growth (electricity demand rising fast)
3. Reliability requirement (solar/wind still intermittent)
4. Financial lock-in (existing contracts + stranded asset risk)
So transition must be phased, not abrupt.
—
7. How the shift to non-fossil energy actually works
A. Step 1 — Expand renewables aggressively (now)
Philippines advantage:
Solar (high irradiance)
Wind corridors (Ilocos, offshore potential)
Geothermal (Ring of Fire advantage)
Goal trajectory:
35% renewable electricity by 2030
~50% by 2040 (policy target range)
But this requires:
Massive grid upgrades
Battery storage deployment
Faster permitting
—
B. Step 2 — Grid modernization (“retrofit layer”)
This is the most critical but least visible part:
Needed upgrades:
Smart grid systems (digital dispatch)
High-voltage transmission expansion
Inter-island HVDC links
Large-scale battery storage
Demand-response systems
Without this:
> Renewables cannot scale beyond ~40–50% reliably
—
C. Step 3 — Transition fuels (bridge phase)
Even in a green transition, you still need stability:
LNG (short-to-medium term bridge)
Reduced coal, not immediate elimination
Flexible gas plants replacing baseload coal
Recent trend already shows coal plateauing in some periods while gas rises
—
D. Step 4 — Nuclear integration (firm baseload layer)
Philippines is actively revisiting nuclear:
Plans for first nuclear plant by ~2032 (target range)
Options:
Bataan Nuclear Power Plant revival
Small Modular Reactors (SMRs)
Why nuclear matters:
Stable baseload (24/7)
Zero operational carbon emissions
Reduces LNG/coal dependency
Think of it as:
> “firm power spine for a renewable-heavy grid”
—
E. Step 5 — Electrification of everything
To truly reduce fossil use:
Electric vehicles (transport decarbonization)
Electrified public transport
Heat pumps / electric industry processes
This is where oil demand structurally declines.
—
8. The key strategic question you asked:
“Do we still build oil depots and import coal?”
Short answer:
Yes—but only in the transition phase.
Medium-term reality:
Oil imports will continue for transport and aviation
Coal imports should decline gradually, not abruptly
Fuel depots remain necessary for resilience
Long-term target:
Oil becomes marginal (aviation + backup)
Coal is phased out
LNG disappears or becomes minimal backup
Nuclear + renewables dominate
—
9. The real transition model (simple mental map)
Think of it like this:
Old system:
> Coal + oil + centralized grid
Transition system:
> Coal ↓ | Oil ↓ | LNG ↑ (temporary) | Renewables ↑ | Nuclear ↑ | Storage ↑
Future system:
> Renewables + Nuclear + Storage + Smart Grid
—
10. Bottom line
The Philippine power system is not “ancient,” but it is:
Built for a fossil-industrial era
Retrofitted incrementally, not redesigned
Now reaching structural limits
The core constraint is not energy source—it is grid architecture.
So the real transition is not just:
“Replace coal with solar”
It is:
Rebuild the entire energy operating system of the country
Nationwide Utilities in the Philippines
Abstract
This article examines the historical evolution, structural challenges, and contemporary transformations of nationwide utilities in the Philippines. As an archipelagic state, the Philippines faces unique logistical and governance hurdles in building integrated systems of electricity, water, and telecommunications. The study traces early colonial foundations, regional inequalities, rural electrification, privatization reforms, and the digital revolution, culminating in an analysis of resilience, economic development, and future trajectories. The findings highlight utilities as both technical infrastructure and instruments of national integration.
Keywords: utilities, electrification, telecommunications, water systems, archipelagic state, resilience, economic development, Philippines
Introduction
Modern nations are sustained by invisible systems—electricity, water, and telecommunications—that underpin economic activity and social life. In the Philippines, the development of utilities reflects not only technical progress but also the broader evolution of governance, economic policy, and national ambition. This paper situates the Philippine utility story within the context of archipelagic geography, colonial legacies, and contemporary reforms.
Historical Foundations
Colonial and Early National Periods
Electricity introduced in Manila (1903) via Manila Electric Company.
Telecommunications organized under PLDT (1928).
Water systems expanded through reservoirs and pipelines in Manila.
These early investments were concentrated in the capital, leaving rural areas underserved.
Regional Inequality and Archipelagic Challenge
Urban centers (Manila, Cebu, Davao) developed utilities earlier due to economic density.
Rural provinces (Palawan, Mindoro, remote Mindanao) relied on localized solutions: diesel generators, wells, rainwater collection.
Geographic dispersion raised costs and slowed integration.
Rural Electrification and Nationwide Expansion
National Electrification Administration (1969) launched rural electrification via cooperatives.
Gradual extension of electricity to municipalities and barangays.
Telecommunications expanded through mobile networks.
Local Water Utilities Administration enabled regional water districts.
Privatization and Market Reform
1990s reforms introduced private investment.
Metro Manila water privatized (Manila Water, Maynilad).
Electric Power Industry Reform Act (2001) restructured generation, transmission, distribution.
National Grid Corporation of the Philippines manages transmission.
Telecommunications and the Digital Revolution
Expansion of mobile and broadband networks.
Heavy investment by PLDT, Globe, and later Dito Telecommunity.
Enabled growth of the digital economy and BPO industry.
Grid Integration and Energy Security
Luzon, Visayas, Mindanao grids historically separate.
Mindanao–Visayas Interconnection Project linked grids via submarine cables.
Improved stability, power sharing, and energy security.
New Technologies: Satellites, Fiber, and Microgrids
Starlink satellite internet extends connectivity to remote islands.
Fiber backbones expanded nationwide.
Renewable microgrids deployed in off-grid areas.
Water utilities adopt leak detection, automated pumping, digital metering.
Utilities, Disasters, and National Resilience
Philippines highly disaster-prone (typhoons, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions).
Typhoon Haiyan highlighted vulnerability of utilities.
Modern planning emphasizes redundancy, distributed generation, underground cabling, rapid repair.
Utilities now framed as national security assets.
Utilities as Development Multipliers
Electricity supports manufacturing, ports, shipbuilding, digital industries.
Telecommunications enable global connectivity, remote work, education.
Water systems sustain urbanization, agriculture, tourism.
Utilities underpin BPO, electronics manufacturing, logistics.
Future Trajectories
Population growth, urbanization, climate change increase demand.
Priorities: renewable energy, water security, universal internet.
Technological advances make universal service conceivable.
Conclusion
The Philippine utility story is one of transformation from fragmented geography to national integration. From colonial electrification to modern fiber and satellite networks, utilities have shaped economic and social development. Future challenges demand smarter, resilient, and inclusive systems to serve every community across the archipelago.
“But I don’t know, perhaps the government only has energy to do one big thing at a time and right now it is to save the Philippines from the pro-China side.”
These kinds of comments I’d expect from GRP as a part of an umbrella approach to disparage all things Filipino. A simple Gemini inquiry would illustrate that national government is multi-dimensional and constructive.
As of early 2026, the Philippine national government is focusing on a “delivery year” strategy, aimed at accelerating economic growth and infrastructure completion under the theme “Agenda for Prosperity: Nurturing Future-Ready Generations.” The administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is prioritizing high-impact infrastructure, food security, digital transformation, and social services.
Key major initiatives currently being implemented include:
1. Infrastructure and Connectivity (“Build Better More”)
The government has maintained infrastructure spending at 5% to 6% of GDP to sustain growth, with a focus on implementing 207 high-priority projects.
Bataan-Cavite Interlink Bridge: A flagship project designed to connect Central Luzon and CALABARZON to ease congestion in Metro Manila.
Railway Projects: Continued construction of the Malolos-Clark Railway and the South Commuter Railway Project.
Regional Airport Upgrades: Privatization and modernization of regional airports, including Bohol–Panglao and Laguindingan International Airports.
Flood Management: Integrated approaches combining drainage, land use, and urban planning to address climate hazards.
2. Economic Growth and Digitalization
The government is pushing for a digital economy to improve efficiency and competitiveness, targeting 56% of retail transactions to be digital by 2026.
Digital Government: Expansion of the eGovPH SuperApp to digitize citizen services.
Digital Infrastructure: Expansion of the national fiber optic backbone to rural schools and health facilities.
Data Center Hub: Developing a data sovereignty law to attract foreign data centers.
E-Commerce Growth: Policies aimed at increasing the number of e-commerce enterprises to 3.5 million by 2026.
3. Food Security and Agriculture
The 2026 budget triples the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund and focuses on agricultural technology.
“Walang Gutom” (Zero Hunger) Program: Food voucher program aimed at reducing food insecurity.
Modernization: Digital Agriculture Projects and improved irrigation systems under the National Irrigation Administration (NIA).
Agrarian Reform: Providing support services for higher productivity to agrarian reform communities.
4. Human Capital and Social Services
A significant portion of the budget is allocated to social services, focusing on education and health to create a “future-ready” workforce.
Education Reform: Ensuring the education budget hits the 4% of GDP target set by UNESCO, with a 18.7% increase for the Department of Education.
Healthcare Expansion: Enhancing Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) benefits to support zero-balance billing for indigent patients.
Social Welfare: Increasing the 4Ps (Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program) budget to P113 billion in 2026.
5. Governance and Defense
Anti-Corruption Drive: Implementing tech-driven monitoring systems (Project DIME) to track project progress and spending, and strengthening investigations into public works projects.
Maritime Security: Strengthening defense alliances, particularly with Japan and the US, to protect Philippine sovereignty in the West Philippine Sea.
Government Optimization Act: A law focused on reducing redundancies and streamlining processes to make doing business easier.
The 2026 proposed budget of ₱6.793 trillion has been officially signed, reinforcing these priorities, with a particular focus on fiscal discipline and transparency in the wake of public scrutiny over certain projects.
Cheerleading is not a helpful thing to do. Should people be praised for doing their job? Perhaps that is a big part of the problem here. Praise is reserved for exceptionalism, not for covering the basic duties. But okay, if the Philippines is doing great already, there is not much more that is needed to be done.
The point isn’t that the Philippines is doing great. The point is striving for accuracy. Facts. Truth. Honesty. Honor, as in The Society of Honor.
I do not denigrate the Philippines nor do I diminish the efforts of most Filipinos. There is however a small subset of Filipinos in the leadership class who ostensibly support democracy yet are not doing what it takes to preserve democracy, and they should be criticized. A child may get a Gold Star for his participation, but someone is a leader should not get participation points for simply doing their job. A leader is supposed to encourage and boost up those below him/her. Why should the people below boost the leader? That is like saying a parent should be rewarded for not letting their children starve to death.
I do not see any relation between your reactions to my comments and what I actually wrote… then I’m made out to be the figurehead “arrogant American…” which seems to be a pattern to be honest. Maybe there always needs to be a villain in every story. The Filipino bida who is always righteous vs the kontrabida who is always wrong. Stepping outside of orthodox thought gets one clobbered. Is the orthodoxy a faith or is knowledge a guide to be adjusted with new data? Is fighting over a fractional narcissism of small differences within our side of liberalism so much more important than fighting the true enemy which are the illiberal authoritarian networks cultivated by Russia and China?
I read your comments in full and try to consider your points. I have asked this before, but I’ll ask again: May I ask for the same courtesy from you?
Sure, you may ask that I strive for objectivity, fairness, and a constructive approach to Philippine social/political/economic and government work. You pride yourself on a demanding approach to Philippine government efforts. I pride myself on running a blog that is absent GRP style derogatory positioning as the foundation of comments.
I do not do “GRP style derogatory positioning,” not now, not ever. Even CV despite his occasional pilosopo never reached the level of the GRP commentariat.
Should the expectation be an orthodoxy where one is told what to believe, or is there room for sometimes heterodox viewpoints that are well-reasoned and open to counter-argument?
GRP demanded orthodoxy where commenters praised each other’s badly argued points and dogpiled those who disagreed even an inch. Is that the expectation here as well?
Medicine is not meant to taste pleasant.
Medicine of the argumentative style only tastes unpleasant if it is factually erroneous, or illogical, or pro-forma to defend the illusion of perfect reasoning.
Until now it is not explained where I am being “factually erroneous, or illogical” or using “pro-forma to defend the illusion of perfect reasoning.” Let us have substance, not wordplay.
I have not claimed any of what I’m accused of doing or saying. Is the goal here to put me in a box despite it being the wrong box?
COA is not a joke. The Philippines is not solely focused on China. It is not cheerleading to want fairness and factuality.
Actually, CV’s platform or bias was (is) not anti-Filipino. It was (may still be) anti-Marcos. That bias operated as a filter to sift out Marcos II’s good deeds (closing pogos) and double down on flaws of the Philippines, as if Marcos were responsible for all of them. Yours often reads (to me) as anti-Filipino, the demands are so intense and sometimes non-factual. The negativity seems (to me) to be your platform rather than, say, a disinterested search for understanding. That said, there is no doubt your background, reasoning, and commentary bring superb knowledge to the table, and ideas, and solutions. When you and Irineo are ripping, this is a doctoral level blog. Still, I would like it to skip the untruths, recited to embellish argument. COA is not a joke, Philippine government is not singularly focused on China. If I seek to correct errors, in defense of the Philippine and Filipinos, it does not mean I don’t appreciate the value of your contributions here.
It is exasperating to be called anti-Filipino and a negativity monger just because the truth can hit nerves at times. Boo Chanco is also often accused of being an anti-Filipino “pessimist.” Apparently the only allowable behavior is to highlight positivity and never look at where things have gone wrong (so how do broken things get fixed?). The habit of latching onto (sometimes singular) perceived slights (that might not have even happened), then going on a warpath refusing to back down is destructive. That habit affects elite circles a lot more than normal Filipinos. I do not claim to understand all, but to say I am disinterested in understanding is a bit too far. If my lived experiences in the Philippines connected to wider SEA culture and history is unhelpful here then I will comment less about such matters.
Read the part where I praise you, and reflect on criticism as you expect others to reflect on yours.
The difference is you have singled me out as one of the contributors here who you attack regularly, on a personal basis rather than in the arena of ideas. I have always taken care to give you and others respect unless they choose to go ad hominem. So your advice here is hollow, but thanks.
let’s say your style reminds me of people with “gasoline in the blood” I have encountered over here in Germany, people who are used to the Zero Defect standard.
My three years consulting for THE largest German carmaker’s financial services arm was literal hell for my inner Pinoy but taught me a lot.
When I worked for one of their major suppliers, a steel plant nearby, a decade later, I was prepared – even if they though also found their major client harsh.
Going even further back, 1983-1985, my McDo period as a Grade 12-13 student, took me a while to reach their quality standard while working.
The car industry article is coming out tomorrow morning BTW, and is dedicated among others to someone who was my de facto mentor in hard times.
That man used to assemble car paint lines, old school master craftsman in Stuttgart, Eastern refugee man who witnessed Dresden bombed as a kid.
So I am used to that kind of style and get it, even if it has been a culture shock to me in the context of this “online tambayan”.
P.S. The car article based on your concept is COMING OUT TOMORROW. LET’S HAVE A LOOK AT THAT. One day cease fire guys. 😉
https://tiwialbay.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-legacy-of-sr-don-higino-templado.html
your story of dealing with maoy reminds me of this story BTW about one of the major “datus” of my father’s hometown: (an abaca planter BTW whose signature adorns many of my great-great-grandfather’s abaca land documents)
the road he built is a road my uncle and me walked uphill, pretty drunk, on one of my late teen visits to the hometown. (what he didn’t tell me is that our old abaca land was located along that road, in the new part of the town called Cararayan, the “good place” just between uphill Cale/Naga and beachside Tigbi/Tiwi)
For sure this is a very embellished, Austronesian story, almost like the Ibalong has Handyong and his folks inventing nearly everything.
Though I am vaguely reminded of the mythical Yellow Emperor in Chinese lore. Guess most founding legends are like that, but I digress.
I am a hothead by nature but the exacting part is trained — as a child I was one of the lackadaisical types that Zero Defects sought to straighten out.
Work-wise I am very much a practitioner of Kaizen and the Toyota Production System as well as Total Quality Management, all three which came from the management philosophy of W. Edwards Deming’s PDCA cycle — Plan, Do, Check, Act. Deming’s methodology was a fine-tuning of Philip Crosby’s Zero Defects. I am anti-Jack Welch style management and so dislike Six Sigma for its sloppiness.
I was thinking more about what I shared about Engineer Leonardo Gutierrez — he was trained in schools set up by Americans and received his practical training (OJT) with a West German exchange program. Eventually he left, after PP to work abroad and never came back. The brain drain of those fleeing martial law, then again during the poverty of the late 1980s and 1990s was something irreversible and explains a lot of the immediate reasons why the Philippines is where it is today. But Engineer Gutierrez was trained, like his fellow electrical engineers whoa managed the rural electrification program were trained. It can be done again if the civic love many Commonwealth and Third Republic figures seemed to have genuine amounts of could be cultivated again.
It isn’t advice. It is editorial direction. The challenge for me is to avoid the blog becoming a place where criticism of the Philippines and Filipinos becomes the mien. So if I see that occurring, it is my responsibility to get some balance to the dialogue, and more recognition of the good faith efforts of Filipinos and the progress of the Philippines out on the table. Remarks like the two I commented on, COA and the Philippines being multi-dimensional, are hardly ad hominem picking on you, they are demands for less bashing of the Philippines, where editorial integrity is mine to discern.
I would add that Irineo was once blocked here, but has come to understand the challenges of producing a good discussion blog. So the attitude that I am picking on you is nonsense. You are just the current recalcitrant, LOL.
I am not interested in arguing the minutiae of semantics. Nor am I interested in an ineffective orthodoxy. I was always a young man in a hurry, and still am now. Results and how to achieve results matter. I don’t have much time for BS. Generally I take care towards sensitivities but not to the point where it becomes detrimental to the other or a burden to me. You’re right, this is your blog so it is your rules, even though the rules seem selectively applied. And just like an “inuman” where after one drink too many leads from laughter to the verge of “maoy” and hurt feelings, I’ll take my leave at that point and come back next time when people are smiling again.
This is by now the Pinoy blogspace’s equivalent of The Restaurant At The End of The Universe in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy.
I have obliged to write about your automotive plan but yellow has mostly left us, and Marcos red doesn’t seem to care about us.
writing it has been interesting for me, but we may not have the beelines we used to have ten years ago or even until 2022.
haha the assembly line starts to run at 7 a.m. tomorrow, PH time – I mean my article comes out.
7 a.m. is the start of the typical German blue collar working day, except in the BMW Dingolfing plant.
They start or started at 6 a.m. so allegedly the part-time farmers could tend to their fields after factory shifts.
In any case, I will make sure that everyone has had strong coffee and is hydrated as I will tag a few people on X.
We won’t be smiling, we will be as serious as workers at BMW who had some drinks the night before but are ready for work. 😉
I wonder if @pos2only would read it. I’m not saying my analysis result is an exact blueprint as it needs the appropriate SMEs and stakeholders on board, but hopefully it can serve as the basis of a plan. I have considerable experience in the industry, along with some other industries. My career had been, let’s just say… more interesting than most.
thanks, @pos2only is a good recommendation – that man thinks industrially. That is the new gen, definitely dedicated to the Philippines, but by experience and necessity way more cynical than the Third Republic civic veterans.
there is the old motto in Bavaria that he who drinks also can work, meaning drink as much as you want but report for duty and do the job the next morning.
and yes, the article does put that disclaimer as it may not be the exact blueprint, you will see the wording later when it comes out. It has been a very interesting journey putting stuff together I only knew bits and pieces of due to my journey through German industry. “Gasoline in the blood” BTW or “Benzin im Blut” means automotive background, and all those I encountered with that over here felt like from one big fraternity.
collecting some more names to tag:
@JosephAguilus (blogger who also has tweeted about automotive)
@FlyingKetchup (also a blog and tweet page)
@bworldph (them and NOT the possibly gatekeeping Bilyonaryo)
@contextdotph (with a lot of policy stuff in our lane)
@teta_limcangco (seems a quite open-minded journalist)
@pnagovph (might as well try these guys)
it will be hard to get people who give us the time of day, given how the Philippine setting can be.
I note you declined to comment on the feckless liberals which is too bad because it’s an interesting topic in view of Filipino social values which promote allegiance to the convenient, or beneficial. Democracy, which requires a community willing to give and take, is overlaid on a population that has learned to take by heartless colonists and poverty. My view is that it makes for conflicts, fluidity, and interrupted policies, but can be, and is, an adequately functioning democracy of feckless souls. Freedoms are many. The people are granted the power to run things. Whether critics like the outcomes is not relevant. In a give and take system of government, they get what others decide, and don’t understand democracy if this pisses them off.
The effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the orthodoxy is my burden, not yours. Over 15 years, we’ve contributed in a significant way to promoting non-feckless thinking, and if that is no inspiration to you, I’m afraid there’s not much I can do about it.
Once again you are trying to box me into a corner to prove your point — a point I disagree with and have sufficiently explained why I hold my positions. You may accept my viewpoints or not; if not then I hope we can disagree with respect. If you’re looking for a chorus you won’t find one with me.
No chorus, just respect for the editorial aspirations I have for the blog.
Let me elaborate. First, what does feckless mean?
“Feckless is an adjective describing someone or something as weak, ineffective, irresponsible, or incompetent. It refers to a lack of purpose, vitality, or care for consequences, often used to describe lazy or unproductive individuals and futile efforts.” per vocabulary.com via Gemini.
I’ve identified senators who to me seam feckless. There are a lot of them. The interesting question for me is, within the Senate community, and within the voter community, and within the community of erudite Filipino academicians, is “feckless” an accurate descriptor? Or is it just what a creative outsider like Dan Brown or James Fallows would use? That is, not accurate, within these communities, but good for providing a somewhat inflamatory, or even offensive, direction for improvement?
I think the senators themselves don’t see the unprincipled, self-serving, and fluid positions they take as improper or unproductive. They have to be that way to get elected and preserve their access to riches and re-election. The adjective “feckless” would offend them.
Voters at the poll don’t see them that way standing there to vote, and may never see them that way unless they screw up big time and make the news for days, weeks, and months. I’d guess 95% of voters are clueless as to the specifics of a senator’s work. They’d never hear the term “feckless” and don’t see any senator as unprincipled or unproductive. And they for sure don’t see themselves as unproductive and unprincipled because they don’t think in those terms. Even if I think their switching from Aquino to Duterte is feckless.
What about academicians? Scholars? They’d describe the behavior as culturally endowed, as Irineo and Joey have discussed here. They wouldn’t describe it as feckless, which implies a certain intentionality to the unproductive behavior. It is as offensive as saying their home in Manila is at the Gates of Hell.
Context is king. If we deem that solutions have to come from within any community, we’d probably do better by understanding those communities and speaking to them with a certain compassion for how they got there. I think the Senate is a horrifying mess, frankly. But it is a legitimate, duly elected, and democratically respectful group. Operating in a legitimate social environment. Efforts to upgrade productivity should be on educating voters, and inspiring government officials to gain some principles, and act on them. Calling them feckless may help in that regard. Ridicule is a legitimate tool in public discourse. But I think it might be wise to make sure we are not educating ourselves and others into becoming name calling bigots.
“There is however a small subset of Filipinos in the leadership class who ostensibly support democracy yet are not doing what it takes to preserve democracy, and they should be criticized.”
Philippine democracy is vibrant and healthy, in the style of Philippine social and political engagements. It survived Duterte 1 and put him in jail. It is working on the main threat to democracy, Duterte II, through impeachment and public discourse, which is open and free. Its agencies are of varied capabilities, generally better than most had expected when President Marcos was elected. If perfection is the goal against which performance is measured, then the criticisms lack merit in my view, for failing to see that institutions can never be perfect, nor people.
Who are these leaders who are not protecting democracy, specifically? Sonny Trillanes believes Leni Robredo is one. Well, that warrants debate. Legislators in the Duterte camp? Oh, yes. But because they exist is no reason to condemn government in a blanket way. So I’d prefer to get to the specifics and avoid generalized condemnations. Who knows, maybe the view that democracy is not being defended properly is wrong. Maybe it is right and if we know HOW and WHO we can articulate ways to improve.
Well you see I agree with everything you said in the first paragraph. Which is why the insistence on the constant use of myself as a convenient whipping boy is very annoying, especially when my comment is taken out of context.
As for the second part it is entirely fair to criticize electeds, the greed and unpatriotic nature of the Dutertes and their supporters is one side, the fecklessness of most allegedly pro-democracy liberals is the other. It is fair to say that Marcos Jr. chased vanity projects when he had a supermajority in the Senate, wasting time on those efforts instead of focusing more on shoring up Philippine democracy (which he also did, but without full effort at first).
I think it is quite egregious that you’re still going along the lines of me supposedly attacking the civil servants at COA, which this entire subthread is based on, and once we established that I was not in fact attacking them, this framing of myself as a villain continues.
Our comments passed each other. Okay, lets put some meat to this; “The fecklessness of most allegedly pro-democracy liberals.”
You cite President Marcos’ vanity projects as an example. Well, that’s an interesting topic. He no longer attends car races or hosts lavish parties and has tempered his globe-hopping in search of investments, leaving that work to agencies. So your criticisms, with others, worked to create a better way forward. Now the question is, can you see the improvement? (Not can he be criticised because, gosh, ther is so little perfection here). Can you see the change as “democracy working” rather than “democracy failing”?
The House is outside my knowledge bank but the Senate is not. The feckless liberals to me would be P. Cayetano, Zubiri, Estrada, Escudero, Gatchalian, Lapid, Legarda, Ejercito, Villenueva, Villar, Villar. Or feckless conservatives, I see no difference.
The earnest liberals would be Hontiveros, Pangilinan, Aquino, Lacson, Sotto. Or earnest conservatives or whatever Sotto and Lacson are.
I don’t know Tulfo, Tulfo.
Duterte bedmates are: A Cayetano, Dela Rosa, Go, Padilla, Marcos, Marcoleta.
What do I extract from this? Loyalties to anything are fluid in the Philippines, as you’ve discussed. So feckless is a common element of Filipino character, one could allege. The opposite would be principles based and steady.
So the solution is what? Change Filipino character? LOL. No, it’s to condemn the corrupt, the hypocrites, and the traitors, and praise the principled. Is that not being done? Yes on social media and mainstream media? Vibrant is an understatement. Through Ombudsman, COA, agencies, Legislature? There are multiple cases ongoing. It is slow and haphazard, but not empty.
I’d say the democracy glass is 80% full.
I beg to differ, I have said time and again we have a thing for perfornative governance, that is if the stats that matter are not displayed because they are not applause amplifiers, but to call giving credit were it is due cheerleading or sipsip that does not help, I am not sure if you have a kid yet but posituve reinforcement works in real life.
Well, the idea that correcting an erroneous statement is a call for cheerleading is logically obtuse. That’s defending the error. It’s defending disparagement.
For children who are still unsure of themselves, positive reinforcement works — up to a point. Where is the point where the child is gaming the rewards without putting in the effort?
Besides, are we to view leaders as children who need constant validation? I think not. Those people who require constant boost ups are likely to be extreme narcissists and have no business being anywhere near a leadership position.
Call me sensitive or defensive but now you are using the needy card.
Sycophansy or what you call sipsip is not to be confused with tactfulness akin to diplomacy or in some cases bola or sweet talk
Sorry to make this about you.
You say you dont need praise
If you dont need praise and was given one, that is not to feed your ego.
Sometimes an observer sees what you dont.
Like you often times see in me that I fail to realize because nobody told me and I was not in a reflective introspective mood.
As simple as that.
Respectfully disagree.
Ok thanks
I asked Claude about SSS contributions collection issues and got this:
senator imee marcos said that sss contribution should be suspended during these hard times, there is blockage in hormoz, the prices of oil are skyrocketing as well as the prices of goods and commodities, and those of services too.
She reminds me of a parrot. Voice has no connection to brain, just memory of what to squawk given proper cues.
It seems to me the problems are insurmountable. There are two alternatives. Full blown socialism. Government pays seniors a fixed amount, the formula for amount being an average estimated (or industry) salary times years worked. Or go totally private with Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) funded by employers and employees. I don’t see any feasible solutions to the collection problem.
I dont see that much of a problem in our country. the older folks are always needed to mind the grandkids while their both their parents ilk out a living and therefore, still feel much part of society without the redundant feeling. the olds may not have millions in the bank or oozing with sss pension money, but our govt have public programs like social pensions for the indigent and the olds (who never had employment) to receive a stipend of about 1k per month to help them with basic necessities like food and medicines, they have free hospitalisation too, but 1st they must be registered with dswd.
there is also discount of 20% on purchases made, plus they are vat exempt. have 5% discount as well on basic and prime commodities like rice, etc. another 5% discount on water and electricity bills so long as the meter is in senior’s name and usage is below certain limit. kaso, meralco says there are few takers on electricity discount for whatever reasons seniors give.
since we are closely knit families, adults children often support their old parents too, and looked after their needs. hence, if you live simply, it is possible to live frugally within your means, sans sss pension.
Yes, “resourcefulness” is a better, more positive, description of Filipinos dealing with things than “resilience”. The family support net is a more generous family style than everyone for themselves.
Indigent seniors can already get SocPen (RA 9994, amended RA 11916), which qualifies them for PHP 3K each quarter (PHP 1K per month) direct cash transfer from DSWD for medicine, food, and other basic needs. Which is obviously not enough for basic needs even in the province but it’s something.
https://www.dswd.gov.ph/social-pension/
The unfortunate part about SocPen is the children and grandchildren will often “visit” the granny right on the day she receives her direct cash transfer…
It is a hard problem to tackle, but a good start would be to investigate cases, fine heavily, and prosecute to make an example of where appropriate. If the employer is keeping two sets of books they should be prosecuted as well.
Of course, much of this could be solved by creating more formal jobs and converting the workforce over to formal employment, like factories. There would still be cases of cooked books and non-contributors in small/informal businesses but that would not matter when the bulk of the tax/program collection are from formalized payrolls.
I’d opt for more formal jobs and ending the reliance on contract workers, a corporate abuse used today as a sneak-around to avoid responsible employee relations. The whole employment scene is disorganized chaos and day work. Lots of ways to avoid SSS. Impossible to police.
The otherwise not so competent Chancellor Schröder did have a good reform in his time over here in Germany, closing the loophole that 10 hour a week contract workers (often students working after lectures, mothers working in the morning when their kids were at school, immigrants doing some cleaning work etc.) didn’t have to pay social security.
The solution was and is quite simple: the employer has to pay a social security lump sum for such employees, the employees don’t need to put in their share. It is an economic incentive making such contractuals a bit more expensive, making abuses like hiring four contractuals to replace one full-time employee (or alleged abuses like having the 3 sons of the immigrant employee AND HIM/HER get four salaries with him/her actually working full time) economically less attractive. And what is nice for the contractuals is that they accrue “pension points” for the future, and of course the chronically underfunded German social security system got one more source of revenue, the math is the same over here as anywhere in the world.
Ahh, that’s an excellent way to deal with it. Thanks.
Firstly the Philippines must admit that the practice of contractual labor in the Philippines is a descendant of and thus inseparable from semi-free labor and debt bondage stretching all the way back to the alipin system (bondsman/debt slave) to today’s endo. Overall there is a relation to utang — debt, therefore, debt-bondage.
But it gets worse because the alipin were subdivided into two subcategories — alipin namamahay (free dependents required to provide periodic tribute in the form of labor) and alipin sa gigilid (bondsmen, debt slaves). The alipin sa gigilid had very few options; not only were they obligated to render labor, but they often were coerced into unequal terms. Guess which subcategory of alipin Philippine contractual labor grew out of… the latter. Endo is just modern form of legalized debt-slavery by another form. Yes, PNoy passed the Kasambahay Act and other EOs in order to limit endo, but no one cares about laws and who obeys the provisions of the endo reforms when too few examples are prosecuted.
The solution is to create many more formal jobs, preferably in a factory where workers “punch in, punch out” every shift. Every payroll would be paid on time, every tax and withholding would be appropriately deducted. Factory owners who want to keep government concessions would willingly comply with labor laws and standards. Then no one would for forced to sell their labor to exploitative neighbors, and would-be bossings will be forced to buy washing machines and cleaning robots.
Karl has an article on Philippine culture and its confusions coming out tomorrow. I have some Claude analyses of your stuff regarding utang na loob etc. (and also an interesting comparison between Indonesian utang budi and utang na loob as well as Indonesian budi and Filipino budhi) which I will add to THAT discussion.
The utang system also shows in the oldest Philippine
affidavitdocument, the 900 AD Laguna Copperplate.The cultural confusion might be a confusion among elites. The masa seem to me to not be that confused, even if they cannot reliably explain why this or that is the case.
The understanding of the masa as relates to culture is probably more pure in that it is still innate. Whereas the elites try to force a foreign intellectual or cultural framework to make sense of indigenous concepts.
The forcing of foreign frameworks gets worse when so-called educated elites try to align the disparities into a one-for-one match, which is of course impossible. The sensible practice (which many other cultures have done) is to compare differences and adopt portions of outside practices that achieve better outcomes, adapting the then-foreign concept into the indigenous framework. It seems to me that often Philippine elites insist on making an exact copy of whatever they envy in others, which is why I sometimes joke maybe that’s why Arab sheikhdoms get along so well with OFWs; see BGC vs the provincial neglect.
The utang system appears to be key to understanding everything. Utang is now commonly simplified to being (money) debt. But in the past utang comprised money, goods, and relational exchange, all which still is deeply present in modern Philippine culture (and I daresay, the hijacking of is the common root of many Philippine problems).
No argument from me. Jollibee would disagree.
Are fast food franchises still using the endo exploit? If so that’s a big shame and reforms should be targeting the big fish first, no complaining about being unable to find small fish whose misdeeds have lesser overall affect. As Jollibee and other major employers are a major part of the Philippine economy talks should probably be done directly to them, offering a chance to first compromise.
It’s still jarring to see Philippine service workers abused as borderline servants. Which also happens here in the US Jollibee locations — one can tell who is Americanized and who is “bagong salta” by how they leave their table.
The Philippine cultural style is deeply ingrained. Authoritarian service, not customer service, define face-to-face interactions. That’s a deep deep reality and wanting it to change is one thing, getting there is quite another. Living in it, one does as the Romans do, in Rome.
@Irineo Re: P-Pop at the end of Coachella 2026
I’ve been noticing something a bit weird and do not know enough about the Philippine entertainment business to opine here — How common are paid or friendly promotions in the Philippine entertainment business? Specifically the type of promotions that are made to seem organic but are in actuality constructed campaigns.
According to multiple US and Philippine entertainment media articles BINI had a great debut and generated a lot of attention during their Coachella performances. I did not recognize any of the media bylines of the article authors, though the bylines almost all had something in common — not just a Filipino surname, but a Filipino-style full name, often including middle names, which is not commonly used by Fil-Ams who are second generation Americans and up (even if they were given at birth a Filipino-style name). Besides, logically if a group “caught fire” the top-tier bylines would be scrambling over each other to cover the hottest new group.
I’m not doubting that the byline authors did write the articles. By all indications most seem to be more to be junior entertainment journalists. But something seems artificial and induced here in an astroturfy way… If BINI indeed had a breakout moment as more than one article suggested, would BINI then not start appearing in Top 50/Top 100 lists while the buzz was buzzing? Yes, BINI “reached” the lower rankings on the Billboard Emerging Artists chart a few days ago… but… Those who know a little about the music industry knows that Billboard is heavily engineered traditionally towards marketing budget and more recently became susceptible to manipulation by intense fandoms, neither which reflect organic popularity… Two ways marketing teams and fandoms can manipulate the Billboard rankings is by: 1.) mass buys of singles on paid platforms (Apple Music, iTunes, Amazon, etc.) 2.) Using humans or bots to repetitively listen to/watch streams on music streaming services or YouTube.
Spotify’s Top 50/Top 100 by country charts are algorithmically ranked by plays, which though can be manipulated by the above way, is less noisy due to Spotify auto-banning bot-like behaviors.
If there was a breakout moment, while Coachella is going on, BINI should’ve appeared on the Spotify USA Top 50 or Hot Hits charts, but did not:
Shockingly BINI doesn’t even appear in the Spotify Philippines Top 50 or Hot Hits charts:
Are we who consume pinoy stuff being gaslit here by marketing and the fandoms? As soon as I clear my algorithmic history BINI and SB19 disappeared. But Cup of Joe did come up again unprompted, unsearched…
I don’t know how that side of the PH entertainment industry works. Even my father’s inside knowledge from his MTCRB days (I think late 1980s or early 1990s) is more on the movie side, though he DOES know the scriptwriter of Amaya (and Maria Clara at Ibarra, and Voltes V Philippine edition) personally as he was one of the historical advisers of that teleserye.
That the Fil-Ams have a certain influence can be seen with Marisa Pizarro, former VP for A&R of Def Jam Records, who promised her Filipino migrant father (she is half-Filipino) that she would do everything she could for Filipino music and is now actively promoting BINI. Maybe it is more of that, just like the dance choreo for Cherry on Top back in 2024 was by a Mexican-Filipino choreographer from Steezy Studios in LA. BTW as I already mentioned Christoper Lopez aka moophs studied music IIRC at UCLA in the noughties and worked with LA producers after that – before that he was a bartender. The surname is of course key, he is part of the owner family and head of ABS’s Tarsier records. Probably his LA networks play a role. It could partly also just be what the head of GKD Labels (the Americans who invested in their own PPop group FINIX, debuting soon) called “hometown pride”, though we never know what goes on in the background. What IS known is that the KPop reactors Kess and Han (who already HAD a KPop following AND interviewed BINI on their channel before the World Tour in 2025) are now promoting the KiT EP for “Signals” (a physical-digital format pioneered by Koreans and also sold on BINI WeVerse) of BINI, so they are part of the promotion network now. They were at the Bulacan concert in Nov. 2025 BTW.
What I also know is that The Team – formerly Wasserman – was the agency that booked the venues for BINI’s World Tour last year in North America, and promoted them for Coachella as well. Direk Lauren of ABS said that the North America tour was “hindi kumita” so probably they had a substantial cut of the earnings. They continue to be BINI’s official partner abroad, and how they as PR folks do placement I can’t of course tell. ABS also partners with The Orchard for foreign IP.
I do know that the SB19 Pagtatag Tour in 2023 had a large number of “AFAMs” especially on their Chicago leg. Interestingly, their Simula at Wakas Tour in 2025 had THE SAME small venues as in 2023 – and less of them, notably the Chicago venue which was hailed as their entering the US market was not part of it. They did have bigger Asian venues thanks to what their fans call “Mama Sony” – the label. In HK BTW Li-Kashing’s Foundation gave free SB19 tickets to OFWs.
https://www.dimsumdaily.hk/philippine-pop-sensation-sb19-performs-in-hk-with-special-tickets-for-foreign-domestic-helpers-sponsored-by-li-ka-shing-foundation/ what to make of THAT I really don’t know. An uncle of SB19 Justin and 1Z Entertainment COO Yani de Dios is part of the pandesal forum BTW, konek or not konek?
https://tatakmnl.com/2025/04/14/sb19-being-considered-for-china-says-justins-uncle-alfonso-de-dios/ he might just be clout-chasing for all we know.
I think with BINI it will all depend on whether the present buzz will pull in some foreign fans, and most notably whether their follow-up to all this – the “Signals World Tour” that starts in Manila in June and Cebu in July, then goes to North America again, then UK, France, Netherlands and Italy, then Singapore and Taiwan – will generate significant non-Filo fandom.
As for COJ, my finding that their label Viva are 15% owned by the French online music firm Believe might be the reason why they are quietly up there. I already mentioned that the Viberate music industry analytics platform (which I joined for 48 hours trial membership, I don’t have a business case for paying their fees, no I am NOT entering PPop European promotions haha) have COJ somewhere in the 600s when it comes to global rankings (Taylor Swift being Numero Uno, what else) while both SB19 and BINI were somewhere in the 900s, Ben and Ben were IIRC in the 700s AND ALL OTHER Filipino acts were in the 1000s and below. That is the reality I see, it is Filipino acts just showing some international presence and the OA Filo crowd hyping them up, as I told Joe two posts ago like after a datu’s great raid. This time it probably is nothing yet like the Greeks raiding Troy, it is more like some Pinoys stealing sausages from their LA neighbors barbecue (?)..
P.S. BINI do seem to have some kind of Nike sponsorship now, whether it is just for Coachella or longer-term I dunno. I mean BINI has around 30 sponsorships in the PH, SB19 has around 20 – that and corporate events pay a lot of the bills for PPop. Of course the jackpot for ABS would be a few global sponsorships. The “global barangays” (my term) help both BINI and SB19 generate hype, basically row the balangays a bit. Whether they get true long-term traction isn’t clear yet.
P.P.S. https://usa.inquirer.net/194758/how-bini-reclaimed-larry-itliongs-filipino-narrative-at-coachella Inquirer USA is being super-OA now.. though I get the enthusiasm “What BINI achieved at Coachella isn’t merely a success for a pop group; it is our generation’s version of February 9, 1964. Just as the Beatles transformed the cultural landscape on the Ed Sullivan stage, BINIchella 2026 has officially launched P-pop into the global stratosphere.” is too much.. 😉
https://www.reddit.com/r/opm/comments/1so03qa/pls_stop_debuting_unprepared_artists/ and finally, half-baked imitations sprouting, what else is truly new? 😀
I had a different take on this: When Philippine media needs to “search out” obscure people with impressive-sounding titles, that is actually an indicator of the thinness of Filipino representation. It is not a sign of having prominence in leadership positions… e.g. for the “VP of A&R,” that position is essentially a new talent scout. These achievements are commendable, but some Filipinos have this weird need to over-emphasize achievements big or small, pulling in unknown or has-been people far-far-away who may or may not be of Filipino descent to prove greatness. I am relatively well traveled and have never encountered another culture that does this, not even Malaysians and Indonesians who are the closest “cousins” to Filipinos, though I have been told by an older Malay that Malays long ago used to do something along these lines of validation-seeking as well…
I just happen to think that excessive self-promotion based on others’ accomplishments or appearances of accomplishments is not an encouragement but acts as a reinforcement of complacency… “We are great already. We are known already. So why make efforts?”
A few friends enthusiastically shared me these two articles:
https://cebudailynews.inquirer.net/717906/artemis-ii-dumanjug-woman-also-helped-nasa-moon-mission
https://cebudailynews.inquirer.net/716026/cebuana-engineer-part-of-nasa-artemis-ii-mission
In the first article the Cebuana-American, who had migrated with her family to the US as a child, is made into the main character of the NASA Artemis recovery mission. “Engineman” certainly sounds impressive removed from context. But an engineman in naval parlance is a ship’s mechanic in the engineering department; essentially with the job of maintaining the ship’s propulsion and electrical systems. On a typical amphibious transport dock (LPD). A LPD-class ship has about 70 enginemen and electrician’s mates in the engineering department, which is a “below decks” job. The article also has a bad photoshop of the sailor, cut out, blown up and superimposed over other crew members; the original photo was her own commemorative selfie, taken (probably without permission) from her social media (and readily searchable), with other sailors behind her looking at the spaceship capsule.
In the second article the Cebuana engineer is part of the ground support engineering crew, which the article shares as the “Orion Fracture Control Team.” Impressive and makes the engineer to seem like she singularly did the job. Essentially Fracture Control is the fracturing of the spaceship’s re-entry heat shield, which is catastrophic, and must be monitored by materials engineers, who are part of a team of hundreds, thousands. Btw, the Cebuana engineer being relatively young and achieving a junior engineering position with NASA is a huge accomplishment in itself, so why not be proud of that? It diminishes the engineer’s accomplishments by exaggerating it, just like the sailor’s part in the recovery mission’s success is diminished by exaggeration; both to no fault of these accomplished young ladies.
Yeah that’s another example of OA and stretching stuff into incredulity in the search for validation, often while attaching completely irrelevant “markers of greatness” like the Beatles. The truth is that Fil-Am farm workers led by Larry Itliong, colloquially known as “manongs”, started the US Farm Labor Movement when Harry Itliong and Philip Vera Cruz initiated the 1965 Delano Grape Strike. I wrote a long essay about this “forgotten history” back in college… The trouble came when the Fil-Ams, led by Itliong, adopted a militantly far-left, borderline communist stance that garnered immense pushback and diminished sympathy for the movement. Fil-Ams, despite being the initiators of the movement, demanded Mexican-Americans to follow the Fil-Ams, which is preposterous when the Mexican-Americans outnumbered the Fil-Ams AND the Fil-Ams did not have coherent leadership. Growing up Fil-Ams griped that the Mexicans took away this “accomplishment” from Filipinos, but in reality, Fil-Ams erased themselves from the historical record by leaving in a tantrum when others did not follow their demands…
Well, that’s my laugh for the day haha. Reminds me of the typical pinoy TikTok dances. Obviously many Filipinas are quite beautiful, but there is a reason why pinoy TikTok dance moves are relatively simple and do not involve much movement. I feel sorry for the kids though. It’s the adults that should’ve known better and protected the kids from this public debut before being ready.