to DOJ chief designate Leila de Lima – it is the constitution and the law, stupid

we celebrate noynoy aquino’s choice as DOJ chief in Leila de Lima. this woman knows her laws and has more balls than all the men in arroyo’s cabinet members have.

in her new role, we hope de lima will remember her true role – defender of the constitution and laws of the country, nothing more and nothing more. she serves the people in doing that job.

we are saying that as we have seen the various DOJ chiefs under arroyo forgetting what their job is.  under arroyo, the DOJ chief lawyered only for gloria macapagal arroyo, the person and the president, not for the country, not for the people and certainly not for the constitution and our laws.

we hope de lima will return DOJ  to its rightful place.

Rights chief to head DoJ

De Lima’s job: Pursue big grafters

MANILA, Philippines—A woman is poised to take on the toughest portfolio in the Cabinet of President-elect Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III.

Leila de Lima, the outspoken chair of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR), met with Aquino at his Times Street residence shortly before 2 p.m. Tuesday and left an hour later.

“He offered the position, I accepted. He will make the announcement,” De Lima told reporters after the meeting. She did not specify the position but it is widely assumed to be that of the justice secretary.

She said she would have to resign from the CHR where she is in the second year of a 7-year term.

The feisty legal eagle rose to prominence as a tough-talking election lawyer for the Genuine Opposition in 2007. She was appointed CHR chair when President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was parrying criticism for the record number of extrajudicial killings in her term.

Aquino had earlier told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that the justice portfolio was very crucial in his fight against corruption. He said his justice secretary would serve as his attack dog in pushing corruption cases against the First Family and its allies, crime syndicates, drug lords and smugglers.

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20100623-277073/Rights-chief-to-head-DoJ

june 30 noynoy aquino oath taking – wear yellow, yellow baller bands, ribbons on cars & homes

to celebrate noynoy aquino’s election win, his oath taking as president and to show support to the new president – turn the whole country into yellow.

wear yellow, put yellow ribbons on cars and in homes, wear the aquino baller bands, wear noynoy t-shorts on june 30 as noynoy takes his oath of office.

noynoy aquino oath taking – new politics, new governance

the inauguration of the new president, noynoy aquino , his first day in office defines further what the aquino administration is all about. aquino will dispense with the traditional parade and for something new, 100 T volunteers who helped aquino get elected will deliver an “oath to change”.

these are not the only new components of the aquino’s oath taking – a major new component is he will not take his oath from the supreme court chief justice renato corona but instead take his out from upreme Court Associate Justice Conchita Carpio-Morales. corona is the poster boy of gloria macapagal arroyo’s midnight appointment binge while morales is the lone sc justice who gave a dissenting opinion on the SC ruling allowing corona to get arroyo’s midnight appointment.

these othe two changes announced today is a refreshing change and a very welcome one. these changes signal a diferent kind of presidency that the country needs – one that i practical and very much in touch with the reality of the philippines, a country that is facing great challenges economically. we are a country that needs to save as much money as we can given the  economic growth challenges we face, the high deficit he will inherit from arroyo and the high debt.

aside from the money saving aspect, it also sends a signal that this presidency is much less about itself but of the people. the parade’s purpose is to pay tribute to aquino, to celebrate the beginning of his presidency but canceling the parade says it is not that at all, it is about the people selecting a new leader.

the other component  of aquino volunteers administering an “oath to change”  completes that picture.  aquino started on his quest for the presidency from a public clamor to run, launched his campaign on a pro-people, people-supported campaign and won the election on the same basis. the oath by the volunteers tells us the people promising to continually support aquino, saying aquino’s power come from the people and that the change that aquino will bring to the country will be complimented  by change from the people themselves.

all of the above is a stark and refreshing change from the previous arroyo administration where it seemed to have been obsessed on doing thins its way regardless of what the people say, want and don’t want. the arroyo administration has been faulted for being blind, deaf and mute on the needs of the people. it was governing the country in its own terms and for its own benefit, not the people.

it is those reasons that most of  the people cannot wait for arroyo to leave office. their disappointment on the arroyo administration has been expressed time and again on surveys after surveys and in the recent election where  aquino’;s candidate, gilbert teodoro never had a chance at winning  the election, remaining fourth in the surveys till election time.

a change in the presidency.. a change in the people. the change the country needs.

No parade for Aquino on June 30 inaugural
By TJ Burgonio
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:16:00 06/20/2010

TO SAVE ON COSTS, PRESIDENT-ELECT BENIGNO “Noynoy” Aquino III will break tradition and do away with the parade at his June 30 inaugural.

“Since the first regular inauguration in 1935, this is probably the only one without the inaugural parade,” historian Manuel Quezon III told the Inquirer Saturday on the phone. “He (Aquino) wants to save money, and because from his point of view, it’s really unnecessary.”

Aquino will take his oath as the Philippines’ 15th President and deliver his speech at high noon on June 30 at the Quirino Grandstand in Manila, in keeping with pre-martial law tradition.

So far, three Asian leaders—East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta, Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak—have confirmed attendance at the inaugural, a foreign affairs official said.

“But we expect a number of foreign ministers and special envoys to attend,” said the official, who asked not to be named for lack of authority to speak for the inaugural committee.

Their attendance “indicates solidarity and friendship” with us, the official said.

Secretary Ricardo Saludo, deputy spokesperson of President Macapagal-Arroyo, agreed, saying: “That’s a vote of confidence.”

Ramos-Horta is a friend of Aquino’s family. He was the only head of state who flew to the country in August 2009 to attend the wake and funeral of Aquino’s mother, former President Corazon Aquino.

Thailand and Malaysia have been “longtime” partners of the Philippines in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, aside from Malaysia’s role as a facilitator in the government’s negotiations with secessionist Moro rebels, officials said.

Innovation: Oath of change

In the past, an inaugural parade preceded the singing of the national anthem, the invocation, the oath-taking and the address of the incoming President.

While Aquino is dropping the parade, his inaugural team has introduced a novelty: The volunteer groups that helped in his campaign would deliver an “oath to change” at the Quirino Grandstand in response to his address.

“That’s an innovation,” said Quezon, the spokesperson for the inaugural, and also Inquirer columnist and host of ANC’s “The Explainer.”

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20100620-276542/No-parade-for-Aquino-on-June-30-inaugural

noynoy aquino oath taking – upholding principles

there will be a lot of words used to describe noynoy aquino’s decision to have Supreme Court Associate Justice Conchita Carpio-Morales to administer his out of office rather than SC Chief Justice renato corona, but for us this is how we will put it – it is noynoy aquino’s declaration that what it is all about is upholding of  principles and what is right.

renato corona is the poster boy of  president arroyo’s midnight appointment binge. while corona’s appointment as SC chief did not have any legal impediment and was allowed by the SC in a decision, it is not absolved on the basis of morals and delicadeza.

aquino does not want to have his oath taking as president tainted by corona administering the oath. he would rather have the lone justice who disagreed with the SC decision to allow corona to be appointed administer it to him even if it detracts from tradition.

to us, it is a bold and admirable declaration of independent thinking and determination to be on the side of principles and what is right. this may very well be the defining  moment of the aquino administration and very well done that it is happening on the very first second of the start of aquino’s presidency.

Lady justice to administer Aquino oath

The honor is mine,’ says Morales

By Dona Pazzibugan, Christine O. Avendaño
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:28:00 06/19/2010

MANILA, Philippines — Supreme Court Associate Justice Conchita Carpio-Morales has officially accepted President-elect Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III’s request that she swear him into office on June 30, in what could yet be the most high-profile snub of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s “midnight appointee,” Chief Justice Renato Corona.

Carpio-Morales—who will hold the distinction of being the Philippines’ first woman justice of the high court to swear in a President—told Aquino in a five-paragraph letter sent at around 10 a.m. Friday that she was accepting his “gracious invitation.”

“As you enter on the execution of your office, I wish that you make good use of your family’s and our country’s patrimony of intangibles—the common heritage of moral courage and good judgment—which cannot be matched by any amount of affluence and can sustain you in the political road ahead,” Carpio-Morales wrote Aquino.

“Please consider this as an acceptance of your gracious invitation. The honor is mine,” she said.

Carpio-Morales had instructed her staff not to release to the media a copy of her letter. But she apparently did not pose an objection to the Aquino camp’s making it public.

Lone dissenter

In her letter, Carpio-Morales thanked Aquino for his “kind words in describing what I consider to be a plain performance of an official function—to uphold and defend the Constitution—which is part of the sworn duty of all public servants in this country.”

“Your parents, themselves public servants, bequeathed a lasting legacy and left an indelible imprint in the life of the nation. What better tribute to them than a life of selfless service to the Filipino people they so dearly loved?” she said, referring to the late President Corazon Aquino and martyred Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr.

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20100619-276377/Lady-justice-to-administer-Aquino-oath

mar roxas defeat : wrong reading & strategic error or dropping of support?

found this article at PDI. roxas supporters are blaming aquino supporters dropping their support on mar roxas as the reason for the mar roxas losing this election. that was their conclusion.

but going through the article, that does not seem to be the reason for the loss. as they themselves said, they had misread the competitive landscape and made strategic errors in identifying who their key competitor is in this election.

based on this article, rather than aquino supporters dropping their support on roxas as the reason for roxas’ loss, these were the strategic errors they committed that led to roxas losing the election:

• they became over-confident when they saw loren legarda unable to catch up. they gave too much focus on legarda.
• shifting resources away from roxas to support aquino was a big mistake. you never leave your candidate unattended to.
• they were unable to see the resurgence of jejomar binay and were unable to launch a counter attack at the right time

competitive analysis and competitive watching is very important in marketing and apparently also in a vice presidential election. this is where the roxas campaign failed. they made very critical errors in reading the competitive set and dynamics.

Roxas supporters blame VP defeat on Aquino backers
By Nestor P. Burgos Jr.
Inquirer Visayas
First Posted 07:01:00 06/10/2010

ILOILO CITY—Some supporters of Sen. Manuel “Mar” Roxas II here blamed the defeat of the Liberal Party (LP) vice presidential candidate on supporters of President-elect Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III who allegedly junked Roxas in favor of Makati City Mayor Jejomar Binay.

“It hurt us that Aquino supporters were sleeping with the enemy,” an LP leader on Panay Island told the Inquirer on condition of anonymity for lack of authority to speak on the issue.

The “Noy-Bi (Aquino-Binay)” factions, which included several core groups in the Aquino camp, tipped the balance in favor of Binay, who was running under the rival Pwersa ng Masang Pilipino party.

Caught off guard

The LP insider said Roxas’ supporters in Panay were caught off guard by Binay’s surge, saying they were focused on keeping Sen. Loren Legarda of the Nacionalista Party at bay.

“We were confident of victory against Loren so we shifted the focus of the campaign and concentrated on Aquino in the last few weeks before the May 10 elections,” he said.

“We saw (Sen. Manuel Villar) inching up on Aquino and decided to re-channel our efforts to Noynoy. We did not anticipate Binay surging ahead,” the LP insider admitted.

He said the Roxas machinery practically shouldered the campaign and funding of the LP campaign on Panay Island, including the campaign for Aquino.

Junked

“We dedicated our machinery and resources for Aquino and ended up being junked by some of Aquino’s supporters. That was disappointing,” the party insider said.

But he acknowledged that Binay’s last-minute but aggressive campaigning among mayors on Panay Island dented Roxas’ hometown lead.

Binay’s people approached mayors, even those aligned with the LP, offering money and trying to win them over to an Aquino-Binay tandem, the LP leader claimed.

The junking of Roxas by Aquino supporters and the last-minute campaign of Binay supporters are seen as the reason Roxas did not lead by as large a margin as expected even in his supposed bailiwicks.

In Capiz, Roxas won over Binay with a margin of 116,526 votes—204,839 votes for Roxas against 88,313 votes for Binay.

final count: jejomar binay wins by 727T votes, 41.6% of the vote

anti-corruption president noynoy aquino declared president elect

“Hindi ako magnanakaw.” that is the line we all remember noynoy aquino said in his tv ads. and  that is the line that most of us embedded into our minds and got us to vote him to office.

today, congress will declare this man as the next president. we expect that he delivers starting july 1.

final results – aquino gets 15.2M, 42.1% of votes

post your Goodbye Message To Gloria and your Hello Message To Noynoy

we are counting just days before gloria macapagal arroyo leaves office and noynoy aquino takes over. here is a place where you can tell gloria what you feel and think as she leaves the presidency and as noynoy takes office.

click  here: http://goodbyegloriahellonoynoy.wordpress.com/

manual count audit shows no election cheating

we can have an army of  koala bears on video but that say anything about cheating in the election. the only thing it says is it’s interesting tv for a 15 seconds, not more, no less.

we think what really counts is the manual count audit that is being done. this marries old style vote counting versus new world vote counting where the old is checking on the new.

the manual count audit is yielding nothing that points to any form of election cheating.. they are correct to conclude that  when they saw no pattern in the errors. aside from the very low error,no pattern means there was no intervention from outside sources. for election cheating to occur, the cheaters need to use the computer system and programs used by the COMELEC. for cheating to be done, a pattern will emerge as that is the nature of computer programs. computer programs operate in distinct and predictable patterns.

they should complete the audit and its analysis soonest so that the election cheating charges will be laid to rest for good.

Manual audit shows ‘no vote tampering’
By Tarra Quismundo
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:23:00 05/31/2010

MANILA, Philippines—The accuracy of the country’s first automated elections still holds as a comparison of hand-counted and machine-counted votes showed variances that do not suggest any pattern or deliberate tampering, an official supervising the random manual audit (RMA) said Sunday.

Henrietta de Villa, chair of the RMA technical working group, said discrepancies so far noted did not suggest a pattern that could be attributed to intentional efforts to cheat.

The RMA, conducted through the collaboration of the Commission on Elections, National Statistics Office (NSO) and Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting (PPCRV), seeks to determine the accuracy of the automated count by comparing it with manually counted results from some 1,145 precincts nationwide.

“So far, what we see through our naked eye is that there is no pattern,” said De Villa, who is also the PPCRV chair.

She said that was the first thing she asked the encoders from the NSO, “‘Is there any pattern?’ And they said ‘there was none,’ because the variances we saw happened to different candidates in different places,” she said when reached by phone Sunday.

Human error

De Villa said one-digit to double-digit discrepancies were spotted in the evaluation, though some cases could be attributed to human error.

She cited one precinct where the board of election inspectors mistakenly wrote 352 votes as the total, while a validation of the hand count tallied with the machine count placed it at only 253 votes.

“But we don’t see any deliberate effort [to write the wrong results],” she said.

The RMA team has so far audited ballots from some 1,050 precincts as of Saturday night, said De Villa.

10 more days

Validation of the results might take 10 more days, De Villa said, as the technical evaluation committee would have to again conduct a per-ballot review of results from precincts where variances where noted.

“People might think we’re delaying this but it’s not that easy. In case of double-digit variances, we elevate that to the technical evaluation committee and they’d have to check again if the right ballots were counted,” De Villa said.

De Villa again called for discernment when looking at left-and-right charges of fraud, saying only cases with solid evidence should be investigated.

“If it’s really legitimate, then it should be investigated. But there are really some wild, wild accusations … Maybe some [candidates] would just like to be on the spotlight or prove that their allegations are correct,” she said.

president noynoy aquino’s campaign promises

we are posting here  the campaign promises that noynoy aquino has made during the campaign period.  we intend to go back to the list to see how he is doing against these promise.

• A SOCIAL CONTRACT WITH THE FILIPINO PEOPLE : THE PLATFORM OF SENATOR BENIGNO “NOYNOY” S. AQUINO III
• Noynoy Aquino – the problem solver we can trust
• presidentiables stand on how they will generate jobs
• presidentiables stand on improving philippine education
• on nuclear energy : aquino, de los reyes, madrigal & perlas no to nukes; gordon, teodoro, villanueva and villar yes to nukes
• presidentiables stand on population growth
• presidentiables stand on cha-cha and arroyo as speaker

Nick Perlas is my candidate but Noynoy Aquino is my President

First of all, I would like to thank and congratulate 2010 Presidentiables Blog for giving me a chance to be part of this blog. There were heated exchanges during the campaign period but of course that is part of what election and politics is. Wawam had to be congratulated for his blog and I hope that in 2013 we will see another one of this kind. I also hope that this blog will continue and this time MONITOR THE PERFORMANCE OF THE WINNERS.

Now on with the article which I originally posted at The Delano Observer.

I would like to agree and borrow this quote from Carlo Angelo Vargas, “Nick is my cadidate but now Aquino is my president,” this statement calls for healing and seeing beyond the difference of election and serving for our country.

I would also like to say that I have the same view. With all honesty I do not like Noynoy Aquino. As I have said in my blog, “Pagod Ka Na Bang Maging si Juan?” he is not the best choice for president but the people have spoken and they choose him.

Noynoy Aquino has a very mediocre track record as a legislator and he fails compare to his parents but we should still give him the benefit of the doubt. We should not wait and ensure that we prove our suspicions true and that he commits every mistake possible.

What we should do is really find ways to help him as our new president. Let us remember that if he fails, it is not only him that will suffer but it is the whole country that will be affected.

Again I would like to quote Carlo, “Nick is my candidate but now, Aquino is my president. As my president, I will support him when he is right, and hold him accountable when he is wrong.”

I am a Filipino, I am Maharlika and I am for the best interest of our country and our people.