2010 'Man' of the Year

In October last year, we wrote about the “unheralded gains” marked by the administration of President Aquino during his first few months in office, which includes the recognition of the efforts of the Department of Justice (DOJ) under the leadership of Secretary Leila de Lima in the war against human trafficking.

We noted that these gains have been hailed by the business sector, including various foreign chambers of commerce who saw the importance of De Lima’s efforts at cleansing the ranks of the Bureau of Immigration (BI) and stepping up the prosecution of parties accused of human trafficking.

We also said that the business sector has a major stake in De Lima’s success in her anti-human trafficking campaign. This is good for the country’s overall international reputation which, in turn, makes for a conducive atmosphere for business and investments in the country.

Our observation regarding De Lima’s significant role in the current administration has recently been affirmed by two entities.

The first is the survey firm Social Weather Station. In its report released in November last year, the SWS said De Lima is the top performer in the Aquino cabinet, having registered the highest net satisfaction rating at positive 54 percent.

Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman was at second spot, with positive 26 percent, or less than half the net satisfaction rating given by the public to the Justice Secretary.

The other entity is Graphic Magazine which recently named De Lima its 2010 “Man of the Year.”

The magazine echoed our earlier observation. It said it “could not have picked a better man for its Man of the Year issue than this Odin of a woman.” Odin is a god in the North Germanic tradition who is associated with wisdom and battle. We believe the magazine had used a very appropriate analogy.

Here’s how the magazine explained why the Secretary is an Odin in battle: “In her Incident and Investigation Review Committee Report (IRCR), De lima neither blinked nor held back her punches, including in it some very prominent names in Philippine politics and even the media.”

“Even while the males of this administration busy themselves with moves to get out of the honky-tonk dilemma they are in, De Lima tacitly walks where none of Aquino’s men dare tread. That, by any standards, is balls,” it added.

De Lima’s character is evident in the government’s intensified war against syndicates preying on workers, women and children and who traffic them for financial gain.

Under her watch, the immigration bureau terminated some 500 so-called confidential agents suspected of being involved in unethical and illegal practices. Many of these ex-agents have political patrons who immediately trained their guns on the secretary’s clean-up drive. A “man” with weaker “balls” would have blinked. Not De Lima.

Some quarters apparently attempted to fuel a call for the appointment of De Lima to the vacant post of Commission on Elections chair. Many in the business sector wondered aloud as to whether or not this was a ploy by some characters to get the Secretary out of their way.

She said she prefers to stay at the DOJ to finish her tasks. The business sector appears to be happy over that decision.

After all, the country needs a “man” at the DOJ.

A resurrected proposal

If it is true that Swiss company Sicpa Products Security SA (Sicpa) has found a very strong ally in the law firm Marcos Ochoa Serapio Tan, the former law firm of Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa Jr. , then we won’t be surprised if Sicpa’s proposal for a stamp tax system “rises from the ashes.”

Sicpa’s unsolicited proposal has been given the death sentence by both Congress and the DOJ due to financial, legal and even constitutional infirmities by Congress, but lo and behold, it is staging a comeback.

Rumors have it that even the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) chief Kim Henares was taken aback when told about the new law firm engaged by Sicpa.

In its comeback, Sicpa is rehashing its old claims. It is saying that government can raise P100 billion in just seven years with the use of its system which allegedly can stop massive smuggling and tax leakages in the tobacco industry.

Congress, after conducting several hearings, found that Sicpa has failed to substantiate its claim of massive smuggling and tax leakages.

In one congressional hearing, Sicpa director Hans Schwab when asked if his company has verified the existence of illicit trade in the country responded that “their assumptions were based on local and international studies on illicit tobacco trade and that it is not their responsibility to explore illicit trade in the country as it is a government prerogative.” He further clarified that Sicpa is “not a research organization.”

Even National Tax Research Center (NTRC) director Dante Sy said during the same hearing that “the data is really very difficult to validate as the survey must be done on a national scale.”

Further, when Schwab was challenged by Rep. Rufus Rodriguez during the hearing to provide justification for his statement that “there is a marked shift from the illegal drug trade to illicit tobacco trade” in the Philippines, Schwab merely said that his statements were based on “international studies.”

Thus, the House ways and means committee in its report said Sicpa’s claim of massive illicit trade of tobacco products is unverified and that in the absence of any validation by the BIR, National Economic and Development Authority, and the NTRC on the assumptions used by Sicpa, the committee cannot simply assume or accept the existence of a tax leakage that will warrant the investment of P18 billion.

A whopping P18 billion price tag warrants a basis more solid than unsubstantiated claims.

Unlimited, not infinite

The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) came out with proposed rules to address the declining quality of broadband Internet connections, it knew from the start that the problem had two sides to it.

This is the reason why in its proposed memorandum circular, the NTC said that while the service providers specify only the maximum speed of connection and that subscribers have the right to be informed of the quality of the service being provided, it is also true that there are some users who connect to the internet for unreasonably long periods of time or simply download too much.

The NTC, upon the suggestion of telecom companies, inserted a provision that allowed service providers to set the maximum volume of data allowed per subscriber/user, thereby preventing network abuse by unscrupulous subscribers who violate intellectual property laws by downloading movies and software, as well as those who subscribe to unlimited call/text promotions which were primarily designed for person-to-person use but are instead used for voluminous commercial undertakings.

Just how abusive are they? I was told that one percent of the subscribers account for about half of the network’s capacity. And this one percent pays P50 per day for unlimited internet connectivity but during the course of the day download as much as 25 gigabytes of data, equivalent to 50 movies. Since they are downloading huge volumes of data, they leave the computer connected to the internet the whole day. What does one do with 50 movie downloads per day? Sell them?

This one percent clogs up the system to the detriment of the 99 percent, which includes those who pay more than P50 per day but are responsible enough to know that “unlimited” does not mean infinite.

So when the NTC all of a sudden backtracks and removes the proposed provision that would allow telecom companies to put a cap on the volume of internet usage, the 99 percent can’t help but cry foul.

 Some would say that it is not the consumers’ fault that the telcos introduced the concept of “unlimited use.” But even the availment of unlimited offerings is subject to the unspoken rule of fair use.

Network bandwidth after all is not unlimited. Telcos invest billions for it. Unfortunately, there is one percent of the population of internet users that have abused and misused this finite resource.

It is for this reason that a number of telcos in other countries have laid out their fair use policy. In Hongkong, PCCW said that the policy (the reasonable expectation that customers will not abuse, misuse, exhaust, waste or otherwise take unfair advantage of telco services to the detriment of other users) is precisely meant to ensure that all users will be given a fair opportunity to access the telco services.

These telcos have imposed penalties for abusive or excessive use, including reducing the transmission speed of the broadband service and suspension if not termination of service.

 I was in talks with some of our local telcos and I told them that they can actually reduce the transmission speed if the network detects that too much data is being downloaded by a particular user without the user knowing that he is penalized. After all, even by the removal of the controversial “data cap” provision in the proposed NTC circular, the telcos are not prohibited from unilaterally putting a cap.

But they insist that their proposal to revive the data cap provision is meant more to educate the public as to fair use. They said they would prefer to be transparent rather than put the cap surreptitiously.

Is putting a cap of say 20 gigabytes per day unreasonable? Next time, try finding out how much data you download on the average daily and see if it even approximates 20 Gb. If not, then there is every reason to castigate those abusing the network. Unlimited after all means unlimited connectivity, not the ability to download infinite volumes of data to the detriment of other more responsible users.

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