PCSO issues; singing the way to peace and what the Pope said

The headline said President Noynoy has transferred control and supervision of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) from the Department of Health to the President’s office. Through a phone interview, Manoling Morato, once chairman of the PCSO, clarified. The word transferred is a wrong word used because the charitable institution technically has never been under the Department of Health. What is true is that the Office of the President continued its oversight function through the Department of Health. The Secretary of Health, Secretary Francisco Duque sat on the board representing the Palace’s oversight function. It would be interesting to know what President Noynoy contemplates as the Palace’s “control” over PCSO.

I wanted more information on the ballooning lotto prize that has everyone in my house betting every day. Certainly, the very idea of such a huge prize now more than P600 million, is so tantalizing they have been queuing to place their bets. That’s what gambling is all about. A chance game even as it has mind-boggling odds like 1 in 30 million. As Manoling told me, 6/55 is the hardest, if not impossible to win because of the odds. I have heard groups putting their bets together and playing with more combinations, but still no winner. If you think you are that 1 in 30 million, and you have great faith in chance, then play by all means, but Manoling said better lower your sights if you aim to win. It is easier to hurdle chance in the 6/42 and 6/49. But my son argues, well I must as well play chance to the hilt, anyway the money I spend on the bets go to charity.

This is one of the more misunderstood notions about the PCSO  it is for charitable purposes and mainly for individual patients needing help. It is also for funding charity hospitals. Its purview is much narrower  with individuals as main beneficiaries. The PCSO funds will be used for other purposes. Executive Order 14 includes using it for “calamities, disasters relief and emerging illnesses.”

That is when the difficulties begin as to who would decide how the funds will be distributed among the different offices that could lay claim to the funds. But I would imagine that new rules would be required if the PCSO’s remit were to be expanded. Historically, the funds come from the public, ie Lotto bets and intended for individual patients. 

According to Morato there are thousands of applicants, most of them in life and death situations that have not been met. He certainly does not think you can put a P20,000 cap for heart and kidney patients awaiting surgery.

As for the PCSO move from its offices in Quezon City to the PICC in Roxas Boulevard, some 1,200 employees have complained to Morato about the personal hardship it brought to them. These families with pittance salaries had earlier moved to QC to be near the office and schools in the area for their children. Once again they are asked to fork out more money to commute to work. As for their children one can only guess what painful decisions had to be made so they could continue schooling. Sometimes, bureaucratic decisions can be so cruel to poor employees who carry most of the workload of the institution anyway.

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One of the bonuses during our trip to Negros was to tag along with Tess Lopez of Vallehermoso Helping Hands Foundation, Inc. who was our host in Vallehermoso, Negros Oriental. With her as guest was Tal Kravitz, a musician and a singer who could play both ordinary and odd musical instruments. Have you ever heard someone sing Amazing Grace to the accompaniment of music from an ordinary saw? That’s what he did when he played before the parishioners in the Vallehermoso parish church. He does not charge for his music. Some of the parishioners had come from distant homes in the mountains around the village but that Sunday, it was well worth the trek and you could see this in their lighted faces and their applause for encores. I think that whoever thought of Tal as Israel’s ambassador for peace and goodwill has hit the jackpot. He knows how to win an audience whether rich or poor with his music. But as he told us he enjoys his work looking for original tribal music in far corners of the world. In exchange he introduces distant peoples to music from Western civilization. Tal plays piano, harp, guitar, a variety of bagpipes, the musical saw, African percussion instruments and more. East Africa and Papua New Guinea are some of the places he’s reached, photographing the indigenous tribes’ lifestyles and recording their music as it was sung and played for thousands of years. But he loves the Philippines and this is his third time here.

The inevitable question remains how to bring peace between the Arabs and Israelis. Could he do it by singing his way through? If you think that his singing can break the Israeli stereotype of Mossad, then we are on to a good thing. He says other Israelis and his own Arab friends (one is a best friend) believe in the two state solution. Maybe we should raise our voices in song to that.

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Peter Seewald, the author who interviewed Pope Benedict denies stories in international and local media that said, based on his interview “the Pope says condoms are justified against HIV.” I quote from the pertinent part of the interview.

Peter Seewald: Are you saying, then, that the Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?

Pope Benedict: She of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution (emphasis mine), but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality (emphasis mine).

Pope Benedict gave a long answer to a rather short question. I highlighted the parts that spell out clearly Benedict’s convictions as well as that of the Church’s. What some interpreters took out in isolation was that part where it says, “There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility…”. They did not even finish the whole sentence.