That New York Times editorial on Pres. Noy
Our guest for our special presentation on our talk show “Straight from the Sky” is a very special person who came to the Philippines for a series of meetings. His name is Tim Harvey and he works with Google… yes that Google in Mountain View, California. Tim Harvey is an American who is married to someone from San Carlos City and he has a love and passion for Philippine languages… and yes, he doesn’t believe that the Philippines should have a national language. That’s the reason why I have him on this tv talk show.
Tim Harvey is a software engineer and in the early 1990s, while an engineer with PI Systems (which designed an early pen-based tablet computer), he came to the Philippines to arrange for development partners. Later, he returned to establish “Ato Ni,” an outsource company that did early preparation work in advance of the release of Windows 95.
In the late 1990s Tim Harvey started the Bisaya Website and later became a founding member of DILA with Ernie Turla (a friend and neighbor in Portland, Oregon) and other advocates of Philippine languages. I joined DILA very early and knew the name of Tim Harvey, but I have never met him before.
But Tim Harvey’s greatest contribution to the preservation of the Cebuano language happened recently. Three years ago, when you clicked on Google, the default language it used for the Philippines was Tagalog/Filipino.
Because Tim works for Google, he asked the team to use Tagalog as our default language for the Philippines. Where did it get this information? The answer was, the CIA Fact book. Tim told the Google Team that created the default language that there are numerous languages in the Philippine archipelago and it agreed to restore the default for the Philippines to English with languages for Tagalog and Cebuano if anyone wished to utilize these.
This is what our guest Tim Harvey has done to preserve the Cebuano language. So please watch this very interesting talk with Tim Harvey on SkyCable’s channel 61 at 8:00 tonight with replays on Wednesday and Saturday same time and channel. Replays also on MyTV’s channel 30 at M-W-F.
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I have never done this in my 27 years of writing columns. But last Aug.28, 2014, The New York Times came up with an editorial about the plan by Pres. Benigno Aquino III to extend his term. I’m sure that our faithful readers do not have a copy of this New York Times editorial, so I will reprint this story so that our readers would know how the No.1 US newspaper thinks of Pres. Aquino. So here’s the article in full.
“POLITICAL MISCHIEF IN THE PHILIPPINES
President Benigno Aquino III of the Philippines is now hinting at running for a second term in 2016, which would require a constitutional amendment. He has also suggested limiting the power of the Supreme Court, which, on July 1, declared parts of Mr. Aquino’s economic program illegal. That, too, would require adjusting the Constitution.
These threats jeopardize Philippine democracy. Mr. Aquino wants more time to complete his reform programs, but there will always be unfinished business. The 1987 Constitution limits the president to a single six-year term. The Constitution was promulgated under his mother, Corazon Aquino, after the overthrow of the 20-year dictatorship predecessors, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of Ferdinand Marcos. Despite her efforts, the presidency remained a fount of patronage and a source of corruption.
Mr. Aquino’s two immediate and Joseph Estrada, were charged after they left office with illegally feeding from the public trough. Ms. Arroyo was charged with misusing state lottery funds. Mr. Estrada was removed from office and convicted of various corruption charges, but he was pardoned in 2007.
Mr. Aquino believes that the Supreme Court has grown too powerful and that someone needs to reassert executive authority.
By a 13-to-0 vote, the court struck down a spending program he created to stimulate the economy. It ruled that he had exceeded his authority in disbursing funds and that parts of the program consisted of irregular pork-barrel spending. Mr. Aquino came to power in 2010 vowing to rid the Philippines of corruption. At that time, the country ranked 134th in Transparency International’s corruption index.
In 2013, it ranked 94th. Mr. Aquino should uphold the Constitution of a fragile democracy if only out of respect for his father, who was assassinated in the struggle against Marcos, and for his mother, who died in 2009 after leading the “people power” that triumphed over the excesses and abuses of the presidency. In practical terms, that means he should stop butting heads with the court and gracefully step down when his term is up.” This New York Times article ought to put Pres. Aquino in his proper place. Indeed, it is no longer us Filipinos bashing PNoy! Even the Yanks are also bashing him for being a threat to Philippine Democracy! PNoy ought to resign.
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