National photo-bomber Torre de Manila

While surfing the Net last Friday, I chanced upon a very interesting and quite timely news item and photos at
ABS-CBNnews.com posted by my good friend Isagani de Castro. From his post dateline Quanzhou, China
Isagani was obviously on an official trip in that city in the province of Fujian.
While on a visit in this part of China, Isagani was apparently shown on a tour that our very own national hero,
Dr. Jose Protacio Rizal has a look-alike monument as that one in Luneta. Posted along with his story, entitled
Look: Why Rizal has a shrine in China, were several photographs of Rizals monument at the site.
One of the photos showed a close-up of the monuments marker showing a brief narrative about Rizal, one
written in Chinese characters and below it the English translation. It read: (verbatim)
Dr. Jose Rizal (1861-1896)
Philippine National Hero with Roots in FuJian
Jose Rizal was a versatile writer, doctor, artist and scientist. He criticized the corruption of the Spanish
colonial government for which he was executed in Manila on December 30,1896. His death had awakened the
Filipino peoples cause of revolution.
Rizals roots are in Shang guo Village. His paternal great-great grandfather was Domingo Lamco, Ke Yi Nan
in chinese, an immigrant to the Philippines. For his noble character and heroic sacrifice in the name of freedom
for the Filipino people. Jose Rizal is highly esteemed by many Chinese worldwide who take grate pride in the
fact, that his roots can be traced to china. (sic)
Isagani did not say in his story if he was invited on an official trip or he is on vacation in China. But a veteran
journalist like him could not ignore, of course, to write about it. Isaganis discovery of Rizals monument in
China is something newsworthy and timely to share back home. He wrote:
A visitor to the Rizal Shrine here in Jinjiang, Fujian province, southern China cant help but compare it to the
Rizal Monument in Luneta amid the photobomber controversy.
Regardless of ones stand on DMCIs Torre de Manila project, Dr. Jose Rizals statue in Jinjiang county looks
more dignified without any structure in the background.
The shrine is described in the memorial wall as surrounded with blooming flowers and greenery, grand and
impressive monument.
The Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry and 7 other organizations proposed to
build a Rizal Shrine here to commemorate Rizals Chinese roots.
Rizal was the 22nd generation descendant of the first generation Ke family whose roots are in Shang Guo
village in Jinjiang. Rizals great-great grandfather was Domingo Lameo, or Ke Yi Nan in Chinese, who
immigrated to the Philippines.
The Rizal Shrine stands as a symbol of friendship between China and the Philippines. According to the Knights
of Rizal, it is the biggest Rizal Shrine outside of the Philippines.
In 1999, then-President Joseph Estrada and then-Chinese Ambassador Fu Ying laid the foundation for the
memorial.
Construction of the Rizal Shrine here started in 2003 and was completed that same year.

1861, the year Rizal was born, was used as basis for the height of the monument 18.61 meters.
The photo-bomber controversy refers to the Torre de Manila, a 49-storey condominium building now in the
center of legal battle. Last June 16, our Supreme Court (SC) ordered DMCI Project Developers, Inc. to stop
further construction and development activities at the Torre de Manila project along Taft Avenue, Manila.
The word photo-bomber is the latest term coined to denote someone or something that gets into the way and
distracts the view from the subject or object of the photograph.
Torre de Manila thus earned this moniker after the public first noted its towering presence overnight and getting
into the background of the Rizal monument in Luneta located just a kilometer away.
Voting 8-5, the High Court issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) in favor of petitioner, Order of the
Knights of Rizal. The Rizalistas filed their petition in September, 2014 to oppose the continuing erection of the
condominium. In their petition, they alleged the Torre de Manila project violates the 1987 Constitution on the
conservation and promotion of the countrys historical and cultural heritage.
Moreover, the petitioners invoked Republic Act No. 4846, also known as the Cultural Properties Preservation
and Protection Act; and RA No. 10066, also known as the National Cultural Heritage Act of 2009. The petition
likewise argued that the project violated the Manila zoning ordinance and is nothing but an eyesore on the
Rizal monument. Other groups led by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and concerned citizens
have denounced the building as something that will devalue the Rizal monument as a national historical
landmark.
The DMCI, however, defended the development of the controversial project, citing the companys having
obtained all the required legal permits and approval of concerned agencies, including the Manila City Hall
during the term of former Mayor Alfredo Lim. The DMCI earlier decried the photo-bomb claim against Torre de
Manila as something that was photo-shopped to deliberately enrage the public.
Last Friday, DMCI got allies from the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) that issued an
official statement prodding the government to allow the Torre de Manila project to continue. The PCCI noted
the DMCI has spent P1 billion on the project and stopping it and other projects that complied with the
National Building Code could discourage investments.
Further, the DMCI admitted they have pre-sold more than 800 condo units when the SC issued the TRO. In
their recent paid ad, the DMCI claimed the Office of the Solicitor General, representing the government,
supports their legal stand on the case.
The High Court set on July 21 the oral arguments of the petitioners and the DMCI to help them settle the fate
of the so-called national photo-bomber, Torre de Manila.

EDITORIAL - Investing in public health

Basic hygiene should be among the basic lessons provided in grade school. But how can children follow their
hygiene lessons when they lack access to toilets and running water in their own home?
The World Health Organization and United Nations Childrens Fund reported recently that more than seven
million Filipinos do not have toilets at home and defecate anywhere, with an estimated 570,000 using buckets
and open-pit latrines.
The WHO and Unicef, in their report on countries progress in achieving Millennium Development Goals for
sanitation and drinking water, also found that about 2.3 million Filipinos still get untreated surface water from

dams, canals and rivers, while another 6.1 million get water that is not filtered or treated from wells and
springs.
Health experts have stressed that many diseases can be prevented and overall health improved, especially
among children, merely through regular hand washing with soap and water. For those with no access to tap
water in their own homes, this is not a simple activity. Even public schools in some urban centers lack running
water in their toilets.
Providing sanitary toilets to impoverished communities has been a problem for decades. A corruption scandal
over toilet communities during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos highlighted the problem. The WHO and
Unicef report shows that three decades later, theres still a lot of work ahead in giving millions of Filipinos
access to proper sanitation and water facilities.
Officials say that since 1990, about 40 million Filipinos have gained access to clean water and toilets. But
family ownership of mobile phones is higher than the number of toilets per household, according to a lawmaker
who is seeking higher appropriation for building public bathrooms, toilets and facilities for clean water.
With state health coverage continuing to expand, providing access to sanitation and clean water can translate
into huge savings in public health care costs. This is on top of the fact that health is truly wealth: healthy people
are more productive and contribute to nation building. Investing in a nations human capital always has
guaranteed returns.

Fake rice?
HE INITIAL results are disturbing butit must be emphasizedinconclusive. More tests are
required before the Food Development Center (FDC) of the National Food Authority can say
categorically that suspect rice being sold in Davao City is syntheticthat is, fake rice. But because
the NFA has already fielded more than 20 complaints from different parts of the country about
possibly fake rice, and because grains mixed with plastic may lead to serious health problems, it
is only right that the appropriate authorities investigate the matter with dispatch.
Rice is not only the countrys staple food; it is, preeminently, a political commodity. That is to say,
it is quite literally a gut issue, and can make or break political fortunes. To this unchanging reality,
the synthetic rice controversy adds another complication: Persistent reports assert that the fake
rice has been smuggled in from China. The government needs to identify the source of the suspect
rice as soon as possible; will Chinese authorities help speed up the process of identification?
This and other intriguing questions may be raised at a hearing this week of the Senate committee on
food and agriculture. But the fundamental question is simpler: Is fake rice in fact being sold in the
country?
According to the FDC, the sample taken from Davao City was found to be contaminated with
dibutyl phthalate or DBP, a raw material for making flexible plastic products. That is disturbing in
itself; DBP is used in the manufacture of various products, including food-containing items like
plastic wraps and lunch boxes. But the sample was too small for the NFA to reach a definite
conclusion. More tests are needed, with bigger samples (more than a kilo of rice grains per sample),
before any scientifically valid conclusion can be reached.
Now that President Aquino has ordered both the Department of the Interior and Local Government
and the Department of Justice to investigate the issue, we expect the Philippine National Police and
the National Bureau of Investigation to move speedily: to isolate the sources of the allegedly

synthetic rice, to determine the areas where it has been sold, not least to obtain adequately sized
samples for immediate laboratory testing.
The possibility now exists that with two law enforcement investigations launched, a Senate hearing
in the works, and a hearing in the House of Representatives getting underway, too, we may all get
the wrong signal and reach premature conclusions. It is easy enough for political or election-related
considerations to drive the food-security aspect out of the picture. Herewith, two reminders:
We should not raise false alarms. Former senator Francis Pangilinan, now presidential assistant for
food security and agricultural modernization, has issued a statement saying he had been informed
that, for harmful effects to be felt, one has to be ingesting DBP every day for at least three months.
This is reassuring, butin this day and agewe need the source of that information, presumably a
scientist, to inform the public himself, or herself. The government can make that person available
today and for the next several days to belabor the point.
At the same time, we should not create a false sense of complacency. We realize that a skeptical
public may find the very notion of eating raw material for plastic products, even if just once, to be
sickening. It is incumbent on the PNP and the NBI to determine as soon as possible when the
suspect rice first landed in the country, and how much of it has actually been sold.
And if the suspect rice is established to be systematically contaminated (plastic extenders have been
known to be added to food products to lower costs of production in a loosely regulated or lowstandard economy), then the police and the NBI must take the necessary next step: File the
appropriate charges against those who brought the fake rice into the country and send them to a real
jail.

Read more: http://opinion.inquirer.net/86456/fake-rice#ixzz3f4e0nxWu

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Poverty persists despite the rhetoric

ACCORDING to the latest installment of a regularly conducted survey by the Ibon Foundation, five years of the
Aquino Administrations straight path has hardly dented the persistence of poverty in the Philippines.
The survey, which the group reports was conducted among nearly 1,500 families across the country in midMay, reveals that 67 percent of the respondents 2 out of every 3 people consider themselves poor. About
24 percent consider themselves not poor, while a little less than 10 percent were either unsure or offered no
response.
The results stand in stark contrast, as they almost always do, to official government estimates of poverty
prevalence. In the most recent report of the official Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES), poverty
incidence was estimated to be just 26 percent, with 10.5 percent falling below the subsistence threshold.
Government officials invariably point to differences in survey methodology as the source of the usual
discrepancy between the FIES and the Ibon survey, and to some extent they are correct.
However, experienced statisticians familiar with both have suggested that such technical differences should
only amount to differences in the results of a few percentage points one way or another. The results of the Ibon

survey, which show poverty incidence is more than double what the government claims, may not be completely
accurate (it has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 3 percent, which the experts say is normal for a survey of
this type), but they cannot possibly be so erroneous as to differ from the government data by an entire order of
magnitude or more.
One clue to the difference is the definition of poverty used by the government, compared with what the Ibon
Foundation estimates is a realistic poverty threshold. The official government poverty threshold is P58 per
person per day. At current exchange rates, that is equivalent to $1.28, very close to the $1.25 per day
threshold considered an international standard. By comparison, Ibon estimates a family of six actually requires
P1,086 per day, or about P181 ($4.00) per person.
What is important to remember, however, is that the Ibon survey does not identify poverty according to an
income benchmark, but rather peoples perceptions; one could be earning well over the established threshold
and still feel poor.
That is what should be of grave concern to the Aquino Administration and anyone who hopes to succeed
President BS Aquino 3rd. For all the rhetoric about Tuwid na Daan and inclusive growth, two-thirds of the
country still feel they are disadvantaged. And circumstances such as the lagging recovery from calamities such
as Typhoon Yolanda, the persistently high cost of power, deteriorating transportation infrastructure, and
expensive, unreliable services such as water and internet, suggest those feelings are not at all misplaced.
That two-thirds of the Filipino people feel they are no better off and perhaps even worse off than they were
before Aquino took office should be regarded by the President and his coterie for what it is an embarrassing
shame and an indictment against his governments lack of sensitivity and attention to peoples basic needs.