Finding your True Self

…..A Reflection on the Matrix movie

A scene wherein Neo finds his true self and capabilities

     
     Although I have watched the Matrix several times before when I was still a child, it is only now that I thought about the message that the movie wants us to think critically about. Before, the only things that I noticed were the cool outfits and the slow-motion action scenes. Now, while I was watching the movie, my mind kept thinking about whether the idea of the matrix can be real and is it possible that we are just not yet “awaken”. 


     Focusing on Neo and his journey to find his true self, there were a lot of obstacles that hindered him from finding it. These were public opinion, environment, and his own beliefs and thoughts. Right now, we live in a society that is greatly influenced by media and the cyber-world. Sometimes, I really do question myself if I am what I want to be or if I am simply going with the flow and be just like anybody else. Relating the matrix concept to real life, I believe that the media is our version of the “fake world” in the movie where everything seems normal and good. Without the media, our world would become boring and plain. In the matrix, neo was easily swayed by the words of the oracle. When she said that he was not the one, he immediately believed it and lost hope for some time. We are also the same, we immediately believe or get affected by what others tell us even though we try to reject the idea, it still lingers in our subconscious. It was only when neo himself lets go of his uncertainties and truly believed in what he wanted to be that he was able to find his true self. This movie just makes us re-think and reflect on what is our perceived self and it’s difference with our true self. It shows that in order to find your true self, one must not let anyone or anything change your beliefs. For me, the journey of neo also signifies how hard it is to find your true self but it is indeed attainable.

An example on how different reality is for everyone

A day in Cyber World

<For my PHILOPE class>

A day in my Cyber World

          It is already a routine that I log onto my computer, access the internet, and travel through the cyber world. My daily travel routine starts with going to Gmail. Before everything else, I make it a point to check my emails regularly to see if I have new mail or updates on stuff I subscribed to. My second destination is Facebook, where I socialize with my friends, update my status, upload new pictures -if there are some, and sometimes view the profile of people I’m intrigued about. I leave the Facebook tab open so that I can still chat with people even when I’m already in my next destination which is Twitter. Before, I kept an alias of bananarama07 in twitter so that people I’m close to won’t see the rants or current updates that I don’t really want them to see but then my friends found out about my alias and so I might as well post my real name. I mostly use twitter to “cyber stalk” my foreign idols and tweet what I’m currently into, where I am, or just virtually shout when I am “fangirl-ing” about a celebrity, drama, movie, etc. In other words, I let out my crazy side on twitter. My next destination is Yesasia.com where I check if the new album or official goods of my favourite artists are already available, if there are and if they are affordable then I purchase them right away. On some days, I side-trip to Multiply.com where I mostly do my online shopping and to Mangafox.com where I read mangas. Next destination is Youtube where I watch the current episodes of my favourite Japanese comedy show –Gaki no Tsukai Ya Arahende, I also watch some music videos and then download them if I find them worthy enough to be re-watched. The last destination I go to on cyber world is Asianfanfics.net where I read a lot of fan made fiction or “fanfics” until I get sleepy and end my cyber journey. My journey’s destinations are mostly social networking sites where I get in touch with friends that I already associated with the whole day before going into the cyber world. 

Corruption in the Media

In the last two decades, murdering journalists has developed into a terrible industry across the Philippines. According to the National Union of Journalists in the Philippines, Esperat was the sixty-seventh journalist killed since 1986. As of February 2009, the National Union of Journalists in the Philippines list had grown to 100, including no fewer than sixty-four since former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo assumed office in 200.

Arnel Manalo, a columnist for a local newspaper in a province in the Philippines, was killed by two men on August 2004; Armando Pace, a radio commentator in Mindanao, was shot in the back by two men in public with many witnesses; Fernando Batul, a radio commentator in Palawan, was shot by two men on May 2006. Another is the case of George and Macel Vigo, a husband and wife journalist team in Mindanao, who was murdered by two men on a motorcycle on June 2006. And Marlene Esperat herself whose partner, also a journalist by whom she had two children, was assassinated in 1989.

In 2009, the Committee to Protect Journalists or more commonly known as CPJ ranked the Philippines as the sixth most dangerous nation for journalists. The Philippines ranked directly after Iraq, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sri Lanka and Colombia which is more dangerous than Afghanistan, Russia and Pakistan. According to CPJ, what’s striking is that “that the Philippines is one of the only countries in the top half of this list that is a stable, peacetime democracy.”

Most of the murders things in common: the victims were provincial journalists, that are not usually not connected with major news organisations; the victims were exposing stories either through commentary corruption and abuse of power in their locality. Esperat, a columnist for the Midland Review, a local newspaper in Tacurong City in Sultan Kudarat province, was a former government employee who had dedicated her life to detailing graft in the regional office of the Department of Agriculture.

Also, the murderers were unknown gunmen, who are presumed to be hired killers. Fourth, hardly any of the killers have been caught. Vergel Santos, a trustee of the watchdog Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR), says: “I can count the number of solved cases on the fingers of one hand.” The Bangkok-based Southeast Asia Press Alliance (SEAPAsays there have been 78 Philippine journalist murders since 1986, and only two have been “partly resolved”.



Sources:

Robles, 2009

National Union of Journalists of the Philippines
http://www.nujp.org/media%20killings%202005.htm

Philippines' politics and corruption

In the Philippines, the government controls the school system, while provincial authorities are in charge of health-care matters. Thus, a national preventive health programme in primary schools depends on funds from the provinces’ budgets.

Fit For School (FFS) is a program that ensures that children in government-run elementary schools wash their hands with soap every day, brush their teeth with fluoride toothpaste and are de-wormed every six months. To implement the programme, the education and health sectors of the Philippines are pooling efforts.

Fit For School is also the name of the Philippine NGO that supervises the programme. Its work is supported financially and with human resources by InWent, GTZ, CIM and the pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. Because it is simple, effective and in line with global and national health policies, FFS is successful. Its acceptance was boosted considerably by a campaign run by various UN organisations and multinational soap manufacturers to mark Global Handwashing Day. The program fits neatly into the structures of the centralised education sector and is thus easy to implement. The schools cooperate. What is more difficult is the funding and procurement of the materials by the local governments. Local education authorities (Schools Divisions) report to central government. They are responsible for implementation. The health sector, on the other hand, is decentralised, so soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste and de-worming tablets are financed and procured by provincial authorities. The programe costs about 50 Pesos a year per child and is thus affordable even for provincial governments that are strapped for cash. But, the support of provincial governors is crucial, according to Alex Villano of the League of the Provinces, an umbrella organisation: “Once staff realise that their governor is interested in the project they will hold the line.” From then on, it is all plain sailing. For the same reason, PhilHealth, the national health insurance agency, also focuses on governors, as a staff member explains: “We talk only to one person and that is the provincial governor. If you get his commitment, then the job is almost done.” Governors also have an impact on local education authorities. According to a senior school nurse, one reason for teachers and Schools Division health officials cooperating on successful FFS introduction in her province was funding from the provincial government: “We are really committed because we don't want to fail the governor after he invested a lot of money.”

Sources:

Schneider, 2009

Monse, 2009

Obermann, 2009

Corruption and tax

High tax rates do not guarantee high tax revenues. A World Bank report argues that other reforms are needed.

The Financial Times reports that Kenya has more than doubled its tax revenues since 2003. And that is not because it has put up taxes. Most of the increase comes from tackling tax-office corruption. One important measure the country has taken is limiting personal contact between taxpayers and tax officers to a bare minimum, thus cutting out encounters where officials might give taxpayers a tax break for a “fee”. According to Michael Waweru, head of the Kenyan Revenue Authority, that form of corruption has decreased significantly since tax payers were given the option of submitting tax declarations via the Internet and making payments online. “It was a small reform that gave a phenomenal result,” Waweru said.

In the World Bank’s eyes, Kenya has taken exactly the right action. According to the report “Paying Taxes 2008”, a joint publication of the World Bank and auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers, a transparent and unbureaucratic tax system with moderate tax rates is the best way to increase and consolidate tax revenue. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, when all taxes are added together, a business has to hand over 230 % of its profit to the tax man. That is only in theory, however, as can be seen from the country’s low tax ratio, which is just 6.3 % of GNP (2004). In Kenya, by comparison, the tax burden for businesses is 51 % of profits. But the 2004 tax ratio, at 17.2 %, was more than twice as high as that in Congo. Countries with high tax burdens “can potentially increase tax revenue by lowering rates and persuading more businesses to comply with the new tax system,” the report says.

Apart from tax cuts and the introduction of online tax declarations, the World Bank and PricewaterhouseCoopers recommend that all taxes with the same base (e.g. income or profit) should be combined. In El Salvador, a business needs to make 66 tax payments a year; in Malawi the figure is 30, in Bangladesh 17 and in Chile 10. The report’s authors also believe it is important to simplify tax laws and make tax audit rules clearer for the taxpayer. Tax revenue in countries with standardised tax audits, they say, is 18 % higher on average than in other countries, even if they have lower tax rates.

Sources:

http://www.doingbusiness.org/taxes

The former president's yearning

Inefficiency and corruption have long plagued the Philippine civil service, but they might soon be overshadowed by a recent and rapidly

growing problem: call it “the president's desire”.

According to former Civil Service Commission (CSC) chief Karina Constantino-David, fromer President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has appointed an unprecedented number of ineligible people to the bureaucracy. The instrument Arroyo has used is something David calls the “desire letter” a document of endorsement signed by the former president, stating that “it is my desire” that a named person be given a particular job.

Under the constitution, the former president has unstated but implied “residual powers”. One of them allows her to directly place her choices in certain government positions where the appointing authority isn't stipulated by the law. Whereas previous chief executives were circumspect about exercising this power, former President Arroyo has apparently thrown prudence to the wind, giving government jobs to thousands of people from outside the bureaucracy. David says that while past administrations appointed favorites through “whispers” or “marginal notes”, under the Arroyo government desire letters are openly “waved around”. Sometimes they are apparently even signed by someone else on behalf of the former president.

In a scathing speech she gave before retiring from the CSC early this year, David said that more than half of the 3,000 career managers appointed by the former President are unqualified and lack the educational skills, training, background, civil-service eligibility and professional experience for their positions. She also pointed out that at least 90 of the presidential appointees were retired military or police officials; and they were given positions that had little to do with their previous jobs, in bodies like the Department of Transportation and Communications, the Bureau of Immigration, and even the Mindanao State University. According to David, desire-letter appointments not only demoralise and politicise the bureaucracy, they also lead to deprofessionalisation: “When the career bureaucracy no longer has merit and fitness as its basis because it is politics in command, you will never have a professional bureaucracy.”

Her speech provoked a vigorous reaction from the former President's Office. One spokesman said: “Her generalisations do a disservice to the over one million civil servants, both career and appointed.” He went on to assert that “all presidential appointees must perform, if they don’t they have to go, whatever their credentials may be.” And Cabinet Secretary Ricardo Saludo said that “questions about legal qualifications are best addressed through due process, not through sweeping generalisations in luncheon speeches”.
But David is far from backing down. In an interview she said that “patronage is happening to an increasing degree.” She notes that because of desire-letter appointments, the bureaucracy already has 60 undersecretaries and assistant secretaries more than it needs. “Each one has a staff and an office, which has electrical costs. And more than half of them are not eligible.”

Perhaps the administration’s most telling response to David’s criticism was yet another political appointment. When David stepped down from the CSC, which as a constitutional body is supposed to be independent of the executive branch, former President Arroyo appointed as her successor Cabinet Secretary Ricardo Saludo, the very Saludo who likes to insist on due process. He is known to be a loyal and close supporter of the former president.
Saludo says he got the job because, as cabinet secretary, he was already dealing with governance matters. He pledges to continue David’s priority initiatives, which included efficient and effective administrative justice, professionalising the civil service and improving public service delivery among others.

He has even devised a new acronym for his agenda: MERCI. It stands for “Morale, Efficiency, Responsiveness, Courtesy and Integrity”. For her part, David has twofold advice for her successor: “One, uphold the independence of the constitutional body; two, recognise that the bureaucracy is not just a machine it's an important component of the entire system of governance.”

The true test for Saludo will be whether he'll stand up for the civil service and oppose the former president’s proclivity for political appointments. As a constitutional body, the CSC is supposed to be independent of the executive, and as its head Saludo has a fixed term of seven years, during which he can’t be dismissed by the former president.

David isn’t too optimistic, however. She says the key to reforming the bureaucracy is a strong CSC, and the prospects of that, “with this former president, are zero”.

In the long term, however, what is most worrying about the desire letters is that former President Arroyo may have set a precedent with lasting impact: Will succeeding former presidents resist the temptation to print out their own desire letters?

Without corruption we have: Leadership, reorganization, performance

There is one thing that is clear: meaningful reform will have to involve the political leadership, the civil servants and the public itself. Governance scholar Brillantes argues that changing the bureaucracy has to begin “at the top” and that progress is “a matter of political will”. He says that demoralisation often stems from leaders not respecting civil-service rules and regulations: “You need good shining leadership above all.”

He also thinks decentralisation – empowering the local governments – should be accelerated. In his view, the bureaucracy’s “frontlines” are in the provinces, whereas “Imperial Manila” continues to dominate the archipelago. As much as 86 % of public finance, Brillantes points out, is still controlled by the national government. He hopes that “somebody with sympathy for decentralisation and local governance should be our next president.”

At the same time, internal reforms in the bureaucracy have to include capacity-building, imparting a performance ethic, Brillantes says. He laments that performance is traditionally measured in terms of “how many meetings, how many letters”. The approach is process-oriented rather than goal oriented. After all, process is easier to measure. Brillantes praises the effort to set up an “Organisation Performance Indicator Framework” to address this issue.

He also thinks the Civil Code should be revisited. It would make sense, to allow civil servants to organise in trade unions, in order to empower them to be more assertive, he believes. Instead, Brillantes says, the civil-service culture is one of obedience.

Former CSC chair David states the bureaucracies of other Southeast Asian countries pulled ahead of the Philippines because “there was a genuine recognition of their importance”. By comparison, Filipino presidents and legislators were lazy, she says.

Congress, in one report, proposed more oversight of the bureaucracy. However, in David’s view, it would make more sense to simply pass the civil-service reform bills that have languished in its chambers. Among them she lists a redesigned Civil Service Code that Congress hasn't even looked at for 15 years, and a Government Compensation and Classification Act that still has to be discussed by the appropriate committee. She finds encouraging that Congress seems to be moving on the Career Executive System Bill, which would reduce the President's powers of appointment.

What can we do? Brillantes urges the citizens to speak up: “We should learn to assert our rights, we are our own worst enemy.” In the end, he says, the bureaucracy is there. “Unless you want to go to the hills or leave the country you have to work with the bureaucracy.”