My report in Public Corporation

Municipality of Jimenez (thru its town officials) vs RTC Judge Vicente Baz and the Mun. of Sicanaban (thru its town officials).

This topic about  the legality of the creation of towns by Presidents is one that affects me personally. Bear with me, and indulge an old man,  as I inject some personal insight into my report.

Jimenez happens to be the place where my Uncle is spending his retirement years after working as a DepEd nurse for Lanao del Norte all his working life. He is  a true-blooded Cebuano who married into the Galindo clan of Jimenez, Mis. Occ.

But of even more importance to me is the case of Pelaez vs Auditor General which is being leaned upon heavily by Jimenez in this petition for certiorari against respondents, more specifically the town of Sinacaban. This then is a tale of my uncle and yours truly.

Jimenez is one of the nine original towns of Misamis Occidental when the old province of Misamis was divided in 1929 into Mis Occ and Misamis Oriental. Jimenez had a land area of a little over 18,000 hectares until August 29, 1949. The following day, Aug 30, 1949, Pres. Elpidio Quirino thru EO 258 carved out of the town of Jimenez, the town of Sinacaban. Jimenez suddenly shrank to 8,100 hectares. If the Beatles were around in 1950, the people of  Jimenez including the future parents-in-laws of my Uncle would have sung: “We’re not half  the town we used to be”. That is my uncle’s part of the tale.

After the usual wrangling over boundaries, Jimenez and Sinacaban came to an agreement whereby portions of some barrios which were delineated as part of Sinacaban were retained by Jimenez pursuant to a resolution of the Mis Occ provincial board on Feb 18, 1950.

I am not sure how, but somehow a new generation of Sinacaban leaders forgot the agreement because on November 22, 1988 Sinacaban wanted to retake these areas and filed their claim with the Provincial Board of Mis Occ. 

I googled Sinacaban just to get some insight and this is very interesting. The website for the town has this following information which I quote verbatim:

A new brand of leader came up on the year 1986, preferably the month of April. 

Anyway, the PB of Mis Occ ruled in favor of Sinacaban forcing Jimenez to file a petition for certiorari, prohibition, and mandamus with the RTC. Using the case of Pelaez vs Auditor General, Jimenez contended that Sinacaban could not exist as a municipality because it was only created by an EO.

RTC Judge Baz ruled in favor of Sinacaban thus Jimenez went to the Supreme Court.

The SC ruled that, indeed, Sinacaban is a municipality although created only under an EO based on the ff:

1.       It has been impliedly recognized (as when Jimenez entered into an agreement with Sinacaban in 1950) and its acts accorded legal validity.

2.       Sinacaban was considered as part of a municipal circuit in the Judiciary Reorganization act of 1989;

3.   The Local Government Code of 1991 provides that towns created by presidential issuances and which have their respective sets of elective officials at the time of the passage of the LGC are considered as regular municipalities.

SC in effect said that Pelaez vs Auditor General does not apply here.

Now let me share with you an old man’s tale (my tale) about Pelaez vs Auditor General. If you read the footnotes of the case you will find a list of 33 municipalities created by Pres. Macapagal (his opponents called it gerrymandering which you can google for the meaning). These 33 towns were subsequently dissolved by the order of the SC. 

One of the towns listed is Libertad in Zamboanga del Sur. It was carved out of Dimataling, Zambo del Sur. How did I know these? I lived in Dimataling until Grade I.  But I grew up in Cebu until high school with my grandparents. But more significant to my story is that my father was appointed by Pres. Macapagal as the mayor of Libertad. But that was shortlived because of the Pelaez ruling.

I'm sad because my iPad is already obsolete but I love this gadget

In January my brother who is an OFW in Canada e-mailed me saying that he was sending me something for my birthday. Then he attached the order invoice for a 32G, wireless model iPad; keyboard dock; case and cables.

During the early days of iPad there  were at least  10 reasons for not buying one. By December the utility of the iPad was already established and the only reason advanced for not buying an iPad was that an iPad 2 was in the making. April 2011 was the purported release. But here was my brother ordering one for me for my May birthday. Who am I to complain? He spent 700 Canadian dollars for the gadget including the 4 apps I asked him to preload. I told myself I am going to take this Apple product for a spin.

This is now the middle of March. The iPad 2 went on the market on March 11. I am both sad and happy. My iPad is already obsolete but I found that the iPad is a game-changer for me. When I was in law school during the first semester of 2010 I would lug at least 2 big law books each day. I did not attend school in the second semester due to my new responsibilities at work. But now that I have settled to the routine, I'll be going back to school next semester. But instead of my printed books, I will be carrying my iPad.

I have GoodReader for reading my pdf books. And I can annotate on the fly with it. For my note taking I am still weighing between the NoteTaker and NotesPlus . NoteTaker can annotate pdfs and e-mailing the result is very easy. I like the recording facility of the NotesPlus. Altho I am not yet sure if it can record clearly from the back of the class where I usually sit.

The new update of NoteTaker, which was not there when I first tried my hand on it,  now allows me to use the keyboard for making notes. I downloaded the income tax return form from the BIR; opened it in NoteTaker,  filled up a few boxes as a test, then e-mailed it to my Yahoo. Presto, I could print it on my networked printer. I could even affix my signature while in NoteTaker.

I think I could do the printing directly with AirPrint. But there was a little problem at the time. I'll work on it next time. I tested AirPrint before in Pages and it worked.

With voice recording, NoteTaker will overtake NotesPlus in functionality. Whichever comes first with a handwriting add-on gets my vote as my main note taking app in classes. But I know the add-on will set me back, or my brother who pays the app for me, by 2 bucks.

I also have the Pages for iPad but I now think I don't really need it. And it cost 9.99 dollars. I should have ordered instead the KeyNote for my presentation needs. It costs the same.

Games? My brother preloaded it, upon my request, with PG Uranus. But the children loved the free Angry Birds better.

Free books? Lots of them. There are many on the Apple Store itself. Or get them from Gutenberg Project.

Next time I'll talk about my wishlist for an upcoming iteration of the iPad, hopefully the iPad 3. iPad 2 does not have what I really need to make my notetaking more responsive. Until then, I am stuck with iPad 1.

Unscientific new PH Peso?

It seems everyone has pitched in about what is wrong with the new Philippine currency note series. Some of the criticisms are about the:

• color of the parrot's beak, (or neck, I am not sure at the moment)  in the PhP500.00
• location of the Tubbataha Reefs in the PhP1000.00

My favorite gadfly, a reliable one, Calipjo Go, also pointed out that using the butanding in the PhP100.00 sounds as if the Philippines is claiming, or at least the Bangko Sentral, that the butanding in the Bicol seas are native to the Philippines.

Bangko Sentral has explained the problems concerning the parrot and the Tubbataha Reefs. See here. The critique of Mr. Go, I think, has been deftly answered by Rodel Batocabe. See here. 

But I have not heard a howl from the scientific community. I cannot believe there is no numismatist among Philippine scientists. So let me weigh in with my 20 cents worth of opinion; more accurately, 20 pesos worth.

Here's a portion of the obverse side of the new  PhP20.00.

I am sure MLQ3 is very proud of his grandpa in this portrait.  (Manolo has vanished from blogosphere. I heard he is again roaming the grounds of  the former official residence of his grandpa. It would not be the first time. He was also there in the early days of the former administration.)

But were he a biologist he would have noticed that the convention in writing a scientific name has been violated in the new series of the Philippine Peso bills:

• the genus is always underlined or italicized
• the specific epithet is always underlined or italicized
• the first letter of the specific epithet name is never capitalized

Here's the reverse side of the same bill. Take a look at the scientific name of the palm civet. (The line enclosing the scientific name was later added in MS Paint just in case I might be accused of violating PD 247)

The same problem holds true in the higher denominations.

Need a new year resolution?

If any of our rich people need a new year resolution, they should read this piece by Sam Harris.

Common, ye god-believers of the world. Show the way. Or Sam Harris, a gnuAtheist, will say "Shame on you."

SUCs - At A Dime a Dozen

State universities and colleges (SUC) are proliferating throughout the country. There are 110 of them as of last count. Many of these are not viable according to Budget Secretary Florencio Abad. Soon another state college will be added. Boxing champion and Congressman Manny Pacquiao is filing a bill for a creation of a state college in his district in Sarangani Province. While the aim is laudable, the end result is not going to be, judging from the experience of many other government-funded tertiary schools.

In the small city (many are saying it should not have qualified as a city)  where I live there is a city college touted as the first LGU (Local Government Unit)  college in the Visayas. A high school classmate of my child finished his four-year electronics course in the college. But when he applied for a job in a big electronics firm he was refused. It seems the school did not offer training that meet the standard of the electronics industry. He went back to a private university (this time an accredited one) and took up marine engineering instead. But what a waste of time.

I think the government, especially the national government, should focus its attention on the elementary education. Higher education should be left to a few state universities that should meet global standards. Perhaps there should only be one government university in each region. Each one should be properly equipped and manned by the best qualified teachers. Then the government should re-channel the budget now going to substandard SUCs and pour the money into the elementary schools and perhaps some high schools, too.

My three children went to public elementary schools. Wrong decision on my part, I now admit. Their counterparts in private elementary schools, whose teachers were ironically earning less than those in the public schools, came out better prepared for higher learning. I think it's partly because the public schools are overcrowded but mostly it's because the standard of hiring is strict in the private schools than in the public school system. And, yes, the books used in the private schools are better-screened by  their administrators while those in the public schools are either non-existent or riddled with errors that made Antonio Calipjo Go sad and mad all these years.

The half-baked products of our public elementary schools and high schools often meet up with ill-prepared teachers in our ill-equipped public colleges. Their diplomas are almost as worthless, in the eyes of would-be employers, as those one can procure in Recto.

The Cebuanos have a phrase for these SUCs and their graduates: tagduhay singko, a dime a dozen.

A classmate after mine own heart

My shorthand for his name in my text messages is Trick. And he is sure to respond when I asked him about topics and events in our law class even if he is in the midst of a regular weekend jaunts with his chums.

He said he has studied in the same school since his elementary grades until he finished a degree in Marine Biology. He thinks that  he ought to be given a loyalty discount now that he is taking up law in the same school. He was half-kidding I thought.

But he seemed serious when he said that he is studying to be a lawyer in order to please his father. Reminded me of my daughter who was asked during enrollment time why she was taking up electronics engineering at Don Bosco. Without hesitation she said it was the wish of her Tatay; and that would be me. But I think my daughter is enjoying her studies. She has always been my sidekick whenever I do utility repairs around the house: from electrical to carpentry to electronics repair.

And I think Trick is enjoying law school, too, and not just to please his father. Why else would he be getting  those good grades effortlessly while I have to struggle hard to commit a point of law to memory. I used to get good grades when I was a young student in college. But now, as I told my young classmates, much of my brain is like an aging hard drive, already with plenty of bad sectors in it.

But I like his worldview more than his adeptness with the law. He talks about the need to reduce our carbon footprint if we are to save this world. One time Trick refused to eat pizza which was a blowout from one of our professors. It was more about the plastic being used to serve the pizza that bothered him. Most other law students would rather talk only about jurisprudence when they are not busy with their facebook account. Yes, they do that - debate about jurisprudence and update their facebook inside the classroom because our law school is wifi-enabled.

Considering the batting average of the law school, I think he would be a lawyer before too long. Perhaps we'll still meet in court someday. Most probably with with me as his client since it is still an iffy situation for me to finish law school at all knowing that the casualty rate in our law school is bigger than its bar mortality rate.

A Professor after mine own heart

One evening our professor digressed into the situation of poor litigants. People who run afoul of the law or who are looking for relief from the court but cannot afford a lawyer are usually extended help by the Public Attorneys Office. But ordinary public school teachers cannot avail themselves of the PAO because they exceed the income bracket to be classified as poor litigants. But sometimes there are people, businessmen in fact, who qualify as poor litigants because they underdeclare their income or they do not file income tax returns at all. They can afford a private lawyer but they want the free services of the PAO.

Consider the Cebu Normal University, he said. It is a government school and was meant to provide education to poor families. But you can see private cars lining along its side fetching children of families who should have been able to afford tuition in private universities.

I also noticed this situation at the Cebu City National Science High School. Three of my sisters-in-law sent their children to Science High. From what I learned, their children were among the few who rode on jeepneys to and from school throughout their secondary school days. When it was our family's turn to send our children to school, we opted to send them to a private high school closer to home altho the school was of a lower caliber. Our family income was not enough to afford a better private high school. At the same time, I did not want to bump off a poorer child from a free schooling at the science high.

The rich, if you tolerate them, want freebies in education as well as in their income tax. I was happy to note that the professor and I share at least one  line of thinking.