BoholAnalysis

I met Bishop Abet Uy for the first time online. Some three years ago, at the suggestion of a good friend of mine, Fr. Harold Anthony Parilla , I sent Bishop Abet a direct message via FB messenger.   He replied, within a day or two and told me how I could proceed with something I wanted to do.   I did as was instructed, and some few weeks later, he sent me, via messenger again, a thank-you note.   Such tech-savviness impressed me, especially for a prelate his age. I was not surprised that some weeks later, I learned that the Bishop was using social media to spread God’s message, in very accessible terms. I also personally witnessed events he presided where online footprint was created almost in real-time (or at least a few hours after the event concluded), making us aware of where he was, what he was doing in building God’s Kingdom here on earth.   Currently, his various Facebook accounts have thousands of followers ( Teba Yu has 11,744 followers...

26 August 2013.  Netizens called for a million march against the Priority Development Assistance Fund in Manila.  Commentaries on the Manila march said that the crowd gathered there was short of the million it promised. Elsewhere in the country, similar activities were also held.  Video footages of the activities happening elsewhere, in Cebu, Davao, Iloilo, and other major cities and even in Australia and in the US were shown.  Maybe I missed it, but I did not see Bohol there. I was in the Bohol march, together with my family. Friends and acquaintances from different organizations, ideologies, profession were there - Marianito Luspo of HNU-CCAD, Jean Darunday of BONACONSO, Alvin Acuzar of BUSWACC, Emmie Roslinda of PROCESS, Engr. James Uy of HNU College of Engineering, artists like Ric Ramasola and Sandra dela Serna, women activists as Regina Estorba Macalandag and Doris Dinorog were among those gathered around 10 pm that day. Quite the usual suspects, I sho...

Two friends of mine sipped coffee at Bo’s after what to them was a disappointing forum on the RH bill sponsored by the local Catholic Church. They were amazed by the lack of information, the drought of reason, and the argumentum ad misericordiam employed by those who said that the RH bill should be junked. The lady, mother of two, asked, “Why should an intellectual forum on a bill be reduced to an attack to our conscience? Why does the church have to repeat all over and over again that to kill is bad?” His companion replied, “I do not really see the point. I have not seen a provision there that says that the bill can be made responsible for deaths of unborn children. I do not really know what they are objecting about.” “Impress me, convince me.” These were the words that echoed in my mind when I heard the conversation. I heard it first in a reality show looking for fresh new talents, shouted by one of the three judges at a contestant doing an interpretation of Stevie Wonder’s ‘...

I came across a very powerful article by Jeffrey Sachs in The Broker Magazine issue for February 2010. Though I am not his huge fan even when he wrote “The End of Poverty” five years back, I got excited by how bluntly he made a critic on government and the development enterprise regarding the climate change issue after Copenhagen. He wrote, in his final remarks on his essay “Rethinking Macroeconomics” regarding that knowledge deficit in the policy-making halls of governments. I love the lines. This is the reason why I am reproducing it here. “Finally, another fundamental problem of governance is the lack of interface between politicians and ‘knowledge communities’, that is, the communities of expertise in critical areas such as energy, food production, disease control, poverty alleviation, and so on. We have not solved the problem of the proper integration of scientific and technological knowledge in public policy making. The US Congress is nearly scientifically illiterate. This is v...

(The Dauis Renaissance Program is about converting the Dauis convent to a museum, souvenir and coffeeshop, and a function room, the construction of decks in the courtyard and the installation of lighting fixtures. It also involved the renovation of the convent roof, the construction and fit out of kitchen and bakery, and the acquisition of implements for dining or banquet services.) I was informed by a colleague of mine that Bea Zobel de Ayala commissioned a research to ascertain the impact of the things that she was doing in Bohol in the past few years. The assessment was conducted by my friends at Holy Name University and was implemented in two sites – Baclayon and Dauis. They said they were interviewing key people regarding the projects. Unfortunately, I am not a key person, so I did not have a chance to be interviewed. I just hoped it is not because I am against how the project was undertaken, lest I will really conclude that they are only interviewing those that have something g...

I can still remember the 1993 American film Demolition Man where Sylvester Stallone faced off Wesley Snipes in a science-fiction-war-thriller movie set in 2032. The forces between good and evil, between light and darkness, is captured vividly in the film while it puts forward the idea that one can coexist with the other even in the mind of a single person. In movies of this plot, the protagonist is always the one at the fold of the law, the one that is just, the one who asserts its rightful power against the other. But as I write this piece, I no longer refer to that police officer played by Stallone in the movie. I refer to one person who has, after all these years, shown what political will is all about. I must admit I am never a fan of this man. I was very critical of his administration when he ‘ruled’ the island of Panglao when I was still studying university. But he is the modern-day Demolition Man. His name is Benedicto ‘Dodong’ Alcala, three-term mayor in the municipality of Pan...

Introduction This paper presents an analysis, in financial perspective, of the details of the agreement entered into by parties 1) The Bishop of Tagbilaran, 2) Beatriz Susanna Zobel de Ayala, 3) Dauis Renaissance Company, Inc. and signed on June 24, 2008 in Dauis, Bohol, Philippines. As the agreement is vague in some respects, figure computations were interpreted on the basis of its implications to financial statements of the “Dauis Renaissance Company”, both currently and prospectively. The paper is structured in three parts. The first section analyses the facts of the agreement and its implication on assets, equities, and net income projections. The relevant provisions of the agreement are cited side by side with the analysis. The second section represents the general independent appraisal of the author on the “Dauis Renaissance Company”, taking collectively all the facts mentioned in the first section. The annex section presents a list of important financial terms which are defined ...