CARACAS: Venezuelan officials and opposition members have held separate secret meetings in the Dominican Republic with a group of former world leaders attempting to mediate the country’s spiraling political crisis, officials said Saturday.

Representatives of both sides of Venezuela’s political standoff met former Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, former Dominican president Leonel Fernandez and Panama’s ex-president Martin Torrijos “in recent days” under the auspices of the Union of South American Nations, UNASUR, to seek a “framework for a national dialogue,” the organization said in a statement.

The mediating former leaders found “a desire for dialogue on both sides,” for which new meetings were proposed to “agree on an agenda that meets the requirements of each party and a method for engaging in national dialogue,” the statement said.

The meetings were the initiative of President Nicolas Maduro, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez tweeted, saying the effort “promotes peace, respect for the rule of law and the defense of sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

The main center-right opposition group Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) said in a statement that its conditions for the talks were the holding of a referendum over Maduro’s recall, freeing political prisoners, allowing exiles to return and “an end to prosecutions for political persecution.”

The opposition is also calling on the government to allow international relief supplies of food and medicine into the country and seek to end a crippling economic crisis “generated by official corruption and an economic model that is spreading misery.”

The three former leaders also held talks with Maduro and the opposition under UNASUR auspices in Caracas two weeks ago.

Publicly, the two sides could not be further apart.

MUD, which blames Maduro for the economic crisis, accuses the electoral authorities of dragging their feet in processing their petition for a referendum on removing the socialist leader from office.

Although a survey last month showed 68 percent of Venezuelans want Maduro to leave office and to hold new elections, however, he has said the referendum drive has “very little support.”

Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves, but its economy is reeling from the collapse in global crude prices.

Venezuelans are experiencing severe food and medicine shortages compounded by the world’s highest inflation — almost 190 percent in 2015, which the International Monetary Fund predicts will balloon to 700 percent in 2016. AFP

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TRIPOLI: Two months after his dramatic arrival in Libya’s capital, Fayez al-Sarraj’s unity government has won international support but had little impact inside a divided country plagued by jihadists, analysts say.

The head of the Government of National Accord sailed into Tripoli under naval escort on March 30 in defiance of a militia alliance that has been in control of the capital since August 2014, after it refused to let him fly in.

His arrival sparked hopes of a way out of the political, security and economic crises that have gripped Libya since the 2011 revolution that ousted longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

But confined to the naval base where it receives visiting foreign ministers, the UN-backed GNA has yet to draw up any clear roadmap for ending Libya’s anarchy and expelling jihadists from their strongholds.

Its targets of restoring peace and healing divisions born of five years of conflict are being stymied by a rival government in the east that refuses to cede power until a repeatedly delayed vote of confidence in Libya’s elected parliament from which it takes its own legitimacy.

The rival administration, which itself had international recognition before the rise of Sarraj, controls eastern Libya through militias and units of the national army loyal to controversial General Khalifa Haftar, a sworn opponent of the GNA.

For Mattia Toaldo, a Libya specialist with the European Council on Foreign Relations, the GNA has already lost a “precious two months” with its failure to secure a vote of confidence.

“While he has received several foreign delegations and made visits abroad, he (Sarraj) is invisible inside Libya,” said Toaldo.

Sarraj “has not found the time — nor the courage — to address the east of the country. It’s not a question of lacking the military strength, but rather absence of political will and… political initiative.”

Othman Ben Sassi, a former member of the revolution-era National Transitional Council, said “the only achievement of this (GNA) government has been the fact that it has won international support.”

On the ground, “it’s the militias, as before, that control the situation. As for the unity government, it doesn’t control anything,” he said.

East-west divide

The task facing Sarraj, a 56-year-old political newcomer, is “extremely fragile,” according to Kader Abderrahim, a specialist on Islamism at the Paris-based Institute for International and Strategic Affairs.

“It’s imperative that a formal vote (of confidence) be held to head off challenges to his legitimacy,” said Abderrahim.

He must “firstly gather Libyans around a joint project, ensure their security and undertake negotiations with the different militias to lay down their arms. This process could take several months,” he said.

On the military front, the GNA controls several airports and has militias and army units based in the western region of Misrata, equipped with tanks and warplanes, under its command.

But the east-west divide rules out any unified control of Libya’s porous borders through which hundreds of thousands of sub-Saharan Africans pour in in search of a better life across the Mediterranean in Europe.

And although Libya holds Africa’s richest oil reserves, the economy poses a huge challenge for the GNA faced with spiralling food, transportation and medical costs since the start of 2016.

With the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan starting in early June, food shortages and power cuts at a time of rising summertime temperatures will only serve to heighten the perception among ordinary Libyans of “Sarraj government failings”, according to Toaldo.

Internationally, the GNA secured a Western pledge at a May 16 meeting in Vienna to ease the arms embargo in place since Libya’s revolution to battle the Islamic State jihadist group.

But for Abderrahim, “Libyans are fed up with Western interference in their affairs and the fact that they have literally imposed Fayez al-Sarraj can only be damaging for him.” AFP

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WASHINGTON: The Obama administration has moved to block sales of cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia for use in Yemen, amid reports of mounting civilian casualties there, a US media report said Saturday.

The report in the journal Foreign Policy, citing US officials, said that the White House had quietly placed a hold on the transfer of such munitions to the Sunni kingdom as it carries out a bloody war on Shiite rebels in Yemen.

A Saudi-led coalition has been fighting the Iranian-backed Huthis since March 2015, trying to roll back their control of wide swaths of Yemen.

Asked by Agence France-Presse for comment, an administration official said that “we are aware of reports that the Saudi-led coalition used cluster munitions in the armed conflict in Yemen, including in areas in which civilians are alleged to have been present.”

“We take such concerns seriously and are seeking additional information,” the official added.

Foreign Policy said it was the first concrete display of unease by US officials over bombings that human rights activists say have killed and injured hundreds of civilians, including children.

Cluster bombs are designed to kill enemy personnel and destroy vehicles or runways.

But because they disperse scores of tiny bomblets over a wide area — some of which may not explode for years or even decades after being dropped — they pose a particular threat to civilians.

They were banned by an international treaty in 2008, but Russia and the United States, both major suppliers, failed to sign it.

The US antiwar group CodePink on Sunday applauded the administration decision, and called on President Barack Obama to suspend all arms transfers to the kingdom.

Amnesty International said Monday that the Saudi use of cluster bombs had created “minefields” for civilians in Yemen. It has called, along with Human Rights Watch, for a ban on arms sales to the Saudis.

The United States has sold the Saudis millions of dollars’ worth of cluster bombs and provided other forms of military support.

The reported move on cluster bombs comes amid growing criticism by American lawmakers of the Saudi monarchy. Legislators are unhappy that the Saudis have not done more to fight the militants of the Islamic State group in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.

The longstanding US-Saudi relationship, built on an exchange of American security backing for a reliable supply of Saudi oil, has been strained as the United States has gained greater energy independence even while reaching historic agreement with the Saudis’ bitter regional foe Iran. AFP

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YENAGOA, Nigeria: For the third time in a week, a militant group has attacked oil and gas infrastructure in Nigeria’s increasingly violent oil-producing south, an official said Saturday.

The Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) have been sabotaging Nigeria’s oil infrastructure for months in bombings that have forced production to drop from 2.2 million barrels per day to twenty-year lows of 1.4 million barrels per day.

Early Saturday morning militants attacked the Nembe pipeline carrying crude exports.

“I am aware that there was a dynamite attack on the pipeline,” Nengi James, chairman of the Nembe Oil and Gas Committee, told Agence France-Presse.

The NDA appeared to claim the Saturday attack on a Twitter account bearing its name in a post that said it had blown up the “Nembe 1, 2 and 3 Brass to Bonny trunk line” at 2:15 am.

A followup post threatened “something big is about to happen.”

Earlier attacks attributed to NDA this week have seen Chevron and Nigeria’s state-owned oil and gas infrastructure blown up.

Continued violence could result in mass evacuations of staff that would “cripple onshore production of about one million barrels per day,” Philippe de Pontent, sub-Saharan Africa analyst at political risk research firm Eurasia Group, said in a recent report.

Like other militant groups before it, the NDA wants a fairer share of oil revenues for the impoverished and polluted southern region.

The group claims that the majority of the country’s oil wealth is owned by people from the country’s north and has plans to realize an independent state by October, according to online statements credited to NDA spokesman Mudoch Agbinibo.

In response to the sabotage — which is devastating government revenue at a time the country is facing stagflation — southern government officials this week urged President Muhammadu Buhari to enter a peaceful dialogue with Niger delta communities instead of using military force to restore oil production.

But on Saturday, Niger delta residents said Nigerian soldiers invaded Oporoza, a town in former militant Government “Tompolo” Ekpemupolo’s stronghold of Gbaramatu Kingdom.

The Nigerian government has issued an arrest warrant for Tompolo, alleging the former leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) stole millions from the federal government after he started working as a security contractor as part of an amnesty program.

There are rumors that Tompolo has been orchestrating the NDA attacks, but the former militant has denied any collaboration.

According to Oporoza resident Raphael Gbenekama, more than seven gunboats loaded with armed soldiers invaded the community, shooting and beating up residents while arresting others.

“As I speak with you I am in the bush where I am taking refuge,” Gbenekama told AFP.

“The whole community has fled and those who could not run have been rounded up and arrested, but I can tell you that we do not harbor criminals, our people are innocent,” Gbenekama said.

Previous crackdowns on militant groups in the past were ineffective and the chaos in Nigeria’s southern swamplands was only restored after the introduction of a costly amnesty program for the rebels. AFP

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PATHUM THANI, Thailand: An embezzlement charge against a powerful Buddhist abbot has unleashed his super-rich temple’s PR machine, with Twitter-using Thai monks orchestrating his defense over a scandal that has opened a bitter rupture at the heart of the nation’s faith.

“There has never been a temple of this size in Thai history,” orange-robed Phra Pasura Dantamano says as he gestures towards Dhammakaya temple’s pristine, 1,000-acre compound north of Bangkok where peacocks roam the lawns and white-clad devotees meditate.

But the affable monk’s comments apply to more than the temple’s enormous, futuristic architecture — including a building that famously resembles a gigantic UFO.

Dhammakaya is also regarded as the wealthiest in Buddhist-majority Thailand, thanks in part to tech-savvy devotees who have cultivated a fervent following, raised tens of millions of dollars and set up outposts in dozens of countries across the globe.

Phra Pasura, the monk in charge of the temple’s 60-member International Affairs Department, is part of the fine-tuned public relations operation that is now firing on all cylinders as it seeks to quash the latest scandal to dog the temple since its founding in 1970.

Dhammakaya’s modern, and some say “cultish,” approach to Buddhism riles traditionalists, with critics accusing the clergy of peddling a pay-your-way to nirvana scheme.

The temple’s abbot Phra Dhammachayo, venerated as a saint among his followers, is wanted by police for allegedly accepting embezzled funds worth 1.2 billion baht ($33 million) from the owner of a cooperative bank who was jailed in March.

The temple has denied its abbot conspired to launder the money, calling the charges “groundless and unconscionable.”

A stalemate has set in.

The temple claims the 72-year-old is too sick to meet with officers, and police do not want to confront him on the temple grounds, fearing clashes with devotees.

Monks and temple staff have been vigorously live-tweeting the drama, churning out detailed press releases and fact sheets, and making use of their slick 24-hour TV channel to bat back the allegations against their revered abbot.

Modern times

The temple boasts a TV studio and editing bays inside its two-story media department, with other offices adorned with signs such as “Corporate Image Division,” and “Printed Media Section.”

Phra Pasura, a former flight attendant with a degree in international relations, says the overheads are minimal.

“Much of the animation and editing is done by monks,” he says of the TV channel, which broadcasts across four continents and airs everything from meditation teachings to cartoons and daily news.

“And a monk’s salary is only two meals a day”, he adds with a smile.

Dhammakaya’s rise comes as mainstream monasteries in Thailand struggle to stay relevant to younger generations swept up in the rapid economic development that has frayed traditional community networks and ways of life.

They have also been rocked by a series of their own controversies featuring badly behaved monks riding in private jets and disgracing the faith with sex and drug scandals.

Sanitsuda Ekachai, who writes on religion in Thailand, said Dhammakaya offers an appealing alternative to urban Thais by mixing “old beliefs and materialistic values”.

Its emphasis on order and community — on display during stunning mass gatherings of followers meditating in ruler-straight rows — also provides an antidote to the alienation of the modern age, she adds.

And the temple’s early embrace of technology has played a key role in building its sweeping global presence, with overseas centers scattered across Asia, several US states and nearly a dozen European countries.

“Dhammakaya has been very active, very smart, very modern in its way of using technology to grow a support base,” Sanitsuda said.

Politics at play

While much of the criticism has focused on the temple’s teachings and assets, the abbot’s embezzlement scandal is also tangled up in Thailand’s treacherous politics.

Police have attempted to nab him on similar grounds before, but the case was dropped a decade ago under ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra, an exiled but still influential telecoms tycoon at the center of the kingdom’s political schism.

That history has fanned speculation that Thaksin and the wealthy temple are in league, with police now renewing the case as part of the ruling junta’s wider crackdown on Thaksin allies.

The temple denies any political affiliations.

The case against the abbot has also gained momentum ahead of a protracted change of leadership in Thailand’s ruling council of Buddhist clerics, a body known as the sangha.

The position of Supreme Patriarch — or top monk — has been left open for years and mainstream Buddhists are fearful that Dhammakaya is poised to take over the council and alter the religion for good.

A rapprochement appeared close this week when Phra Dhammachayo agreed to meet at the police station near the temple to discuss the arrest warrant against him.

But the parley was cancelled at the last minute after the abbot fainted on his way to the car.

Authorities retreated and are now plotting their next move as the game — and the media coverage — continue. AFP

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GENEVA: The World Health Organization has ruled out any change in timing or the location of the upcoming Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, shunning a call by doctors and scientists to shift the event over the Zika virus.

An open letter addressed to the global health body signed by 150 international doctors, scientists and researchers Friday had called for the August Games to be moved or delayed to help prevent the spread of Zika virus.

Holding the Games in Rio, the second worst affected city in Brazil, would be “irresponsible” and “unethical” and could risk spreading the virus to “poor, as-yet unaffected places” like Africa and South Asia, said the letter.

Zika, which can cause birth defects including a devastating syndrome known as microcephaly in which babies are born with unusually small heads and brains, can be introduced to a new region when a local mosquito picks it up from an infected human.

If it lives long enough, the mosquito then infects people it subsequently takes blood, starting a vicious cycle.

But the WHO said moving the Olympics would not have a major impact on the spread of Zika.

“Based on current assessment, cancelling or changing the location of the 2016 Olympics will not significantly alter the international spread of Zika virus,” it said in a statement late Friday.

Brazilian authorities on Saturday also said the Games would proceed as planned, with the health ministry saying it would continue to follow the guidance of the WHO, which has deemed the risk of Zika infection in August — the middle of winter in Brazil — to be “minimal”.

Nearly 1,300 babies have been born in Brazil with irreversible brain damage since the mosquito-borne Zika began to spread there last year.

The virus can also cause adult-onset neurological problems such as Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which can cause paralysis and death.

“An unnecessary risk is posed when 500,000 foreign tourists from all countries attend the Games, potentially acquire that strain, and return home to places where it can become endemic,” experts from the United States, Britain, Canada, Norway, the Philippines, Japan, Brazil, South Africa, Turkey, and Lebanon, among others, had stated in their letter.

“Should that happen to poor, as-yet unaffected places (e.g., most of South Asia and Africa) the suffering can be great,” it added.

The WHO and top health officials have called on those travelling to Brazil to take precautions against mosquito bites, and have said pregnant women should avoid areas where Zika is circulating, including Rio.

Serena to go ‘super protected’

Tennis world number one Serena Williams admitted Saturday that the health dangers posed by the Zika virus were a concern, but said she still planned to compete in Rio.

“It’s something that’s been on my mind. I’m really just gonna have to go super protected,” said the 34-year-old American, the defending Olympic champion.

Men’s world number one Novak Djokovic said talk of moving or canceling the Games was unrealistic.

“To cancel the Olympic Games is unthinkable, honestly. I mean, many athletes and people already planned in advance,” the Serb tennis champion said, adding however that the impact of the outbreak on local people should not be underestimated.

“How about those people living there, you know? Not talking about them too much. So I think we have to look from different perspectives in order to make a right conclusion.”

The Olympics and Paralympics, set for August 5 through September 18, “will take place during Brazil’s wintertime when there are fewer active mosquitoes and the risk of being bitten is lower,” the WHO said this month.

On Thursday, the top US public health official, Tom Frieden, said “there is no public health reason to cancel or delay the Olympic Games”.

Given the big financial investments at stake, the open letter questioned whether the UN health agency was able to give a non-biased view of the situation.

It said the world body may not be properly considering the options, which include moving the Games to a place where Zika is not present, postponing them until Zika is under control, or cancelling them.

“WHO must revisit the question of Zika and postponing and/or moving the Games. We recommend that WHO convene an independent group to advise it and the IOC in a transparent, evidence-based process in which science, public health, and the spirit of sport come first,” the letter said. “Given the public health and ethical consequences, not doing so is irresponsible.” AFP

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SAN FRANCISCO: Seducing hyper-connected “millennials” poses an increasing challenge for luxury brands, which find their markets slowing as young, skeptical consumers force them to rethink strategies.

Goldman Sachs estimates that 92 million Americans are in the Millennial generation — born between the early 1980s and the 2000s — surpassing the famed cohort of postwar Baby Boomers who are now approaching a geriatric phase.

The huge pool of Millennial consumers grew up with the Internet, smartphones and a sharing economy in which owning things like cars is seen as almost unhip.

Studies show many have different expectations than their elders, who were relatively better paid and less indebted at the same point in life.

Deloitte analyst Nick Pope spoke this week at an FT Business of Luxury Summit of “a structural worry” as to whether there would be the “same level of spending in product ownership and luxury as there was in their parents’ generation.”

A Deloitte study targeted Millennials as an opportunity for luxury brands, but warned that they require “a high level of investment” and are more “mercurial” consumers whose brand loyalty can quickly shift.

“Their engagement with digital technology has exposed them to more sources of information, a greater range of influences, and smaller brands,” the study said of Millennials. “To attract, excite and engage millennials will require a high level of brand investment.”

Luxury-sector sales, excluding the effects of currency changes, were up only one percent last year, and similarly tepid growth is expected this year, according to global management consulting firm Bain & Company.

US jeweler Tiffany recently announced a disappointing financial forecast, and the maker of the well-known British Burberry trench coat has embarked on a money-saving plan.

Digital Panacea?

“The people in the luxury space, they got very spoiled, because there was a market of people who consistently spent,” Sarah Quinlan of MasterCard Advisors told Agence France-Presse on the sidelines of the FT luxury summit in San Francisco. “That market is no longer there.”

Oligarchs with lavish spending habits in oil-rich countries such as Russia and China have seen growth slowing in their countries. It is unclear that Millennials, with their fickle and prudent spending styles, will take up the slack.

But Burberry has taken aim at those Millennials with a digital strategy cited as an example for the industry.

And LVMH, the France-based multinational luxury goods colossus, reached into the Silicon Valley talent pool last year and recruited Apple executive Ian Rogers.

Luxury brands including Burberry, Vuitton and Tiffany have taken to relying heavily on social networks such as Snapchat that are popular with young people.

Having a presence online and in social media has become a necessity for brands.

It promises to become even more important as people use smartphones while making buying decisions on the move. Internet titans are pitching instant shopping opportunities based on time, location, interests and more.

Still, brands such as Tiffany face a problem: some young people see them as “old-world luxury” items that don’t jibe with their Internet Age values and lifestyles, according to Neil Saunders of Conlumino retail research company.

Being on social networks has become a “must” in the marketing equation, but it is not enough, contended Quinlan.

“The bottom line is having something relevant that fits into their lifestyle,” Quinlan said of luxury brands that court Millennials. “I don’t think they’ve done enough to curate their brands.”

The fading lure of luxury items among Millennials is “not necessarily an income problem,” she contended.

Data collected by Mastercard describes consumers who choose to enhance their lives with spending on trips, dinners, outings and other experiences instead of on “stuff.”

“They might buy one piece; if it’s very special, it’s very valuable, has a memory of a trip somewhere,” Quinlan said.

Yet, Pope saw the luxury goods market as “absolutely sound,” so long as brands recognize the shifts under way and offer “value enhancing” products.

Thus, companies could transform their shops into places where people can socialize and linger as they might in a coffee shop, or connect with increasingly popular historical, ethical or sustainability trends. AFP

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FRANKFURT: The ECB, expected to hold fire on monetary policy at its meeting Thursday, will likely focus instead on welcoming Greece back into the fold of fully-fledged eurozone borrowers after a bailout deal, analysts said.

European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi may well also use the lull in the bank’s unprecedented stimulus drive to remind governments that they can’t leave all the heavy lifting for Europe’s recovery to central bankers alone.

“As the ECB is presently focusing on implementing the measures decided in March, the governing council is likely to sit tight at its meeting on Thursday,” said Commerzbank economist Michael Schubert.

The ECB’s decision-making council is holding its regular policy meeting in Vienna this time round, rather than its Frankfurt home.

The most recent package of measures — the further cut in interest rates, the expansion of the asset purchase program known as quantitative easing (QE) and a new program of ultra-cheap loans for banks — was only announced a little more than two months ago.

Neither the corporate bond purchase scheme nor the new loan scheme have even started yet, Capital Economics economist Jonathan Loynes noted.

No need for further easing

Furthermore, recent economic data do not call for more stimulus for now.

“The general news on the economy since the last meeting does not seem to warrant immediate further policy action,” Loynes said.

Nevertheless, Draghi “will be careful to leave the door to further policy loosening wide open,” he said.

With no monetary easing on the cards, Greece is likely to be back on the agenda following last week’s bailout deal, ECB watchers said.

“The successful conclusion of the Greek bailout review on Tuesday suggests that the ECB will introduce a waiver and once more accept Greek government bonds as collateral for tender operations,” said Commerzbank’s Schubert.

Greek banks have been unable to take part in the ECB’s regular refinancing operations for a long time now.

Normally, in these, banks receive cash in the form of very low interest loans in return for “collateral” — high-quality assets, preferably sovereign bonds, placed at the central bank as guarantee.

But given the desperate state of Greece’s finances, its sovereign bonds have been classified as “junk” for some years, and are not normally eligible to be used as collateral.

Initially, the ECB granted Greek banks a special waiver to get around this problem, allowing them to use Greek sovereign bonds as collateral, as long as Athens kept to the terms of its international bailout program.

But then the ECB suspended that waiver until Athens could thrash out an agreement with its international creditors on its bailout program.

And since then, Greek banks have been kept afloat via the Emergency Liquidity Assistance or ELA program, which is much more expensive.

Cost reduction

BayernLB economist Johannes Mayr said that allowing Greek banks to participate in the ECB’s regular refinancing operations would represent a substantial cost reduction for the banks.

They would also be able to participate in the new cheap-loan scheme known as TLTROs, Mayr said.

“This could have a very positive effect on credit growth and therefore on domestic demand in Greece,” he said.

The ECB might also allow Greece to take part in QE, which would bring down the very high risk premia on Greek sovereign bonds and boost the prospects of Greece being able to return to the capital markets, Mayr argued.

But that was some way off, analysts said.

Draghi “may caution that there is much still to be done by both Greece and its creditors before the markets can conclude that the country’s debts are sustainable,” said Loynes at Capital Economics. AFP

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THE HAGUE: Nameless migrants laid to rest in unmarked scrubland, murder victims dumped in mass graves, desperate searches for the missing after natural disasters. Around the world, millions of families wait in vain to bury their dead.

“You cannot close the book on the life of a loved one if you do not know the truth, or what the reasons were, why people went missing,” said Salvadoran diplomat Augustin Vasquez Gomez.

His country, where some 8,000 people are still missing after years of civil war, has become one of the latest nations to sign a treaty pledging to support the work of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP).

In the Philippines, also a signatory to the treaty, there are still 2,000 missing after Typhoon Haiyan struck in Nov. 2013.

And while finding and identifying the missing killed in conflicts or disasters is an age-old problem, no overall global figure has ever been determined.

The numbers are thought to be “staggering” — between 250,000 and a million in Iraq alone stretching back to the early days of the regime of former dictator Saddam Hussein, said Kathryne Bomberger, ICMP director general.

The organisation, which finances its painstaking research through voluntary donations, held a recent seminar on its work as it moves its headquarters from Sarajevo to The Hague.

Born out of the conflicts in former Yugoslavia and set up in 1996 by then US president Bill Clinton, the ICMP has used sophisticated DNA matching techniques to identify more than 70 percent of the 40,000 who went missing in the Balkans wars.

Now it is shedding its ad-hoc status to become a recognized international organisation — the only one dedicated exclusively to accounting for the missing.

Migrants new challenge

It hopes to open a new lab in the Dutch city in the coming months, to complement its first one in Sarajevo which already has the capacity to handle up to 10,000 DNA cases a year.

Demand is growing. And as the conflicts in Syria and Iraq feed a new wave of refugees, hundreds of whom have perished at sea lacking any kind of documents, a new challenge is emerging.

After five years of civil war and a huge exodus from the country, there are an estimated 60,000 missing Syrians.

“There’s nothing we can do in Syria for the moment, but we’re already losing time in terms of collecting data from survivors,” Bomberger told Agence France-Presse.

She’s hoping to try to move into the refugee camps, build up trust with families there and start organising a valuable data base.

Every day Syrian families are contacting the organisation for help finding relatives, and the ICMP is already working with Italian authorities to try to identify the dead washing up on Italy’s shores.

In Iraq on Mount Sinjar, it has been working to identify mass graves from the Islamic State group’s persecution of the Yazidi people, protect the sites and catalog the DNA of the dead.

And that’s without mentioning conflicts in Africa or Asia, where there are also many families waiting to claim their dead.

‘Just one piece of bone’

“Part of what we want to do and focus on is demographics, for once to try to get a handle on how many people are missing in the world,” said Bomberger. “Most countries don’t have accurate figures because of the highly political nature of these conflicts.”

Identifying the dead is also crucial, if those behind the world’s worst crimes are to be successfully held to account, said Kweku Vanderpuye, senior trial lawyer at the International Criminal Court.

“Oftentimes the perpetrators of those crimes operate under the principle: no bodies, no crime,” he said.

For those left with no grave to mourn over, there is an overwhelming sense of loss, of farewells left unsaid, a raw grief which does not fade as the decades pass.

“Our truth is hidden in mass graves,” said Munira Subasic, president of the Mothers of Srebrenica, who lost 22 members of her extended family in the 1995 genocide in the Bosnian enclave.

She told the seminar how one Bosnian Muslim mother died in Srebrenica a few days ago, still mourning her son whose body has never been found.

“Her last words were that if she had been so lucky to find just one little piece of bone she would have wrapped it in silk and kept it for herself. And it would have made her the happiest person in the world,” said Subasic. AFP

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BARCELONA: Argentina star Lionel Messi, one of the world’s highest-paid athletes, goes on trial in Barcelona on Tuesday for allegedly defrauding Spain of over four million euros in unpaid taxes.

After winning a league and Cup double with Barcelona, the five-time World Player of the Year and his father will confront in court the accusations that have dogged him since June 2013.

The trial will run until June 2 — the day when Messi is due to testify along with his father.

The court appearance comes just days before he joins his Argentina teammates for the Copa America in the United States.

Argentina take on defending champions Chile in their first game of the tournament in California on June 6.

Messi and his father, Jorge Horacio Messi, are accused of using a chain of fake companies in Belize and Uruguay to avoid paying taxes on 4.16 million euros ($4.7 million) of Messi’s income earned through the sale of his image rights from 2007-09.

They have been charged with three counts of tax fraud.

Spanish prosecutors are seeking a jail sentence of 22-and-a-half months for Messi and his father if they are found guilty, plus fines equivalent to the amount that was allegedly defrauded.

But any such sentence would likely be suspended as it is common in Spain for first offences carrying a sentence of less than two years.

Under Spanish law, a defendant is not obliged to attend the full trial if prosecutors seek a jail sentence of less than two years, which means Messi may only show up on June 2 for his testimony.

The football star and his defense team have argued that the player’s father handled his finances without reporting to him, and that the striker was not aware of any wrongdoing.

“My dad handled the cash,” Messi said in September 2013 when he was questioned by a judge investigating the case at a court in Gavia, a town on the outskirts of Barcelona where the footballer lives.

The player’s father agreed.

“He has nothing to do (with these issues), he only plays football,” Jorge Horacio Messi said.

Named in ‘Panama Papers’

State prosecutors initially asked that the case against Messi be dropped, arguing the player only followed the instructions of his father who he “trusted fully and blindly.”

But the judge in charge of the case in October 2015 rejected the request, arguing in his ruling that “there are rational signs that the criminality was committed by both accused parties.”

The income related to Messi’s image rights that was allegedly hidden includes endorsement deals with Banco Sabadell, Danone, Adidas, Pepsi-Cola, Procter & Gamble and the Kuwait Food Company.

Questions over the player’s finances increased after Messi and his father were among those named in April in reports by international media who received a vast trove of data and documents leaked from a law firm based in Panama.

The two men opened a company in Panama in June 2013, just after the allegations of tax fraud broke, to continue to hide income earned from image rights from Spanish tax authorities, Spanish news site El Español reported.

The Messi family acknowledged the existence of the company but they said it was “totally inactive” and never had any funds.

The scandal appears not to have dented the popularity of the footballer whom Forbes magazine says was the world’s fourth highest paid athlete last year with earnings of $74 million.

Both Barcelona and the Argentine Football Association have supported the player, who is loudly cheered whenever he appears on the pitch at the Spanish club’s Camp Nou stadium.

Barcelona managers have even insinuated that there is a conspiracy to tar the image of their star player, who has been key to the club’s success on the pitch in recent years. AFP

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CONGRESS will proclaim maverick Davao City mayor Rodrigo Duterte this afternoon as the 16th President of the Republic uncontested after a landslide victory, but neophyte Leni Robredo’s slim edge over the heir of the Philippine strongman Marcos is set to usher her to the vice presidency amid claims of election fraud and legal protests.

Camarines Sur Rep. Robredo clinched the second highest post of the land in a tight race with a lead of just more than 263,000 votes over Senator Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr. in an election that used the hotly debated automated system provided by the Venezuelan firm Smartmatic. Voters’ turnout was roughly 82 percent or 45.7 million.

At least two university professors, one a mathematical economist from Ateneo de Manila and another, a political science analyst and statistics expert from De la Salle University, said Robredo’s supporters continue to harass them online after they posted their findings on Facebook that it was statistically impossible for her to win the vice presidential race.

Lawyers for Marcos, meanwhile, pointed out an unusually high undervotes of nearly 4 million registered in the vice presidential race, and said the fight will go on as they plan to file a protest before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET) contesting the official outcome of the canvassing of votes.

Fraud: Signs of a plague
De la Salle professor Antonio Contreras said several issues swirled around the vice presidential race which now need to be addressed if questions on the legitimacy of Robredo’s victory were to be settled.

“The issue here is fraud. And it is one already mediated by technology. The signs of the plague are there. I urge Bongbong Marcos to exhaust all legal remedies if only to make sure that this will never happen again. It was actually better that Marcos ended up losing, for it would have been difficult to probe fraud if he won. I can just imagine the illogic that would be raised, the same one now being raised at (President-elect Rodrigo) Duterte: “Nanalo naman. Paano dinaya? (He won. How was he cheated?)” he said.

He said in an earlier post on Facebook: “There is no glory in winning a highly questionable election. The ghosts of fraud will haunt you. And you will go down the annals of history as a product of that fraud. And worse is when you eventually lose in a protest. You will end up as a blighted footnote.”

Contreras gained more attention and bashers on social media when he corroborated a statistical analysis made by David Yap, instructor of Mathematical Economics at the Ateneo, of the quick unofficial count by PPCRV showing Robredo’s vote eradicating the nearly 1 million lead of Marcos in the early hours of May 10, when the nation was asleep.

Yap said it was statistically improbable to say that Marcos’ bailiwicks’ votes came in early, but were quickly overtaken when Robredo’s own votes from her bailiwicks were transmitted.

Contreras stressed that resolving the vice presidential issues is more important than arguing whether former President Ferdinand Marcos deserves a hero’s burial.

“I am sorry if I will have to focus my energy on cleaning up our electoral system so that future elections can indeed become true barometers of the people’s will, that I refuse to be drawn into this issue of the Marcos burial. It is an important symbolic issue that has the potential to divide us. But we have been sidetracked by so many symbolic debates that we lose track of those that will have serious impacts on our democracy, like elections,” he explained.

Contreras also pointed out the “undervotes” – which he said were staggering at 3.9 million.

Referring to an argument of Prof. Douglas Jones of the University of Iowa, who authored a popular book – “Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count?” he said: Professor Douglas Jones is not just a data scientist. He is an election science guro. So I hope this will put him at par, even more qualified than David (Yap, the other professor from Ateneo), myself and the 104 signatories of the statement who claim that they are data scientists, combined.

Contreras quoted Jones as saying that an undervote of 5 percent is already suspicious.

“Ours was beyond suspicious at 8.43 percent for the vice president,” Contreras said.

Another international statistician, Ma.Victoria V. Ferro, provided Contreras an analysis of the election results on a precinct basis, made by an associate of hers who requested anonymity.

“There were many precincts that had more than 90 percent turnout. A turnout like this indicates voters that are eager to vote and have a high degree of enthusiasm. An analysis of the undervote percentages of the precincts that had 90 percent turnout is very revealing. Take note that according to Prof. Douglas Jones, the noted election scientist from Iowa, an undervote of 5 percent is already suspicious, and that of 10 percent is highly suspicious,” he said.

“Data shows that we have 3,130 precincts whose turnout was more than 90 percent, indicating high voter enthusiasm, but whose undervotes for Vice President are considered suspicious, to highly suspicious, to even preposterous, with three precincts showing 95-100 percent undervotes!” he added.

Missing votes
Contreras also raised the issue of “missing votes.”

“This is not rocket science. In any election, the equation should be that: Number of total votes in the election = Total votes for each candidate + Number of undervotes (voters that did not shade a candidate) + Number of overvotes (voters that shaded more than one candidate),” he said.

“I have received information that for the VP (race) this is not allegedly the case. It is being alleged that when we add all the votes cast for all the six candidates, the number of undervotes and the number of overvotes, the sum is less than the number of total votes cast. This indicates that there are missing votes, and the estimate is around 299,315 based on the data downloaded from the PPCRV transparency server,” he added, referring to the Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting.

“If this is true, where did these 299,315 votes go? The answer is nowhere to be found.”

Contreras also supported the demand of the Marcos camp for a system audit to determine if there were human interventions during the transmission of votes.

‘Prove it’
A political analyst said on Sunday, however, Marcos will have to prove that there was cheating if he intended to file an electoral protest.

Prof. Ramon Casiple, executive director of the Institute For Political and Electoral Reform (IPER), said the issue on undervotes cannot be considered cheating given that it happened as a natural election occurrence.

He said that if Marcos would push through with the filing of an election protest case, he would have to prove that the undervotes were a result of cheating.

George Garcia, the legal counsel of Marcos, earlier said that one of the grounds that might be raised if a protest pushed through, was the unusually high number of undervotes.

Casiple said that Marcos is using the same argument used by Liberal Party standard bearer Manuel in the 2010 vice presidential race.

Roxas, in his election protest filed several months after the May 10, 2010 elections, noted that the election returns did not reflect the actual votes for the vice presidential race because of several reasons, including the high incidence of null votes, erroneous uploading of final testing and sealing results from the clustered precincts, reported cases of fraud, irregularities and statistical improbabilities in certain clustered precincts.

Senate President Franklin Drilon in a radio interview maintained that there is nothing unusual with the high number of undervotes.

Drilon said that based on the numbers, about 1.4 million voters did not shade any name for the vice president.

‘Harassed’
Contreras said he and Yap were being harassed on social media after they posted on their Facebook accounts their findings on the irregularities surrounding the vice presidential elections.

The harassment turned intense before the National Board of Canvassers finished its official counting on Friday.

Yap has deactivated his Facebook account after several users started posting “nasty” messages against him.

Yap had posted on his FB account his statistical analysis of the quick count showing Robredo’s vote eradicating the nearly 1 million-vote lead of Marcos on the evening of May 9. Marcos was leading the count on the night of May 9 but his numbers and those for Robredo were reversed in the early hours of May 10. Since then, “the increase and decrease of votes between Robredo and Marcosa was constant and the graph showed a straight line,| Contreras told the Manila Times the week after the elections.

Contreras continues to fight his online bashers.

“I was confronted in private by a young Robredo supporter on FB to provide clear and empirical evidence of election fraud. I pointed out to her the videotapes from Maguindanao and Basilan where LP (Liberal Party) supporters were seen pre-shading ballots for VP and LP local officials, and my own experience with an LP campaigner giving out sample ballots just outside my own voting precinct and of massive disenfranchisement in Lucban, Quezon, both of which I personally witnessed and wrote about here in social media. She just wouldn’t believe me,” he said.

Contreras said someone also tried to hack his FB account but he was able to repulse the attacker.

The late Jesse Robredo must have turned in his grave when his widow, Leni, declared that her (purported) victory in the vice-presidential contest was made more meaningful as it happened on his birthday.

The indications of cheating that made Leni “win” are so obvious.

For starters, Robredo won over Marcos in the Congress’ official count by 263,473 votes. This is almost exactly the same as her margin of 263,840 over Marcos in just two provinces. And perhaps, you guessed them right – Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao. Controlled by warlords and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), these areas can deliver the number of votes a candidate wants, if the price is right.

This has been going on for decades. Then presidential candidate Miriam Defensor-Santiago also lost by a landslide in these two provinces in the 1992 elections.

The following are the results of votes in these provinces, according to official Comelec data. Do you honestly think their residents, dominantly Muslims, were such big fans of Robredo as to give her such landslide margins?

This means that if the votes – which weren’t really votes – from these two provinces were not included, Marcos would have won:

But there are other provinces where Robredo very suspiciously won by a landslide, among these:

Can somebody please give me a rational explanation why Robredo won by a landslide in these provinces?

The vice presidential race, as well as that for the president, was to a great extent a tribal contest, with a candidate’s tribe and its expanded territory (regions) overwhelmingly voting for him or her.

For example, Marcos received about 300,000 votes, with Robredo getting a measly 4,000 in Ilocos Norte. (Figures here are rounded off for easier reading.) But Robredo garnered 800,000 votes from her bailiwick Camarines provinces, leaving Marcos with only 67,000.

Cebu gave Marcos a severe beating by delivering 400,000 more votes for Robredo. Cebu, of course, has continued to be a bastion of anti-Marcos sentiment, partly because of presidential candidate Sergio Osmena, Jr.’s colossal loss to Marcos in the 1969 presidential race, Sergio Osmena 3rd’s imprisonment by the strongman, and the fact that the so-called “oligarchs” he targeted during his regime were mostly from Cebu and Negros.

That President Aquino 3rd and his yellow cabal junked Roxas to throw resources into Robredo’s campaign to win the vice presidency (amid rumors of a Plan B under which President-elect Duterte is to be ousted later) is also quite obvious in that Robredo got significantly more votes than Roxas in several provinces. For instance, in the two provinces that gave Robredo the edge, Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao, she received 400,000 votes while Roxas got only 163,000.

Marcos’ bailiwicks (the “Solid North,” several Mindanao provinces and Leyte) cancelled out Robredo’s “bailiwicks,” which I put in quotation marks as these include areas into which the Liberal Party threw their resources, such as Negros, Cebu, and several provinces in Mindanao).

One thing that makes me very suspicious that Aquino and his yellow horde moved heaven and earth to cheat to have Robredo win, while throwing Roxas under the bus, are the results seen in the National Capital Region.

Marcos won by a landslide in the nation’s premium region, gaining 46 percent of the votes in the NCR, while Robredo got only 29 percent and Cayetano 13 percent.

This should worry Aquino and his rabid anti-Marcos forces. In the NCR, which has the ahighest literacy rate and the most developed media and information infrastructure, Filipinos either have forgiven Marcos’ father, forgotten his father or don’t believe in the yellow propaganda that Martial Law was a dark period of our history. There is not a single city in metropolitan Manila where Robredo won over Marcos. Even Quezon City, the site of anti-Marcos centers such as the University of the Philippines and the Ateneo voted 2 to 1 for Marcos.

Check out the table below and see how your city voted:

The NCR results are so radically different from those of the entire Philippines. This is an anomaly – the farther away from the capital and metropolitan region, the more significant the decline becomes of the media’s reach to disseminate a new name like “Robredo.” Where I voted in a southern province just two hours’ drive from Makati, I often even overheard people asking, “Sino ito si Lini Roberto?” How could Robredo, who campaigned only for a few months, win against somebody with a household name that started being disseminated 40 years ago?

The NCR results in past elections mirror the national results, probably since the region is actually a melting pot of migrants from all provinces. For instance, Duterte won 43 percent of the votes in NCR, just 4 percentage points higher than the 39 percent he received for the entire Philippines.

How can Robredo explain that Marcos won 46 percent of votes in the NCR, and yet he garnered only 35 percent of the votes nationwide, a huge drop of 11 percentage points? How can she explain she received only 29 percent in the NCR, yet got 6 percentage points more for the entire Philippines?

It will be expensive for Marcos to file an election protest, since he would have to pay for the costs of opening and examining each Election Return and Certificate of Canvass. Yet, the weaknesses of our electoral system must be corrected, or our democracy will continue to be a sham. He has to do it for the sake of the country.

Robredo’s “victory” must be exposed as a sham, representing the last gasps of the Yellow Force.

tiglao.manilatimes@gmail.com

The coming change
EVEN before Mayor Rodrigo Duterte’s official proclamation as “President-elect,” which was due to happen today, his promise of “change” has already begun to unfold. But the “coming change” seems surprisingly different from what was promised by the just-concluded electoral process or imagined by his most ardent supporters. His approach to his constitutional presidency has a distinctly authoritarian character, and it seems to come closest to what the Israeli philosopher Jacob Leib Talmon calls “totalitarian democracy.” This seems enough to cause many of his most rabid supporters some precious hours of sleep.

Not everyone may have heard of Talmon or his work. But it is fairly well discussed among academics. I refer to it simply to lend some academic classification to the emerging political puzzler, although to a non-academic observer like me, “totalitarian democracy” is nothing but an oxymoron—a combination of words with contradictory meanings. On the basis of what we have heard and are hearing from Mr. Duterte and his evolving entourage, I believe “totalitarian,” “dictatorial,” or “despotic” would suffice to describe the political organism that seems to be shaping up.

First of all, everything seems to be coming from out of the box—from the way Mr. Duterte will dress for or speak in his inaugural, to what social and political forces he’ll work with, to what aspects of human life he’ll want to control and dictate, etc. No conventions or precedents are sacred. “This is what I want; I don’t want a debate. I want your obedience, not your opinion or your consent.” This is what strikes the average listener, hopefully incorrectly, as he listens to the presumptive President-elect.

Coalition govt with the Left
For starters, Mr. Duterte has decided to set up a coalition government with the Left. The decision may have been secretly considered by the candidate before the election, or discussed between him and the leaders of the CPP/NPA/NDF, but until he announced it recently, the public knew absolutely nothing about it—he never said he would do anything like it, if elected President. Although it now appears that the Left had mobilized its forces for Duterte at the polls, he ran as presidential candidate of the PDP-Laban only, and not as a coalition candidate of PDP-Laban and the CPP/NPA/NDF.

Would he have obtained the same massive grassroots support had he told the electorate he was running as a candidate of the Left also, and that one of his first priorities, if elected, would be to create a coalition government? This is an important question to ask. It is not to revive any Cold War position or sentiment, but it is a fact that while Soviet communism has collapsed and the Cold War has ended, the last remaining communists in Utrecht are Filipinos, and communist insurgency in the country has grown and prospered. So the Filipino people have every right to know what their government intends to do about it.

For the sake of national solidarity and peace, we should welcome our qualified brothers and sisters on the Left as they take elective or appointive high government office, but only after a genuine peace and reconciliation agreement shall have ended the prolonged armed struggle in the city and countryside. There is no reason why a coalition government should not work here as well as it has in present-day Europe, but it would have no constitutional, political or moral basis while the armed struggle remains unsettled.

In 1992, Congress repealed Republic Act 1700, otherwise known as the Anti-Subversion Law of 1957, which outlawed the Communist Party of the Philippines and related organizations, so that their members could come down from the mountains and the hills and enter the political mainstream. As a consequence, former communist partisans now sit in Congress as elected party-list members, but sadly their party continues to wage armed struggle.

For a coalition government to prosper, it must be built on a comprehensive peace agreement that includes, among other things, the laying down of arms and other reconciliatory and confidence-building measures. Even with the best of intentions and goodwill, no coalition government can be formed without this indispensable anchor or foundation. If the coalition government is to be forged after—and necessarily as the result of—an election, the plan or proposal must be well-publicized for the guidance of the voters right from the start of the electoral process.

Unfortunately, this was never mentioned during the campaign, not even in the presidential debates. No wonder some people feel a gun is now being held to their head, as it were.

Reviving the death sentence
Throughout the campaign, Duterte thrilled audiences with his promise to solve crime in three to six months by “killing criminals.” He has since vowed to restore the death penalty for certain heinous crimes. The 1987 Constitution has abolished capital punishment, except for compelling reasons involving heinous crimes. Various administrations from Fidel V. Ramos up have used the penalty to execute criminals. But in 2006, then-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo suspended the penalty and commuted the death sentence of 1,230 convicts to life imprisonment.

In 2007, the Philippines acceded to the Second Optional Protocol to the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which commits the state to the perpetual abolition of capital punishment. The government will have to renounce this treaty if it decides to restore the death sentence. That will not be without its international consequences. And the mere move to restore the penalty is certain to trigger an intense debate.

Advances in penology have created a strong case against the death sentence; extensive studies have shown that the certainty of punishment is a far greater deterrent to crime than the most severe sentence. If every crime were solved, every criminal arrested, prosecuted and punished, the crime rate would certainly go down, without need of imposing any sentence that carries the lethal vengeance of lex talionis.

A martial law practice
Duterte has also spoken of curfew for minors. At the Kapihan at Anabel’s in Quezon City last Saturday, Duterte’s bejeweled spokesman-designate Salvador Panelo described curfew as one of the priority measures of the next government. Curfew was one of the most appreciated features of martial law in the seventies, especially by wives and mothers, but it did require martial law to enable Marcos to impose it. Unless part of a state of emergency, curfew will have to be legislated by Congress rather than simply ordered by the Executive; it might sail into extended debate on the freedom of movement of citizens.

Still there is less danger of a dictatorship arising from a regime that imposes curfew on minors than from one that sees itself in absolute control of everything that moves and believes it has the power and the authority to impose a quota on the number of children a family can have. This is about the most frightening pronouncement we have heard from the incoming government. The presumptive NEDA director-general and secretary of economic planning seems to believe the shortest route to economic progress is not to produce more food for all those sitting on the table but to send away some of the people there.

Three children per family?
So instead of talking about new ways and means of creating employment and income, eliminating the energy cartel and reducing the cost of electricity, education, health care and food, his first proposal is to impose population control. This is barred by our Constitution, except that the last time we looked, the Supreme Court justices who constitutionalized the unconstitutional Reproductive Health Law have not heard about it at all.

Now Mr. Duterte is quoted as saying he does not want to see more than three children per family under his rule. This is a 200-percent improvement upon China’s draconian “one-child policy,” but operates under the same totalitarian principle—it gives the state a power it does not have and puts it in control of all aspects of human existence.

This is totally incompatible with and repugnant to sound democratic principles. In The Moral Foundation of Democracy, the renowned Duke University professor John H. Hallowell points out what Church teaching and our own Constitution make abundantly clear, that there are spheres of human life which the state may not legitimately control. Family life is one. Our Constitution recognizes “the Filipino family as the foundation of the nation, and marriage, an inviolable social institution, as the foundation of the family.”

Sec. 12 of Article II provides: “The State recognizes the sanctity of family life and shall protect and strengthen the family as a basic autonomous social institution. It shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception. The natural and primary right and duty of parents in the rearing of the youth for civic efficiency and the development of moral character shall receive the support of the Government.”

Correctly understood and enforced, this provision bars the State from trying to run the family life of any single couple or individual. Under this provision, the State is the primary official protector of conception; it cannot, therefore, be the source or agent of even one single case of contraception. And yet at the behest of powerful global population controllers, and with the obscene cooperation of the Aquino government, this provision was savaged by the RH Law, which makes the State the primary source and provider of contraception.

In 2014, a benighted Supreme Court ponencia declared this clearly unconstitutional law “not unconstitutional,” saying it is nothing but “a population control measure” which in its view is “not prohibited” by the Constitution despite the clear and unmistakable prohibition contained in the above-quoted provision. Now, the incoming Duterte government threatens to wreak complete havoc by limiting the fertility of married women to a maximum of three children during their lifetime. And we are expected to welcome it and celebrate it, as the first good news about our economic and moral salvation!

How long before married women are required to secure official papers from the State so they could bear children?

Duterte must succeed as a democrat
We all want the incoming Duterte government to succeed. But it must succeed as a democracy, not as the latest manifestation of totalitarianism. We must all work together for this, but Mr. Duterte should lead us, not against us.

For six years, we had to bear Aquino’s drift into dictatorship. By using the vast resources of the Executive to corrupt Congress and intimidate the Judiciary, he took virtual control of the three branches of government, after the impeachment and removal of the late Chief Justice Renato Corona, and devoted himself to creating ridiculous myths about his late father and mother, Ninoy and Cory Aquino, and making life unpleasant for his perceived enemies, like former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who remains under detention, and most recently Sen. Ferdinand (Bongbong) Marcos Jr., whom he has made sure would not become the Vice President.

Only Aquino’s native incompetence and ineptness saved the country from the real rigors of dictatorship. He did not lack the tyrant’s malice, nor the madness, but he did not have the skills. Mr. Duterte, by any measure, is far more skillful and effective than his bumbling predecessor. If he decides to become a dictator, we are sure to suffer the full impact and rigors of his dictatorship. For this reason, he needs to show us a much clearer and far more reassuring layout of where he intends to take the nation during his watch. He must do his best to succeed as a democrat, not as anything else.

fstatad@gmail.com

SOME military figures expectedly hate the announcements by President-elect Rody Duterte and his spokesmen that he is seriously inclined to start peace talks with the communists, and that he is willing to grant amnesty to persons detained by the Philippine government for being communist rebels. About 500-plus Filipinos are detained in military custody after having been captured in raids on New People’s Army by units of the Armed Forces of the Philippines or in bloody encounters between NPA rebels and AFP troops.

Among them are Benito Tiamzon and his wife Wilma Tiamzon, the detained alleged leaders of the CPP and its armed wing the NPA. The latest reports say Mr. Duterte is going to release the couple so they could join in the peace talks.

But some of these 500 or so detainees, the Philippine Communist Party’s highest leaders in Utrtecht and in the Philippines say, are not NPA combatants at all but members of Communist Party peace panels arrested on their way to or from peace or truce talks with government counterparts. Thus, these are “political prisoners,” persons jailed by the government not for having committed any crime or taken up arms as NPA rebel soldiers but for being sympathizers of the CPP or suspected of being CPP members.

A news item reports that incoming President Rodrigo Duterte said Sunday he would seek an early start to peace talks with communist rebels and free detained leaders when he takes office in end-June. The report also said Mr. Duuterte has offered safe passage back to the Philippines for Jose Maria Sison, CPP founder. Joma Sison lives and operates in Utrecht, the Netherlands, as senior consultant of the CPP—though everybody knows that he is the CPP’s main leader and source of political and strategic wisdom. He had fled to Europe and lived in exile since nearly 30 years ago after attempts during the Cory Aquino presidency to end the CPP-NPA insurgency.

Fighting the CPP-NPA rebellion eats hundreds of millions from the Philippine national budget. Some 30,000 people have been killed in this communist rebellion. NPA-dominated areas are always poor and deprived of local and national government socio-economic development support. Anti-communists in these places are executed if the NPA thinks they are agents of the government military. Their families flee and they become refugees in neighboring towns and villages.

President BS Aquino, soon after taking office in 2010, revived peace talks with the Reds. But these were ended in 2013 because, Aquino said, the CPP-NPA side was insincere and did not really want a political settlement. The Reds demanded their jailed comrades be released as part of the government’s token of sincerity.

The news yesterday mentioned that President-elect Duterte had met a rebel emissary in Davao 10 days ago and that he soon be sending two members of his future Cabinet to Norway for preparatory meetings with maybe Joma and the other rebel communists in exile. Norway has for decades been serving as a mediator between the Reds and the Philippine government. Mr. Duterte was quoted in yesterday’s news as saying he has commissioned his emissaries to go to Oslo and prepare with the rebels the “framework and agenda” that he and Joma Sison would talk about. He also said the two Cabinet emissaries would then “maybe accompany Jose Maria Sison home.” Mr. Duterte said he would then, once his emissaries succeeded in forging an agreement with the rebels, “release all the political prisoners.”

That’s okay with us, and we hope it’s okay also to most of the Filipino people—including most of the military. Provided, of course, that the agreement “hammered out” with the Reds includes a tight and credible undertaking to lay down their arms.

SAN Miguel Corp. (SMC), the country’s most diversified conglomerate, is selling its telecommunications assets to PLDT and Globe Telecom in a deal that would solidify the duopolistic hold of the two biggest telcos in the local market.

This comes after SMC and Australia’s Telstra Corp. ended talks on a joint investment in a new mobile network in the Philippines.

In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, PLDT, or Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., said it would acquire 50 percent equity interest of the telecommunications business of SMC, with Globe acquiring the remaining 50 percent. JAMES KONSTANTIN GALVEZ

HONG KONG: Hong Kong and Shanghai were higher by the break Monday as Asian stocks broadly rose after comments from Federal Reserve boss Janet Yellen implied that interest rates could soon be lifted.

The Hang Seng Index advanced 0.7 percent, or 143.01 points, to 20,719.78.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index edged up 0.18 percent, or 5.14 points, to 2,826.19 while the Shenzhen Composite Index, which tracks stocks on China’s second exchange, rose 0.12 percent, or 2.21 points, to 1,809.25. AFP

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TOKYO: Tokyo stocks rose on Monday morning, extending three straight sessions of gains as a weaker yen and hopes the government would delay a consumption tax hike lifted sentiment.

Japanese media said Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would delay a planned sales tax hike over concerns it could damage the already fragile economy.

Tokyo was scheduled to raise the sales tax from eight percent to 10 percent in April 2017.

But Abe on Saturday told his close aides, including Finance Minister Taro Aso, that he intends to push back the planned increase to October 2019, according to local press reports.

Abe is expected to announce the decision later this week, the reports said.

At the break, the Nikkei 225 index at the Tokyo Stock Exchange rose 0.89 percent, or 150.36 points, to 16,985.20, while the Topix index of all first-section shares gained 0.74 percent, or 9.98 points, to 1,359.91.

US equity markets ended higher on Friday following Federal Reserve boss Janet Yellen’s much-anticipated remarks at Harvard University.

At the event, Yellen implied that US interest rates could be lifted soon, saying that a rate hike “probably” would be justified “in the coming months” if economic data continued to strengthen.

“The stock market’s reaction is changing and coming around to the idea that the US economy is strong enough to withstand higher rates,” Yoshinori Ogawa, a market strategist at Okasan Securities, told Bloomberg News.

“The expectations for an increase are leading to a stronger dollar and firmer stocks globally, and that’s a stabilizing factor for Japanese shares.”

On currency markets, the dollar rose to 110.98 yen from 110.37 yen Friday in New York.

The weaker yen boosted some exporter shares with Toyota rising 1.25 percent to 5,659 yen and Nissan jumping 3.33 percent 1,100 yen.

Banking giant Mitsubishi UFJ tacked on 0.37 percent to end the morning at 544.7 yen. AFP

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HONG KONG: Asia stocks were broadly up Monday after comments from Federal Reserve boss Janet Yellen that suggested a US interest rate hike was looming.

Speaking at Harvard University Friday, Yellen said she believed growth and the strengthening of the labor market would continue, and in that case, “probably in the coming months such a move would be appropriate.”

That time-frame, which other Fed policymakers have also referred to in recent weeks, would put the Fed’s action at its June 14-15 or July 26-27 meeting.

Traders appeared to react positively to the news Monday with stocks flat or slightly higher after a positive lead from Europe and on Wall Street.

The US central bank has repeatedly stated its intention to continue raising rates this year after December’s first hike in nine years.

“Janet Yellen’s remarks on Friday confirm that at least one increase in the Fed rate is likely this year. Traders will take confidence from the fact that stock markets are firm in the face of this confirmation,” Ric Spooner, chief market analyst at CMC Markets, said in an email commentary.

“As far as the markets are concerned, the timing of the next Fed increase now becomes the central issue. Another increase in the near future will increase the possibility of a second increase in US rates before the end of the year.”

Tokyo led the gains in Asia, rising 0.9 percent by the break after the dollar powered higher against the yen on the news, boosting Japanese exporters as a weaker currency inflates the value of their overseas profits.

Hong Kong rose 0.5 percent, while Shanghai, Sydney and Seoul were flat. Jakarta and Taipei gained 0.6 and 0.4 percent respectively.

“There has been a deliberate move on the part of the Fed to steer the market toward prospects of near-term tightening,” Philip Borkin, a senior economist in Auckland at ANZ Bank New Zealand Ltd., said in a client note, according to Bloomberg News.

“The Fed will probably be reasonably chuffed at the way the market is absorbing that message.”

Hopes of Japan tax hike delay

Tokyo also got a lift on hopes the government would delay a consumption tax hike scheduled for April next year.

Media reports over the weekend said Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had told his close aides, including Finance Minister Taro Aso, that he intends to push back the increase to October 2019 on fears it could damage the already fragile economy.

Tokyo had planned to raise the sales tax from eight percent to 10 percent to help pay down one of the biggest debt loads among rich nations.

Oil prices remained below $50 a barrel Monday, with crude dipping 11 cents to $49.21 while US benchmark West Texas Intermediate fell one cent to $49.32 a barrel.

Traders are now looking to the June 2 meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Vienna, where it is hoped a deal on reducing production can be reached.

Prices had topped $50 a barrel — a key psychological level — for the first time this year on Thursday after production disruptions in Canada, as well as unrest in Nigeria, Africa’s biggest crude producer.

On Sunday Canadian petroleum producer Suncor said production in Canada’s fire-ravaged oil sands area was coming back online and thousands of workers were returning to their jobs.

The work stoppage at oil facilities in the region reduced Canada’s total output by an estimated 1.2 million barrels per day, hitting US crude inventories.

Key figures around 0315 GMT

SINGAPORE: Oil prices dipped in Asia Monday after comments from the US central bank head implying interest rates will rise but traders are pinning their hopes on a tightening global market ahead of an OPEC meeting this week.

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen Friday said the US economy is improving enough to support an interest rate increase “probably in the coming months”, raising the possibility of a rate hike in June or July.

The dollar was up against all major currencies as markets digested the news. A stronger greenback makes dollar-priced oil more expensive, denting demand and hurting prices.

In Canada, Suncor Energy Inc has restarted production which has been halted because of wildfires. The blaze forced evacuations and halted production of more than 1 million barrels a day.

At about 0240 GMT, North Sea Brent for July dipped 11 cents to $49.21 while US benchmark West Texas Intermediate for July delivery fell one cent to $49.32 a barrel.

Brent crude last Thursday topped $50 a barrel for the first time this year as production disruptions in Canada and Nigeria eased short-term concerns about abundant global supplies.

In early 2016, oil prices had nosedived to around $27 from above $100 a barrel two years ago, owing largely to a stubborn supply glut.

“The fact that crude prices are not below $49 means that there is still demand-buying in terms of crude futures… Maybe the investors are starting to be more optimistic about the path of oil,” IG Markets analyst Bernard Aw told Agence France-Presse. “But because the dollar has gone up so much, trying to break above the fifty-dollar mark will be even more difficult now.”

Traders are now looking to a June 2 meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Vienna where it is hoped a deal on reducing production can be reached.

But after returning to world oil markets in January after the lifting of nuclear-linked Western sanctions, Iran has said it has no plans to join any output freeze by other major crude producers.

Talks in Doha involving OPEC members and other major producers such as Russia last month failed to reach a deal to cap production. AFP

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