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Founded in 1986
Founding Publisher/Editor:
Lito A. Gajilan
Columnists:
Atty. Michael J. Gurfinkel
Joseph G. Lariosa
Gani P. Tolentino
Ted L. Reyes
Atty. Reuben S. Seguritan
Photographers:
Butch Gata
Sheryl Garcia
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not reflect the opinion of the paper nor that of the publisher
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For the past 20 years, The Filipino Express has provided the Filipino American community the best news, arts and entertainment coverage from around the United States and the Philippines.
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This website includes selected articles from this week's edition of the Filipino Express. Not all the stories published in the printed version appear on this site.
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To tell us what you think about Filipino Express Online or to comment on the stories published here, E-mail us at Filexpress@aol.com
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WHAT was President Arroyo thinking when she gave the go-signal to her underlings to spring US Marine Lance Cpl. Daniel Smith out of the Makati City Jail and hand him to the US Embassy?
For those who were not able to follow the celebrated Subic rape case that happened in late 2005, here’s a short backgrounder.
After about a year of trial, Smith was convicted by Judge Benjamin Pozon of raping a Filipina inside the former Subic Naval Base. The judge then ordered the American soldier detained at the Makati jail.
The US Embassy wanted custody of Smith. But Pozon ruled that under the Visiting Forces Agreement, US custody of Smith ended when the judicial proceeding ended with his decision.
There is also a provision in the VFA that allows US custody of convicted USA servicemen if the United States and Philippine governments come up with an agreement. As such, US Embassy officials and the Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales hurriedly drew up an agreement.
But Judge Pozon said no; the justice secretary cannot represent the Philippines in a mutually binding agreement with another country. Only the President or the secretary of foreign affairs can. Smith’s high-powered lawyers, supported by Philippine government lawyers, appealed Pozon’s decision to detain the GI at a Philippine jail before the Court of Appeals.
Meanwhile, the Arroyo government, through Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo, signed an agreement with US Ambassador Kristie Kenney allowing the US Embassy custody of Smith.
But before the Court of Appeals could issue its decision, Arroyo’s minions, acting more like commandos than Cabinet secretaries, sprang Smith out of his cell in Makati under cover of darkness -- close to midnight on Friday, December 29.
Arroyo later admitted that she approved the abduction of Smith from his detention cell and his transfer to the US Embassy, She justified her decision by saying she wanted to save the country’s deteriorating relationship with the US.
Mrs.. Arroyo may be the President, but she has to realize that the executive department that she heads is just one of the three co-equal branches of government under a democratic system. The Senate, which she wanted to silence by barring officials from testifying in Senate investigations, is one of those. The Judiciary, which includes the Court of Appeals that was supposed to decide on the custody issue, is one of the three.
By ordering her men to release Smith to the US, she again showed her disdain for the other co-equal branches of government. The case was already under the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeals. The prudent thing is to allow the CA to do its job. She should have waited for it decide on the case.
But no. Arroyo must have her way. With her attempt last year to vest extra powers on herself and now this disrespecting of the judiciary, the current tenant of Malacańang is making no effort to hide her dictatorial tendencies. Shades of Marcos; why don’t we just dissolve the Judiciary, and yes, the Senate, and revert to the dark years of one-man rule?
And for what? “To forestall the further deterioration in our strategic relationship”, as Mrs.. Arroyo herself said? Last we looked, the Constitution never said that it was the job of the President to save the country’s relationship with any country. The Chief Executive is duty-bound to protect the country’s sovereignty and uphold justice and the rule of law.
What was Mrs. Arroyo thinking?
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Interview now required for visa applicants
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Editor’s Note: REUBEN S. SEGURITAN has been practicing law for over 30 years. For further information, you may call him at 212 695 5281 or log on to his website at www.seguritan.com
THE Department of State has recently released the final rule that will guide US consular offices on when personal appearance for interview will be required in non-immigrant visa (NIV) applications.
NIVs allow entry of an alien for a temporary period and for a specific purpose. The most common NIVs are the visitors’ visa for business or pleasure (B1/ B2), student (F, M or J) and working visas (H or L).
The final rule reflects the recent amendments introduced by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 (IRTPA) mandating clearer guidelines for requiring personal interview to NIV applicants.
Prior to the 2004 law, the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) basically left the issue of waiving NIV personal interviews to be determined by State Department regulations.
Generally, the amendments are already reflected in current State Department regulations. The most noteworthy amendment, however, is the limitation imposed on the consular officer’s discretion to require NIV applicants to appear for a personal interview.
Under the new rule, consular officers must now conduct personal interviews of all NIV applicants between 14 and 79 years old, the same age range covered by the biometrics collection requirement. Under the old rule, interviews were required for persons between 16 and 60 only.
Personal interview may no longer be waived for the following: (1) those applicants who are not citizens or residents of the country where they are applying; (2) those who have been previously denied a visa application; (3) those where their NIV ineligibility was not overcome; and (4) those from countries designated by the State Department as state sponsors of terrorism.
Among the limited exceptions to the in-person interview rules involve cases where the visa was temporarily denied but the denial was subsequently overcome; or where the inadmissibility was waived; or where NIV applicant is eligible for an interview waiver.
As for the NIV applications of foreign diplomats and officials, the personal interview requirement is considered “as advisory,” according to the AILA report, so as not to impose on the “President’s constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations.” The final rules, therefore, do not require the personal interview under the A-1, A-2, C-2, C-3, G-1, G-2, G-3, G-4, NATO-1, NATO-2, NATO-3, NATO-4, NATO-5 and NATO-6 categories, among other diplomatic or official visas.
The wider coverage of the in-person interview requirement is expected to congest busy consulates like the US Embassy in Manila. It would be advisable for NIV applicants to schedule an appointment early to minimize or avert visa processing delay.
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Judicial activism in libel cases may save the day
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CHICAGO – The libel cases filed by 40 Filipino journalists against First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo are loss-loss propositions from either side.
They will only be all “sounds of fury and signifying nothing.”
Pataasan lang ito ng mga kanilang mga ihi. (They are all for show.)
Why? Because these cases filed by journalists were mere retaliations against Mr. Arroyo, who was accused of widespread corruptions.
Nobody is going to win in these cases. Only the lawyers will.
Okay, the charges and counter-charges filed against each other by protagonists in the cases are not going to enrich jurisprudence in journalism, unless the court exercises some form of “judicial activism.”
Friends from both sides
Those people behind the cases are my friends from way back in the Philippines. Mr. Arroyo’s legal adviser and spokesman, Atty. Jess Santos, was a friend of mine when Attorney Santos was still lawyering for the late Mayor Nemesio Yabut of Makati, which was one of my beats in the 80s. While journalists across the aisles in the case, like Ramon Tulfo, Rusty Otico, Joe Pavia and Conrado de Quiros are also my friends.
But because Mr. Arroyo’s legal advisers, including my friend Ka Jess Santos, want to have something to do on their spare time while pleasing the First Gentleman, why not sign up on the case?
Frankly, I think, Ka Jess has no time to spare because when I called in his office last year at the GSIS office near the Senate building nestled on the reclaimed area of the Manila Bay on Pasay City side, he barely had time to have coffee with me and my fellow Chicago visitor, Mr. Marlon Pecson.
Nor will my journalist friends have quality time with their lawyers, considering the limited time in their hands in between deadlines.
But this is much I can say: Mr. Arroyo and the journalists have the right to sue each other. That is a matter of right.
NYT vs. Sullivan
But as to who is going to win? The lawyers from both parties but of course! And the clear losers? Both parties, who else?
On paper, if we base the outcome of the case on the landmark libel case of New York vs. Sullivan, which was used by the Philippine Supreme Court as a basis in dismissing the libel case filed by former President Cory Aquino against the late Louie Beltran, the two libel cases filed by Mr. Arroyo and the journalists against each other are going to be dismissed.
According to the progeny cases that spun out of the Sullivan case, if a complainant in the libel case has access to mass media, like public figures, no amount of scurrilous libel can issue, even if the information heaped on him is false for as long as the complainant cannot prove that the defendant has full knowledge that before the defendant wrote it, the defendant still went on to recklessly publish the libelous information even if he knew that the information was false. This is really the high wall erected by the United States Supreme Court to protect the freedom of the press.
Now in the case of journalists as complainants, they cannot win a libel case because as members of the media, journalists have a natural and easy access to media to defend themselves against libelous information. Journalists can easily clear the accusations against them, using their own media.
Protects privacy rights
Perhaps, if the complainants are of another profession, say, a nurse or a doctor, these nurses or doctors would have to be a celebrity nurse or doctors first before they can have access to the media. That’s why, unknown doctors and nurses have a better chance at winning libel cases than journalists.
So, what should the court do in these cases filed against each other by Mr. Arroyo and journalists?
The judge should recommend to Congress that it should pass a law, creating an arbitration body that should first resolve the disputes whose outcomes are predictable, before these disputes are elevated to the court of law as we know it.
Arbitration courts in the United States have been very popular tools in resolving disputes at preliminary stages, thereby unclogging in advance the courts of hundreds of thousands of cases.
For instance, Mr. Arroyo could have first brought his case before an arbitration body under the aegis of either the National Press Club of the Philippines, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines, the Manila Overseas Press Club, or the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas, praying that the involved journalists should be sanctioned by their publishers for falsely libeling him, that is, if he has proof to the contrary.
Suspension and disbarment
Some forms of sanctions are suspending the reporter so he cannot write for a short or long period of time or dismissal from his job at the most.
On the other hand, if the journalists have a case against Mr. Arroyo for corrupt acts, they can ask an arbitration body from the Integrated Bar of the Philippines, seeking his suspension or disbarment so that Mr. Arroyo cannot to return to his law practice when his wife, President Gloria-Macapagal Arroyo, leaves Malacanang.
Anything less, the charges and countercharges of libel filed by Mr. Arroyo against the journalists and vice versa will only enrich the pockets of the lawyers from both sides, not the journalism jurisprudence.
Don’t call the judge, the Grinch, who stole your Christmas, er, your damage award!
(lariosa_jos@sbcglobal.net)
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(NEW Year’s Day is more than just firecrackers, horn-tooting and booze swiggling. It is also about a Jewish mother, revered over the centuries, by Muslims and Christians alike. And the column is about this Lady, who is specially honored on Janurary 1. -- JLM )
TIME magazine titled a recent cover story “Hail, Mary”. It devotes eight pages to Jesus of Nazareth’s mother. “A Mary for All” was how the Economist bannered an earlier report. Life Magazine led off with: “The Mystery of Mary”. And shortly thereafter, Time did a two-page spread: “Mary, So Contrary.”
What’s going on here?
After centuries of “sullen neglect… Christians of all denominations are finding their own reasons to venerate Mary”, Time reports. Families, pastors and theologians, notably within U.S. Protestant churches, are re-discovering the Virgin.
Harvard University minister Peter Gomes pinpoints this trend in a joke about a Protestant pastor at heaven’s gates. “Ah, Professor. I know you’ve met my Father,” Jesus says in making the introductions. “But I believe you don’t know my mother.”
New appreciation of Mary stems from the very arena in which Protestants historically pride themselves most: careful and full reading of Scriptures.
Mary stood by the Cross. And she figures in “a skein of appearances longer and more strategically placed than any other character in scriptures”, Princeton University professor of New Testament literature, Beverly Gaventa, points out.
“She is present in all key situations: at Jesus birth, at his death and in the Upper Room,” Gaventa writes in “Personalities of the New Testament”. Whether in Egypt, Nazareth or Cana, “there isn’t a figure comparable to her”.
The new thinkers are exploring the implications of Mary’s excruciating presence at the crucifixion. “(She) witnesses almost single handedly Christianity through it’s darkest moment.”
There are critics, Time notes. Southern Baptists Convention leaders complain their colleagues are “guilty of over-reaching”.
That would baffle Muslims. Mary is Islam’s most honored woman, the Economist notes. “(She’s) the only one to have an entire chapter named after her in the Koran. Christians and Muslims alike see in Mary an affirmation that there is no limit to proximity of God that any human can attain,” the report asserts. “Surely, that is reason enough, for people of any faith, to feel reverence for history’s foremost Jewish mother.”
The Economist cites the “wisdom” texts in Jewish and Christian scriptures and the Eastern Church’s lesser-known Gospel by James. It reviews studies by Methodists Hebrew scholar Margaret Barker to Jaime Moran, religion and psychology writer.
Muslim and eastern Christians “cherish the story of Mary’s childhood in a place of supreme holiness. Both name Mary’s guardian as the priest Zechariah or Zakariya.”
“Catholics would tell you, rather firmly, that Mary is not a goddess,” the Economist notes. “She is not worshipped but rather venerated: a human being with a unique role in praying for and protecting the human race.” That hews closely to Muslim belief too.
The wisdom texts speak of a “woman clothed with the sun”. And down the centuries, “heart-stopping turns of phrase” have been applied to Mary, the Economist notes. “Our tainted nature’s solitary boast” was the way one poet put it.
“Shortly after Vatican II, a period of Marian silence descended,” recalls Catalino Arevalo, SJ, of Ateneo University. “We, in the Philippines, did not go through that phase.”
“Churches in former communist Eastern Europe have not experienced the ‘eclipse of Mary’ either,” notes this Filipino theologian. “What strikes a mainland China visitor, who gets in contact with Catholics there, is that veneration of Mary has never been stronger.”
That “Marian silence” and “dechristinization” of Europe led the German theologian Karl Rahner to write: “Many Catholics today are going through a winter of belief.”
Once known as “Christendom” Europe built the Continent’s loveliest cathedrals from Chartres to Notre Dame. Now, Europe suffers from a “vacuum of faith”, Los Angeles Times notes. The Gallup Millennium Survey reveals barely 20 percent of West Europeans attend church services once a week.
“When the new springtime of faith comes…the cult of Mary the Mother of God, will return,” Rahner added. “In fact, it will be its surest sign. Its form may perhaps be different, but if Christian tradition is valid, it will return.”
That was in 1968. Today, Rahner’s comments resound in essays by, among others, Lutheran Carl Braten: “I can’t predict exactly how the (Mary re-discovery) will happen. Some of it will be good, and some may be bad. But I think it’s going to happen”.
Some 38 years after Rahner wrote of this “second spring”, Father Arevalo notes, “this appears a remarkably prophetic text”.
This comeback of Our Lady is seen on the dateline of stories from new Marian shrines: Medjugorge in Yugoslavia; Akita in Japan; Kibeho in Rwanda and Cuenca in Ecuador. “News accounts fueled renewed interest in the Marian movement.”
Then, there was Pope John Paul II. “No pontiff in the entire history of Catholicism has had so strong and articulate a devotion to Mary.” He willed that her logo be carved on his plain cedar coffin.
If Karl Rahner was right, then perhaps the current cover stories may be more significant than they appear, Fr Arevalo says. Are they buds of the “the new springtime of faith,” which, Rahner foresaw, “is about to begin”?
(E-mail : juan_mercado74@yahoo.com)
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Between nationalism and national convenience
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NORMALLY, events happening in the home country do not catch the attention of Filipino Americans living in the US. An exception apparently is the present conflict between the Filipino and the American government involving US Lance Cpl. Smith, member of the visiting US armed forces in the Philippines who was recently convicted by a Philippine court of raping a Filipina woman.
The issue of contention is under whose custody he will be held in jail at this point in time, whether he should be confined in a Philippine jail or held under the custody of the American embassy in Manila.
The Filipino judge who convicted Smith said he must be held in a Philippine jail after the conviction. The Americans claim the trial is not yet over as long as the appeals are not over and Smith must be entrusted to the custody of the US government. The case has been elevated into a diplomatic issue.
The convicting judge said his order to confine Smith in a Philippine jail is in accordance with the RP-US Visiting Forces Agreement. On the contrary, the US government said Smith should now be turned over to the custody of the American embassy. The Americans, applying pressure, have notified the Philippine government that it was terminating the agreement on joint military exercises starting next year.
Since the Philippines pulled out of the American- sponsored coalition during the start of the war in Iraq, US-Philippine relations have been deteriorating. The notice of termination has therefore alarmed Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who fears that unless this tide of further deterioration in bilateral relations is halted, it could lead to worse pressures.
GMA has felt these pressures in the past. During recent unofficial visits to the USA, efforts on the part of Filipino diplomats to secure for her an appointment at the White House have been ignored. The worsening relations have seen significant reductions in foreign aid from the US to the Philippines.
There is now speculation that further pressures could include restrictions on the issuance of visas to Filipinos for travel to the US. Can you imagine the resulting outcry if these restrictions affect the flow of professionals who will seek livelihood in the US, not to mention those who are approved to join their families who have been approved as immigrants in the US? Can you imagine how GMA would react to such a widespread outcry since she will surely be the target of such protests?
The Philippine government has backed down and has allowed the US to prevail on the issue of Smith. He will be released to the US embassy. GMA has announced that the decision was made to preserve the harmonious relations between the two countries.
The topic was discussed by the regular group of senior Fil Ams who gather every morning at Jersey City’s Hudson Mall for their daily walk and talk over coffee. These seniors are predominantly Philippine-born but naturalized US citizens who have lived and retired in this country but go home from time to time to visit their home country. Almost all of them favor the position of the American government vis-a- vis Smith. To assuage whatever little bother it does to their conscience, they revisit the rape case and state their belief that the victim of the sexual assault, if it did happen, was her fault. What nice girl would consort with soldiers in bars late at night.
L’affair Smith is not yet over. Expect demonstratons and rallies against GMA, who will be accused of succumbing to blackmail. On the other hand, because of the potential threat to the livelihood of Filipino overseas workeers, which now forms a lifeblood in the economic life of the nation, it should strike a balance against the mass reaction.
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Michael J. Gurfinkel has been an attorney for over 26 years, and is an active member of the State Bar of California and New York, as well as the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the Immigration Section of the Los Angeles County Bar Association. He has always excelled in school:
Valedictorian in High School; Cum Laude at UCLA; and Law Degree Honors and academic scholar at Loyola Law School, which is one of the top law schools in California.
WEBSITE: www.gurfinkel.com
Four offices to serve you:
LOS ANGELES:
219 North Brand Boulevard, Glendale, California 91203
Telephone: (818) 543-5800
SAN FRANCISCO:
966 Mission Street, San Francisco, California 94103 Telephone: (415) 538-7800
NEW YORK:
60 East 42nd Street, Suite 2101, New York, NY 10165 Telephone: (212) 808-0300
PHILIPPINES:
Heart Tower, Unit 701, 108 Valero Street, Salcedo Village, Makati, Philippines 1227
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