Email sent by seaman Ben about 15 minutes ago:

Papasok pa lang po kami ng gulf of aden, pero may mga nakikita na kaming mga fishing boat. we dont know kung pirata na sila o kung legitimate na mangingisda lang (most of the pirates kasi nagpapanggap na mangingisda, according to coalition forces in the area).

nakatanggap na rin kami ng distress call mula sa ibang barko. well, kami dito sa barko namin tense na, we dont know what will happen to us.

I asked Ben, my seaman correspondent headed by cargo ship towards the Middle East, how they intend to ward off pirates.

di po kami allowed magdala ng baril sa barko, merchant mariner kasi. water spray lang gagamitin namin using fire hose. 3 days from now nasa gulf of aden na kami. dito na kmi sa red sea.

One crew of Pinoy seamen reportedly threw tomatoes from their pantry at pirates attempting to board their ship.

A viewer and now my regular email correspondent Ben is a Filipino seaman who traverses some of the world's most dangerous seas. He has promised to update me on his travels via his ship's 24-hour wifi, and I will update my readers on his whereabouts via this blog. His ship left Italy a few days ago and spent New Year's Eve nearing Egypt and psyching himself up for the notorious Gulf of Aden, a vast maritime den of pirates. Hundreds of seamen have been taken hostage there in the last several years, the majority of them Filipinos. Ben's email that arrived just this morning:

January 1, 2009:

howie we're arriving tomorrow in egypt passing suez canal going to al jubail, saudi arabia... by january 3 nasa gulf of aden kami. so far we don't know what will happen to us pag daan namin doon. i'll keep you posted sa pagdaan namin sa lugar ng mga pirata. may nakasalubong kasi kami kanina na barko na dumaan lang doon. kahit may mga nagbabantay na coalition forces nagpipilit pa rin daw sumakay sa barko mga pirata. actually may isang crew na tinamaan ng bala... sige po ingat lagi...

December 25, 2008:

magandang pasko ulit sayo, isang marino po ulit. sa oras pong ito ay pasko na jan sa pinas subalit dito samin sa barko ika sampo pa lang ng gabi, 2 oras bago magnoche buena. as usual malungkot kami dahil malayo kami sa pamilya namin at kakaalis lang namin sa porto maghera, venice, italy. patungo naman kami sa bindisi, italy.

December 23, 2008

alam mo howie in a few days dadaan kami ng gulf of aden sa somalia. magmumula kami dito sa italy, papunta kami al jubail, saudi arabia to discharge our cargo. hindi namin alam kung ano ang mangyayari samin pagdaan namin, para din kaming si manny (pacquiao) na dadaan sa isang mabigat na pagsubok at hindi namin alam kung kami ay dadamayan din ng ikalawang pangulo ng bansa kung kami ay macapture ng mga piratang somalian. by the way, first or second week pa ng january ang daan namin kasi dito pa kami sa italy nagloloading pa ng cargo intended for al jubail. if u want to i will give you an update sa pagdaan namin ng gulf of aden, nakaonline naman kami dito sa barko... yun naman ay kung gusto mo lang... mabuhay ka kabayan...at ang gma7 magandang pasko at maligayang bagong taon.

Unless the randy Rizal suddenly developed a taste for older women, it's unlikely that he would have chosen 45-year-old Ms. Jacoby over the other Suzanne living in the same Brussels boarding house, the spinster's comely 18-year-old niece Suzanne Thill.

A confluence of events marked Rizal Day for me, including a morning jog in downtown Lipa City that serendipitously led me to a vintage bahay na bato with an arch that said "Casa de Segunda," which Rizal's teen-age crush Segunda Katigbak had called home. That was apparently her main claim to fame, occupying a temporary place in our hero's young heart. I entered the courtyard through an open wooden gate. On the spacious veranda where Segunda's family must have entertained other landed families, I heard and then saw a caretaker belting out a disco number through a loud videoke machine while Mariah Carey pranced on the screen. I quickly exited, afraid of interrupting.

Then there was a front-page, above-the-fold article in the Inquirer today about Rizal's love life that simply rehashed accounts by other writers. Sayang -- there's territory in that field of Rizaliana waiting to be explored (like, did Josephine and Pepe really produce a stillborn love child and if so where could he have been buried?).

I also have a quibble with the writer Gerry Lirio's repetition of the dubious notion that Rizal's girlfriend in Brussels was his middle-aged spinster landlady, Suzanne Jacoby. This May-October relationship was asserted by Zaide long ago and accepted as gospel truth by many since, but it has been debunked by more recent scholars, including Rizal enthusiasts in Belgium who have researched those days in our hero's life in minute detail.

Unless Rizal suddenly developed a taste for older women, it's unlikely that he would have chosen the 45-year-old Ms. Jacoby over the other Suzanne living in the same boarding house, the spinster's 18-year-old niece Suzanne Thill, who was originally from Luxembourg. The proof of this relationship is purely in pining letters to Rizal where he is called endearingly "my little bad boy" by a certain "petite Suzanne." According to Cebu-based Pros Slachmuylders, a Belgian Rizalist, Zaide knew that Rizal fell for the younger Suzanne (actually Suzanna on her birth certificate), but the (Zaide) "mistook the young Suzanna’s middle name Jacoby as her last name instead of Thill."

French-speaking Belgian scholar Jean-Paul Verstraeten told me that Rizal's gf's signing her letters "petite Suzanne" meant there was another, older Suzanne in the same place whom Rizal knew, probably the spinster aunt. (I'm sorry, is the word "spinster" considered politically incorrect?).

No known pictures of Ms. Thill remain. But while in Brussels, our hero would create and send to his friend Valentin Ventura in Paris a bust of a Caucasian lass with exquisite young features, prompting Ventura to write him asking who his model could be. I'm not sure if Rizal ever answered his query. But it certainly did not remind Ventura of middle-aged a spinster.

After Rizal moved away from Brussels in 1890 in search of a cheaper city to live in, and a place where he could publish El Filibusterismo, petite Suzanne wrote him longingly: “Don’t delay too long writing us because I wear out the soles of my shoes for running to the mailbox to see if there is a letter from you... There will never be any home in which you are so loved as in that in Brussels, so, you little bad boy, hurry up and come back.”

Her little bad boy did not come back, adding to Rizal's trail of broken hearts.

Airing December 29, 2008 (a day or two later on GMA's Pinoy TV overseas)


Howie with long-time friend Perry Berry, second from left, with wife
Lyn and youngest child Josephine, 14.

I-Witness viewers often ask whatever happened to some of the more intriguing characters they saw on the country's longest-running documentary program.



Mang Sergio, illiterate dog trainer, has a new ward, Bagwis, who can bark the value of the coin in his master's hand: five arfs.

In their year-end episode, Howie Severino and his intrepid team revisit several of these characters, underdogs all. One of them is literally a dog, Habagat, a talented canine made famous by its even more talented master, an illiterate old man who makes a living on the streets of Manila. He does shows with Habagat for passersby who stop dead in their tracks to watch a dog that can count, add, and high-five with anyone who will part with a coin.



Every day, the challenge for Mang Sergio is to convince a jeepney driver to stop for three dogs, three people (Sergio, his son Eddieboy and special child Nelia, 32), and a pile of monoblock chairs.

Howie also gets a poignant update on old friend Perry Berry, a charismatic dwarf who left his job as a preacher and is now searching for a job. He manages to find a gig as a human washing machine on a comedy show. But his biggest pride is still his youngest child Josephine who has not let her dwarfism stop her from becoming class president.



We paid a visit to the blind twins Jerome and Joshua Nelmida, who have graduated from the blind pre-school RBI and now go to Paranaque Elementary School-Central, where all their classmates are sighted. They can write faster in Braille than their classmates can write putting pencil to paper.

Perhaps the most uplifting story is about the blind twins whom Howie met last year at a pre-school for the blind. They are now in grade one in a regular school where all of their classmates are sighted. They somehow manage to fit in, and even excel, despite being at a deep disadvantage.

In a surprise twist, Howie describes his own experience this year with disability and underdoggism -- he suffered a temporary facial paralysis that distorted his face, slurred his speech, made food fall out of his mouth, and forced him to wear an eye patch for weeks. Although he is nearly back to normal, the experience left him with a fresh appreciation for the gift of physical normalcy and an even deeper respect for those who are able to overcome permanent disadvantage to pursue their dreams.

Director: Jazel Kristin Villamarin
Camera: Egay Navarro
Executive producer: Noi Cuanang
Researcher: Cris Sto. Domingo
Writer and on-cam guide: Howie Severino



The Team in Lipa, Batangas for our episode's last shoot: Sitting, left to right: Assistant cameraman Jessie Bernardo, cameraman Egay Navarro. Standing, l to r: Howie Severino, Chelsea Sombillo, Cris Sto. Domingo, Noi Cuanang, and JJ Villamarin. Note Egay's home-made dolly.

Shoot location: The Luna home in Lipa.

At Christmas time, amid a global recession and the Philippines' endless political nightmare, it's balm for my soul to reflect on life's small joys.



1. The Cultural Center of the Philippines, across the street!



Living across the street from the CCP is one noble reason to live so far from my office. Having a rich array of artsy, affordable treats to choose from the whole year-round and within easy walking distance has made living in Manila a generally joyful experience, despite the pollution, crime, traffic, and public spitting and urinating.

2. Reunions.



I've known Perry Berry since the 1980s, but I finally got to know his unique, loving family in 2006 when I did a documentary on his life as a leader of little people, manager of Hobbit House, discoverer of musical talents, and provincial pastor. Then a few weeks ago, I went to see him again and got an update on his family. His youngest, Josephine, the high schooler on the far right above, has been the perennial president of her class since grade school, rising above the occasional taunts she hears on the street.

3. A boy and his dog.



One of my most joyful accomplishments as a documentarist was helping reunite Eddieboy, above, with his aging father, Mang Sergio, he with the unusual talent for training dogs. I saw Eddieboy again a few weeks ago in downtown Manila helping his father stage street shows with his dogs. The original dog star, Habagat, is still the show's mainstay. But Eddieboy does his own dog-walk routine with Amihan, above, the newest trainee.

4. A politician I can relate to.



Before he ran for anything, Obama was a regular dude trying find himself, above as a college freshman in California before he blossomed into a campus superstar. When I saw this picture, I thought of myself at that age at almost the same time (Baracko and I are the same age). I was wearing puka shells around my neck, experimenting with my clothing, trying to find a voice as a writer, and under the illusion that I was cool.

I can't let this item pass without embedding the hilarious video of a Pinoyesque Obama below:




5. Many books to go before I sleep...


I love buying books, most of which wait their turn in my book case or in piles on my desk at home. Many will probably never get read, but like quiet, agreeable friends, their mere presence gives me comfort. I do get to read some in their entirety, the most recent being Rage, a history book written in the peculiar style of three alternating first-person points of view: the brothers Juan and Antonio Luna and Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, important figures linked through marriage, history and a hideous double murder.

Rather than pay cheap lip service to our own golden boy, Filipino politicians should take to heart the real lesson of Pacquiao's triumph: the sweetest victory is achieved honestly.

One headline claimed that Pacquiao's historic victory over the heavily favored Oscar De La Hoya showed the heart of the Filipino. Let's not get carried away -- our champion might have demonstrated the heart of some Filipinos, but certainly not all. And certainly not those seen hanging around the champ in Las Vegas and claiming they were there to inspire him to victory.

By taking on and defeating the bigger and more celebrated "golden boy" of boxing, what the Pacman really showed is that a Filipino can win by being disciplined, smart and honest. That's harder than it sounds, because all around us is incompetence and dishonesty, most infamously in the field of politics and governance.



With the same long odds against the champ, one could have imagined his compatriots in other fields succumbing to the temptation of underhanded tactics (like those overaged youth baseball players from a decade ago or a certain political candidate with the gall to call an election official many times and deny it was cheating). But no, that rare underdog status was the Pacman's motivation to work his butt off, block out distractions, and listen to good advice. In the end, with a dubious weigh-in, the surprisingly underweight De La Hoya became the object of suspicion and not his Filipino opponent.

Really, our own golden boy credits prayer way too much, as if his Mexican-American Catholic opponent was lacking in the prayer department. Praying is what too many of us do already rather than the more difficult tasks of preparation.

Nope, Pacquiao's edge was in old-fashioned hard work and clever strategy. He and his trainer studied their adversary and devised a plan that they executed with ferocious efficiency.

How I wish those police operatives in Paranaque did the same last week when they caught wind of a pending robbery and sloppily executed an operation that left several civilians dead, including a father and his young daughter.

All of us, including those policemen, should ask ourselves when faced with a tough challenge: What would Pacquiao do?

If this unique individual is to make any difference at all in the nation's worst of times, we should learn the real lesson of his example -- whether it's in boxing, politics, police operations, or the daily struggle to overcome poverty, victory requires sacrifice, preparation, and cleverness... and it's not a real victory if it's not achieved honestly.

Our beloved high school retreat master and spiritual counsellor Fr. Pat Lim journeyed to his final destination last week, making me dig out this classic picture from our senior retreat in Sual, Pangasinan in 1979. He's the chubby old guy in shorts near the center. I'm the one appearing to shiver in the early morning coolness, standing third from right.

Fr. Pat was better known to many as the long-time parish priest of Della Strada church on Katipunan Avenue in Loyola Heights. I remember a February night in 1986 after mass when a few parishioners, myself included (as an Ateneo high school teacher, I was living nearby), stayed behind to discuss the unraveling political situation in the country. Then Father Pat alerted everyone about exciting news on Radio Veritas: Enrile and Ramos were breaking away from Marcos! The crowd cheered. (In those days, a military rebellion was a brand-new phenomenon and welcome news.)

So in 1979 the year I graduated from high school and in 1986 when the nation graduated from a dictatorial regime, Father Pat stamped himself in my memory.

My New Jersey-based classmate Jimby emails: I remember part of his Sual retreat sermon... how some Atenean eagles end up as fried chicken (aren't we the best-tasting chicken, though?).

(I don't know Jimby, how many Ateneans have you tasted? : )

The picture is by my high school classmate Noy Montemayor, whose shadow is in the foreground.

In response to the previous post on the Down from the Hill manifesto of 1968, I received the following email from a former Ateneo college teacher in defense of the Ateneo administration in the 1960s and early 70s. He meant to post it as a comment on this blog:

Dear Howie,

I read your column (Ms. Liberty Chee of the Ateneo de Manila University faculty forwarded it to the other faculty members who supported the position of the original 14 on the RH bill). I tried to respond through your blog but because I do not know what kind of outgoing server I am using, I failed to get through. I hope this second try is more successful.

I was a faculty member of the Ateneo faculty when the five (Linggoy, Gerry, Eman, Freddie and Leonie) wrote that piece "Down from the Hill". I just want to make one factual correction and one comment (based on what you reported of their piece, as I have forgotten exactly what they wrote).

Fact: The first Filipino Jesuit President of ADMU was Fr. Francisco Araneta, appointed in 1959 (the first 100 years of the ADMU), ten years before "Down From the Hill"). He was succeeded by several Filipino Jesuits. In 1969, it was Fr. Pacifico Ortiz, S.J.

Comment: The ADMU administration in 1969 and after was supportive of the students' aspirations for reform in the country. In January 1970, students and faculty were allowed to use Ateneo de Manila buses to go to a large protest rally in front of Congress (then located on Burgos Drive, between Manila City Hall and Roxas Blvd) where Marcos was to address the congressmen and senators at the opening of Congress. Edgar Jopson, then concurrently ADMU Student Countil President and National Union of Students President, addressed the rally, critical of the regime (but not critical enough for the radical Left who attacked him in their speeches). Inside Congress, Fr. Ortiz led the opening prayer, which was as critical of the regime as an opening prayer could ever be.

Another indication of the liberal leanings of the ADMU administration was that it allowed students, who had stopped attending classes in 1972-73 (the schoolyear when martial law was declared) to join the protest movement both below and above ground, to take their final exams. In various ways, it was also supportive of calls for reform in the Church following Vatican II.

Joseph H. Francia

PDI columnist John Nery beat me to commemorating the landmark Ateneo student manifesto, Down from the Hill, on its 40th anniversary today, but I'm glad John did; a purer bred Atenista I do not know.

The editorial writer in him deftly connects the statement's high-minded condemnation of the "oppressive power elite" in 1968 to "Mikey Arroyo, the President’s son who is the current and intemperate kingmaker in Congress. Or consider (to offer another example) Jinggoy Estrada, another president’s son who uses the pulpit of the Senate to exact revenge on political enemies."

The manifesto sounds quaint in our jaded age, with its grim-and-determined call for Filipinizing the Jesuit university, then a bastion of American priests. But it was soon after the call that more Filipinos were finally being appointed to university leadership positions and courses were developed that would bring students in "closer contact with the masses," among a range of other nationalistic changes that would make the Ateneo more "relevant", as the manifesto demanded. Makes one nostalgic for a time when the written word had real power.

"They heralded the change that was to come," Nery writes, "they" being the five intense undergraduates who published Down from the Hill in the college newspaper the Guidon: Jose Luis “Linggoy” Alcuaz, Gerardo Esguerra, Emmanuel “Eman” Lacaba, Leonardo Montemayor and Alfrredo Navarro Salanga.



The Renaissance radical in the group, Eman Lacaba, later took his idealism to the hills where he became the poet laureate of the communist underground, endearing himself to generations of activists with lines like this:

"We are tribeless and all tribes are ours./We are homeless and all homes are ours./We are nameless and all names are ours./To the fascists we are the faceless enemy/Who come like thieves in the night, angels of death:/The ever moving, shining, secret eye of the storm." (from the poem Open Letters to Filipino Artists).

The Down from the Hill manifesto was a critique not only of the Ateneo but of the church, with a demand to "make herself relevant to the Philippine situation."

Re-reading that line tonight, I thought immediately of the recent statement of 66 Ateneo faculty who "speaking for ourselves and not for the university, have come to conclude that the Philippines urgently needs a national policy on reproductive health and population development," and have thrown their support behind the Reproductive Health bill in Congress now being opposed by the Catholic church.

The statement prompted a respectful rebuke from Ateneo president Bienvenido Nebres, SJ, who stated that "the Ateneo de Manila University does not agree with their position of supporting the present bill. As I said in my letter of October 2 to Archbishop Aniceto and Bishop Reyes, it is 'the considered opinion of our moral theologians that, although there are points wherein the aforesaid bill and the Catholic moral tradition are in agreement, there are certain positions and provisions in the bill which are incompatible with principles and specific positions of moral teaching which the Catholic Church has held and continues to hold.'"

By restricting the power of couples to control the sizes of their families, the church may again be marching out of step with the times, and hearing loud calls from its flock to "get real," so to speak. It is in the reformist impulses of the current lay faculty that one can hear the echoes of the five undergrads who offered a vision that was ahead of its time. Not everyone is jaded.

A battle over paradise



NO MAN'S LAND
An I-Witness documentary (GMA7)
Airing Monday midnight: November 24, 2008, after Saksi
(Delayed by a day or two on Pinoy TV overseas: click here for
schedules: http://www.gmapinoytv.com/program_guide - we're prime time
overseas!)

For three generations, a close-knit clan of fisherfolk have claimed
the tiny, white-fringed islet of Mantigue in Camiguin province as
their home -- a prized piece of real estate in the tourism economy.
Now the government wants it back and return the island to its natural
state for day visitors to enjoy.

The effort of local officials to relocate the residents, including a
mass arrest of the entire island population, has bitterly divided the
community. Eerily evoking the group dynamics of the popular TV program
Survivor, but with much higher stakes, family members threaten and
back-stab each other over the wrenching decision to leave or fight for
a slice of paradise.

At the center of the conflict is the tormented Romulo, who has finally
decided to accept the government's resettlement offer and urge his
neighbors to do the same. The rest of the clan, including his cousins
and siblings, accuse him of treachery and try to discredit him.



Howie Severino and his team camp out on the islet and explore its
hidden natural treasures, even scuba diving at night to accompany
spear fishermen hunting precious food fish. They also see how the
intensifying planetary choices between people and nature play out in a
very small space.

Director: Jazel Kristin Villamarin
Executive Producer: Noi Cuanang
Writer/host: Howie Severino
Videographer: Egay Navarro
Underwater Videographer: Ding Cabreira
Dive master: Fra Quimpo

My topic was hard enough without having to coax words out of my half-paralyzed mouth.


My real purpose in Vienna was a UN conference on corruption and my talk on Philippine media's role in removing corrupt leaders, aka Marcos and Estrada, and in failing to remove another, aka GMA.

How pathetically appropriate that I would attend the conference appearing like an envoy for a tribe of pirates, and speaking with a slight slur, unable to pronounce certain vowels, as if I had just had a few drinks in the morning. And that smirk is an attempt at a full smile.

The condition is called Bell's Palsy, which paralyzes half the face for up to a month and humbles anyone who has ever taken his motor skills for granted. Food and liquids can just spill out of your month uncontrollably (but that was just for a few days, I can retain all of my food now).

My topic was hard enough without having to coax words out of my half-paralyzed mouth, essentially another cautionary tale about the Philippines for an audience that doesn't know much about our country. Yet another display of our dirty national laundry.

I tried to answer the question, why is the Philippines an outlier in that hallowed correlation between a free press and corruption prevention? Why can't our leaders be deterred despite a media full of corruption reporting? One could argue, as Roby Alampay does in a previous blog post, that corruption would be much worse without our rambunctious press, a mind-boggling prospect considering the current scale of malfeasance.

The bulk of my explanation echoed other readers of this blog who cited a feeble rule of law and the failure of accountability institutions. In other words, once media exposure of corruption occurs, the judicial system must take over. Otherwise, the public outrage will be channeled another way, like people power or military adventurism. Unchannelled outrage can lead to apathy and cynicism, a sense of hopelessness leading to thoughts of migration.

But how does a nation develop the rule of law? A Singaporean academic kept citing his own country's example and the "political will" of its leaders. But that also begs the question, how does one pull political will out of a hat?

My own theory is basic: countries get lucky or unlucky with its leaders, who have the opportunity to demonstrate political will and integrity in creating institutions that will ensure more of the same. In the absence of effective accountability institutions, it boils down to a question of character.

After the fates of Presidents Marcos and Estrada, both disgraced and removed from power, President Gloria Arroyo was presented two different lessons: 1) Political survival (and success) requires honest governance (the high road); or 2) political survival requires knowing how to game the system (the low road).

It is clear to everyone alive which road this administration took, which lesson it took to heart. Sayang: Many had believed in 2001 when Gloria took over that she had a chance to save our politics, as the daughter of a president with a sterling reputation for honesty and as someone who got an opportunity to serve as president only because her predecessor betrayed the public's trust.

Only God knows why she decided to take the low road. Where was the guiding spirit of her father? The high road would have enabled her to govern more effectively, have a better night's sleep, preserve her father's good name, and spare herself the humiliation of "hello Garci" in a million ring tones and an insincere apology to the nation.

The northern hemisphere just rounded the corner of autumn and heads toward the dead of winter -- the perfect season to explore Vienna's indoor spaces, such as the Leopold Museum where Gustav Klimt's radiantly blanketed bodies are caught in various eternal hugs. One isn't allowed to shoot the paintings, so I settled for the museum's serene geometry, above, looking across a courtyard to another upper-floor gallery.



In Vienna, as elsewhere in Europe, the vintage mixes easily with the new, as this corner tableaux shows, the pickup allowing the Austrian kalesa the inner lane in rounding a curb.



Even early afternoon produces long, pointy shadows in the wintery north, in an alley where a classic chariot clip-clops past a modern classic.



On the trendy Leopold Museum's top floor, a picture window to frame the more classical art history museum in the heart of Vienna's Museum Quarter.

"If the efforts haven't necessarily completely disinfected our towns and country, at the very least they've caused a lot of cockroaches to panic and scamper, effectively enough to have some of them in turn get crushed by the public."

My contemporary and fellow journalist Roby Alampay's comments on the previous blog post deserve a post on their own, pasted below. Roby is executive director of the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) based in Bangkok, a press freedom advocacy group in the region.

How can a country with press freedom be considered among the most corrupt in the world? Isn't sunlight supposed to be the best disinfectant?

I arrived in Vienna last night to speak at a UN conference on corruption about the Philippines' history of removing corrupt leaders (and, of course, a recent history of failure too). I'm not sure how replicable our experience is for the other countries represented here, mostly from Africa. People power as practiced on EDSA seems to have been a uniquely Pinoy phenomenon. But I do want to highlight the importance of media asserting its powers to investigate and agitate, so that leaders are made to account.

The World Bank Institute produced a graph plotting several dozen countries according to their rankings in corruption perception and press freedom, and found a correlation between the two: in general, the greater press freedom, the less corruption. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.



There are significant exceptions to the rule, and one of them is... the Philippines. We are counted among those countries with press freedom, yet we are considered in Transparency International's rankings as among the most corrupt in the world.

Critics, myself included, could question the definition of "press freedom" used for the graph, a media that is generally autonomous of the state. That would strike many as rather narrow, for what kind of freedom could there be if there are more journalists being killed in the Philippines than anywhere outside of Iraq?

Nevertheless, there was enough freedom for enterprising journalists to nail the goods on Joseph Estrada so that we all saw him go to jail. That's justice, with no small role for media even with its tenuous room to maneuver.