“Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) … Japan’s largest party.  It was formed in the late 1990s as a result of the merger of several anti-LDP parties. Its membership covers a broad spectrum of political beliefs, but it is generally perceived as a center-left party.

“Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) … The LDP is Japan’s second largest  political party.  It is a conservative party and is made up of various conservative and centrist factions.  Before 2009, the LDP had been in power almost continuously since 1955, when it was formed as a merger of early postwar Japan’s two conservative parties, the Liberal Party of Japan, Occupation, and the Democrat Party of Japan, Occupation.

“New Komeito (NKP) … The Shin Komeito Party (Japanese name for the New Komeito) is Japan’s third largest party.  It was formerly as the Clean Government Political Assembly and the Komeito.  At its foundation, the party was center-left, but it has trended rightwards as a participant in the LDP’s governing coalitions. It is supported by the Buddhism-based new religious movement Sōka Gakkai.

“Japanese Communist Party (JCP) … The Japanese Communist Party is Japan’s fourth largest party.  It is a communist party of the left-wing.
“Social Democratic Party (SDP) … SDP is a leftist political party.  It is a successor of Japan Socialist Party, which had been Japan’s largest opposition party in the 55-year system.

“People’s New Party (PNP) … Conservatism, Anti-Postal Privatization.

“Your Party (YP) … Centrism, Conservative liberalism, Economic liberalism.”

At the bedrock of a functional society is its functional Judicial/Legal System. But, to the degree this System is wanting dictates the proportionate degree anarchy and darkness reigns in any society. For then the most ruthless lords over all as only might is right.

The following work-in-progress outline prioritizes top areas our System needs work on as viewed along the lines of the Party Ideology :

6, 7, 8 years … what’s our average?

9? More than 10 years?

What is the average through-put rate for the resolution of court cases in the country today? Does anyone still bother to track the statistics? To gauge from these how to make our Judicial/Legal System more fairly responsive, relevantly functional and thus be building blocks for our nation’s and people’s development?

What is ours in contrast to other more rapidly progressing nations and productively developing people?

Who cares?

We have some 40,000 lawyers today and more spillover the roster with each annual bar exam. Mostly all are PRC-licensed as are mandatorily card-carrying IBP members and thus in-scrolled in the Supreme Court’s registry of bar practitioners. Atop that more than a handful hold and cling to the highest public offices in all three branches of our government.

Yet who and how many of these truly care to make our effective court cases through-put rates more reasonably shorter? – At least comparably to developed country standards and actual trends? And of these who and how many are actually doing something – to address the deficiencies? Something systematically doable in people’s lifetimes, earnestly results-driven beyond mere rhetoric?

Unless and until our Judicial/Legal System are reasonably swift, predictably equitable and relevantly responsive to the dynamics of modern life and societies truly progressive Nationhood and the bounties from being a united People will remain but hollow yearnings. In turn, unless and until we are One Philippine Nation and One Filipino People peace and prosperity will (continue to) elude us.

a. Short-to-Medium Term:

• Enlist and sustain political leadership support for a speedy and equitable Judicial/Legal system inclusive of the Ombudsman and the Sandiganbayan – Disqualify the filed candidacy of any applicant-candidate who has a pending and unresolved criminal case or incidental/related civil case filed against him prior to the start of the filing of election candidacy.
• Improve mail service to facilitate speedy, timely and more reliable court communications. Deputize private carriers if need be
• Amend the Rules of Court to reduce avoidable delays – i.e. the reduction of the number of motions for reconsideration. Effectively put more weight to initial argumentation and reserve case reconsiderations to the appeals process.
• Increase the number of Salas and rationalize and speed-up the assessment processes in the corrective auditing of such incremental needs on a regular basis. Inclusive of perpetual performance audits of existing Salas and their staffs, both in number of cases resolved and the quality of such resolutions.
• Constitute special courts with corresponding special rules for deployment to and assist existing courts overwhelmed by a backlog of cases. To unclog their dockets of such cases determined – with the respective respondents’ concurrence – hinging more on questions of law rather than on the adjudication on the merits of the respective cases themselves. These special courts are eventually absorbed into the regular court system or dissolved when case backlogs are adequately reduced.
• Mandate a maximum limit to any given court’s case loads and institute an automatic mechanism for the deployment of special courts as this limit is approximated. Overloads are only temporarily accepted for the soonest turnover to special courts designated to handle case dockets backlogs.
• Mandate a maximum time interval of two weeks between hearings. Exceptions – if granted – are subject to the most compelling reasons and arguments for consideration. The IBP is mandated to monitor their members’ performance counseling those who repeatedly request exceptions from the maximum intervals. In cases where such exceptions arise pending third-party documentary or testimonial submissions such third parties are automatically formally ordered by the court to expedite their required participation under pain of contempt. All courts’ case loading limits are determined by their respective handling capacity as computed against this maximum interval.
• Increase in staged increments the salaries of court staffs, public prosecutors, judges and justices to effect a 100% or more increase in salaries within a 3-year period or at least sufficiently competitive with most private sector practice to draw the best legal minds, moral and ethical lawyers into the judiciary and inclusively to professionalizing court-support and prosecutorial staffs. Allow the use of directly collected judicial fees for this use, but under COA oversight.
• Provide technological improvements to court staff support functions – i.e. stenographic notes recording and processing, transcript documentations and reproduction, digital on-line access to these – to enhance cost effectiveness and performance efficiency. Allow the use of directly collected judicial fees for this use, but under COA oversight.
• Make the databases of all legal cases, on-going, already ruled on, under appeal or archived; and the progress on all judicial/legal system reforms available to the general public via the Internet with search indexes on these for speedier accessing. Similarly render accessible the progress of all cases under investigation, pending and undergoing pre-trial processing and subsequent hearings. Expand the proposed Free Access to Information Act to include all the herein indicated disclosures without demand.
• Cause legislation of heavier penal sanctions and monetary penalties for infidelity to public office and trust by court staffs, prosecutors, judges and justices commensurate to degree of submission expected from the general citizenry to all matters judicial and legal to the Judicial/Legal System. Equally cover all bar practitioners who by commission or omission, causally or deliberately impede the Judicial/Legal System’s delivery of justice under the additional theory that even as private practitioners they are entrusted officers of the court.

b. Long Term:

• Law students are progressively grounded on the practical understanding and application of the PIE values (Patriotism, Integrity and Excellence) as the cornerstone of the Judicial/Legal System as they individually and collectively practice the legal profession. Also consequently as their primary contribution towards building One Philippine Nation and One Filipino People.
• Modify/change the constitution so appointments to the Judiciary which are subject to Presidential and Legislative (partisan political) intervention are limited only to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals and only as nominated by an exclusively formed constitutional-body equally composed of lawyers and non-lawyers. These appointees then in turn are vested with the authority to collegiately appoint with the most senior members of the Judicial and Bar Council all other members of both high courts, subject only to reasonable oversight by a joint Executive-Legislative-IBP-Citizens NGO body.
• Social Science/Civics education developed and honed from elementary to high schools to include citizens’ legal prerogatives, rights, and duties and the practical ways to live up to these in their daily lives, personal relations and community responsibilities and interactions.
• Convene and sustain a special body to periodically review and accordingly draft recommendations, define the more in-depth needed reforms – to hasten court cases dispositions and related. Accordingly assign the priorities of remedies needed, provide for the requirements of each of these and then plan and plot timetables and execute these systematically to study, explain, argue, resolve such reforms and educate the public at each stage until these are implemented and enforced.
• Study for seasonal implementation/adaptation to integrate a Jury Sub-System taking existing systems as models – Grand and Trial – into the current Judicial/Legal System after evaluation of the pros and cons, its practicability, constraints of local conditions and cultural realities, institutionalize structural remedials, and in-place it if and when a plebiscite called for the purpose votes in favor of it in staged-in phases of  implementation. This is to include public education – to best assure its successful adoption.
• Limit TROs and equivalent Issuances and modify Interpretative Judicial Rulings guidelines on matters beyond immediate Judicial/Legal competence. Rationalize these to require reasonable expertise concurrence especially on NEDA-declared National Priority Development (ala National Security) Initiatives and Projects but with checks and balances on such declarations and the provision of adequate protection for potentially affected party/ies.
• In all the foregoing conduct periodic reviews and improvements of the “Five Pillars of the Justice System” as individual elements of the Judicial/Legal System and in their interactive efficiency and effectiveness within the same, to wit:

  • Public Support and Government interactive relations as consistent with the binding social contract that public office is a public trust with the governed citizenry as the exclusive beneficiary and who, while binding themselves as responsible supporters of the governing authorities, in turn are the fundamental and only justification for the existence of these governing authorities and thus immutably binding the same to its  obligations to serve the governed;
  • Police and all other Law Enforcement Agencies professionalism, efficiency and credibility with rationalized community and volunteer participation;
  • Prosecutorial Service inclusive of the Ombudsman professionalism, efficiency and credibility. Especially in their pro-active exercise of their investigative and prosecutorial duties and responsibilities rather than passively awaiting third-party complaints;
  • Penal System – progressively rationalized to be more rehabilitative and socially relevant than merely isolative and punitive. The system and its convicted inmates are attuned to be more contributory to nation and people building as an adjunct to the latter’s rehabilitation with social restitution as a recompense for crimes and offenses committed and a payback for the rehabilitation they are afforded and the opportunity to rejoin the national community as productive and responsible members;
  • Judiciary inclusive of the Sandiganbayan and all their support staffs and offices – to render optimally equitable, professionally efficient, reasonably swift judicial and legal services and thus be deserving of public faith, confidence and acquiescence to its ultimate disposition over all judicial and legal matters and intra-society conflicts.

• Designate Study Group, with private sector participation with strict deadlines for additional and more working recommendations.

- pdt 09_1129

NOTE: Combined in the photo mosaic are graphical representations of the elements of the Five Pillars of a justice system. These are taken from (left to right):
http://www.bucor.gov.ph/bucorweb/main.htm;
http://www.nplp.org/;  http://www.ombudsman.gov.ph/ http://www.123rf.com/stock-photo/justice.html;  http://sc.judiciary.gov.ph/;  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Justice;  http://www.pnp.gov.ph/;  http://sb.judiciary.gov.ph/;  http://www.ibp.org.ph/

work-in-progress outline below :

“Despite their constitutional image as loyal and supportive public servants, bureaucrats have widely been seen as powerful and influential figures who collectively constitute a ‘fourth branch of government.’ Theorists as different as Weber, Burnham and Trotsky have drawn attention to the phenomenon of bureaucratic power and the degree to which politicians are subordinate to it… ” pp. 392-393

“… However, it is important to remember that the nature of bureaucratic power is, perhaps inevitably, shrouded in mystery and conjecture. This is both because, if civil servants exert power, they do so through private dealings with ministers that are not subject to public scrutiny, and because, in view of the myriad other pressures bearing on ministers, the influence of the civil service cannot be quantified…” p. 393

“… Most importantly, unchecked bureaucratic power spells the demise of representative and responsible government. For political democracy to be meaningful, appointed officials must in some way be accountable to politicians who, in turn, are accountable to the general public…” p. 395; “Politics;” 3rd Ed., Andrew Heywood; Palgrave Foundations.

a. Short-to-Medium Term:

• Re-engineer and bring about intensive re-orientation of the civil and uniformed services in all state institutions to incorporate into their conduct of office the:
  • Practical understanding and application of the PIE values (Patriotism, Integrity and Excellence) towards building One Philippine Nation and One Filipino People, and;
  • Principle that efficient, effective and responsive public service is sacred and is the immutable social-contractual obligation of the government bureaucracy and personnel in a representative democracy to the Nation, People and citizens from whom government itself is justified and exists in the first instance.

• Reaffirm and reinforce/establish the office, mandate and functions of metropolitan and rural-regional planning and management authorities (using the MMDA Model) in managing, orchestrating and developing contiguous metropolitan, strategically-grouped rural and adjacent satellite areas.
• Conduct systematic private, professional and NGO sectors assisted applied efficiency audit of key bureaucracies for the optimum streamlining of the government bureaucratic structure matched by skills training and competitive remuneration rationalization. Inclusively incorporate the organization, call-out thresholds and participation mechanisms of civilian emergency and uniformed reservist volunteers for public service augmentation needs as may foreseeable arise.

b. Long Term:

• Meritocracy is institutionalized as the key evaluative and disposition standard for a professionally trimmed and administered “lean and mean” public (civil and uniformed) service.
• Fully professionalize government bureaucracy – civil and uniformed – in stages. Pursuant and faithful to the primal rationale that public service is public trust and accordingly is mandated to the fundamental fulfillment of the social contract between the citizenry and government organizations and employees where the latter as the exclusive service provider accords responsive, efficient and national development focused public services to the former as the foremost and sole service beneficiary. In the process reverse the notoriously acquired reputation from actual practice of government as “the employer of last resort.”
• Develop and cultivate a performance-based career tradition in all state institutions that is insulated against changes in politic al/elected leaderships, self-serving bureaucratic inertia and personality shifts therein.
• Design and apply pay-scales and non-monetary retirement benefits approximating private sector equivalents relative to the staged re-engineering/professionalism of public service organizations and personnel.
• Offer and provide reasonably attractive early retirement options for employees in positions determined redundant but attrit all such positions as timely and necessary.
• Institutionalize the concept that public service employment is a dedicated career path choice and a commitment to leadership by example. Ideally it is prepared for from the earliest stages of formal education extending to sustained lifestyle-applied transformed education (TETP).
• Design and systematically install timed implementation of:
  • A “PMA” (Civil Service Academy) equivalent for the Civil Service to develop personnel for a leaner more professional and competitively (to the private sector) paid results-and-service-driven public sector bureaucracy;
  • A highly professional and equivalently compensated Regular-Core Uniformed Services (military, police, and safety);
  • That also functions as the nuclei of, and augmented by, a deep civilian-militia reserve and equivalent police and safety volunteers.

• Designate Study Group with private, professional and NGO sectors participation with strict Deadlines for Working Recommendations.

- pdt 09_1120

NOTE: Photo above is a composite of an edited copy of a wall-mounted photo in the lobby of the Pasig City Hall with a picture posted in the website of the Armed Forces of the Philippines – http://www.afp.mil.ph/0/news/pagbati.htm

In a Westminster parliamentary democracy, such as Australia, organised political parties are seen as fulfilling a number of important functions.

Parties draw together people who have similar political philosophies and ideas. Whilst these people may not agree on all matters (hence the existence of factions and “tendencies”), parties are a means by which people of broadly similar interests can meet, organise and campaign.

Parties are the chief means by which political power is exercised in Australia. All Federal, State and Territory governments are composed of people who belong to political parties. Electors usually vote for parties, rather than for individual candidates.

Parties select candidates to contest elections for public office. This process is known as pre-selection. The choice offered to voters is thus the choice offered by parties. This is especially important in safe seats where one party consistently wins. Since the parties provide the candidates for election, it

follows that parties also provide the nation’s political leaders.

In the parliamentary arena, political parties provide the government and opposition. The party or parties which wins a majority of seats in the lower

house, the House of Representatives, forms the government. The party or parties which win the second largest number of seats becomes the Opposition. Much of the political debate is defined in government versus opposition terms.

In government and opposition, political parties provide organisational

support. The party machine, also known as the extra-parliamentary wing of the party, is responsible for organising and financing election campaigns, developing policies and recruiting members. The organisational support of political parties is vital to the stability and viability of a party’s parliamentary members.

Parties articulate philosophies and develop policies. All parties have

methods of debating issues and formulating policies to be presented to the electorate during election campaigns. In government or opposition, parties utilise these policy-making processes to determine their attitude to legislation and issues of the day.

Parties are an avenue for community groups to influence the decision-making process. Many pressure groups have close links with political parties, such as trade unions with the ALP, business groups with the Liberal Party, or farming organisations with the National Party. Contact and access to the organisational and parliamentary wings is considered vital by groups aiming to influence the development or implementation of public policy.

Parties are one of the main avenues for political debate and discussion in the

community. Since most members of parliament are members of political parties, it follows that parliamentary debate, questioning and scrutiny is focused around their interests and preferences.

Parties are ultimately responsible for the structure of the machinery of government. The organisation of the Public Service and statutory authorities lies

in the hands of the government of the day. In practice, parties can make appointments to the public sector from the ranks of their members and supporters.

Note: An interesting feature of Australian political life since the late 1990s has been the decline in support for the major political parties. At the 1998 Federal Election, 20.3% of electors cast their first preference for someone other than Labor, Liberal or National Party candidates. Recent years have also seen the rise of new political parties, such as Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and the Australian Greens.

Nevertheless, the functions of political parties remain unchanged. The expectations of voters, reflected in more volatile voting habits, reinforces the important role political parties have to play in the Australian democratic system.

a. Short-to-Medium Term:

• Rationalize for, and maneuver National Economic positioning in a Global International Economic Order of Competing Super Powers and Zones of Interests and Influence aimed for optimum internal growth and sustained development, capitalizing on natural and premium national resources and competitiveness, with and in continuing consultation with Citizen-NGOs, Trade and Business Groups.
• Encourage and incentivize Private Sector initiatives consistent/supportive  to National Economic Development accepting the pragmatics of Free Market economics yet grounded on ethically  self-enlightened interest Capitalism.
• Provide Micro-financing and professionally assisted Cooperative Enterprise development and supports to boost socio-economic mobilization to build and sustain a strong and dominantly middle class and entrepreneurial society and incentivize the eclipse of the gray economy for its re-surfacing as micro-to-small scale enterprises.
• Streamline and systematize in-country (re-) investments from OFWs and encourage their eventual homecoming to help set off and build-up small and medium enterprise development.
• Rationalize and push Tourism Development – Nature, Adventure, Medical, Educational and Retirement Alternatives.
• Reduce bureaucratic drag and simplify business and taxpayers registration and operational reportage requirements to render doing business in the country at least as competitive as in neighboring countries and in-country responsible entrepreneurial/commercial  citizenship noble as profitable.
• Induce local traditional and investment banking to open more credit financing facilities for local business development precipitated by specialized CB refinancing windows, secondary financial instruments markets and conditional tax credits/incentives schemes.

b. Long Term:

• Persuade “brain-drain” Filipino Expats to reinvest in the country through a systematic promotion of a facilitated Reinvestment-Relocation Assistance Service and by incentivizing commo-technologically driven remote investment management initiatives and options.
• Foreign Debt – rationalize/unburden the country and people as much as pragmatically practicable and at the soonest time possible. Free more of the National Budget for developmental and social support needs, in the least belligerent manner yet most aggressive stance though for long term mutual benefit – i.e. Debt-to-Equity in Development Projects Conversion;  Multilateral Lobby for Debt Condonation; Concessional Natural Resources Mining/Harvesting Privileges for Debt Principal Reductions; Application of Carbon Credits and equivalents for environmental rescue/rehabilitation initiatives and projects, etc.
• Cause and sustain Government-led public-private joint co-operative initiative for strategic participation/partnerships in the Bio-Techo-Medical/Healthcare/Alternative-Sustainable Energy global industries.
• Emplace adequately regulated secondary mortgage markets and specific financial support/products to encourage increase private sector/citizens savings and to provide financing for Corporate-Cooperative Agri/Aqua-Business Ventures.
• Rationalize Labor laws and regulations to ease on Minimum Wage mandates from Daily to Hourly peg, Multiple and Part-Time Employment restraints and Extended Sub-contracting Schemes, especially for outsourcing, small-to-medium scale and community-based enterprises amongst other more creatively relevant schemes responsive to global economic demands and realities.
• Modify Constitutional provisions on:
  • Foreign real property ownership (Allowed limited to pre-designated “Development Zones” with applying terms and conditions – i.e.  pre-approved foreign-capital financed pre-developments, etc.);
  • Media ownership and operation;
  • Educational institution ownership and operation.

• Designate Study Group, with private sector participation, with strict Deadlines for further Working Recommendations.

- pdt 09_0823

… One Nation and One People          

“A person is a person through other persons…

“None of us comes into the world fully formed. We would not know how to think, or walk, or speak, or behave as human beings unless we learned it from other human beings. We need other human beings in order to be human. I am because other people are…

“Differences are not intended to separate , to alienate. We are different precisely in order to realize our need of one another…

When you have a hand and you have only the separate fingers, it is easy for people to break the fingers. But when you put the fingers together it is difficult to break them. Let us come together and be one, let us be people of peace, let us be people of harmony. - Most Reverend Desmond M Tutu, OMSG DD FKC; Anglican Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town

On the general roles of a political party:

1) Rallying point and a continuity of focus for people anchored on a common vision beyond and transcending individual personalities, subjective loyalties, and generations of demographic shifts.

2) Closest approximate to a collective and dynamic societal memory and moral conscience.

3) Reservoir of future leaders and a critical mass of cadres to support such leaders and educate the masses.

4) Provide a watershed of constructive ideas, critical thought, and empowered citizens constituting a societal political conscience to fight the criminals and incompetents in the body politic.

5) Counterweight to traditional politicos and self-serving politics.

- pdt 07_01

Tumindig Ka

Tumindig ka, ipaglaban ang karapatan
Tumindig ka, ipagtanggol ang karapatan

Tumindig ka, ipaglaban ang karapatan
Tumindig ka, ipagtanggol ang karapatan

Daang taon na, ang lumipas
Ilang pangulo na ang nagdaan
Wala pa rin asenso si Juan
Luklok pa rin sa kahirapan

Tumindig ka, ipaglaban ang karapatan
Tumindig ka, ipagtanggol ang karapatan

Daang taon na, ang lumipas
Ilang pangulo na ang nagdaan
Wala pa rin masilunggan si Juan
Takpi-takpi ang kasuotan

Daang taon na, ang lumipas
Ilang pangulo na ang nagdaan
Wala pa rin sariling lupa si Juan
Nag-iisa na baon sa utang

Tumindig ka, Tumindig ka,
Ipaglaban ang karapatan

- Noel Cabangon

The Party believes in a representative democracy with a free market and regulated capitalist economic system engine that provides a conducive holistic environment for the pursuit of individual potential optimization and human dignity fulfillment that balances market-oriented capitalism with its social responsibility to the nation and people it flourishes under and as enlightened by the lessons of history and human flaws. We are too cognizant and participative in the pragmatic reality of a globally interdependent market place that is dominated by extant developed and shifting orders, powers, markets and states, all operated by fallible human systems that gravitate to serve unilateral interests rather than collaborative mutually beneficial relationships. In all these we champion One Philippine Nation and One Filipino People who are just, peaceful, prosperous and where an equality in basic opportunities is pursued; and for these we nurture and preserve a national community bound in social contract between responsive governmental leadership who holds public service in sacred trust and a responsible citizenry who are committed to their individual and collective duties as both are driven by the basic values of Patriotism, Integrity and Excellence in all they do and aspire for; and in these are cognizant of and abides by and in a Divine Creator. – pdt; 090909

Transform Education, Transform Philippines – TETP – is a Concept, a Gathering and a Movement to build One Philippine Nation and One Filipino People. By the unified commitment and focused action of a critical mass of people driven by the PIE Values and transformational education.

Invariably direct political action is an extension of TETP from the above context. However such actions’ lapsing into actuality is prudently deferred to when in time and caused-effect such outcomes are anticipated to occur spontaneously. When the time is right as extant pragmatic constraints make apt including the unfolding of realities imposed by economic and anthropological gestation.  When that critical mass of individuals gel and in convergence with conducive objective conditions and irresistible historical circumstances they logically opt to animate themselves as a focused political action-oriented grouping – a political party.

Meanwhile, this section of the TETP BlogSite romps into that anticipated eventuality yet presently confined to the realm of the theoretical. Consider this therefore as a political template as it were of ideals, concerns, issues, potentials and even if one will – dreams. Venturing into the sphere of possibilities suggested by a Dream Political Party – a group of people anchored on Nation and People building founded on TETP and driven by the PIE Values and organized for responsive electoral leadership and unified responsible followership. With its attendant underpinnings of ideological perspective, platform of government, party objectives, mobilizing organizations, tasking, constituent and leading elements and related subjects. All such stuff that would constitute a worthy embodiment of a political organization that – if it actually existed – would make TETP come true sooner than later. – pdt; 030909