Corrupting each other eh?
In yesterday’s Bloggers’ Kapihan forum, Mr. Tonchi Tinio of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers gave a briefing on the dubious multi-million dollar Cyber Education Project of the Department of Education. To be fair enough, here’s the government’s spin on the issue.
Now, though we all know that this is another white elephant, that does not truly address the basic problems of our education system, one of the multi-million dollar contract’s provisions that we are probably not aware of is that the contractor of this cyber-education project is Chinese company Nuctech which specializes in, guess what, X-ray inspection technology. And whose company president, is interestingly the Chinese President’s only son, Hu Haifeng.
So now it is clear that while President Gloria Arroyo, in her very timely trip to China, was able to beg off from the National Broadband Network contract (by, perhaps, agreeing to return whatever bribe was given–ever wonder why the First Gentleman left immediately for Germany, where the Arroyo family’s purported bank accounts are, right when the issue erupted?), she could not back off from a loan and a contract that involves the Chinese President’s only son. Fair enough, the President and her minions can keep their lucrative bribe money–only they have to fend off political backlash with spindoctors’ propaganda.
One such spin is this. Contrary to its name, the Cyber Education Project is not a project that seeks to provide internet access to our public schools. It is a project that seeks, primarily, to provide long-distance instruction through a satellite-backed broadcast network. Yes, we shall spend billions of pesos in such a network–while, on the other hand, we already have three government-owned and controlled television networks. The need, really, is not there.
People, it is a loan. Ultimately, it is us who will pay for this white elephant and these people’s kickbacks.
Yeah and I also thought that that CyberEd’s gonna be ‘interactive’.
It was really nice to finally meet you there, Bikoy.
[...] Corrupting each other eh? by Bikoy [...]
[...] The way the government is handling the issue of Mariannet Amper, the 11-year old girl from Davao who hanged herself because of her family’s impoverished situation, is very typical of the establishment’s pattern of covering up for the consequences of evils and shortcomings. Unfortunately some people readily buy these spins. Primary of such spins is to dismiss the entire issue as an isolated case, and to trivialize the girl’s reasons for committing suicide as largely personal and psychological. And to match such issues with the harping of news that proclaim economic progress by the numbers–numbers that are largely intangible to the vast number of impoverished Filipinos. Aw, too bad the benefits of the apparent strength of the peso, or the booming stock market didn’t “trickle down” to the Amper family. You know what’s worse, the President has used this issue to hasten the implementation of her highly controversial, corruption-laden Cyber Education Project. [...]