Well-funded pro-RH groups exposed

Today is the 7th run of the Aboitiz Future Leaders Business Summit, a two-day activity at the Radisson Blu where some 90 selected students who belong to the top of their respective schools from all over the country come to Cebu and have the rare opportunity to dialogue with the Chief Executive Officers, Presidents or Chief Financial Officer of the Aboitiz Group of Companies. This summit was once a Cebu only activity… now it has become a nationwide summit.

This Future Leaders Business Summit aims to prepare each student to enter the corporate world, exhorting them to strive for excellence. But the summit is not all serious roundtable talks, there are many activities like teambuilding exercises, simulation of real business situations and some games. Call these participants lucky that they are experiencing something that few students could ever hope to experience in their classrooms.

I have been attending these sessions and I always find it comforting that the Aboitiz Corporation has adopted this program because it offers these students a glimpse of how the Aboitiz Corporation, which is the pride of Cebu business, started from a small shipping company to the multi-national conglomerate that it is today. This program truly gives meaning to the words of our National Hero Dr. Jose Rizal… “The youth is the hope of the Fatherland.” If our students are exposed to good governance practices that the Aboitiz Corporation adheres… then there is a great hope for a better future for Philippine business.

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Speaking of good governance, yesterday morning, the Institute of Corporate Governance (ICD) held a breakfast roundtable discussion at the Marco Polo Plaza Hotel where Good Governance Guru, Prof. Jesus “Jess” Estanislao spoke before the Cebu-based ICD fellows. As Prof. Jess reported, ICD has taken a great leap in adopting the Global Standards of Corporate Governance through the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). This means that the Philippines will have to upgrade its corporate standard to that of Singapore… the acknowledged business leader in ASEAN.

When we were still in the Board of the Mactan Cebu International Airport Authority (MCIAA), this government owned and controlled corporation (GOCC) made it to the top five in the ICD’s Good Governance scorecard because of good governance practices. Yesterday, I asked Jess Estanislao where is MCIAA today? Unfortunately, because of the new law governing GOCCs, they stopped the scorecard rating until the GOCCs come up with a report this coming November. So we’ll just look into this later.

During the Q&A, I also asked the ICD if they could come up with a separate scoring system for family corporations especially the small and medium scale businesses to separate it from the top Philippine corporations that are featured in the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE). Something like this is being worked on by Prof. Estanislao, which I’m sure would be a great boon to small business that needs to practice good governance. Someday, family corporations would allow Independent Board of Directors into their businesses.

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Senate Majority Flood Leader Vicente “Tito” Sotto has made a serious impact in the drive against the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill during his “Turno en contra” speech when he literally exposed the four local groups working to legitimize abortion in the Philippines with huge financial support from various foreign organizations. Without mincing words, Sen. Sotto pointed to the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and various United Nations (UN) organizations like the UN Population Fund (UNPF).

What Sen. Sotto is telling us is that this is a very crystal clear foreign intervention to our domestic policies. What was revealing was when Sen. Sotto said, “The RH Bill seeks billions in public funds to purchase and distribute artificial contraceptives nationwide, claims to uphold the prohibition against abortion, but various versions contain provisions mandating a “post-abortion” care.”         Sen. Sotto added, “Studies abroad have shown a connection in a contraceptive lifestyle to increase abortions.”

He also named the local groups promoting the RH Bill like the Democratic Socialist Women of the Philippines (DSWP), the Family Planning Organization of the Philippines (FPOP) and the Reproductive Health Advocacy Network (RHAN) that funded many pro-RH activities, including those in radio and the internet. The FPOP for instance got some P27.5 million in 2011. Now pray tell us how that money was spent?  How about the UNFPA which Sen. Sotto said had a budget allocation for “nurturing legislators.” Is this what we call “bribe” money to legislators so that they would support the RH Bill? Indeed, the anti-RH groups are up against well-funded pro-RH groups.

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