Straight from the Heart

Abs Damahan

National Ulama Conference of the Philippines

ZamBaSulta Region

With their Theme: Multi-Stakeholders Consultation Meetings “Finding Common Ground for Peace, is our Religious Duty”. In more than one year’s internal community conflicts affecting three Barangays: Arena Blanco, Mampang and Talon-Talon I am not fully convinced on the part of Local Government Units (LGUs) and the Police authority are in control of the situation per police presentation data matrix reports of 69 shootings incidents with 42 dead and 27 wounded is a complete laxity security measures by our local authority of Zamboanga City. By mere  the essence of time and the prolong lapses of days, months and over one year of family feuds this really contribute to aggravate the peace and order situation of these three barangays and including the whole of Zamboanga City proper.

In my long years of experienced helping global community of short and concise write-up for conflicts Resolution, City Peace and Order Council and Police authority is out of control in handling, maintaining and containing this family feuds (RIDO) or whatever conflicts we may attributes of this non-stop killings spree. In reality, we must admitted, this really create fears and havoc for the peace loving people of Zamboanga City

By the impact of rural migration caused of over 40 years Mindanao conflicts Zamboanga City is the only city part of Western Mindanao is becomes the center point of rural migrant destination from the adjacent affected conflict area provinces likes: Basilan, Tawi-Tawi and Jolo Sulu from the time of the declaration of Martial Law in the 70s. Multi-Tribes of Tausog, Sama and Yakan many of us becomes a permanent residents of Zamboanga City in almost all barangays of the city and post subdivisions developed in Kilometer radius within the city.

In summary after the open forum every-body agreed by all multi-sectoral group who are participated from the religious point of view and perspective, Local Authority, Philippines National Police (PNP), Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), Non-Government Organization (NGOs) Peace Advocates, Civil Society and the Media Organization concluded with the declaration to be adopted by the National Ulama Conference of the Philippines (NUCP) ‘That this Local Conflicts is a not a Religious Conflicts’.

For comments, reactions and suggestions please e-mail at abs_damahan@yahoo.com or call to tel No. 062-926-9418 or text Cell. No. 09283147761 Blog: http://absdamahan.wordpress.com

Straight from the Heart

Abs Damahan

Is Zamboanga City breaking down of Peace and Order?

One foreigner asked me in my Facebook thread- how Zamboanga City is safe for travel? I answered him frank and candidly with true reality of Zamboanga City now, I said, Zamboanga City is not safe place for tourist travel and visiting.  In fact we are a dangerous place part Western Mindanao in wave and series kidnapping cases and break down for almost daily shootings incidence of Three (3) Barangays: Manpang, Arena Blanco and Talon-Talon. After so many exchanged of threads and postings with foreigner one or three members of fb joined our group I should not names them in this column inter-act with harshly words question me, why I should destroyed the image of Zamboanga City. I said no, I should tell the whole world boldly and honestly what really transpired and real happening of the Asia’s Latin City so that foreign tourists who visited us be aware on our present situation particular Zamboanga City and adjacent provinces of Western Mindanao- Basilan, Tawi-Tawi and Jolo Sulu.

Broad day-light shooting at the back of City Hall and ambuscades in the main thoroughfare streets of Zamboanga City I think Zamboanga City is not a safety place to live from both foreign visitors and local residents who stayed in post barangays and post subdivisions of the only Asia’s Latin City.

With the rampant of loose Fire-Arms in the hands of the un-authorized civilians reside in the city. Naturally, common crimes will surely rise un-curved by the police authority liked what happen now in Barangay Mampang police authority is out of control for the non-stop family feud killings spree between the alleged Estrada family and Amping clan continued to create fears and havoc to the majority peaceful residence of that area. City Local officials, the City Peace and Order Council, the City Crisis Management Committee and the Police Authority too much in laxity for handling this on-going family feuds. The City Ordinance and the State Gun control laws if any must be reviewed, if not I will calls for urgency of the City Council must pass law for the measures to regulate civilians who possessed guns.

For comments, reactions and suggestions please e-mail at abs_damahan@yahoo.com or call to tel No. 062-926-9418 or text Cell. No. 09283147761 Blog: http://absdamahan.wordpress.com

Straight from the Heart

Abs Damahan

Is ZAMCELCO going for bankruptcy?

After reading the Financial Reports of ZAMCELCO for the year 2009, the accumulated deficit or losses amounting to P 100,789,943 and their combined huge loan for almost billion of pesos to banks, creditors and suppliers.  As member and consumer of the electric cooperative I have the privilege rights to question the top level management of the cooperative even in my column. How the Head Departments does can purchase luxury cars-KIA- when in fact the Cooperative Financial standing position is in heavy losses?  The reason why I should question Zamcelco because rendered of bad services to consumers public and frequent black-out in the past months and up- to the present two hours interrupted brown-out in almost daily basis.

So therefore, direct to the point, who are behind the mess if any responsible officials for the mishandling of the Cooperative funds? This query needs an upfront response from the Finance Officers of the Cooperative with the details figures explanation to make clear for the public consumption.

Going back to luxury cars I think, this is not the time for the Head Departments to acquire those cars even the mode of loan packages by the Financing firm, still consider heavy burden for the Cooperatives and the member consumers of the Cooperative. In simple layman term, it’s really affects the financial capability of Zamcelco finance’s operation. As a matter of fact Zamboanga City experienced power shortages for the past couple months.

For GM Reinerio Ramos I don’t  mean to hurt you, but an advice for the benefits of all, light and water are basic services part for human lives,  this is for our comport, we needs an excellence, appropriate and efficient service from Zamcelco. Find ways to improve and rehab Zamcelco operations it’s really a trouble for the household family with-out sufficient power supplies to every residence of Zamboanga City.

For comments, reactions and suggestions please e-mail at abs_damahan@yahoo.com or call to tel No. 062-926-9418 or text Cell. No. 09283147761 Blog: http://absdamahan.wordpress.com

Straight from the Heart

Abs Damahan

Is Basilan road to peace?

Chances for longer and permanent peaceful solution to the Province it depend how the sincerity of leaders in handling the complexity problems over four decades of internal conflicts hounding of many lost of lives since the declaration of Martial Law in 1971 up-to the present Aquino administration.

The untamed paradox solution to peace is undeniable without wholehearted efforts to resolve by the Basilenos themselves, for a common ground base to attain cohesively by all stakeholders of the province with the supports of the National government. This is not denying facts Mindanao conflicts eaten much more of our National resources in term of war campaigns to eliminate the so called ‘The Armed-Resistance of the state’ whether  the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the Abu Sayyaf Group or whatever group based in Southern Philippines.

This pockets of resistance can hamper peaceful co-existence in golas living side-by-side, unless the National and Local government seriously enough to address the issue of Mindanao for a genuine and honest intent. These conflicts should have final conclusion and have definite ending for this trouble provinces of Mindanao.

The real country economic growth and progress if all of its citizenry enjoy the benefits of the nation’s interest from social and economic benefits. The equally shared values for common goods of all is the measurement of genuine economic growth, minority rights under UN Charters is a sacred and privilege rights cannot be denied by the majority of the society elsewhere of the global community. This is unconditional rights for the minority should be addressed by the leader of state in authority.

There are semblances of attempts from the previous administration since the Marcos era to PGMA is considered unworthy peace-efforts all of them are failed because of their attitudes of insincerity from GRP-Armed-Resistance Group some alleged gain from the war funds because of huge resources allocated for the purposed.

This time under P.Noy administration we are hoping for the best would change the atmosphere towards peace and development for the entire Philippines archipelago. Setting government an inclusive to all with-out borderlines minority rights should have fair shares of pie in his six years administration.

For comments, reactions and suggestions please e-mail at abs_damahan@yahoo.com or call to tel No. 062-926-9418 or text Cell. No. 09283147761 Blog: http://absdamahan.wordpress.com

Listening to the Voice of Humanity

Straight from the Heart

Feature-world crisis

Listening to the Voice of Humanity

Steven Kull

Last Part

Having a very large Citizen Advisory Panel also make it possible to hear from subgroups within the citizenry. This can include subgroups based on race, ethnicity, gender and partisan affiliation. Obviously, finding common groud among these different groups is more challenging than finding majority agreement among the general citizenry. But when one is dealing with people who are randomly selected, rather than people who are affiliated with organized interest groups, it is often easier than one expects. People have multiple identities and, as long as they are not committed to being identified with just one of them, they are more to find common ground.

Giving voice to the people is not an all-or-nothing proposition. If we think of humanity as a kind of large mural or tapestry, even the most basic poll begins to give us some information about the kind of thinking that is occurring in different corners of the world. With methods that go into greater depth, we gain greater detail and nuance. With coverage of more nation, we gain greater breadth so that we can increasingly get a sense of humanity as a whole.

As many have noted, the most compelling challenges of the future are ones of a global nature, requiring a global response. Nation states are not entirely adequate to these challenges and have prevented international institutions from fully consolidating their capacity for collective action. Like actors in a Greek drama, thay seem headed for an impasse with the potential for tragedy. It may be time to shift our attention from the actors to the chorus in the background. Already we can begin to hear a voice of humanity-a voice that is less constrained by established patterns and that offers a more flexible and holistic approach to the challenges we as a species facts.

Steven Kull, PhD is a political psychologist who studies world public opinion on international issues he is the Director of WorldPublic.org, the Program on International Policy Attitudes and the Center on Policy Attitudes and regularly provides analysis of public opinion in the US and international media. He has briefed the US Congress, the State Department, NATO, the United Nations and the European Commission. His most recent book, co-authored with I.M. Destler, is Misreading the Public: The Myth of a New Isolationism. He is a member of the Council on Foreign relations and the World Association of Public Opinion Research and teaches at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy.

For comments, reactions and suggestions please e-mail at abs_damahan@yahoo.com or call to tel No. 062-926-9418 or text Cell. No. 09283147761 Blog: http://absdamahan.wordpress.com

Listening to the Voice of Humanity

Straight from the Heart

Feature-world crisis

Listening to the Voice of Humanity

Steven Kull

Part-7

The Process of Collective Deliberation

Standard polls are not always adequate for giving the public a voice through. On some issues the public does not enough information or has not had enough time to really sit down and deliberate about tradeoffs. In this case it may be necessary to do in-depth polls where people are given information and presented pro and con arguments. They in key also need to wrestle with trade-offs.

In some cases it is necessary to go yet another step and to have representative samples get together in person to deliberate on the issues together before coming to conclusions. All around the world there exciting new experiments being conducted along these lines. These include the “citizens’ juries,’ ‘deliberative polls,’ ‘Consensus Councils’ or ‘civic lotteries.’

Here again these ideas are popular with publics around the world. Respondents were asked about the possibility of having a large group of randomly selected citizens meet to consider a current issue facing their national legislature; after hearing the full range of arguments they would discuss the issue with others and finally send their collective conclusion to the legislature. In nearly every country large majorities approved of this idea-on average 68%. Interestingly, in most countries, majorities said they would have more confidence in the conclusions of such a group than the conclusion of their own legislature.

Creating a New Function of Government

Of course, it is not enough to simply give the larger society voice. It is also essential for the government to actually listen to the people. To ensure this will happen it is probably necessary to make the process of listening to the people an established function of the government. Once again, this is something that people around the world would like to do needy survey country polled, majorities have said that they would be then government to establish an agency to study the public’s views on the issues the government facing. Ethan Leib has made the case that the function of giving voice to the citizenry should become a kind of ‘fourth branch’ of government.

For the government to commit to giving the citizenry a voice would create the possibility to truly go to scale. Rather than just having an occasional poll or citizen jury, there could be a large ongoing representative sample ready to give input to the government, a Citizen Advisory Panel. All panel members would be linked by the Internet and would be briefed on current issues facing the government and asked for their views. In some cases, it would also make sense to get panel members together in groups to deliberate on the issues together with other panel members. The conclusions would be reported to legislative representatives as well as being released to the general public and the media. To make sure the process is conducted in a fair and unbiased fashion, a board representing different political parties, different sectors of society, and also a small representative sample of citizens would oversee the entire process.

To be continued…

For comments, reactions and suggestions please e-mail at abs_damahan@yahoo.com or call to tel No. 062-926-9418 or text Cell. No. 09283147761 Blog: http://absdamahan.wordpress.com

Listening to the Voice of Humanity

Straight from the Heart

Feature-world crisis

Listening to the Voice of Humanity

Steven Kull

Part-6

But this is not what people perceive as occurring. Asked how much their country is governed to the will of the people the mean response was 4.6. in every country a majority-on average 73%-said that their country should be governed according to the will of the people more than it is.

What then can be done to increase the influence of the aggregated consciousness of the people? The first step is simply to give the people a greater voice.

Some have argued what is key here is for individuals to step forward and organize themselves into organizations that put forward key ideas and concerns about what needs to happen. This is doubtlessly an important part of the process by which new ideas and concerns are developed and disseminated into society.

However, no individual or group can speak for the society as a whole. To give voice to the whole of society we must go back to the method that the ancient Greeks used to develop the first democratic government. They created their government by selecting people by lot from the whole of the citizenry. In modern vernacular we call it random sampling.

This is the essence of public opinion polls. When a sample, randomly selected from the general public, is asked questions in a clear and unbiased fashion this can provide a useful way to discern the dominant tendency in the public as a whole.

People around the world also want government leaders to pay attention to polls. Even when presented the counter argument that government leaders “should not pay attention to public opinion polls because this will distract them from deciding what they think is right,” in all 18 nations polled majorities said that government leaders “should pay attention to public opinion polls.”

Some people express discomfort with polls. They hear that wording questions differently will produce different results and are afraid that polls are used to misrepresent the public for political ends. This, no doubt, sometimes occurs.

But there are means to address this problem. When public opinion researchers take many different poll results, some of them seemingly contradictory, and analyze the wording carefully, they are generally able to see that there is a reason the public responds differently to different questions. The public’s attitudes are complex and, like the blind men encountering an elephant, each poll finding elucidates one aspect of the whole.  However, in putting them all together there usually a discernible coherent voice.

Another approach that I have found effective in discerning the voice of the public is to take the majority position in numerous polls and to imagine that one ‘person’ had taken all these positions. I have even tried writing out a kind of interview with this collective-

Rather than just having an occasional poll or citizen jury, there could be a large ongoing representative sample ready to give input to the government, a Citizen Advisory Pane.

‘person’ where the answers to a series of questions are all majority positions from different polls. Interestingly this ‘person’ is remarkably reasonable and nuanced. Such an ‘interview’ with the American public can be found at pipa.org/articles/RBI_all.htm.

To be continued…

For comments, reactions and suggestions please e-mail at abs_damahan@yahoo.com or call to tel No. 062-926-9418 or text Cell. No. 09283147761 Blog: http://absdamahan.wordpress.com