If I was the President of the Philippines

Reading all these stories about GMA just infuriates me. She has totally no delicadeza and she is so thick skinned that nothing gets to her anymore. After "Hello Garci" and surviving it, she and all the other politicians just got more brazen in what they do that they don't even care to hide what corruptions they do anymore.

I'm sure if and that's the big IF GMA were to step down after 2010, the next President would be no different.

So it made me think, what would I do if I was the President of the Philippines? What programs and changes would I implement to fix the country? Here is what I think (obviously these will be implemented if I had no opposition to the programs I want to implement).

Let's start with the most basic problem, graft and corruption.

1. I will set up an anti-graft task force consisting of former police officers, NBI agents and supreme court judges (trustworthy of course). Who after rigorous interviews and background checks would will investigate and prosecute those who are found guilty of accepting bribes to plunder. Basically, anything involving stealing money from the government and the people.

They will report and are answerable only to me. Cases will have to be solved within 1 year and will not be dragged for 10 years. They will of course be monitored all the time so as not to have a biased decision against someone the don't like and make a fair decision.

2. I will increase the salaries of all government officials to market rate. From the Executive branch all the way down to the various departments. This is to remove all temptation for asking for a bribe. Anybody caught asking for a bribe (from a hotline to undercover agents) will be penalized as a heinous crime for government officials and employees.

I'm going to model the way the government works like that of Singapore. Where the officials are highly paid that they have no need to commit graft to support their lifestyle.

3. Next one to fix is the BIR, remove all types of corruption there and make them accountable for shortfalls in the collection. Strict prosecution of tax evaders and tax collectors found to be taking bribes will be prosecuted and charged within a month.

4. The biggest problem is customs, so a complete revamp and removal of the top positions in the BOC and completely eliminate falsification and misdocumentation of imported goods. Eliminate smuggling or reduce it to the point that it will not be profitable to be caught smuggling goods.

This has two effects, one is to have fair trade and to protect local producers against cheap imports due to improper classification or smuggling.

5. The next one to fix is our tax system. Clean up the tax system to remove confusing deductions and loopholes and simplify the filing of taxes either through gross taxation or some other ways to eliminate all the numerous loopholes and deductions that makes it easy to evade taxes.

Have a set of simplified tax rules for employees and individuals. Make it easy for people to file taxes (1 page for employees), 3 pages for business owners or self-employed making less than a certain amount. Another set of tax rules for Corporations where taxes tend to be complicated.

Eliminate the need for people making less than P100,000 to pay taxes and those making between P100,0001 to P500,000 pay 2% of gross income, P500,001 to P750,000 pay 3% of gross income, P750,001 to P1M pay 4% of gross income and P1,000,001 and up pay 5% of gross income.

This simplifies the tax code and frees up the BIR personel to work on businesses and those who evade taxes.

Of course, a lot of people will argue that the Philippines will lose a lot of income, but I believe this simplification will increase tax payment participation and the simplified process will reduce expenses that the collection will more than make up for the losses.

More on my next post.

Teaching

I've been thinking about school a lot lately. Mostly because my son is already in school and partly thinking how I can make his school experience better and instill in him the love for learning.

I borrow books from the library every week and we make sure to read to him every night. Because of this routine we did since he was old enough to listen to stories, around 2 or 2 and a half years old, he now has the habit that he has to be read something every night before he will go to bed.

So how does this relate to why I'm thinking about school? Partly it's because of my experience with teachers while I was in school. I never really had any good teachers I can think of except for the two I had in my 3rd year of high school. One is Mr. Tumambing who was our Chemistry teacher and the other is Ms. Go who was our Geometry teacher.

I would say that both of them inspired me to do very well in their subjects. Mind you, I'm not an A student, most of my grades were just above passing, around 77 to 79 marks. But these two teachers were so good in teaching that they made it easy to understand their subjects. At least that was the case for me since I had other classmates who had trouble with these two subjects.

These were the only two subjects in my 3rd year of high school that I never had any problems with. I understood their lectures completely that I didn't even have to study for their exams, I just got 80s or 90s. My other teachers sometimes I feel like were just going through the motions and I hardly understood what they were teaching.

College was even worst, I had newly graduate professors who were practically just writing stuff they memorized from a book somewhere and expect you to understand what they were teaching.

I know all the arguments that I shouldn't have relied to be spoon fed that I should study and I should do my own research, blah blah blah. But I believe now that those arguments are just there to hide that fact that they don't know how to teach. No doubt, they know their subjects, but they do not know how to teach what they know to others.

And that is where the problem lies. I consider myself to be smart. My school grades may not show it, but in subjects where the teachers were excellent teachers, my grades will show that I can excel. My low grades mostly stem from boredom thatn not undestanding the subject.

At the time, I could not see how something that happened in 1941 (history and social studies) could be of any significance to me nor could I understand why the need to learn nouns and pronouns (English). I especially hated Rizal course (Filipino) and why I needed to learn Filipino when I can already speak and write the language.

Later, I realized that history and social studies is important because that is where you will learn how the world works and what has happened may and can happen again. Working in the financial industry, you will come to appreciate the history of money, markets and economic history. How the people reacted during the booom and bust in the past is pretty much how people will react to the current time's booms and busts.

I realized later that I should have learned better English writing since I never realized at the time that I would love writing. This blog is an example.

I realized that if the teachers and professors "sold" me on the subjects there were teaching, like why, how, when I would be using those information. I probably would have paid more attention.

Listening to audiobooks my John Maxwell, Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and Jim Rohn made me realized that if you are a good teacher, you don't need a blackboard or notes or handouts. You just need to stir up your students imagination and they will use their mind as their blackboard. And that is more effective than writing a bunch of words on the blackboard all the time.

I love teaching other people and having learned from these speakers made me strive to keep things simple whenever I teach someone else about complicated matters. I used to work as a technical support for an ISP and part of the job is to teach people how to use their computers to use the Internet. This was in 1996 where the Internet was just starting and people are just beginning to learn to use their computers. I've encountered some people who doesn't even know how to minimize or maximize their windows.

That job taught me how to make things simple for people to understand and I have carried that over to my work in the financial services industry. It is even harder since I am explaining an abstract concept like investments and insurance to people who never think about these things until they need it.

And that is my challenge with regards to school, my son and what I would like to do in the future. I would like to be able to teach in a school, either in HS or University, teaching students about life, business, sales and how to succeed in life. I have been learning things about memory improvement, photoreading, how to become a better learner, etc. And I would like to impart these knowledge to my children and other students.

It would be nice to be able to do this. Maybe, sometime in the future.

Room to Read

As I was checking out a book in our local library, I happen to see a book titled "Leaving Microsoft to Change the World" by John Wood. It's funny because I had no intention of borrowing any other book that day other than what I had already reserve since I still have around 10 books I had previously borrowed that I haven't read. But something made me pick up the book and look at the cover flaps. Upon reading it, I found out about how the author quit his high level job at Microsoft to establish libraries in Nepal.

It's kind of one of those moments when things happen because you were thinking about it often enough. Like hearing a music on the radio that you were just thinking about.

Even since I was in college, I had thought about how I can give back to the world. And it always ends up to helping young children have a better opportunities in life. Either through scholarships or as simple as giving some cash or clothes to street children in the Philippines.

As I got older, I realized I wanted to focus on providing libraries to children in the Philippines. I grew up reading books and have been fortunate enough to be able to afford to buy expensive books. But I see all these children on the streets and even some of my classmates who rarely read. True, they probably have better grades in school than I do, but the extent of their learning is limited to what they learn in school. There was no other avenues for intellectual growth let alone a place to borrow books to expand ones mind.

The school libraries we have are usually for Filipinianas or materials related to our courses. Even then, when you leave school, you have no access to the libraries. No one even bothers to go back to apply for an alumni access to the school libraries as it is inconvenient to commute or drive all the way to your old school just to borrow some books.

There is something called the National Library of the Philippines, but I don't even know anyone who's been there let alone know where it is located. Contrast that to what we have in Canada where libraries are pretty much in every city or district. And it's not just one, in Richmond alone, there are 4 libraries serving the city, 1 major and 3 satellite libraries. One is never more than 15 minutes away from the nearest library.

In the Philippines where I live, there was no library anywhere near our place. If you ever found a library, the books are probably too old or ones that you would never read anyway.

The libraries in Canada are filled with books of almost every subject matter. You can find reference books, For Dummies books, children's books, business, self-help, novels, sci-fi, non-fiction, audio CDs and even DVD movies. All for free.

I went from spending almost $500 a year in books to zero by just borrowing everything from the library.

I wish this was something we had in the Philippines years ago. But I realized now that this is something that will never happen as government priorities are somewhere else. Either to other social projects or through corruption. Education has also lag in terms of fiscal priority. I'm starting to think that the people in government are inclined to keep the population ignorant so they can easily buy their votes.

If you look at the collective intelligence of the current population, it seems that they are getting more and more ignorant. The shows on TV doesn't help either as they are mostly tele-series that provides nothing more than intrigues and who did what to whom. Or the more popular showbiz shows that does nothing but dish out intrigues and rumours.

There's tons of them, but I only see one educational show on air. And it's shown in a way that wouldn't even hold a child's interest. If you're one of the lucky ones who can afford cable TV, then you're in luck since you can have the Disney Channel to watch Little Einstein or Dora.

But I digress from the main point of what I'm writing. I was inspired by the book "Leaving Microsoft to Change The World" as this is very close to my heart. I had decided that I wanted to start a public library much like what Andrew Carnegie did when he started to give out his wealth.

I have to figure out how I can start something similar to "Room to Read" but for the Philippines and what is needed to get it done. I might start with starting a book drive to donate to local schools. I'll have to look more into this when I go back to the Philippines.