27th June 2024 - News from the Philippines. Mayor Alice Guo's Birth Certificate May be Cancelled. POGOs under Fire. De Lima Cleared. VP Duterte Steps Down from DepEd Sec Position. ROTC Bill targets

compulsory conscription for Filipino Youth. Filipino students bottom out on international creativity testing. Next excess deaths hearing will be in July. No Vital Statistics Release this June.

Please pardon my few posts the past 2 weeks; I am currently enjoying a break with family in Australia where it is now winter term break. I will back to usual scheduling by the second week of July.

No Vital Statistics Updates in June 2024

There has been no release of Philippines vital statistics in June 2024, with the month nearly over. Aside from March ‘24, when there were no VS releases, this year there have been 2 releases each month, with the latest release being for 2023 data as of 31 March 2024. No 2024 vital statistics have been released yet. I will update, of course, as soon as there is any new data!

Perhaps PSA is too busy focusing on alleged fake birth certificates.

POGOS and Mayor Alice Guo

Mayor Alice Guo’s woes and public persecution continues with the recommendation by PSA for the cancellation of her birth certificate. Whatever the truth to her situation, the Guo case has become a spectacle!

Her case has also become of stepping point for renewed calls for the banning of POGOs - Philippine Off-short Gaming Operators, which is well discussed in the following article.

Former Senator de Lima is Cleared of all Charges

After being held in detention since 2017, though finally released on bail in November 2023, Lila de Lima has finally been cleared of all charges. It has taken more than 6 years for her cases, the accusations politically motivated, to move though the court system to a final resolution, which was effectively dropping of all charges via the granting of a motion for demurrer.  A demurrer is a motion filed on the ground that the evidence presented by the prosecutors is insufficient for a criminal conviction.

Next Hearing into Philippines Excess Deaths will be in July 2024

The next congressional hearing into the Philippines excess deaths will be held in July 2024. The date is still to be announced.

28 Priority Bills for the 19th Congress - Includes ROTC Bill that aims to reintroduce Mandatory Conscription

The Philippines Congress has recess from 25 May to 21 July 2024, when regular sessions will resume with the 19th Congress. 28 bills are prioritized for passage, ranging from economic to environmental.

One of these 28, though second tier priority, is the ROTC bill. This bill will reintroduce mandatory military service (Reserve Officer Training Corp) for young Filipinos. Mandatory ROTC was abolished in 2002, following the death of Mark Welson Chua, a student from the University of Santo Tomas (UST) who exposed various accounts of corruption within his ROTC unit. Vigorous debate and opposition from youth will surely surround this proposal, which VP Duterte is strongly in favor of. Military service is entirely voluntary as stated in the 1987 Constitution.

Filipino Students Rank Poorly in Creative Thinking

Philippines education woes continue, not helped by nearly 3 years of lost face-to-face learning from 2020 to 2022, with the Philippines ranking in the bottom 4 on a PISA test on creative thinking, together with students from Albania, Ubekistan and Morocco. Only 3% of Filipino students can match the average creative thinking of Singaporean students.

Continuing with the status quo in Filipino education, without changing direction and implementation of broad remedial measures is likely to see more of the same in future testing. VP Sarah Duterte, who was also head of department of education has resigned from that, and other positions, it is rumored, to focus on her political aspirations.

Teachers in the Philippines are a profession under massive pressure; public school teachers handle classes on average with 50 students. Salaries are not high, but work pressures are. Unfortunately, teachers appear to be grossly overrepresented among recent reports of sudden and premature deaths being reported in local social media. Loss of experienced educators is dealing further blows to the embattled education sector. More details to follow in coming stacks.