The Pacific state of Hawai’i’s House of Representatives has joined the state’s Senate in calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza, becoming the first state to pass such a resolution, reports Hawaii News Now.

In March, the Senate passed a ceasefire resolution with a 24–1 vote, and now the House has passed it on a 48–3 vote last Friday.

However, although the lawmakers are the first to pass a ceasefire resolution, reports have quoted the state legislature’s Public Access Room as saying it “does not have the force and effect of law”.

• READ MORE: Is­raeli strikes kill 34 in Gaza – Hamas con­sid­ers lat­est cease­fire pro­pos­al
• Other War on Gaza reports

Nor does it need a signature from the governor.

According to the resolution, the lawmakers are pushing for President Joe Biden’s administration to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire.

The Hawai’i lawmakers are also demanding that the administration “facilitate the de-escalation of hostilities to end the current violence, promptly send and facilitate the entry of humanitarian assistance into Gaza, including fuel, food, water, and medical supplies, and begin negotiations for lasting peace.”

President Biden has previously called for a ceasefire in Gaza, but there did not appear to be a contingency plan should negotiations seeking a ceasefire fail, according to The Washington Post.

Since Israel’s war on Gaza began on October 7, more than 34,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip by strikes from Israel, and 77,143 have been wounded.

US overthrew Hawai’ian kingdom
Tensions in the region go to at least the Nakba in 1948 when an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their land and illegal Israeli settlements began.

Given Hawai’i’s history of American businessmen overthrowing the indigenous Hawai’ian kingdom with the support of US military forces in 1893, pro-Palestinian advocates have pointed out that Hawai’i has a key connection to the conflict in Gaza.

Fatima Abed, founder of Rise for Palestine, is both Palestinian and Puerto Rican, and has a family member who is based in Gaza.

She told The Huffington Post: “People in Hawai’i, especially Native Hawai’ians, are determined on this issue because it’s very jarring to know that our tax dollars are going to fund the genocide of another colonised people while, here at home, our government budgets aren’t covering the basic needs of the people.”

Abed said that the island of Lahaina and its people had not been sufficiently cared for after the wildfires last August.

“Native Hawai’ians across the state have been underserved for decades. The people of Hawai’i see that money being sent overseas to hurt people instead of helping here, and it makes no sense.

“From the river to the sea, all of our people will be free.”

A law professor in Noumea says New Caledonia is now faced with a period of high uncertainty — be it political, economic or institutional.

Mathias Chauchat said referendum voters were made to believe that with yesterday’s no vote, the provisions of the 1998 Noumea Accord had become void.

The Noumea Accord lapsed with yesterday’s third referendum on full sovereignty.

• READ MORE: New Caledonia votes ‘non’ – but huge Kanak boycott of French referendum
• Betrayal of Kanaky decolonisation by Paris risks return to dark days
• Independence for Kanaky: A media and political stalemate or a ‘three strikes’ Frexit challenge? — Backgrounder
• I support Kanaky New Caledonian independence – but why I’m not voting
• Other New Caledonia referendum reports

However, Chauchat told Caledonia TV even after three no votes, the structures created by the Noumea Accord remained in place because their irreversibility was enshrined in the French constitution.

He said the no campaign was selling its supporters a dream of being able to change them like an organic law as it was possible in all other French overseas departments and territories.

But Chauchat said that to change accord provisions, there first needed to be a 60 percent majority in both the National Assembly and the Senate to alter the constitution, which in the current political situation was difficult.

He said the provisions cover the entire political construct, including the make-up of the electoral roll, of the assemblies and the collegial government as well as the economic re-balancing within the territory.

Chauchat said the French government may claim that the end of the Accord makes it obsolete, but he said this would end up in France’s Constitutional Court, where the pro-independence parties would continue their fight for respect of the accord.

As a result, he said, New Caledonia was now faced with instability, particularly over plans to open the electoral roll to more recent arrivals from France, who under the Noumea Accord cannot vote in provincial elections.

Referendum result confirmed
The French supervisor of New Caledonia’s third and last independence referendum said the high level of abstention had had no impact on the “sincerity of the vote”.

Presenting the official result, Francis Lamy said the rules don’t make voting mandatory and there was no minimum participation required.

Turnout was 43.9 percent, down from almost 86 percent last year, following a boycott by the pro-independence camp.

A total of 96.5 percent voted against independence.

Lamy also said there had been no significant irregularity and polling was calm.

His assessment was based on reports from more than 250 magistrates and officials deployed to polling stations territory-wide.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

After three decades of frustratingly slow progress but with a measure of quiet optimism over the decolonisation process unfolding under the Noumea Accord, Kanaky New Caledonia is again poised on the edge of a precipice.

Two out of three pledged referendums from 2018 produced higher than expected — and growing — votes for independence. But then the delta variant of the global covid-19 pandemic hit New Caledonia with a vengeance.

Like much of the rest of the Pacific, New Caledonia with a population of 270,000 was largely spared during the first wave of covid infections. However, in September a delta outbreak infected 12,343 people with 280 deaths — almost 70 percent of them indigenous Kanaks.

• READ MORE: Independence for Kanaky: A media and political stalemate or a ‘three strikes’ Frexit challenge? — Backgrounder
  
• I support Kanaky New Caledonian independence – but why I’m not voting
• Other New Caledonia referendum reports

With the majority of the Kanak population in traditional mourning — declared for 12 months by the customary Senate, the pro-independence Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) and its allies pleaded for the referendum due this Sunday, December 12, to be deferred until next year after the French presidential elections.

In fact, there is no reason for France to be in such a rush to hold this last referendum on Kanak independence in the middle of a state of emergency and a pandemic. It is not due until October 2022.

It is clear that the Paris authorities have changed tack and want to stack the cards heavily in favour of a negative vote to maintain the French status quo.

When the delay pleas fell on deaf political ears and appeals failed in the courts, the pro-independence coalition opted instead to not contest the referendum and refuse to recognise its legitimacy.

Vote threatens to be farce
This Sunday’s vote threatens to be a farce following such a one-sided campaign. It could trigger violence as happened with a similar farcical and discredited independence referendum in 1987, which led to the infamous Ouvea cave hostage-taking and massacre the following year as retold in the devastating Mathieu Kassovitz feature film Rebellion [l’Ordre at la morale] — banned in New Caledonia for many years.

On 13 September 1987, a sham vote on New Caledonian independence was held. It was boycotted by the FLNKS when France refused to allow independent United Nations observers. Unsurprisingly, only 1.7 percent of participants voted for independence. Only 59 percent of registered voters took part.

After the bloody ending of the Ouvea cave crisis, the 1988 Matignon/Oudinot Accord signed by Kanak leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou and anti-independence leader Jacques Lafleur, paved the way for possible decolonisation with a staggered process of increasing local government powers.

A decade later, the 1998 Noumea Accord set in place a two-decade pathway to increased local powers — although Paris retained control of military and foreign policy, immigration, police and currency — and the referendums.

In the first referendum on 4 November 2018, 43.33 percent voted for independence with 81 percent of the eligible voters taking part (recent arrivals had no right to vote in the referendum).

In the second referendum on 4 October 2020, the vote for independence rose to 46.7 percent with the turnout higher too at almost 86 percent. Only 10,000 votes separated the yes and no votes.

Expectations back then were that the “yes” vote would grow again by the third referendum with the demographics and a growing progressive vote, but by how much was uncertain.

Arrogant and insensitive
However, now with the post-covid tensions, the goodwill and rebuilding of trust for Paris that had been happening over many years could end in ashes again thanks to an arrogant and insensitive abandoning of the “decolonisation” mission by Emmanuel Macron’s administration in what is seen as a cynical ploy by a president positioning himself as a “law and order” leader ahead of the April elections.

Another pro-independence party, Palika, said Macron’s failure to listen to the pleas for a delay was a “declaration of war” against the Kanaks and progressive citizens.

The empty Noumea hoardings – apart from blue “La Voix du Non” posters, politically “lifeless” Place des Cocotiers, accusations of racism against indigenous Kanaks in campaign animations, and the 2000 riot police and military reinforcements have set a heavy tone.

And the damage to France’s standing in the region is already considerable.

Many academics writing about the implications of the “non” vote this Sunday are warning that persisting with this referendum in such unfavourable conditions could seriously rebound on France at a time when it is trying to project its “Indo-Pacific” relevance as a counterweight to China’s influence in the region.

China is already the largest buyer of New Caledonia’s metal exports, mainly nickel.

The recent controversial loss of a lucrative submarine deal with Australia has also undermined French influence.

Risks return to violence
Writing in The Guardian, Rowena Dickins Morrison, Adrian Muckle and Benoît Trépied warned that the “dangerous shift” on the New Caledonia referendum “risks a return to violence”.

“The dangerous political game being played by Macron in relation to New Caledonia recalls decisions made by French leaders in the 1980s which disregarded pro-independence opposition, instrumentalised New Caledonia’s future in the national political arena, and resulted in some of the bloodiest exchanges of that time,” they wrote.

Dr Muckle, who heads the history programme at Victoria University and is editor of The Journal of Pacific History, is chairing a roundtable webinar today entitled “Whither New Caledonia after the 2018-21 independence referendums?”

The theme of the webinar asks: “Has the search for a consensus solution to the antagonisms that have plagued New Caledonia finally ended? Is [the final] referendum likely to draw a line under the conflicts of the past or to reopen old wounds.”

One of the webinar panellists, Denise Fisher, criticised in The Conversation the lack of “scrupulously observed impartiality” by France for this third referendum compared to the two previous votes.

“In the first two campaigns, France scrupulously observed impartiality and invited international observers. For this final vote, it has been less neutral,” she argued.

“For starters, the discussions on preparing for the final vote did not include all major independence party leaders. The paper required by French law explaining the consequences of the referendum to voters favoured the no side this time, to the point where loyalists used it as a campaign brochure.”

‘Delay’ say Pacific civil society groups
A coalition of Pacific civil society organisations and movement leaders is among the latest groups to call on the French government to postpone the third referendum, which they described as “hastily announced”.

While French Minister for Overseas Territories Sebastien Lecornu had told French journalists this vote would definitely go ahead as soon as possible to “serve the common good”, critics see him as pandering to the “non” vote.

The Union Calédoniènne, Union Nationale pour l’independence Party (UNI), FLNKS and other pro-independence groups in the New Caledonia Congress had already written to Lecornu expressing their grave concerns and requesting a postponement because of the pandemic.

“We argue that the decision by France to go ahead with the referendum on December 12 ignores the impact that the current health crisis has on the ability of Kanaks to participate in the referendum and exercise their basic human right to self-determination,” said the Pacific coalition.

“We understand the Noumea Accord provides a timeframe that could accommodate holding the last referendum at any time up to November 2022.

“Therefore, we see no need to hastily set the final referendum for 12 December 2021, in the middle of a worldwide pandemic that is currently ravaging Kanaky/New Caledonia, and disproportionately impacting [on] the Kanak population.”

The coalition also called on the Chair of the Pacific Islands Forum, Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama to “disengage” the PIF observer delegation led by Ratu Inoke Kubuabola. Forum engagement in referendum vote as observers, said the coalition, “ignores the concerns of the Kanak people”.

‘Act as mediators’
The coalition argued that the delegation should “act as mediators to bring about a more just and peaceful resolution to the question and timing of a referendum”.

Signatories to the statement include the Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era, Fiji Council of Social Services, Melanesian Indigenous Land Defence Alliance, Pacific Conference of Churches, Pacific Network on Globalisation, Peace Movement Aotearoa, Pasifika and Youngsolwara Pacific.

The Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) secretariat has called on member states to not recognise New Caledonia’s independence referendum this weekend.

Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, which along with the FLNKS are full MSG members, have been informed by the secretariat of its concerns.

In a media release, the MSG’s Director-General, George Hoa’au, said the situation in New Caledonia was “not conducive for a free and fair referendum”.

Ongoing customary mourning over covid-19 related deaths in New Caledonia meant that Melanesian communities were unable to campaign for the vote.

Hopes now on United Nations
“Major hopes are now being pinned on a Kanak delegation of territorial Congress President Roch Wamytan, Mickaël Forrest and Charles Wéa who travelled to New York this week to lobby the United Nations for support.

One again, France has demonstrated a lack of cultural and political understanding and respect that erodes the basis of the Noumea Accord – recognition of Kanak identity and kastom.

Expressing her disappointment to me, Northern provincial councillor and former journalist Magalie Tingal Lémé says: “What happens in Kanaky is what France always does here. The Macron government didn’t respect us. They still don’t understand us as Kanak people.”

Dr David Robie covered “Les Événements” in New Caledonia in the 1980s and penned the book Blood on their Banner about the turmoil. He also covered the 2018 independence referendum.

The tech juggernaut Facebook’s shock decision to block all news feeds from Australian media outlets this week in response to a proposed new Media Bargaining law, that will force social media giants to pay for news content that is posted on their platforms, has created fury among Australians.

But it is also turning attention to the impact of Facebook – and Google – on Australian journalism.

Facebook banned Australian users from accessing news in their feeds on the morning of Thursday, February 18, as the government pursues laws that would force it to pay publishers for journalism that appears in people’s feeds.

• READ MORE: Facebook backs away from news across the Tasman – RNZ Mediawatch
• Facebook’s Australia ban threatens to leave Pacific without key news source
• Other News Bargaining law stories

The legislation was introduced to Parliament in Canberra in December 2020. The House of Representatives passed it earlier this week.

The bill that has wide political support in Australia is now under review by a Senate committee before it is presented for a vote in the upper house.

In a lengthy statement issued by Facebook on February 18, the company revealed that it would bar Australian news sites from sharing content on the platform.

Within moments of the announcement being made public, Australian news organisations, media commentators, interest groups and local consumers of Facebook that runs into millions, began voicing their fury.

‘Go directly to source’
National broadcaster ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) immediately posted a notice on their news pages on the website calling on Australians to “go directly to the source” by downloading from their own news application.

Facebook’s head of policy for Asia-Pacific, Simon Milner was unrepentant during an interview on the ABC network, arguing that they disagree with the broad definition of news in the new legislation.

“One of the criticisms we had about the law that was passed by the House of Representatives [on February 16] is that the definition of news is incredibly broad and vague,” he said

Facebook has said earlier that the proposed laws fundamentally misunderstood the relationship between their platform and publishers who used it to share news content.

In fact, Facebook has been arguing for a long time that they are a publisher that provides a free platform for news organisations.

But many media organisations and scholars argue that they are bleeding out revenue from the Australian media running advertising on these pages, which otherwise used to go to the media companies and their platforms such as newspapers and TV stations.

A first of its kind, the success or otherwise of the Australian legislation is closely watched by other countries, especially in Europe.

US government pressure
Interestingly, according to an ABC report on January 18, the US government had tried to pressure the Australian government to drop the proposed legislation.

According to the ABC, a document with the letterhead of the Executive Office of the President has said: “The US government is concerned that an attempt, through legislation, to regulate the competitive positions of specific players … to the clear detriment of two US firms may result in harmful outcomes.”

The Australian government, however, sees the new legislation as designed to ensure these media companies are fairly remunerated for the use of their content on search engines and social media platforms.

Google has begun signing deals with publishers in response, but Facebook has chosen to follow through on its threat and remove news for Australian users.

In an interview on ABC Radio on February 18, Glen Dyer of popular Crikey! media that uses Facebook extensively to reach their audiences described Facebook’s behaviour as “resembling China’s (Community Party)”.

He argued that in the past year China has been imposing trade restrictions literally overnight on spurious grounds inconveniencing Australians at the behest of China’s leader, and Mark Zuckerberg is also behaving in a similar high-handed way.

“It [Facebook] has a management structure that is controlled by a small group headed by Mark Zuckerberg,” he noted.

Boycott Facebook
“Australian advertisers should boycott Facebook”.

However, Dyer added that they would not have the guts because “most of these Australian companies are controlled offshore and the local executives would not risk their bonuses”.

Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, speaking on ABC TV’s flagship current affairs programme 7.30 Report on February 18, argued strongly for an across the board tax on advertising revenue designed in such a way that both local and foreign companies operating in Australia cannot avoid it.

“The real question is that the revenue model for media has moved into other platforms like Facebook and Google. There is less revenue support for journalism and that has been a worry for some time,” said Turnbull, who was a merchant banker before moving into politics.

“Government will be better off imposing a tax on advertising revenue across the board …. take that revenue from Facebook and Google and make the money available to support public interest journalism,” he recommended.

Turnbull believes that government has lost the plot because they are saying to companies like Facebook and Google, “you have to pay money to those [media companies] who put contents on your site [even though] you are not stealing it or breaching copyrights, you have to pay”.

Thus, he appealed to Australians to go directly to Australia media news platforms and applications – like that offered by the ABC – without using Facebook.

Digital threat to democracy
Chris Cooper, executive director of Reset Australia, a global initiative working to counter the digital threat to democracy has also condemned Facebook’s action.

“Facebook is telling Australians that rather than participate meaningfully in regulatory efforts, it would prefer to operate a platform in which real news has been abandoned or de-prioritised, leaving misinformation to fill the void,” he argued.

Reset Australia had made a submission to the government during the legislation’s drafting stage arguing that the true impact of the legislation should be changes to the news, media and journalism landscape in Australia, that should ensure promoting greater diversity and pluralism within the Australian media landscape.

Cooper argues that Facebook does not care about Australian society nor the functioning of democracy.

“Regulation is an inconvenient impost on their immediate profits – and the hostility of their response overwhelmingly confirms regulation is needed,” he says.

Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg blasted Facebook’s decision to block access to pages like 1800Respect, the WA Department of Fire and Emergency Services and the Bureau of Meteorology.

Speaking on ABC he said that this was done at a time that a bushfire emergency in Western Australia depended on this information, and also when Australia is about to roll out the covid-19 vaccines where people needed access to reliable information.

Frydenberg noted that this heavy-handed action will damage its reputation.

“Their decision to block Australians’ access to government sites — be they about support through the pandemic, mental health, emergency services, the Bureau of Meteorology — was completely unrelated to the media code, which is yet to pass through the Senate,” he said.

“What today’s events do confirm for all Australians, is the immense market power of these digital giants.”

Kalinga Seneviratne is a media analyst and author. This article was first published on IDN-InDepth News and is republished with the permission of the author.

Pacific Media Watch newsdesk

Nine Entertainment and News Corporation are wrong to say Google and Facebook have destroyed their business models by stealing content, according to news publisher Eric Beecher, reports The New Daily.

Giving evidence before the Australian Senate hearing on the government’s proposed media bargaining code on Monday, Beecher said representatives from Nine, News Corp and The Guardian had wrongly accused Facebook and Google during previous hearings of “stealing both their content and their advertising revenue”.

Beecher, the chairman of Solstice Media and owner of Private Media, publisher of the independent Crikey!, said the multibillion-dollar organisations clearly gained more than they lost from sharing their journalism on Facebook and Google, writes Euan Black in his New Daily report.

• READ MORE: The Conversation’s submission to the Australian Senate media code inquiry
• Nine’s statement to the media bargaining code inquiry
• The proposed Australian media bargaining code

“Those media companies actively provide snippets or their full journalism to the platforms for one blindingly obvious reason: They gain huge benefit from the exposure – and clicks – their content attracts on Google and Facebook,” he told the senate committee.

“If they didn’t, they wouldn’t allow it to be ‘stolen’.”

Beecher, who also chairs Motion Publishing, publisher of The New Daily, disputed claims that the internet giants had siphoned off advertising revenue from the news organisations.

He said that before Google and Facebook most of this revenue came from newspaper classifieds that have since moved online.

Money ‘ended up in pockets’
Beecher said this money had “ended up in the pockets” of realestate.com.au (owned by News Corp), Domain (owned by Nine) and other classified advertising websites like Seek and Carsales.

“As has been meticulously researched, the vast bulk of Google and Facebook’s advertising revenue has not come from news publishers,” he told the hearing.

In an earlier submission to the senate inquiry, Facebook said it had generated 4.7 billion referrals to Australian media publishers and shared A$5.4 million in revenue with them between January and November.

It also claimed “the commercial value we derive from news content in Australia is virtually zero”, while Google has threatened to remove its search engine from Australia if the current version of the code is passed into law.

Despite disagreeing with key arguments used to defend the media bargaining code, Beecher said the internet giants were “almost certainly too powerful” and should be legally required to “pay full Australian tax on all their Australian profits that stem from all their Australian revenue”.

“I’m not here to defend Google and Facebook,” he said.

‘Their behaviour is scary’
“Their market dominance and the information they collect about their users’ online behaviour is scary.”

Beecher said the huge market share and tax minimisation strategies of the internet giants provided enough justification to ask them to pay a “social licence” fee to support public interest journalism.

“For those reasons — not because of spurious arguments about stealing content and advertising revenue — I believe they should pay what is, in effect, a social licence to support the public interest journalism that has been severely affected by the invention of the commercial internet, which Google and Facebook dominate,” he said.

Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who is the Greens’ media spokesperson and sits on the committee tasked with interrogating the proposed new laws, also called for the code to explicitly support public interest journalism.

She said in a statement that the Greens would seek amendments to the bill that:

• “Require news organisations to spend the revenue from the Code on resourcing public interest journalism, and
• “Require the 12-month review of the Code to report on the impact that the Code is having on small, independent and start up publications.”

So it goes. Nineteen senators in the Philippines Senate have approved on the third and final reading of Senate Bill (SB) 1083 this week, effectively giving more teeth to the Human Security Act of 2007, which was a watered down version of the 1996 Anti-Terror Act of Senator Juan Ponce Enrile.

SB 1083 is the Philippines’ response of commitment to international efforts in the fight against terror.

Authored by Senator Panfilo Lacson, the bill intends to fortify the legal backbone in the fight against terror, equip law enforcers with necessary tools to carry out operations, and safeguard the rights of those accused of the crime.

READ MORE: Senate approves anti-terrorism bill on final reading

SB 1083 defines terrorism as a crime “committed by any person who within or outside the Philippines, regardless of the stage of execution; engages in acts intended to cause death or serious bodily injury to any person, or endangers a person’s life; engages in acts intended to cause extensive damage or destruction to a government or public facility, public place or private property: engages in acts intended to cause extensive interference with, damage or destruction to critical infrastructure; develops, manufactures, possesses, acquires, transports, supplies or uses weapons, explosives or of biological, nuclear, radiological or chemical weapons; and release of dangerous substances, or causing fire, floods or explosions.”

The law allows the police or military to conduct a 60-day surveillance on suspected terrorists, although this can be lengthened to another non-extendable period of 30 days with judicial authority.

A suspected person can be detained without a warrant of arrest for 14 days, or 10 more days if authorities deem it necessary. This happens to be one of the provisions that angered Senator Francis Pangilinan, who voted with Senator Risa Hontiveros against the bill.

“The prolonged detention is an impingement of rights and liberty. Why 14 days? If security officials and law enforcers are doing their job, why will it take them long to file a case?” Pangilinan said.

‘Produce or invent evidence later?’
“Or, is the practice of arrest and detain now, produce or invent evidence later still prevalent, as it was when opposition leader Jovy Salonga was arrested, detained, and charged in 1981? The current law is not perfect, and, we, in Congress, should be working continuously to make it work for the people.”

Lacson, on the other hand, assures that the bill provides sufficient safeguard to ensure the basic human rights of the accused. The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) shall immediately be notified in case of detention of a suspected terrorist.

The measure also mandates the CHR to give highest priority to investigate and prosecute violations of civil and political rights of persons and to prosecute officials or law enforcers who violate the basic rights of the suspects or detained persons.

The catch, however, is that SB 1083 removed the provision of payment of P500,000 (NZ$15,500) damages for each day of detention of persons acquitted of terrorism charges.

Events, however, render the SB 1083 at once timely and yet ill-timed. Timely while extremist terror is breathing down the neck of countries, but ill-timed most especially while we have a government that, while publicly claiming openness, seems at heart intolerant to dissent, indulging itself in a spree of red-tagging, arresting students, academics, social workers, priests and activists.

SB 1083 also comes at a time when government holds the most expensive intelligence work there is as far as budget goes, at a whopping P4.9 billion (NZ$154 million). With that much arm, we now have a highly omnipresent Big Brother practically watching over its citizens’ shoulders at any given time of the day.

This tilts the balance of power entirely and, if the wrong hands take the rein, might easily endanger our democracy.

SunStar is an independent community newspaper and online portal based in Cebu, Philippines. This editorial was published on 27 February 2020.

• Urban warfare: Marawi – 153 days and more

Philippines Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon has dismissed comments by Senator Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go that “politics” is behind the filing of a proposed concurrent resolution calling on regulators to temporarily allow television giant ABS-CBN to operate as Congress deliberates on its franchise application.

The Senate has the prerogative to pass a concurrent resolution expressing its “sense” on the matter, which does not have the force of law, unlike a joint resolution that needs to be passed by both the Senate and House of Representatives and signed by the president, Drilon told reporters on Wednesday.

“Being a neophyte senator, he (Go) may not be aware of our tradition and our rules. Precisely, a concurrent resolution does not go through the president because it has no force and effect of a law. It is just a sense of the Senate. There is no politics here,” Drilon said.

READ MORE: ‘Speak truth to power’ – Varsitarian reports

“We are not depriving the President of the right to veto or approve,” he added.

Drilon’s earlier proposed joint resolution seeks to extend ABS-CBN’s franchise until the end of 2022, prompting an accusation from Go that opposition senators did not want President Rodrigo Duterte to have a hand on the issue. Duterte steps down on June 30, 2022.

Go, on Monday’s Senate inquiry into the ABS-CBN franchise, gave an idea as to why the Duterte-controlled House of Representatives was stalling on the TV network’s licence renewal.

He said Duterte was displeased over ABS-CBN’s supposed refusal to air his 2016 campaign ad that was a response to an attack ad financed by an arch-critic, then senator Antonio Trillanes IV.

ABS-CBN on Monday said Commission on Election restrictions in the final stretch of the 2016 campaign prevented the Duterte ad from being aired, and that it returned the payment, but Duterte refused to accept it.

Go countered that it took a year for ABS-CBN to address the Duterte campaign’s grievance. “Remember, in an election campaign, especially in a presidential campaign, there is no tomorrow. Every second matters,” he said.

Guevarra vs Puno
Drilon, along with Senator Grace Poe, also dismissed comments by retired chief justice Reynato Puno that ABS-CBN cannot operate when its 25-year franchise expires, based on a 2003 court ruling.

The franchise expires on May 4, 2020, reckoned from the date of effectivity of 15 days after publication, which is April 19, 1995, according to the Department of Justice.

Drilon said Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra’s opinion – that ABS-CBN could be allowed to operate on a provisional authority from the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) given Congress’ lack of time to pass a new franchise – should be binding throughout the Executive Branch.

“Guevarra said that on grounds of equity, the ABS-CBN can continue. Again, this is an opinion expressed by no less than the secretary of justice, whose opinion is binding on the entire executive branch, so this must be extended due respect.”

Guevarra gave his opinion on the franchise issue during Monday’s Senate inquiry called by Poe.

Drilon said he was in favor of doing what was “necessary in order to allow an objective debate on the renewal of the franchise, without the threat of ABS-CBN being closed.”

In fact, even without the concurrent resolution, a provisional authority would still be valid, he said.

‘Man of wisdom’
“That is the view of Secretary Guevarra; that is the view of Speaker Cayetano; and that is the view of Senator Poe as chairman of the committee on public services,” Drilon said.

Poe said that while Puno is a “man of integrity and wisdom,” a lot had happened since the 2003 ruling that he penned.

“And in fact, hundreds of franchises go through both houses of Congress and because of that, the cure of Congress, because sometimes they don’t have enough time to deliberate on it, is to direct the NTC to grant the provisional license,” Poe told ABS-CBN’s Karen Davila.

Poe also said that even without any resolution from Congress, ABS-CBN should continue operating, “even just by precedents of the acts of Congress in recent years.”

Several companies have been given provisional licenses, she pointed out, citing PT&T, Globe, Smart, GMA Network, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines and Marine Broadcasting.

Felipe F. Salvosa is coordinator of the journalism programme at the University of Santo Tomas in the Philippines and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

• More ABS-CBN television saga reports

The top lawyer of the Philippine Bureau of Corrections (BuCor) who was a controversial witness in Senate hearings on the Good Conduct Time Allowance (GCTA) controversy has been shot dead.

According to the police report, lawyer Fredric Santos was gunned down yesterday afternoon by two unidentified suspects in front of his daughter’s school in Muntinlupa City, as he was about to pick her up.

Santos suffered gunshot wounds to the head and was declared dead on the spot by the Muntinlupa City rescue team, police said.

READ MORE: Timeline – The GCTA law and the controversy it has stirred

Santos was the legal division chief of the BuCor who was suspended by the Office of the Ombudsman and once detained by the Senate in September 2019 over controversies in the GCTA law’s implementation.

Santos’ office is not included in the process of screening for GCTA grants. But he was grilled by the Senate blue ribbon committee on his role in providing legal opinion on whether the BuCor chief needs the Justice Secretary’s approval to release inmates sentenced to reclusion perpetua.

At the Senate, Santos said he had told then-BuCor chief Nicanor Faeldon of the rule requiring the justice secretary’s approval for releases.

But when Faeldon denied this, Santos backtracked and said he could not recall whether it was just relayed to a staff member.

Rambo Talabong is a Rappler journalist. This report was written with a file by Lian Buan.

Another “fake news” row has broken in the Philippines in the wake of the mid-term elections this week with Vice-President Leni Robredo rejecting false reports that she had promised to resign if no member of the opposition Otso Directso bloc wins a Senate seat.

The claim originated from a website that is known for spreading misleading information.

Robredo is regarded as a critic of President Rodrigo Duterte.

READ MORE: Robredo: No matter the election results, Otso Diretso’s fight continues

Claim: Vice-President Leni Robredo made a promise to step down from her position if no member of the Otso Diretso slate won a Senate seat.

The claim has been circulating on Facebook, with one post featuring an image of Robredo, along with the text: “Remember her promise. If no one among 8 diretso will win the election she will step down as vice president. Do you think she will fulfill her promise?”

Various groups and pages on the social network, particularly those expressing support for President Rodrigo Duterte and his allies, have called on Robredo to fulfill the “promise” and resign.

One of the most shared posts can be found in “Atty Glenn Chong Supporters Group”. It had 3,000 shares, 892 reactions, and 330 comments as of writing.

The claim seems to have originated from an article published by The Adobo Chronicles on May 7, 2019. Since then, the story has been shared by 44 Facebook groups and pages and had drawn 6,945 total interactions from 1,546,053 combined followers, according to CrowdTangle.

The facts: The Vice-President had already denied the claim in a tweet on May 15.

She attached a screenshot of a version of the claim and captioned it on her official Twitter account: “Not true. Let’s continue fighting disinformation. Report peddlers of fake news.”

Though Adobo Chronicles’ article was dated May 7, the claim began circulating on Facebook the day after the 2019 midterm elections, May 14.

Robredo actively endorsed members of the Otso Diretso slate during the campaign period. She expressed support for the team both on social media and on the ground up until the elections results started to come out.

But while the opposition slate managed to get some wins in Bicol, Robredo’s home region, not a single member was able to enter the top 12 lineup on the national level.

As of writing, 96.3 percent of total votes have already been transmitted.

Adobo Chronicles claims to be a satirical website, but it has been known to spread misleading information.

• Pauline Macaraeg is a journalist for Rappler. This report is part of a “Fact check” series published by the website.
  
• Philippines opposition fails to rock Duterte’s Senate dominance

A team led by Makati police chief Senior Superintendent Rogelio Simon confirmed that the police served the arrest warrant on Trillanes yesterday for the charge of rebellion, hours after the document was released by Makati Regional Trial Court Branch 150 Executive Judge Elmo Alameda.

Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Jose Balajadia told reporters that the police followed protocol. He said the National Capital Region Police Office director Chief Superintendent Guillermo Eleazar served the warrant on Trillanes.

READ MORE: Why the Senate backed Trillanes but not De Lima vs Duterte – by Camille Elemia

Eleazar said in an interview on ANC that Trillanes voluntarily went with the arresting team. The senator had earlier said he would not resist arrest providing police presented a the proper warrant.

Trillanes was brought to the Makati City Central Police Station for charging procedures.

He was then taken to Makati RTC Branch 150 to post the bail of P200,000 (NZ$5600). He was accompanied by fellow opposition senators Kiko Pangilinan, Paolo Benigno Aquino IV, and Risa Hontiveros; as well as his Magdalo party colleagues.

The judge signed Trillanes’ release order before 5 pm.

Rebellion charge revived
The rebellion charge against Trillanes was revived after President Rodrigo Duterte issued Proclamation No. 572, revoking an amnesty granted to the senator in connection to the 2003 Oakwood mutiny and the 2007 Manila Peninsula siege.

Trillanes had questioned then Police Chief Ronald Del Rosa about extrajudicial killings in Duterte’s bloody, protracted war on drugs, and had also organised the testimony of former members of an alleged death squad that operated under the president while he was mayor of the city of Davao in the country’s south, reports CNN Philippines.

Another opposition senator, Leila de Lima, also a fierce critic of Duterte, has been detained in Camp Crame since February 2017, for drug charges.

Rambo Talabong is a journalist with the independent news website Rappler. Asia Pacific Report publishes under a Creative Commons licence.

• De Lima witness: Duterte ordered death squad killings in Davao
• Duterte’s Trillanes arrest order fiasco

News website Rappler has found millions of false social media accounts spreading fake news linked originally to the 2016 Philippine campaign of President Rodrigo Duterte.

Rappler chief executive officer Maria Ressa has told a Senate hearing her social media team had traced the spread of fake news after she was attacked with an average of 90 hate messages an hour in October 2016 after the online news site published a story on fake social media accounts.

“By mid last year, we had 12 and a half million accounts being part of it,” Ressa said at the resumption of hearings on fake news by the Senate committee on public information.

As an example, she cited the account of a certain Sally Mathay that reposted wrong information via cut-and-paste.

“If you look at the websites and the groups of where she posts disinformation or what she wants to post, you can see the combination of pages,” Ressa said, adding that it was how an “ecosystem” of fake news was created.

“You can see both the Duterte campaign pages and former Senator Bongbong Marcos coming together here,” she said.

‘Patriotic trolling’
Ressa said Rappler took part in a study looking at “patriotic trolling” — a state-sponsored online hate and harassment campaign “to silence and intimidate”.

“Social media provided cheap armies to potential authoritarians and dictators to control and manipulate public opinion,” Ressa said, citing the study that is set to be released in the next few months.

She did not provide details of the study, but said it mirrored the findings of a survey of 65 countries released last November by the US-based Freedom House that showed China and Russia were flooding social media with lies and disinformation rather than seeking to control them.

Trolls followed three steps to do this in the Philippines, she said.

As shown in the case of Senator Leila de Lima, a staunch opponent of the President now detained on drug charges, Ressa said the trolls first attacked the credibility of the target.

“You allege corruption and then you repeat that exponentially because if you say a lie 10 times, truth can catch up. But if you say a lie a million times, that becomes the truth,” she said.

Sexual violence
Ressa said the second step was to use sexual violence as this “inflames biases, fuels misogyny and then degrades the target as a sexual object”.

And the last step was to directly attack the target, citing her own experience with the spread of the #ArrestMariaRessa campaign.

Ressa said social media was being used to manipulate opinion in the Philippines because the country was “actually the top country that goes online globally” with 97 percent of Filipinos online also on Facebook.

Ressa said her staff had mapped the network of the purveyors of fake news, which has become much more systematic.

She said it was “consistent in its approach and it built off on the social media [election] campaign team and it was weaponized in July” after Duterte took office.

Silencing dissent
She said some governments had sought to “silence dissent” through the proliferation of fake news, flooding social media with hate messages.

Rappler, which the President has called a “fake news outfit,” is battling the revocation of its licence by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly violating the constitutional restrictions on foreign control of mass media in the country.

Ressa joined other journalists, bloggers and even the government’s communications office to resist suggestions to rein in social media.

Presidential Communications Operations Office Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy, who also spoke at the Senate hearing, asked whether statements by Ressa, whom she described as a “very fierce opponent of the President,” should be accepted “hook, line and sinker”.

“I just want it for the record that it cuts both ways. This is not the sole crime of pro-Duterte bloggers,” Badoy said.

• UN critics join global outrage over Duterte’s Rappler ‘free press’ attack
• More Philippine articles

After visiting Senator Leila de Lima in jail, Senator Antonio Trillanes IV said that he will stop at nothing to make sure Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte also serves time in prison.

“Hahabulin ko ‘tong si Duterte, the moment mawala na sya sa poder ng kapangyarihan, ipapakulong kita, hahabulin kita,” Trillanes said outside the custodial center of the Philippine National Police (PNP) where De Lima is detained over drug charges.

READ MORE: De Lima detained in Camp Crame

Aside from pushing for the investigation of the alleged Davao Death Squad (DDS), Trillanes is also accusing Duterte of having an undeclared wealth amounting to as much as P2.4 billion (NZ$66.4 million).

Trillanes said he is not at all unfazed by what happened to De Lima, who, like him, is a staunch critic of the Duterte administration.

“Ako ang susunod? Plano nga nila akong unahin e, pero sige – bring it on, do your worst,” Trillanes said.

(I’m next? I was supposed to be their first, but bring it on, do your worst.)

He added: “I am motivated more than ever, mas ginaganahan ako na iexpose itong pagkatao ni President Duterte na siya ay isang mandarambong at mamamatay tao, hindi ako titigil hangga’t hindi namumulat ang sambayanang Pilipino, talagang pananagutin natin siya, hahabulin at hahabulin ko siya, hindi ko siya titigilan.”

(I am motivated more than ever to expose the true character of Duterte, that he is a plunderer and a murderer. I will not stop until the Filipino people realise this. We will hold him accountable, I will run after him, I will not quit.)

‘Lascañas making them nervous’
Trillanes said the Senate will start hearing the testimonies of retired Davao cop SPO3 Arturo “Arthur” Lascañas on Thursday.

Lascañas is in the center of the scandal tagging Duterte in the vigilante group “Davao Death Squad” (DDS), accused of killing more than a thousand people in Davao City when Duterte was mayor.

The retired policeman denied the existence of the DDS last October 2016, calling Edgar Matobato a liar, but turned around on his word last week and divulged in some detail some of Duterte’s alleged kill orders, including broadcaster Jun Pala.

“Palagay ko diyan sila kinakabahan talaga e, nangangatog na mga tuhod ng mga ito dun sa hearing na gagawin sa Thursday,” Trillanes said.

(I think they’re nervous, their knees are shaking thinking of the hearing on Thursday.)

“Malalaman na ng mga kababayan natin kung anong klaseng tao, anong klaseng monster si President Duterte,” he added.

(Our countrymen will know just what kind of a person, a monster, President Duterte is.)

Encouraging dissent
Trillanes said that the administration failed in its attempt to scare off critics of the government.

“Heto sana yung ayaw nilang mangyari, kaya nga nila ginawa yung illegal arrest at persecution na ito para nga sana matakot ang mga kalaban ng administrasyon, kabaliktaran yung nangyari. Ang ordinaryong tao, lumalakas ang boses,” Trillanes said.

(This is what they didn’t want to happen, they orchestrated this illegal arrest and persecution to scare off the critics of the administration, but the opposite happened. The voices of the ordinary people are getting louder.)

According to Trillanes, De Lima also feels motivated despite being in prison.

“She’s in high spirits at hindi natitinag ang kanyang conviction, tuloy ang kanyang laban, inassure ko siya na lalong lumakas ang voices of dissent,” Trillanes said.

(She’s in high spirits, her conviction has not wavered. Her fight continues. I assured her that the voice of dissent has become louder.)

Rebellion charges
Trillanes was himself also jailed on rebellion charges, but managed to win as senator in 2007. He was granted amnesty in 2010 by former president Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, which enabled him to legislate as a free man.

Trillanes said he gave some advice to De Lima on how to effectively perform her functions inside jail.

“She can file resolutions and bills, she can issue statements but she will not be allowed to vote and interpellate.

“I was allowed back then by President [Benigno] Aquino [III] to conduct a committee hearing inside prison, but I doubt it if President Duterte will allow her,” Trillanes said.

Lian Buan is a journalist with Rappler.

• War on drugs Senator Leila de Lima arrested in Philippines