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THE Appeals Court brouhaha involving the Government Service
Insurance System (GSIS) and the Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) in a
sorry saga of accusations and counter-accusations over alleged
attempts to buy justice has now taken on a new, and sinister, turn
in cyberspace where the world zooms in and laps up whatever is on
offer.
A video posted on the hugely popular viral
network that is YouTube–which gives an intriguing new angle on the
Appeals Court/GSIS/Meralco troika–is getting millions of hits.
And, judging by the alleged content, with every hit the Philippine
judiciary has got to be receiving an ugly black eye.
The gist of the video is a claim that the voice
heard on it is that of a top GSIS official, allegedly imploring his
minions to “take advantage of the corrupt judiciary.”
Needless to say, nobody at the GSIS hierarchy is
willing to comment on the matter so as not to—as one GSIS
spokesperson put it—“dignify” whatever the video is trying to
imply.
The Internet is, of course, the happy hunting
ground, of drive-by character assassins. But the alarming fact is
that once something like this is posted on YouTube—ostensibly
allowing it to run and run and putting it beyond the long reach of
the law with regard to the criminally libelous content of the
material—it does tend to take a damaging life of its own.
And that’s irrespective of whether or not, as
in this case, the factual nature of the content is yet to be proved
beyond reasonable doubt.
But the pros and cons notwithstanding, we can
only be grateful that the blindfold worn by Dame Justice has
precluded her from checking out YouTube. Though just hearing about
it will set her wobbling on her pedestal!
Good news for nationalists
Here’s some good news that should get
nationalistic hearts fluttering: the Philippines may well have
finally cast off all vestiges of its colonial past with regard to
Spain.
Representatives from a Spanish company arrived
in the Philippines not too long ago with the intention of recruiting
200 fluent Spanish speaking Filipinos for a call center operation to
be set up in Manila but handling back office telephone enquiries
from European customers.
Alas, despite a lengthy recruiting drive and
many weeks of interviews, the company was only able to sift out
eight applicants whose fluency of the Spanish language matched up to
the required standard.
Interestingly, as far as we were able to
ascertain there are only three academic institutions teaching
Spanish in Metro Manila—University of the Philippines, the
Instituto Cervantes and, surprisingly, Sta. Isabel College in Taft
Avenue.
The Spanish company then took its search to
Taiwan, where in Taipei alone they were able to find over 600
applicants whose knowledge of Spanish far exceeded even the required
standard.
That should come as no surprise since it just
happens that in Taiwan there are 14 universities where Spanish
language is part of the curriculum.
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Filipinos in
Spanish farms
This story, also on the Spanish front, is doing
the rounds of the corporate cocktail circuit and eliciting much
knowing laughter.
It concerns an agricultural company in Spain
that got the nod from Spanish authorities to recruit several hundred
farm-hands from the Philippines since finding suitable labor is a
perennial problem on most European farms.
The jobs were advertised and recruiting took
place in Manila. And considering the nature of the work, there were
no hard and fast academic requirements required.
Almost 300 Filipino “farm-hands” were
selected and transported to Spain. And that’s where the problems
began.
The farm bosses began to slowly discover that
most of the new arrivals from the Philippines hadn’t a clue on the
type of work required on a farm. Which was hardly surprising
considering that many of them were actually accountants, teachers,
nurses and the like who, quite inventively, used the cover of the
farm offer, to enter Spain.
Word is that in a matter of a few weeks many of
the Filipino recruits had quietly disappeared from the farm, leaving
the place with hardly any workers and a potential loss from the
recruitment fiasco of 3.2 millions euros.
rjottings@yahoo.com
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