Marxist football
Red propaganda has kept the country’s social landscape backward, and a strong proof of this is the absence of a universal identification card that Filipinos long deserved, but which communist sympathizers had successfully stalled after painting it as being purely intended for political persecution.
A national ID system is long overdue for the nation. The country’s neighbor Hong Kong credits the use of its unified card for the quick delivery of social services and in helping maintain peace and order.
Filipinos, in contrast, have to go through the ordeal of fishing for at least three identification cards, one of which government issued, just to open a bank account.
The ridiculous situation turns into a conundrum when those without a government-issued ID, such as a passport or a license, are caught in a no-win situation where they need to be issued a government ID to obtain their preferred proof of identity, such as a passport.
Thus, the need to be certified by the barangay as a resident or even the local police outpost just to get a “valid” ID.
A new biometric national ID system called Philippine Identification System (PhilSys) is being rolled out after a law was passed, finally, to mandate its use, but the usual critics said President Duterte or his minions will use it as a tool of repression.
For them, the legislation threatens privacy rights and could be used for surveillance and control political dissent.
The crafting of a law was needed since the Supreme Court rejected the adoption of an ID scheme done previously through a presidential order.
President Duterte had pushed for the landmark bill as part of priority legislations on the rationale that an identification scheme accepted by all improves the delivery of government services.
The law guaranteed basic information of a person and nothing else will be provided in the ID database kept with the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA).
Specifically, the holder’s demographic details, such as name, sex, date of birth, place of birth and address are required for the information bank. There are currently at least 33 sectoral ID currently being issued by various government agencies.
Approval of the ID scheme was a long time coming.
On 12 December 1996, President Fidel V. Ramos issued Administrative Order 308 (AO 308) to establish a “National Computerized Identification Reference System,” which was later invalidated in Ople vs Torres (23 July 1998) on the grounds of violation of the constitutional right to privacy and the argument that a national ID may be instituted only by Congress.
In his ponencia, then Justice (later Chief Justice) Reynato Puno contended that the national ID system “will put our people’s right to privacy in clear and present danger” and the “vast reservoir of personal information (collected in the ID) constitutes a covert invitation to misuse, a temptation that may be just too great for some of our authorities to resist.”
On 13 April 2005, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo issued Executive Order 420 (EO 420) directing all government agencies to adopt a uniform data collection and format for their existing but separately issued ID cards.
The directive was upheld by the Supreme Court but public protests whipped up by the Left using the same argument of privacy invasion created a political storm forcing Arroyo to defer the proposal.
Beneficiaries of the cash transfer program are the poor, since it will facilitate their verification and thus speed up the provision of government social services to the right targets.
Those who suffer from it, in turn, are the opportunists who conveniently hide behind anonymity.
It is too easy to know whose welfare the national ID scheme serves.
The law guaranteed basic information of a person and nothing else will be provided in the ID database kept with the Philippine Statistics Authority.
“Filipinos have to go through the ordeal of fishing for at least three identification cards, one of which government issued, just to open a bank account.