The ‘Lucky Sperm Club’ race is on

I FIRST heard that term “Lucky Sperm Club” uttered by First Pacific top executive Manuel V. Pangilinan in the early 1990s in pejorative reference to the Ayalas and other Spanish-descended business tycoons against whom his consortium was bidding for the purchase of what is now the Bonifacio Global City.

The term was popularized by the American billionaire investor Warren Buffett in a self-deprecating way to refer to individuals who like himself inherited wealth, power or social status by virtue of birth rather than their own effort or merit. The phrase is a criticism of inherited privilege, that certain people are born into advantageous situations simply because of their family background.

“I won the lottery the day I was born. I was born into a rich, powerful family and that gave me all sorts of advantages in life. I call it the ‘lucky sperm club,'” Buffet said.

What we call democracy is in reality the rule of the Lucky Sperm Club (LSC). President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is the embodiment of the LSC club, whose election to the top post of the land owes nothing to his personal accomplishments and qualifications, but to the fact that he is the Lucky Sperm of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., who ruled the country for two decades, first as elected president and then as dictator. Ironically, Marcos owes much of his presidential victory to the fact that another LSC member, Sara Duterte, supported him.

Marcos’ administration is the personification of LSC rule: the House speaker is the son of one of the most powerful but behind-the-scenes personality in the Marcos Sr. government, Imelda’s brother Kokoy Romualdez; the Senate president, Francis Escudero, is the son of the agriculture minister during most of martial law. Marcos Jr. even got his 30-year-old son Sandro to become the representative of their home district, the first district of Ilocos Norte. Can’t they moderate their political greed?

Farce

From president to senators, district representatives, mayors and governors, it has been mostly those who inherited wealth, political power and the names of their fathers (including famous actors) who have ruled the failed institutions we call elections and the Congress. This is actually the main feature of our sorry society that makes democracy here a farce.

The accompanying table (see above) shows my classification into four categories of the present Senate membership. Out of the 24 senators, 14 are LSC members and two are in each of the three other categories.

What a distinguished list of members of our Senate, its name derived from the Romans who invented the institution to contain the wisest (senex, or wise old man) of the Republic.

Indeed, what convinced me in my youth to join the communist-led insurgency was less my conversion to Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong Thought than the 1970 dissertation of Philippine Military Academy and then-Ateneo political science professor Dante Simbulan. It would be only in 2005 that Simbulan turned his dissertation into a book, titled “The Modern Principalia: The Historical Evolution of the Philippine Ruling Oligarchy.” The book is actually a history of the national-level Philippine Lucky Sperm Club.

Simbulan narrated in detail the evolution of the local principalia class who were the Spanish rulers’ minions, the foundation of the ruling oligarchy in the country. It consisted of local elites, often former datus (native chiefs) who were co-opted by the Spanish colonial regime to help administer the Philippines at the local level. They were given privileges, such as exemptions from certain taxes, and were able to accumulate wealth and power through their collaboration with the Spanish authorities.

Framers

Framers of the 1987 Constitution stuck to the American colonizers’ idea embodied in the 1916 Jones Law that being a much smaller country than the US which had at that time 48 Senate seats, the Philippines should have just 24 senators. Thus, the very competitive contest for the Lucky Sperm Club members to claim a seat in the limited-seat Senate. It has also become the national platform for a member to project his image on a national scale, to make a bid for the presidency. Four out of the seven presidents after the Marcos dictatorship were senators.

Will the dominance of the club in the Senate diminish in the coming elections? Not at all, as most of its members in the Senate can still run for reelection and, boosted by name recall, they are likely to win another term, according to recent polls. Makati Mayor Abby Binay will replace her sister Nancy. Nancy or Abby, who cares?

Two candidates, likely to win going by the Pulse Asia poll, would require us to create another category: erstwhile admirable individuals who weren’t Lucky Sperm Club members but hardly ideal senators: Panfilo Lacson, who pushed for the luxurious P30-billion new Senate headquarters, and boxer Manny Pacquiao, who obviously has received too many punches in his head in his glorious career.

When Warren Buffett frequently mentioned the Lucky Sperm Club idea to emphasize the role of luck and privilege in success, he emphasized that therefore the Club members should exercise humility and give back to society. I haven’t sensed that kind of humility in the Senate. Instead, arrogance that they are god’s gift to the Philippines.

Foolish proposal based on ignorance

In this new era when print media is in a crisis, partly because paper costs — which social media doesn’t have — have skyrocketed, editors of mailed-in letters should act as editors and edit these with as much ruthlessness as they edit other articles. Indeed, many other broadsheets have ceased to print even well-read columns, just to save on paper costs.

In the US, opinion-page editors for decades as standard procedure would edit down to its barest necessities letters from the public. I would know, as I regularly wrote letters to the New York Post and Washington Post when I was with President Arroyo’s government. The editor working on my letter and I would go back and forth in so many emails for days to reduce the length of my letter down to the essence of what I wanted to say, and agreed to.

A case of editors not editing is the rambling letter of long-retired ambassador Hermenegildo C. Cruz that attempts to debunk my view that bringing our dispute with China over the South China Sea is a harebrained idea.

In his letter of 1,600 words, he made only the following real arguments that could be written in about 100 words, with the rest of his letter consisting of gibberish and ad hominem remarks questioning my integrity and skill in journalism.

Brics

He claims that my view that Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) would block our US-backed move to have the UN decide on our dispute with China is wrong since Brics is just an economic alliance, unlike the US-led Western alliance which is a political military partnership. But I referred to Brics not as an alliance but merely to refer to the five nations the acronym refers to which would refuse to be US puppets.

OK, forget Brics. Russia and China alone will veto our move in the Security Council, of which they are members with veto power.

Cruz tries to debunk my claim that the UN is useless in deciding territorial disputes by referring to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and G77. That few readers here would even know what those are is proof that while still existing formally, these long ceased to be of any real influence in the UN. That’s a fact that nobody can deny but reveals that this 90-year-old is living in the distant past when the US projected the UN as a world government, with it really pulling the strings. There is not one territorial dispute the UN succeeded to resolve. Why does Cruz insist the UN will resolve our dispute with China? That’s a serious denial of reality; Cruz should get professional help over.

Cruz has probably had eyesight difficulties reading newspapers that have reported the fact that the UN has not been able to stop the Israeli genocide of Palestinians, with over 42,000 innocent civilians mostly women and children massacred in Gaza, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea, the Israeli Defense Forces attacks in Lebanon and Yemen. And this nut thinks the UN will intervene in our conflict with China?

The most important reason that Cruz’s proposal to bring our dispute with China to the United Nations is that the body’s charter prohibits it from settling a territorial dispute.

The relevant provision is Article 2(7) of the UN Charter, which states:

“Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state, or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter VII.”

This article has been interpreted time and again to mean that the UN does not have the authority to impose a settlement on territorial disputes unless the disputing parties agree to mediation or arbitration.

While the UN Security Council can intervene if the dispute poses a threat to international peace and security, as outlined in Chapter VII of the Charter, this is usually in the context of conflict prevention or peacekeeping, rather than directly settling the territorial dispute itself.

But Cruz didn’t write a word on this point which is the most important reason why taking our dispute to the UN is based on ignorance, and instead spewed ad hominems against me. Did Cruz bother to read the UN charter when, according to him, he was assigned as diplomat to the UN? Was he what we call our permanent representative to the UN or just staff there?

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The ‘Lucky Sperm Club’ race is on
Source: Breaking News PH