I've read the reposted article on several people's blogs and I must say that I felt truly enraged at the issue myself. However, after a short while of adopting an almost Armando-esque mentality of reasonable consideration, I figured that it would do me good to read up on the issue itself before giving in to reposting the lengthy blog entry without a second thought.
Granted, the piece itself was very emotionally moving (haha) especially to someone like me who is an avid reader. Now that I'm here in the States, I can't testify to the complete disappearance of imported books over a period of time as suggested by Hemley's title "No More Newly Imported Books in the Philippines". In fact, even after reading the piece itself, it seemed like there was a period of time when books weren't "coming in" by air, and this barely defines a total loss of imported books for a great indefinite period of time. In fact, as Henley himself said,
Granted, the piece itself was very emotionally moving (haha) especially to someone like me who is an avid reader. Now that I'm here in the States, I can't testify to the complete disappearance of imported books over a period of time as suggested by Hemley's title "No More Newly Imported Books in the Philippines". In fact, even after reading the piece itself, it seemed like there was a period of time when books weren't "coming in" by air, and this barely defines a total loss of imported books for a great indefinite period of time. In fact, as Henley himself said,
"But it IS accurate and no exaggeration when I stated that virtually all AIR shipments of books into the Philippines were stopped between January and March. That doesn’t mean that books were not arriving in the country – ostensibly, books on freighters were still allowed in and you could receive personal books via Amazon during that time. The exact dates were these: air shipments stopped on January 26th and the first shipments were released on March 17th, a day after Undersecretary Sales spoke with importers and book sellers, and storage fees were paid."
in response to an analysis of the event by blogger Charles Tan on his blogspot blog (links at the end of this entry). But of course, to be focusing on such a topic would be plain nitpicky of me, and not at all fair to the rest, and the gist, of Hemley's article.
I will be honest in saying that what drove me to read the multi-posted article (aside from its apparent popularity) was its title. Since I am not exactly a mutually exclusive fan of Filipino Literature, I know just how much there is to lose if imported books were to stop coming in to the Philippines. However, I think that when you think about it, our incensed reactions may have been not-that-apt for the issue.
Amusingly enough, a few days (hell, maybe even a week) before this Book Blockade fiasco gained its popularity, a good friend of mine posted an entry on his blog comparing Malaysia to the Philippines. Long story short, he commented that book prices in the Philippines were much more affordable because our books aren't taxed. Whether he was referring to the VAT exemption on books or the conditions of the Florence Agreement (which, by now, we're all vaguely aware of), I'm not sure.
That said, I don't think consumers, book importers/sellers, and the blog-reading crowd are really taking up arms against this book blockade because of a threat of rising prices in books. As Charles Tan candidly suggested in another entry, all one really needs to do is to compare the U.S. suggested retail price (hell, mandatory retail price) printed on the back of the book multiplied by fifty (an easy to use conversion factor) to Philippine prices to see that we're really on the shallow end of the book-price pool. Even if/when customs taxes and levies are put on, book prices cannot (reasonably thinking, of course) go up by more than 10%. Surely this won't hurt to consumer market that much, right?
Instead, I think we are affected first and foremost by the apparent breaking of the rules of the Florence Agreement. I'm no lawyer here, and I am lost in the sea of legal jargon within the text itself (as an aside, if anyone can definitely explain it to me, I'd be much obliged), but the gist of the agreement as I understand it is that all 29 signatory countries agree to not impose taxes on the importation of cultural, educational and scientific materials including books. I am particularly lost on this phrase in the first article stating:
I will be honest in saying that what drove me to read the multi-posted article (aside from its apparent popularity) was its title. Since I am not exactly a mutually exclusive fan of Filipino Literature, I know just how much there is to lose if imported books were to stop coming in to the Philippines. However, I think that when you think about it, our incensed reactions may have been not-that-apt for the issue.
Amusingly enough, a few days (hell, maybe even a week) before this Book Blockade fiasco gained its popularity, a good friend of mine posted an entry on his blog comparing Malaysia to the Philippines. Long story short, he commented that book prices in the Philippines were much more affordable because our books aren't taxed. Whether he was referring to the VAT exemption on books or the conditions of the Florence Agreement (which, by now, we're all vaguely aware of), I'm not sure.
That said, I don't think consumers, book importers/sellers, and the blog-reading crowd are really taking up arms against this book blockade because of a threat of rising prices in books. As Charles Tan candidly suggested in another entry, all one really needs to do is to compare the U.S. suggested retail price (hell, mandatory retail price) printed on the back of the book multiplied by fifty (an easy to use conversion factor) to Philippine prices to see that we're really on the shallow end of the book-price pool. Even if/when customs taxes and levies are put on, book prices cannot (reasonably thinking, of course) go up by more than 10%. Surely this won't hurt to consumer market that much, right?
Instead, I think we are affected first and foremost by the apparent breaking of the rules of the Florence Agreement. I'm no lawyer here, and I am lost in the sea of legal jargon within the text itself (as an aside, if anyone can definitely explain it to me, I'd be much obliged), but the gist of the agreement as I understand it is that all 29 signatory countries agree to not impose taxes on the importation of cultural, educational and scientific materials including books. I am particularly lost on this phrase in the first article stating:
"2. The provisions of paragraph 1 of this article shall not prevent any contracting State from levying on imported materials :
(a) Internal taxes or any other internal charges of any kind, imposed at the time of importation or subsequently, not exceeding those applied directly or indirectly to like domestic products;
(b) Fees and charges, other than customs duties, imposed by governmental authorities on, or in connection with, importation, limited in amount to the approximate cost of the services rendered, and representing neither an indirect protection to domestic products nor a taxation of imports for revenue purposes."
(a) Internal taxes or any other internal charges of any kind, imposed at the time of importation or subsequently, not exceeding those applied directly or indirectly to like domestic products;
(b) Fees and charges, other than customs duties, imposed by governmental authorities on, or in connection with, importation, limited in amount to the approximate cost of the services rendered, and representing neither an indirect protection to domestic products nor a taxation of imports for revenue purposes."
Now, this little portion right here may be a legal deal maker/breaker on Department of Finance (not Customs) Secretary's Espele Sales' part, but I would wager that it doesn't help her cause of placing import taxes on the books. According to her, Sec. 105 of the Tariff and Customs code of the Philippines has a provision for a 1% tax on books NOT used for scientific or educational purposes. However, after reading the text (and again, I'm no lawyer, so this is a very bystander-ish understanding of the text), all I saw is that scientific/education/philosophical books are excempt from import tax. It doesn't say anything about necessitating the other kinds of books to be taxed, and/or specifically at 1%. In fact, after a quick cntrl+F search on the text, there isn't even a mention of either the percent symbol (%) or "percent". Therefore, her statement that the Department of Finance, and subsequetly the Department of Customs were simply enacting a rule that was already in place for a long time seems lost to me.
{disclaimer: my sources for Sales' quotations are not reliable on a scholarly level. however, I do cite all my sources at the end of this article}
Furthermore, she suggested that lawmakers, in order to take out this 1% tax (5% for non-educational books) need to draft and approve a law that specifically states that the tax should be at 0%. This, in my opinion, is useless since in the first place, an international agreement should effectively 'trump' any local (in terms of it being just the country) laws. From my non-lawyer point of view, if the Philippines (or its corrupt officials, anyway, hehe) wants to impose the 1% tax, it should pull out from the Florence Agreement. Yes? Again, I would appreciate an actual law-knowledgable person's opinion on this.
And hence, we arrive at what I percieve is the real fire under our butts concerning this issue. Inasmuch as the legal portion of it is potentially objective reason for anger, I am willing to wager that a huge portion of us who were moved by the article have neither read the Florence agreement beforehand, or were even aware of what the actual Customs rules and regulations (so to speak) were before this fiasco. I think we all took offense at the given excerpts of Sales' powerpoint presentation and supposed justificiation for her decisions. Really, to seemingly base a taxing decision on a missing comma (not to mention the ridiculous resulting phrase it produced: "books for book publishing"), is stupid and, well, frothing with apparent corruption. After all, if she was gonna base it on that comma (seemingly), and if the people over at the Department of Customs had the final say on whether a book should get its 0%, 1% or 5% tax rate, then it really was an invitation for accusations of corruption.
Hell, we all like to think, at least candidly, that the Department of Customs may be one of the most corrupt departments in the government (ha!), so this jrticle kinda just proves our point even more. And, you know, when it all comes down to it, I am all for any movements or notions that aim to expose the corruption in our government and hopefully incite the youth (or anyone in the population en masse, for that matter) to act against it. I am happy that something like books (even though it heavily mentions Twilight) can cause this big a reaction, escpecially at a day and age when we're accused of no longer reading, but I really do think that we should take a while to step back, and reassess what we're fighting, and what's happening, really.
As I said before, I don't think these new (or, according to Sales, pre-existing but newly enacted) taxation laws will really affect the average consumer - we'll just have to save up a little more, or exert a bit more effort buttering up Mom and Dad to pay for our books. Book prices shouldn't go up that high, and I highly doubt that Fully Booked will close its doors for good. Let's not cry panic yet over not being able to buy New Moon now that we've finished reading Twilight. Fine, cry injustice on behalf of the booksellers/importers, but are you really concerned at the book prices and taxes, or the corruption that seems to have driven this change? As I said earlier, Malaysia (which, interstingly, is not part of the Florence Agreement) taxes its books, and here in the States, books cost much more. If these prices had been jacked up by some reasonable and undoubtedly legal means, would we really have taken issue?
I think that we should be proud to realize that we are mad at the corruption that's happening. We are AWARE, we are INVOLVED, and we are willing to call them out on seemingly wanting to capitalize on something like books (which, for all your morally aligned people, you can still ague for, I won't mind :) ) which, for myriad reasons, we seem to treat as sacred. Why am I emphasizing and encouraging this dichotomy? I am doing this because I think we should see past the price and see the corruption. We shouldn't stop at the books - let's let the lawyers and law-people internationally and locally battle the Florence Agreement forefront - they know much more than we do - we should carry this awareness to see the knee-deep (or neck-deep, even) pool of feces that our corrupt officials have gotten us in. And if you weren't already convinced that their corruption affected us, then maybe in some weird tangential way, you can use this Great Book Blockade of 2009 as a jumping board. And, eventually, if we are willing to post Henley's article all over our Multiply blogs, then maybe, hopefully, we can start another action en masse to battle our corrupt government.
As Justin Benigno Aquino himself said, maybe we can look at this Great Book Blockade of 2009 and hope for the Great Politician Purge in the near future.
{disclaimer: my sources for Sales' quotations are not reliable on a scholarly level. however, I do cite all my sources at the end of this article}
Furthermore, she suggested that lawmakers, in order to take out this 1% tax (5% for non-educational books) need to draft and approve a law that specifically states that the tax should be at 0%. This, in my opinion, is useless since in the first place, an international agreement should effectively 'trump' any local (in terms of it being just the country) laws. From my non-lawyer point of view, if the Philippines (or its corrupt officials, anyway, hehe) wants to impose the 1% tax, it should pull out from the Florence Agreement. Yes? Again, I would appreciate an actual law-knowledgable person's opinion on this.
And hence, we arrive at what I percieve is the real fire under our butts concerning this issue. Inasmuch as the legal portion of it is potentially objective reason for anger, I am willing to wager that a huge portion of us who were moved by the article have neither read the Florence agreement beforehand, or were even aware of what the actual Customs rules and regulations (so to speak) were before this fiasco. I think we all took offense at the given excerpts of Sales' powerpoint presentation and supposed justificiation for her decisions. Really, to seemingly base a taxing decision on a missing comma (not to mention the ridiculous resulting phrase it produced: "books for book publishing"), is stupid and, well, frothing with apparent corruption. After all, if she was gonna base it on that comma (seemingly), and if the people over at the Department of Customs had the final say on whether a book should get its 0%, 1% or 5% tax rate, then it really was an invitation for accusations of corruption.
Hell, we all like to think, at least candidly, that the Department of Customs may be one of the most corrupt departments in the government (ha!), so this jrticle kinda just proves our point even more. And, you know, when it all comes down to it, I am all for any movements or notions that aim to expose the corruption in our government and hopefully incite the youth (or anyone in the population en masse, for that matter) to act against it. I am happy that something like books (even though it heavily mentions Twilight) can cause this big a reaction, escpecially at a day and age when we're accused of no longer reading, but I really do think that we should take a while to step back, and reassess what we're fighting, and what's happening, really.
As I said before, I don't think these new (or, according to Sales, pre-existing but newly enacted) taxation laws will really affect the average consumer - we'll just have to save up a little more, or exert a bit more effort buttering up Mom and Dad to pay for our books. Book prices shouldn't go up that high, and I highly doubt that Fully Booked will close its doors for good. Let's not cry panic yet over not being able to buy New Moon now that we've finished reading Twilight. Fine, cry injustice on behalf of the booksellers/importers, but are you really concerned at the book prices and taxes, or the corruption that seems to have driven this change? As I said earlier, Malaysia (which, interstingly, is not part of the Florence Agreement) taxes its books, and here in the States, books cost much more. If these prices had been jacked up by some reasonable and undoubtedly legal means, would we really have taken issue?
I think that we should be proud to realize that we are mad at the corruption that's happening. We are AWARE, we are INVOLVED, and we are willing to call them out on seemingly wanting to capitalize on something like books (which, for all your morally aligned people, you can still ague for, I won't mind :) ) which, for myriad reasons, we seem to treat as sacred. Why am I emphasizing and encouraging this dichotomy? I am doing this because I think we should see past the price and see the corruption. We shouldn't stop at the books - let's let the lawyers and law-people internationally and locally battle the Florence Agreement forefront - they know much more than we do - we should carry this awareness to see the knee-deep (or neck-deep, even) pool of feces that our corrupt officials have gotten us in. And if you weren't already convinced that their corruption affected us, then maybe in some weird tangential way, you can use this Great Book Blockade of 2009 as a jumping board. And, eventually, if we are willing to post Henley's article all over our Multiply blogs, then maybe, hopefully, we can start another action en masse to battle our corrupt government.
As Justin Benigno Aquino himself said, maybe we can look at this Great Book Blockade of 2009 and hope for the Great Politician Purge in the near future.
great links to look at:
- Charles Tan's blog explaining his take on the GBB of 2009
- Part II of Charles Tan's blog entry on the GBB of 2009
- Hemley responds to Charles Tan
- Reposting of the Hemley article on a Multiply site - look at the very long comment. The commentor was allegely able to talk to Sales and get her take on the issue.
- Philippines Tariff and Customs Laws
- Florence Agreement on the UNESCO website
- Igo's entry, which started this blog entry
