Dream team

It’s not over till it’s over.

At least not until Dec. 10 comes to pass.

For those who don’t know yet, Dec. 10 is the deadline set by the Commission on Elections (Comelec) for political parties to substitute candidates.

Supporters of Davao City mayor Rodrigo Duterte are also hoping PDP-Laban would announce by Dec. 10, at the latest, that he would be substituted for Martin Dino, head of the Volunteers Against Crime and Corruption (VACC) and a former barangay captain, who filed his certificate of candidacy for president last Oct. 16.

Dino, a political lightweight, is obviously a “temporary” candidate of PDP-Laban, an established party which could have chosen a presidential candidate with better chances than Dino.

Speculations are, thus, rife it is Duterte that PDP-Laban will field for the presidency.

But is Duterte still going to change his mind after telling all and sundry that he is not interested in the presidency?

Observers say there is still hope, especially after Duterte was quoted as saying he is leaving it to God and that “if he wants me there, he will place me there.”

“Ganoon iyan (It’s like that). It’s God’s play. It’s not ours… Let’s leave it to God. If God wants me to be president, he’ll make me president. If God wants me dead tomorrow, I’m gone,” he said.

His supposed running mate Senator Alan Peter Cayetano is optimistic Duterte will change his mind about running for the presidency.

Cayetano believes Duterte will be the best president for the country, given the latter’s track record in fighting crime.

Observers add that Cayetano, who is running on a platform of anti-corruption and anti-poverty, will complement Duterte, who was quoted before as predicting that Cayetano will surely win the vice-presidency.

The dream team being hoped for by Duterte and Cayetano’s supporters can still happen. God willing.

Majority rule

In any organization, it cannot be helped there will be dissenters, a few individuals constituting the minority, who will refuse to go by the majority’s decision.

Take the case of Alliance Select Foods International (ASFI) where just last August, two disgruntled minority shareholders sought to stop the company’s stock rights offering to prevent their shares from being diluted.

But the Pasig Regional Trial Court denied their TRO petition after the two minority shareholders failed to show they had a clear and unmistakable right that was or would be violated.

The SRO is expected to infuse needed capital to fund the company’s operations so even financial analysts are puzzle why these minority investors would want to it stopped.

Earlier, these two Singaporean minority shareholders claimed the government had not been diligent enough to protect shareholders, saying government agencies, the legal system, and private regulators each have a major role in ensuring that companies behave and act responsibly and honestly to their shareholders and the investing public, and should be willing to enforce compliance to these laws and regulations.

Late last year, Raymond See was named ASFI’s new president and CEO. The Singaporeans, however, questioned See’s capabilities as a professional, claiming he was not independent. They called instead for the creation of an independent interim management committee made of experts in the company’s business with a background in finance.

Majority members, on the other hand, assert the minority has an axe to grind, especially after a number of their proposals, including setting up an office in Singapore with the company paying a monthly management fee of SGD20,000 when ASFI has no operations in Singapore, paying a P600,000 monthly compensation for an auditor that had worked exclusively for them, higher salaries for one of their children, were denied.

Now’s new offerings

Just last Oct. 14, publicly listed NOW Corp. launched and demonstrated live two of its innovative technology creations.

These are NOW Broadband Cable TV, a guaranteed broadband Internet service with Wireless Cable TV, and NOWPlanet.TV, a digital media platform that converges free TV, web channels, cloud services and other interactive services.

The company also launched a website (www.nownetwork.ph) dedicated to this service.

The first of its kind in the Philippines, the NOW’s broadband Internet service offers broadband Internet at guaranteed speed with wireless cable TV broadcast and cloud services. Clients can be assured of a bandwidth of a minimum of two megabit per second to as much as 1.4 gigabit per second.

Times Plaza Building along UN Avenue in Manila and Angelicum College in Quezon City are among the first customers to enjoy these services.

According to NOW officials, true convergence is achieved on the level of customer experience thru the following features simultaneously: browsing 24x7 Internet throughput at guaranteed speed, watching their favorite shows from free TV such VHF and UHF signals, interacting with web channels such as TED Talks, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram; playing high definition, fast motion networked games; using cloud services such as e-mail, task, calendar, files, community collaboration, video chat, document management with one terabyte of storage per customer, watching, streaming or downloading high-definition videos and 4k/6k/8k films, making phone calls on Skype and live video conference to as many as 200 participants per session, all with the flexibility of using any device such as regular or 4k TVs, desktops, laptops, tablets and smartphones.

Customers are also able to launch their individual channel to allow them to share their own content to their target users worldwide. This trailblazing service is made possible thru the company’s strategic synergy with a cable TV operator in Metro Manila, the first among more than one thousand cable operators in the country that could partner with NOW. Officials disclosed that discussions with other cable operators and global telecom companies are ongoing.

The market must have been overjoyed by these developments such that NOW’s share price gained 110.42 percent over a four-week period, according to a report by BusinessNewsAsia.

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