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The importer of the Twilight series, paying the duty imposed by the customs official, set the "precedent for duties to be imposed on other book shipments," reported philstar.com. Agulan halted the entry of other imported books to squeeze more from Meyer's creation.
Hemley later clarified that only air shipments of imported books were frozen.
The Philippines, as signatory of the Florence Agreement in 1952, agreed to the free flow of "education, scientific, and cultural materials."
However, DOF undersecretary Estela Sales backed up the customs policy by reinterpreting the Florence Agreement and Republic Act (RA) 8047 or the Book Publishing Industry Development Act. RA 8047 specifically provides for the "tax and duty-free importation of books or raw materials to be used in book publishing."
"For lack of a comma after the word 'books,' the undersecretary argued that only books 'used in book publishing' (her underlining) were tax-exempt," Hemley wrote.
Presently, 1% tax is being demanded for educational, technical, scientific, historical and cultural books, with 5% duty for non-educational books/materials.
Legality in question
The book blockade issue already earned the ire of a few politicians, who were quick to blast the BOC's actions.
Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago said the BOC's reinterpretation of RA 8047, aside from being in direct violation of the Florence Agreement, "has no legal basis."
"The Philippines is bound by this treaty under the principle of pacta sund servanda. This simply means that every treaty in force is binding upon the parties to it and must be performed by them in good faith," Defensor-Santiago was quoted as saying on philstar.com.
Makati City mayor Jejomar Binay said the BOC should pounce on smugglers instead of book importers in their attempt to answer for their P140 billion worth of loss in tariffs and taxes.
"The (BOC) should go after smugglers and plug the losses. They should get their priorities straight and for me, collecting P140 billion in lost tariffs and taxes should be their priority. They are either neglectful of their duty or they tolerate smuggling," Binay said.
Senator and 2010 presidentiable Mar Roxas asked DOF secretary Margarito Teves to "list down the legal basis for the issuance of the department order and to cite appropriate customs laws and rules in support of the implementation of the directive." He emphasized that this should be done before the school year starts.
The National Book Development Association of the Philippines came out with their position paper regarding the issue. According to them, "the Department of Finance is breaking international and its own laws imposing this tax, the National Book Development Board has the sole authority to determine when and how and if books are to be taxed and anyway Republic Act No. 8047 is the last word on this subject."
Bloggers' wrath
Since Hemley's article was posted over the internet, bloggers were on the front lines of disseminating the controversial article by forwarding it through email, re-posting it on their blogs, and giving their own two cents. For weeks now, various reactions-from political dissections of the issue to emotional tirades against the powers-that-be-were in free-flow on the web.
Andro Ramirez, blogging for donavictorina, focused on the issue of the "missing comma": "I used to make fun at how former Senator Leticia Ramos Shahani would be so particular where to put proper punctuations during deliberations in a legislative bill in the Senate. Now, I see the wisdom in her ways. Leave it to our government to misinterpret a 59-year-old international treaty and mesh it with an internal book-publishing act, all because of a missing comma."
Andro goes on to poke fun at Sales: "Bravo Undersecretary Sales. You have now become a bane to us book lovers, and it took your genius to unabashedly state that the common interpretation of the Florence Agreement was wrong for 59 years. Where were you when Harry Potter was weaving his magic on book sales? Whose book interest grew due to the success of the movie versions? And because government got away with it, eventually, they came up with 1% tax on educational books and 5% tax on non-educational books."
Tina of refineme.org asks: "Tell me, when are books never educational? Regardless if it's fiction or non-fiction? Or cultural, even? when is a book not educational? (This really baffles me)."
Blogger alizarinred says, "If there is one thing I feel that the government needs to pay more attention to, it is education. And with this stupid ban imposed upon books, how the heck are we going to improve our country's literacy rates? It's bad enough that kids today don't read as much as the generations before them used to; they're either playing at the arcade or staring at the TV/computer all day playing addicting video games or doing God knows what in who knows where. But now we have to deal with fewer good reads coming in to the country.
She continues, "This so-called Great Book Blockade of 2009 is totally overrated. It's the result of some Customs official's dumbed down interpretation of the Florence Agreement. Ah, but then again what can you expect from the lucky plundering idiots we've got high up in the government? Bet they've never even read a book in their crummy little lives."
Commenter aleafofgrass says, "It's not really the tax that's bothering me. It's the opportunism, the violation of a treaty and a law, and the equal measure of ignorance and arrogance being displayed by the concerned government officials. Taxes are fine, provided they are imposed for the right reasons and most importantly, that citizens reap the benefits. Ha, another utopian dream. Let's all just continue to make noise about this issue until this nonsense is scrapped."
One step at a time
The blogosphere spearheaded advocacy sites to generate noise in hopes of convincing government officials to take action.
A cause site was put up on social networking site Facebook called "Filipinos Against the Taxation of Books," attracting almost 11,700 members to date. "Through this cause group we hope to gather enough popular support and call the attention of lawmakers and government officials who are also members of Facebook - hopefully some of them may champion this cause," the description states.
Similarly, a petition site "fueled by disgust over the recent book blockade in the Philippines" was also put together, targeting the BOC and Sales in particular. The petition site, as of this posting, has collected 178 signatures.
"10,000 members! This is the sort of thing that inspires confidence about the future," Manuel L. Quezon III commented at the Facebook account. "But Customs remains defiant. Locsin's letter has been ignored. Officials think this will blow over. So maybe the organizers of this group should consider crafting a sustained campaign to inform others of the issue, and pester government and media? It can be done!"
Hemley agreed with Quezon saying "the FB [Facebook] group is amazing, but it's important to take it outside, too, and make sure the issue can't be ignored by government officials."
As a sign of protest, Rock Ed Philippines organized "Bookbigayan 2009" on May 24 at Baywalk, Roxas Boulevard. They invite people to "bring used/old books to give away." Anyone can browse through the donated titles, and a maximum of 5 books per person can be taken. Books not taken will be donated to public schools.
Photo by Ofelia T. Sta. Maria.
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