Category: CHANGE

let a MILLION PEOPLE MARCH

this has been going around facebook since yesterday, so far reposted 633 times and counting.  a call for a major major march vs. the pork barrel on aug 26, monday, a holiday commemorating the start of the 1896 revolution.

This is a REPOST from Ito Rapadas
Please repost kung mamartsa kayo. Salamat at mabuhay ang mga tunay na Pilipino!

“What we need is a MILLION PEOPLE MARCH by struggling Filipino taxpayers- a day of protest by the silent majority that would demand all politicians and govt. officiials (whatever the political stripes, color they may carry) to stop pocketing our taxes borne out from our hard work by means of these pork barrel scams and other creative criminal acts. They don’t want to investigate themselves, they remain relaxed and unperturbed because they believe it will die down in time. Let’s make them feel that this time is DIFFERENT cause we are all sick and tired of it! PLS. REPOST IF YOU AGREE!”

sounds good.  government needs to get the message that we’re angry, we’re fed up, we want an end to the pork barrel system.  a million or more marching would grab their attention.  but for a stronger, more emphatic, delivery of the message, let’s not march to luneta, which is a dead end.  let’s march to EDSA instead, on a workday, just because we want traffic, lives, schedules disrupted, we want people to stop and ask, what’s going on, and to see why this is every pinoy’s and pinay’s fight for responsible spending by government.  we want media spreading the word, we want as many people as possible, from gated villages to the grass roots — across classes, across ages, across genders, across ideologies, across seas — discussing the pork barrel, and expressing soldiarity with the million marchers.

but we cannot, we should not, stop there. do we want an investigation, i.e., televised public hearings? do we want to know what senators and reps have been really spending their pork barrel funds on in the last two years, and how much goes back to them in the form of commissions / kickbacks?  if found guilty, do we want them punished, ousted?  do we want them to give the money back?  YES to all of the above, i would think?  but all these should be very clearly articulated, because if we leave it up to government to act on the issue, their lawyers will plead due process, i.e., innocent until proven guilty in a proper court, while the senators and congressmen will just get creative and start calling the PDAF by another name / other names, with the complicity of the palace, of course, and tuloytuloy lang ang ligaya.

what if we make DEMANDS such as these:

1. THAT CONGRESS FREEZE ALL SPENDING OF PORK BARREL FUNDS;

2. THAT THE PALACE FREEZE ALL SPENDING OF “SPECIAL FUNDS” OF WHICH THE PDAF IS BUT A SMALL PART;

3.  THAT THE PRESIDENT ISSUE AN EXECUTIVE ORDER CREATING A TRUTH & CONSEQUENCE COMMISSION WITH SUBPOENA POWERS THAT WILL INVESTIGATE THE COMPLICITY OF SENATORS AND CONGRESSMEN WITH NGOS AND CONTRACTORS, AND HOW MUCH GOES BACK TO SENATORS AND REPS IN COMMISSIONS/KICKBACKS;

4. THAT THE TRUTH & CONSEQUENCE COMMISSION BE COMPOSED OF MULTICOLOR MULTISECTORAL STALWARTS OF CIVIL SOCIETY, YUNG PRO-PEOPLE NA MERONG CREDIBILITY, SUCH AS: CHRISTIAN MONSOD, RENE SAGUISAG, MELINDA QUINTOS DE JESUS, HEBER BARTOLOME, RANDY DAVID, LEONOR BRIONES, CONRADO DE QUIROS, LENI ROBREDO, SATUR OCAMPO;

5. THAT THERE BE TWO MONTHS OF DAILY TELEVISED PUBLIC HEARINGS, SIX DAYS A WEEK, TO DETERMINE WHO HAVE ENRICHED THEMSELVES ON PORK BARREL FUNDS, AND DESERVE TO BE PUNISHED AND/OR PENALIZED.  TWO MONTHS, THREE MONTHS TOPS.  WE WANT THIS RESOLVED BY CHRISTMAS:  PAMASKO SA BAYAN.

6. THAT SENATORS AND REPRESENTATIVES WHO ARE FOUND GUILTY OF ENRICHING THEMSELVES ON PORK BARREL FUNDS A) BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE?  B) SUSPENDED LANG?  FOR HOW LONG?  WITHOUT PAY?  A POSSIBLE EXCEPTION FOR SENATORS / REPRESENTATIVES WHO MIGHT STEP UP AND VOLUNTEER INFORMATION THAT HELP, HASTEN, THE INVESTIGATIONS, A LA STATE WITNESSES, MAYBE ONE MONTH SUSPENSION LANG?

7. THAT STOLEN MONIES  BE RETURNED, AND TURNED OVER TO BIR COMMISSIONER KIM HENARES FOR SAFEKEEPING UNTIL THE PRESIDENT IS PREPARED TO AUGMENT THE BUDGETS FOR HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND ENVIRONMENT, THE BETTER TO ADDRESS INCREASINGLY URGENT NEEDS NATIONWIDE.

and that’s my two cents.  here’s hoping that serious plans are afoot to organize and unite behind this exciting advocacy, and to dare take the leap from social media to the parliament of the streets.  mabuhay!

Paths to change

By Calixto V. Chikiamco

OUR CURRENT situation seems hopeless. Our economic oligarchy is powerful, rich beyond imagination. It controls conglomerates that reach into almost every aspect of Filipinos’ lives, its unassailable position protected by law or other barriers to entry. More importantly, its rent-seeking power provides self-reinforcing means for enrichment and impregnable authority: it can penetrate, influence, and manipulate the weak state and its institutions almost at will. In other words, it can buy off or influence politicians, judges, bureaucrats, and media organizations to thwart change, prevent competition, and extract more economic favors or rent through the weak state.

The state of our politics also provides reasons for hopelessness. Whereas the political class is supposed to be distinct from the economic oligarchy in that the former must at least answer to the people through democratic elections, that has not been so. Cheating, vote buying, and voter intimidation through private armies have undermined the true expression of the people’s will. Also, an almost non-existent party system with politicians changing parties and positions at the drop of a hat undermines democratic accountability.

Moreover, with the amount of money needed now to run for elections, running for office is a rich man’s (or woman’s) game or a corrupt man’s game. Therefore, either the politician must be rich himself and is part of the economic oligarchy or has sold himself to vested interests. Politics has also become a family business. Dynasties rule our political landscape. The interests of the state are subsumed to the interests of the family.

Much hope had been placed that President Aquino’s Daang Matuwid will bring about change. While his moral style has been a marked contrast to the blatant corruption under former President Arroyo, President Aquino has proven himself to be a reactionary, unable and unwilling to make changes to the system of which he’s a product. He was, after all, a congressman then a senator, before becoming president. Political reforms are absent from his agenda. There’s no talk of campaign finance reform, dismantling private armies, eradicating jueteng, banning party turncoatism, or reducing the role of political dynasties.

Forget about revolution. The Left already missed its opportunity with its disastrous boycott of the 1986 elections. Furthermore, the Philippine Left has proven to be a tool of the Right, equating nationalism to keeping out foreign competition and promoting laws like CARP that only enrich the rent seekers in the government.

So, how will change happen then? Is the Philippines doomed to a thousand-year rule by an irresponsible political and economic oligarchy which will resist any reform of its privileges and rent-seeking power?

Change can still happen, although very slowly. Change can happen under the following scenarios.

The threat to the state. This is the circumstance by which almost all countries in Asia got its act together and started their remarkable rise. External and internal threats often spur the state to positive change: South Korea with the threat of invasion from the North, Taiwan from the threat of invasion by communist China, Singapore vulnerable as a tiny nation surrounded by big countries and formerly threatened internally by Communist subversion (read Lee Kwan Yew’s biography), Indonesia threatened by the Communist coup de e’tat in 1965 and where a million people died in the aftermath. Japan, as a thousand year old civilization, embarked on the Meiji Restoration, a revolution that modernized Japan after its feudal backwardness and vulnerability was exposed by US Commodore Perry’s black ships in 1853.

Therefore, the threat of China bullying the country may similarly spur changes internally as well. Narrow vested interests may have to be subsumed as the state tries to strengthen itself in a possible confrontation. For example, the country may be forced to finally amend the Constitution to lift the restrictions on foreign ownership if it’s to join the US-sponsored Transpacific Partnership (TPP). Joining the TPP and moving closer to the US may be needed to get the US as counterweight to China. Japan is already doing so, and has indicated its willingness to sacrifice its powerful rice farmers and automotive lobby in order to join the US-sponsored TPP.

Tail wagging the dog. This is the Shenzhen scenario. Deng, faced with powerful opposition from conservative interests in Beijing, created a capitalist experiment in Shenzhen, then a tiny, undeveloped fishing outpost in the far south. The experiment proved so successful that the rest of the country had no choice but to follow, and opposition melted away.

Can the country have its own Shenzhen? That was supposed to have been Subic with its free port status, but Subic and other free port zones just became havens for smuggling. The ARMM with its economic and political autonomy, could have been a Shenzhen but it failed because Misuari built it on the same corrupt political patronage system as the rest of the country. Will the new Bangsamoro Region be our Shenzhen or will it be another failed experiment? It remains to be seen whether the MILF leadership can use its autonomy to build a region with a political and economic model different from the rest of the country.

A change in political economy. The political economy may change if the local oligarchy or at least parts of it, is forced to become more outward-looking. Why? Because the need to compete in the world market would temper its abuses and the elite would see the need to have a strong bureaucracy, efficient infrastructure, and vibrant domestic industries to compete in the global markets.

For the economic oligarchy to become more outward-looking, it would have to find exporting more profitable than extracting rent from regulated, non-tradable industries (power, telecommunications, ports, shipping, banking, etc.). The key to this is to undervalue the exchange rate, as it had been in other countries like Taiwan, China, and South Korea and to open up protected service sectors to foreign competition.

Change from below. It’s still possible to defeat powerful vested interests in a democracy. Coalition-building, voting, organizing, and protesting through social media or in the streets, legal challenges, and other forms of democratic collective action, given the right historical moment, can force positive change even if these are opposed by powerful vested interests.

Social security, the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, civil rights legislation, the Glass-Steagal Act and other progressive legislation got passed in the United States despite opposition from powerful vested interests. Recently, the sin tax got passed because a broad coalition pushed for it and won despite the power of the tobacco monopolist. Therefore, the way forward is not, as some suggest, to revert to a dictatorship, but to strengthen democracy. Change in the Philippines will be forced from below and not initiated by an enlightened leadership.

Will change happen? If we don’t hope, we die.

why i am against a department of culture

ishmael bernal died in june 1996, sick and broke and disheartened.  there were many more films he wanted to make.  top of the list were feature films on antonio luna and gregorio del pilar, but producers were never interested, not in marcos’s time or in cory’s or in fvr’s.  post EDSA, when remorseless censorship of movies continued to be the norm and the economic downturn led producers to invest mostly in cheap and surefire formula movies, the phone stopped ringing, bernal said.  he tried teaching (film-making in u.p.) but the pay was a pittance (80 bucks an hour) so he turned to directing commercials — detergent queen, he called himself.  in the final years of his life what kept him sane, what gave him something to do, was Kasalo, the small carinderia he ran with poet tom agulto and his wife carmie, which became the favorite hang-out of kindred spirits, and where, as artistic director, he staged small shows every monday, e.g., an excerpt from the musical noli me tangere, elizabeth oropesa reading feminist poetry, and the like.  pitifully small stuff for very small audiences, but that’s what bernal was reduced to, that great filmmaker-turned-activist who could have been making consciousness-raising eye-opening films for the movie-going public and earning for the country international recognition with films that go beyond poverty porn.  when government named him national artist in 2001, i could only regret that it came ten years too late.  given his body of work, why didn’t they value and honor him while he lived.  maybe then he’d still be with us.  maybe we’d be the wiser for it.

nonoy marcelo died in october 2002, sick and broke and disheartened, his magnum opus, the manuscript Malabon, a history of his beloved town from pre-spanish times (7th century AD, if memory serves) all the way to EDSA 86, unpublished, till now.  i know of it only because back in the late 90s, he asked me to edit his text that was deeply and widely researched, lovingly written in his unique prose, serious and comic at turns, and fully, wonderfully, illustrated in vivid color.  his hope was that it would inspire other artists to write, even make movies, about their own towns and provinces, awaken an interest in history and roots.  he said he had approached the national commission for culture and the arts (NCCA) for funding, but was unsuccessful — i’m not sure now if the project was rejected outright or if conditions were set that were unacceptable to nonoy.  by the time i became part of the project, he had gotten some funding from the munipality of malabon, hurray, except that they wanted an extra chapter that would drum up the incumbents and their programs kuno.  jorge arago joined the team then, and he and nonoy tried their darnedest to humor the poiticos without compromising the work.  and. it. got. stuck. there.  arggggh.

jorge died in december 2011, sick and broke and disheartened.  he left behind two unfinished works, the long-awaited bernal biography & filmography and a historical novel on binangonan, no doubt inspired by nonoy’s Malabon.  without a sponsor, the bernal project was taking forever; he was always dropping it when paying jobs came along.  he always hoped to get some funding but hated having to go around begging.  again, given his body of work, in film, television, and print, it’s the saddest thing that no one, not government, not rich and powerful friends, ever cared enough about the bernal book to subsidize jorge’s efforts and help get it done.

so i ask : would this proposed department of culture, for a change, be interested in, give priority to, projects such as those of ishmael, nonoy, and jorge, projects that are politically and culturally significant, indispensable to the determination and articulation of a national identity that goes beyond fragmented and divisive stereotypes?

the proposal admits that we filipinos lack a sense of identity…

MORE THAN A CENTURY after its liberation from colonial rule, the Philippines continues to be a fractured entity, its people torn apart by deep economic, social, and ethnic divisions. This disunity has prevented it from achieving its potential as a modern and progressive nation, imbued with purpose, hope, and determination. Parochialism, violence, and self-interest continue to dominate political life, and, along with a lack of a critical consciousness of the past, persistently thwarted substantive and sweeping reform. These divisions have been exacerbated by the absence or the weakness of a unifying culture, of a way of thinking as one nation made up of diverse tribes, regions, clans, faiths, and economic classes but bound together by history and geography in common causes. Colonialism fragmented the Filipino people; but neither did freedom and democracy succeed in forging them into truly one nation.

A sense of national identity

In short, Filipinos direly need a sense of national identity. This is crucial to the nation’s future, because only a sense of national identity—the sense of a common heritage and a shared past, and therefore a shared stake in the outcome of the country’s present strivings and struggles. The scholar-critic Benedict Anderson has described this imagination of the nation as “a deep, horizontal comradeship… [a] fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries for many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willing to die….” This also means a sense of national culture—a recognition of culture as a unifying, humanizing, and modernizing agent.

however, the proposal does not go on to tell how a department of culture would fill that dire need for a sense of national identity.  the proposal only goes on to say all the things it would do, via bureaucracy, to improve our people’s knowledge about, and appreciation of, our “rich, centuries-old cultural heritage drawing on both indigenous traditions and colonial experiences” that would serve as a “spur to artistic creativity” and inspire government toward “correct” and “appropriate” economics and politics.

A serious spur to artistic creativity can inspire and affect similar creative initiatives for agricultural and industrial growth. Properly recognized and utilized, a strong national culture can serve as a vital fulcrum and measure for the formulation of appropriate and significant political or economic policy. Thus, culture can best guide national economic planners on what can better serve the people and help set standards for correct political achievements.

Ideally, a comprehensive and intensive cultural reorientation can set things right. A culturally oriented industry would sell the best canned tuna not only because it is the best and most nutritious tuna but also because it is Filipino. And the Filipino consumers would choose it from among other canned tunas in the grocery because it is Filipino. It will sell abroad because people of other countries would recognize Filipino canned tuna as the best in the world. A culturally oriented Congress will not pass any measure which is anti- Filipino. Just as a policeman would think twice before accepting bribe because it is against his values as a Filipino, a medical graduate would want to stay in the rural areas because he wants to serve his fellow Filipinos.

nice vision, but it’s rather naive to think that such a department of culture (just a more powerful version of the NCCA, it seems) would have even a small a hope of taking us there — i.e., of changing a failed system from within, where vested capitalist interests rule — without a clear stand, shared and supported by the collective, of what is exactly anti-filipino and what is pro-filipino.  which brings me back, full circle, to the question of national identity.

read this thesis presented to the college of social sciences, U.P. Baguio, by April Glory Prodon Herrera and Jayvee Paas Robias: A Study of Filipino National Identity and Nationalism in the Age of Globalization among the Youth of Baguio City (March 2010).

While respondents exhibit a positive personal preferences for things Filipino, these preferences have not yet been lifted to a level of consciousness that would make the manifestation of such personal preferences as expressive of their identity as Filipino, or as charters of national identity. It also appears that ignorance or lack of information on the cultural affinities of ethnic groups and on their membership in the national community is the most problematic area.

The refusal of the majority of the population and especially of dominant groups within the society to confront questions within the society, to confront questions of neo-colonial domination and to gain lessons from the country’s historical experiences will most certainly be reflected in the nature and content of national identity formation especially through the schools. In other words, the colonial and ethnically fragmented character of the nation finds support and is reflected in the consciousness of its members, among others.

what we need at this point is not a culture department but an agency led by filipino psychologists, mandated to draw up a psychological profile of the essential filipino based on empirical studies, historical and colonial past and present, arts and culture, etc., that is, an integrated psychological reading and abstract of the Filipino identity that could be the basis, the starting point, for national discussions and consensus across all regions and islands and tribes toward a conscious psychological sense of identity and nationhood, the better, the sooner, to confront our demons.

as for the “development and propagation” of our national language that this culture dept would promote, ang tanong ko lang naman ay, what national language, the laboratory filipino, the formal filipino language, being pushed by u.p. where foreign words are spelled the tagalog way, no matter how strange and quite a balakid to quick reading comprehension?  or the filipino of television and cinema, of komiks and tabloids, of OPM lyrics and commercials, the filipino that is already being spoken and understood nationwide, so i’m told, that can already be used to begin a discourse, even if only a pointed exchange of information and perceptions and sentiments, for starters, across islands and tribes?

and finally, needless to say, any attempt at forging nationhood, unifying our fragmented selves, across all classes and ethnicities, without a credible and creative and intensive mass media campaign — radio, tv, and cinema being the major purveyors of culture in this country — is doomed to fail.

in fairness to the president

it was a kneejerk reaction, i admit, the fear of what else president aquino and the house of reps could railroad, given the surprisingly speedy impeachment of corona.  it brought back tense memories of the nograles congress’s attempt back in 2009 to rush through the transformation of the legislature into a constituent assembly, the easier, the faster, to foist charter change on a chacha-suspicious public.  i had visions of the aquino-belmonte team  succeeding where arroyo-nograles failed, and it was scary.

but okay, benefit of the doubt, credit where credit is due.  would that the president apply the same kind of zeal to getting passed the RH bill and the Freedom of Information Act both pending, and dragging, in Congress, and the same kind of passion and creativity and transparency in turning around the economy through appropriately drastic rather than quick-fix measures.

read Huffington Post‘s Of Circuses And Sanity In The Philippines by Edsel Tupaz and Daniel Wagner.