Category: edsa

de quiros, aquino, edsa

conrado de quiros is sounding like a broken record these days, insisting that “edsa” &  “people power” and “good vs. evil” are the themes to work on if we want to see noynoy aquino again racing ahead of the pack like after his mom died.

and so a guy asked him daw:

“DON’T you think that transforming the choice into a moral one is a little too high for the masa to grasp? Don’t you think the better tack would be to talk about gut issues (malapit sa bituka)?”

the noted columnist’s reply is so last decade:

Not at all.

To begin with, you would not be transforming anything. You would not be raising or reducing or reshaping anything. That was exactly how the masa saw the choice from the very start, when Cory died and Noynoy Aquino announced his intention to run: the choice was a moral one. It was not a gratuitous choice between presidential candidates, between Noynoy and Villar (Villar never even figured in the equation), between what the candidates had to offer. It was a desperate choice between the GMA curse and the Cory legacy, between Noynoy (or what he represented) and Gloria (or what she is), between life and death.

It was a choice between Good and Evil.

The fact that Noynoy got more than 60 percent showed this wasn’t merely a middle-class or elite sentiment…

yes, but that was then, we were in grief, we were emotional and romantic, we wanted more of cory and ninoy (not of gma) and noynoy seemed like the next best thing.   but this is now, we have been through a lot since cory died — killer floods, the ampatuan massacre, the murder of the rh bill, and now the illegal arrest and torture of 43 ngo health workers — and some of us are looking for answers to many questions beyond who-what is good who-what is evil, according to whom?   dams are good in times of reasonable rain, but evil in times of excessive rain.   due process is good, but why is it that the law is more protective of the rights of indicted evil-doers?   and where is due process for the health workers accused of being bomb-makers?   is the military good or evil?    is contraception good or evil?   it’s all too muddled to work as a winnowing concept and yet de quiros thinks the world of this good vs. evil theme.

For a long, long time, GMA was seen as the worst leader this country has ever had after Marcos, or for some even before Marcos. Yet all that it elicited from the public was cynicism and text jokes. It was only after Cory died and Noynoy arose in her wake that the cynicism turned into a revulsion for an intolerable situation and the text jokes turned into an epic desire to change things.

For the Aquino camp, that means it’s not just enough to harp on the hell that the GMA curse is, or the heaven that the Cory legacy can be, it needs to harp on the hell that the GMA curse is and the heaven that the Cory legacy can be, at the same time. For the Aquino camp, that means that it’s not just enough to harp on Villar as the embodiment, continuation or extension of GMA (literally or in a kindred way) or Noynoy as the inheritor, keeper, and perpetuator of the Cory legacy, it needs to harp on the one as the disease and on the other as the cure.

but what is this heavenly change that cory’s legacy will bring about through noynoy?   mababaw ang kaligayahan ni de quiros.

Who cares about Noynoy’s plans for education? Simply removing the monsters whose very existence teaches the young that lying, cheating and stealing are rewarded and whistle-blowing, telling the truth, and being courageous are punished is an entire curriculum unto itself. Who cares about Noynoy’s plans for economic development? Simply stopping a reign of corruption stops poverty completely literally in that there is no mahirap where there is no korap, and completely spiritually in that nothing impoverishes a country more than an utter lack of moralidad. Who cares about Noynoy’s plans for national security? You arrest the usurpers who made the country home to desperation and insecurity, and line them up against the wall, or its legal equivalent since we don’t have the death penalty anymore, though we can always make an exception, and we will have more security than can be guaranteed by the armed forces or the insurance companies.

but we should care about a presidential candidate’s plans for education; the curriculum problem goes beyond / goes deeper, it’s not just ethical and moral but academic and pedagogic and even a problem of language.   and we should care about noynoy’s plans for economic development because de quiros exaggerates, stopping corruption will not stop poverty “completely literally”: it would only mean a little more money for health education and dole-outs for some but not nearly enough to make a sustainable difference in the lives of the many many poor, not while the oligarchy reigns and the debt policy rules.    and we should care about noynoy’s plans for national security because current policies discriminate against pinoys (think vfa) and civil society (pro-poor ngos) and do nothing to secure our environment, and our very lives, from deadly trash and irresponsible land use and destructive mining and rapid reckless deforestation.

in another column, de quiros waxes nostalgic about edsa and people power and the cory magic.

The Cory magic hasn’t lost its magic, it has simply not been used. Or the Cory magic hasn’t lost its magic, it has simply been lost on the people who held it in their hands but never knew what they had. The Cory magic is Edsa. The Cory magic is People Power. The Cory magic is the glimmer of hope piercing through the dark of despair.

I said last year that the Noynoy camp had a tremendous advantage in that the opening of the year presented two Edsas, January being Edsa II and February being Edsa I. Both resonated with good triumphing over evil, a concept GMA has been at pains to make people forget, which is why she has tried to hide the very thing—and people, who were Cory and Jaime Cardinal Sin—that brought her to power. Both stood to unleash the Cory magic in all its glory.

January came and went, and not a single statement on Edsa, or about Edsa, issued from the lips of the Aquino camp. We’re on the second week of February, and not a single statement on Edsa, or about Edsa, has issued from the lips of the Aquino camp. We’re on the fifth month after Noynoy declared his intention to run, and not much, if not not a single statement, has issued from the lips of the Aquino camp about their cries of anguish and anger from the pit of the land, about the glimmer of hope piercing through the dark of despair, about the people and their power.

The Cory magic is not something that works by itself, it works only by being used. The Cory magic is Edsa, the Cory magic is People Power, the Cory magic is people drawing the line, demanding change, commanding change, shouting at the top of their lungs, “tama na, sobra na, palitan na.” You do not invoke these things, you do not conjure these things, you do not say the magic words that unleash these things—there is no Cory magic.

ah, yes, EDSA.   de quiros makes it seem like we are back in 1986 and the choice is simple, black and white, good vs. evil, cory vs. marcos.    indeed “tama na, sobra na, palitan na” were magic words back then, but it was clear kung sino ang dapat palitan at sino ang dapat ipalit, the opposition being united behind one cory (doy did a mar upon the clamor of the people).   eh hindi naman ganyan ang sitwasyon ngayon.   ang daming choice.   maliban kay mar, walang kandidatong kusang nagbibigaydaan kay noynoy, each one thinks himself/herself as the good one vs. the evil one.   and maybe all of them are right, all in their own small ways.

if the object was were to beat gma’s annointed and everything evil she stands for in the may elections, and if the strategy was were to go by, be guided by, the EDSA tradition, then villar erap gordon gibo jamby perlas bro.eddie and jc, should have, one and all, when cory died, humbly nobly happily rallied behind noynoy as the one opposition candidate.   of course it didn’t happen because there was no clamor to that effect.   the real clamor is for CHANGE but noynoy is only promising small change — to stop corruption and streamline the system, the very system that needs changing.

truth to tell, it’s jamby madrigal and nicanor perlas who are running on platforms of CHANGE, and noynoy and the rest should be giving way to them, i.e., if we are to go by EDSA.   but the people aren’t ready, pinagiisipan pa nila, pinagtatalunan pa, kung sino ano ba talaga ang paniniwalaan, ano nga ba yung tama na, alin ba ang sobra na, paano ba papalitan, atano ang ipapalit.   clearly people power continues on “hold” while seeking to level-up beyond good vs. evil.

environment 9: sustainable devt

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AS
SPIRITUAL AND REVOLUTIONARY PRAXIS

Junie Kalaw

Toward the end of this century as of the last one, dramatic changes have taken place under the impact of, among others, the industrial revolution, two world wars, struggles for political independence, the internationalization of economics, and the globalization of mass media.  These forces have had shearing effects on the fabric of political and economic society, some appearing first as part of the solution, even a boon (like pesticides), and only later as a problem.   Through all these changes and upheavals, the structures of oppressive domination have persisted on different levels occasionally changing external form but otherwise entrenched firmly enough in society to continue denying Filipinos and other Third World populations their freedom and autonomy.

Today’s Revolutionary Conditions

Poverty remains the Philippines’ major problem, aggravated by the depletion of our natural resources, the impending breakdown of our life-support systems, and the high rate of our population growth.  With our remaining forests down to less than 800,000 hectares, only 20% of our coral reefs in good condition, 18 major river systems biologically dead, 13 provinces severely eroded, fresh-water reservoirs drying up, and the population requiring 40% more food by the year 2000, we face a critical situation and time is not on our side.

The deterioration of the Philippine environment is traceable to economic activities designed to support the consumption needs of other countries.  Ecological footprints of the development of industrialized countries are to be seen not only in our degraded ecology but also in the waste that is exported back to us.   This historical trail of international trade based on the exploitation of our natural resources by former colonial masters has piled up ecological debts that remain uncompensated.   Sadly, this system of “ecological colonialism” has been institutionalized in the present international economic order.

Highlighting the crisis are new perspectives from ecological economists like Herman Daly and Robert Goodland.  They see our economic system as an open system functioning with the closed system that is our planet’s biosphere.  With the current global economy amounting to about US$32 trillion, we are consuming 40% of the primary production of terrestrial photosynthetic energy from the sun.  This means that in one doubling time, we will be using 80%, a condition that with its attendant waste may exceed the “carrying capacity” of the planet.  Thus it is posited that there is no room for aggregate economic growth and that sustainable economic growth for everyone is not possible.  This raises such issues as the rights of poor countries to their equitable share of remaining clean space, access to their own natural resources, access to information and technology, and bargaining power in markets.  Further, inasmuch as the relationship between rich and poor is a function of power, there is nothing to stop the rich from using this self-same power to maintain their wasteful consumption patterns and perpetuate an inequitable system.

Revolution Based on Reconciliation

Pope John Paul II in Rome calls it a “moral crisis,” the lack of a “morally coherent world view.”  A lumad datu in Mount Apo ascribes it to a foreign belief system that has exiled God to the heavens so that we no longer see God in the trees, streams, mountains, and animals, nor in our fellow humans.  The reference is to the same fundamental gap between our personal ethics and the system’s ethics, and the need for a systems ethics which translates personal decisions in to decisions for the common good.  More concretely, it is the gap between what is an honest living for loggers and what is good for the environment and the common welfare.   The gap is widened not just by plain greed but also by a moral and ethical blindness to, and lack ofcomprehension of, the norms for a just and sustainable functioning of bigger systems.

At its worst, the gap renders futile church teachings on honesty and love for the poor on account of its inability to translate doctrine in terms of land reform or equitable wages or conservation of forest and marine resources.  In the end we realize that we have not yet found our wholeness.  We have yet to manage successfully the integration of personal and social transformation.  The exception was the EDSA Revolution, when a critical mass of Filipinos got their inner and outer values together and created the spiritual and political space that made the sharing of pan de sal across military defenses an operative Communion of the People, and that produced transformative political change, but which, unfortunately, we were unable to sustain.

Nowhere is the fundamental gap between personal ethics and systems ethics more dramatic and disastrous than in the policy of equal access to the benefits of creation.  Whereas in an ecological system life flows, sustaining and fulfilling the lives of all in a process we can call “ecological justice,” in the current system control over and access to life-giving natural resources are awarded to a privileged few — a situation which has produced the poverty and resource depletion that imperils our life-support systems.  Moreover, we have cast the responsibility and accountability for these effects to the impersonal free enterprise and market systems.

The conflict between our economic system and nature’s ecological processes has been a fundamental cause of the destruction of our ecosystems.  While natural systems consist of organic unities such as families, communities, cultures, and ecosystems, we manage to evaluate and reward our economic activities according to functional sectors and enterprise organizations.  We gauge national development by adding the production of these sectors and industries into a gross national product (GNP); not measured are local community welfare and ecosystem enhancement.  This has resulted in a big normative gap between the welfare of corporations, both transnational and national, and the welfare of local ecologies and communities.  The bridging of this gap requires more than just environmental protection measures or community projects by business enterprises.   It requires a whole re-orientation of the way we do business and a re-discovering of the true essence of hanapbuhay, a truly Filipino concept that searches for the life-flow, like the Kalinga concept of wealth that is based on the enrichment of life rather on a life of personal enrichment.  We cannot relegate this revisioning to our economists and government planners alone.  We need to take responsibility for our country’s economic development models, policies, and practices, and to participate in the political processes that will enable us to create a just and sustainable future not only for ourselves but for the generations of Filipinos to come.

Politics, whose primordial function is to serve the welfare of the whole, is the human activity that should be most spiritually informed.  Most efforts at political reconciliation have as their objective the consolidation of power under the ruling regime.  Thus, one presently sees accommodations being made with the forces of he past dictatorship under the pretext of hastening the healing of the nation.  What needs reconciliation and healing is not the gap between contending politicians with vested interests but the gap between their interests and the welfare of the people, between the welfare of the state bureaucracy and the welfare of the environment and local communities.   This requires the relocation of authority from the ideologies of political parties to the reality of the interdependence of life in an ecology; the re-vesting of power from the centralized bureaucracy of state, party committee, and church to persons in communities; the affirmation of the subsidiarity of parts and the ecological and spiritual solidarity of wholes; and the establishment of a local citizenship and a global polity.

It is a reconciliation that needs to find a new concept of security and management of changes in the shift from national security based on militarization and armaments to a “natural” security based on securing clean water, fertile soil, fresh air, and food.  It requires a fundamental re-orientation of power from one based on the accumulation of goods and information to one based on the capacity to make goods and information flow, where power becomes something one does not hold on to but something ope opens up to for the life process to flow in service to others.

Such a reconciliation gives witness to the great lesson of ecology that all life is interconnected and echoes the teachings of all great spiritual traditions that the governance of communities is a sacred task, whether we call it the Christian Mystical Body, the Moslem Uhma, or the Kalinga ili.

Conversion and Renewal

Christian churches are now seeking an alternative to the ruling anthropocentric model of man subduing the earth.  The new theological understanding of creation spans a spectrum of interpretations: the sacramentalist model, where everything is a manifestation of God; the stewardship model, which argues for the sustainable use of power, knowledge, and natural resources; the creative model expounded by Matthew Fox, where God is ever “birthing and nurturing creation”; the Franciscan model of kinship of “brother sun and sister moon”; and the evolutionary model of Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Berry.  They all have broadened the praxis of faith to include “justice, peace, and Integrity of Creation” and redefined “a spirituality that integrates our faith and our daily lives and all of Creation.”

Here at home, in defense of what we Filipinos call lupang hinirang (beloved country), the Philippine Independent Church recently announced its advocacy of a total ban on commercial logging for 25 years.  Following the Catholic bishops’ pastoral letter “What Is Happening to Our Beautiful Land?” and the involvement of bishops and parish priests in blockading logging trucks on Bukidnon, picketing DENR offices in Nueva Ecija, and apprehending illegal loggers in Cagayan, there is clearly an escalation of activism among Christian churches and a growing concern for the integrity of life on earth.

A more concise expression of the revolutionary message of the Gospel has yet to be made by any church group in the Philippines, but it is important to remember that the times call for a new conversion.   In the past, conversion was brought about by mediation between people and the Divine, or between people and other people.  Today’s need is a mediation between people and nature, a mediation we call “sustainable development.”  It is a conversion that comes from revelations through nature, revelations that link polarities into higher levels of integration and renewal, revelations that affirm the integrity of God’s creation whose truth lies beyond contending ideological positions and is encompassed in an ecology.  It will come from re-remembering what our indigenous Filipinos knew about the sacredness of the land, our lupang hinirang.  It will come from re-experiencing the tradition of nurturing the Earth, our tipan sa Mahal na Ina.  It will come from responding to the biblical revelations to be stewards of the earth.  A conversion where “carrying capacity” becomes the operative term for compassion, and the patterns of community life a metaphor for wholeness.  It will require the devolution of power away from its institutional sites in the bureaucracies of state, party, and even church, and into people in the communities as the locus of the Mystical Body.   It will empower people to participate in the creative act of sustainable development by witnessing the Spirit that runs through all life.

This kind of conversion will gain its meaning from the operationalization of sustainable development strategies, programs, and projects.   It will need to find expression on the level of communities, affirming their cultural identity while cherishing diversity by upholding (1) indigenous rights to ancestral land, (2) equal rights for women, (3) social equity through agrarian, aquatic, and urban land reform, and social forestry, and (4) an ecologically sound economic system that is community-based and exports only ecological surplus or excess carrying capacities.  It will practice the sustainable utilization of natural resources, clean production technologies, and the proper recycling and disposal of waste.  It will come from governance that is based on moral values translated into public good, a democratic participatory process, a system called Pamathalaan — Pamamahalang nakatindig sa sariling taal at nakahandog kay Bathala.

In the final analysis, sustainable development depends on the personal conversion, commitments, and communion of everyone.   It needs a conversion that translates into personal choices regarding what to consume and what lifestyle to live.   In a post-modern age, it will mean making a conscious choice from among the diversity of options brought about by modernization.  Many of these options will be offered by expert systems where people have little control over processes, whether these be biogenetic systems that program the sex of our offspring or communications systems that tell us we are what we consume.  They will involve matters disembedded from space-time locality so that we no longer directly experience the consequences of our actions.  Such will be the landscape of a “post-modern revolution.”  The future will therefore need the wisdom of our historical traditions, the moral anchors of our faith, and our living communion with all people and God’s creation.

Enviroscope, Haribon Foundation Bulletin, December 1993

in cory’s wake

when ninoy died and his remains lay in bloodied state sa times street, pumila kami that night, my husband and i, to pay our respects, never mind that marcos might get mad or his military might be watching.   we just had to pay homage to this man who won our respect when he, alone, suffered jail for seven years and seven months rather than bow to a dictator, and when he dared come home from exile because the filipino is worth dying for.

past the gate a couple of kids handed us a black ribbon each, a small strip with aspili.   the patio too was small, the space enough only for the line of people snaking single-file around the coffin for a quick hello and goodbye, as quick as the pass-by cory’s coffin i’m now seeing on tv.   it was also very quiet.   the house was closed, there was no sign of any family or friends.   except for two or three watchful guys standing by (security siguro) we, the people, were alone with ninoy.   a starkly simple affair.

with cory, aba, sosyal!   what a case-study of a scene.    the huge venues and tv cameras, the people quietly filing by the coffin while family and friends sit around, move around, make chika nearby.   how rare, masses and elite sharing the same space happily, clear divisions and all.   the silent masa are just happy to be allowed a glimpse of cory one last time, never mind that they enter by a different gate, and are not treated like guests and offered seats.   the elite are just happy that the masses are there too, imagine if they weren’t, what a snub, how embarrassing.

interesting, too, that gma the once lucky bitch is now the the odd woman out.   indeed, she’s damned if she goes, damned if she doesn’t.   pero dapat kaya niyang magpunta.   just as dapat kaya ng mga aquino na tanggapin siya.   of course kung type niyang magdrama, she could always do the unexpected, like, line up with the people, why not, pay her respects to cory first, before facing cory’s clan.   i’m sure even kris would be lost for words  (well, at least for a while ;).

of course it would mean gma counting on the people to be too awed by her pa-humble chutzpah to do anything but welcome her among their ranks.   but what if the people remember only that cory had asked her to resign.   what if they do an edsa instead, like, you know, stop her from getting any closer to cory, kapitbisig human-shieldeffect.   lol.   that would be the end of her.   safer not to cross lines.   safer to face kris.

mean and nasty

i wondered who was responsible for the friday rumor that had cory passing away and people bursting into tears.   mabuti at napasinungalingan agad, though not quick enough to spare us a taste of the great grief coming, sooner or later.

i wondered who could be so mean and nasty.   who could be so unkind as to play with our emotions like that.   malacanang, maybe?

STATE OF WAR
Conrado de Quiros

The rumor I’ve heard is that Malacañang started the rumor. That rumor was that Cory died last Friday, a rumor that spread faster than Hayden Kho’s videos that day.

Even the British Embassy was duped into believing it and issuing a statement condoling with the family and the Filipino nation. Which sparked some idiotic reactions, not least from Dante Jimenez, the fellow who once proclaimed himself anti-crime only to end up being party to it, who demanded that whoever was responsible for the statement be made persona non grata.

For what? For being victimized in the same way as Cory’s former chief legal adviser, Adolph Azcuna? For spontaneously combusting into lamentation and commiserating with the host nation for its immeasurable loss? That is to unduly hasten people to their graves? If so, then we should condole every day with Arroyo’s family. Maybe that will do the trick. Some people ought to recover from their sicknesses, others ought to be shot.

But to go back: The rumor I heard is that Malacañang sparked the rumor to see how the public would react to Cory’s demise. Is it believable? I don’t know, though stranger things have happened in this country. But whether true or not, I believe how the public will react to Cory’s demise is not farthest from their minds. I believe it is the one thing that terrifies them. I believe it is the one thing that drives them out of their freaking minds.

The one thing Arroyo has never allowed since she took power, and especially since she wrested it by telling Garci she wanted to win by a million votes over her nearest rival, is people massing in the streets in numbers that could turn into another Edsa. Cops and soldiers have variously: prevented groups from gathering at the Edsa Shrine, headed off leftists groups to prevent them from swelling the ranks of those gathered at the Ninoy statue (easy enough in light of those groups advertising themselves with sanguine flags and even more sanguine slogans while marching down Edsa), scuttled rallies, imposed curfews on them (7 p.m. or thereabouts), floated rumors about bombings and other acts of violence in the rallies, and intimidated by coming out in the streets in full combat gear.

The ploy has been successful enough thus far. No rally has ever reached the proportion of Edsa I and II. Not the rallies in 2005 in the wake of “Hello, Garci” (which Malacañang met with “calibrated preemptive response”), not Danny Lim’s “withdrawal of support” (which gave Malacañang the excuse to experiment with a state-of-emergency declaration), not the huge rally to protest NBN, which never snowballed, thanks to the ploys above.

But what happens if, heaven forbid, something should happen to Cory?

If the vigil is held at the Manila Cathedral, the headaches for Malacañang will be epic. In the first place that is Alfredo Lim territory. Lim, of course, is the tough-as-nails mayor of Manila, the former tough-as-nails NBI director, and the former tough-as-nails chief of the Western Police District, who was known to shed a tear at the (false) news of Cory’s passing. He is also a tough-as-nails follower of Cory, whose loyalty has never wavered, who indeed went out to fight off Enrile’s and Honasan’s legions when they tried to grab power from her in 1989. Lim got a commendation for it.

A vigil in the Manila Cathedral will be impregnable. A vigil in the Manila Cathedral will be unassailable.

Quite apart from that, there is Filipino Culture standing like the Frown of God in the way. Few things are sacred to us, Filipinos, but one of them is the gathering of kin and friends to extol the virtues of a loved one who has gone ahead of us. Cory may have only a tribe of kin, but she has the whole nation for friends-and I do not mean Facebook. If the country turns out to commiserate with the kin of someone who has done so much for it, what can you do? If all of us decide to keep physical vigil with someone who kept spiritual vigil with us in the hour of our death, what can Malacañang do?

You cannot prevent people from attending a vigil, certainly not one for what the country considers even now a living hero. Not even people who do not believe in God, or who do not know whether there is one or not. They too can always believe in the power of good and the reprehensibility of evil, and recognize the embodiments of one and the other.

You cannot trot out cops and police in battle gear to meet people who are making their way to the Manila Cathedral carrying candles to light their way in lieu of cursing the darkness. You cannot scuttle a vigil, you cannot dictate limits to how many people may wish to personally express their overpowering sense of bereavement, you cannot prevent people from lifting their voices to heaven asking God have mercy on someone who has brought heaven’s light to the world, have mercy on a nation that has not always bathed in it.

You cannot impose a curfew on a vigil.

That is not to speak of what would happen if–pray heaven it is yet a long way off–Cory is finally reunited with her husband in the resting place of heroes. I have little doubt the crowds that will see her off, tears welling in their eyes, their hearts bursting with the magma of grief, will be bigger and more volcanic than the one that did so Ninoy. I have little doubt the men in barong and the women in dresses will be joined by the men in bare feet and the women with infants sucking on bare breasts, businessman and farmer, executive and laborer, priest and soldier, equestrian and plebeian, rich and poor, nun and whore, saint and sinner, chorusing, like Job, in anger and despair, “Please lang God, tama na, sobra na tigilan na.”

I don’t know that Malacañang began the rumor. I do know Malacañang will be the end of it.