Category: OFWs

What’s PBBM waiting for? #OFWsLebanon

Trying to understand why the prez does not seem to think it’s urgent that we evacuate our OFWs from Lebanon ASAP. Dahil kaya umaasa pa siya na maaawat pa ang Israel bombings sa lalong madaling panahon, at mawawala na ang panganib? O dahil ba ayaw niyang mapilitan na umuwi pati ang mga OFW na malayo pa sa panganib o ayaw umuwi dahil wala namang uuwiang hanapbuhay dito? Whatever. It behooves him to order ASAP the rescue of the thousands na matagal nang humihingi ng saklolo.

Evacuate OFWs out of war zone
Inquirer Editorial 

Over the weekend, the United Nations (UN) issued a warning that foreign domestic workers in Lebanon were being abandoned or locked in their employers’ homes as Lebanese families flee the escalating conflict between Israel and the armed group Hezbollah.

According to the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM), many of the 170,000 foreign domestic workers in Lebanon are women from Ethiopia, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Bangladesh, and the Philippines.

On Tuesday, Israel said it had begun ground operations in southwest Lebanon against the Iran-backed Hezbollah which is allied with Hamas. The conflict has put the Middle East on edge, with Iran warning Israel against further attacks, and the UN pleading for a diplomatic solution to the brewing regional conflagration.

But with Israel starting its invasion into Lebanon, it is a race against time to keep foreign workers, including some 11,000 Filipinos, out of harm’s way.

The Philippine government cannot afford to continue its seemingly nonchalant way of handling the situation, choosing to implement alert level 3 which calls for voluntary repatriation of OFWs instead of moving them out of the conflict zone immediately.

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said only around 1,000 Filipinos in Lebanon have expressed willingness to be repatriated last month. Deputy Assistant Secretary Marlowe Miranda claimed Filipinos in Beirut don’t want the DFA to raise the alert level to 4, which requires mandatory evacuation, because this would mean they cannot obtain clearance to return to Lebanon.

Lackadaisical attitude

But several OFWs in Lebanon have appealed to President Marcos last month to immediately repatriate them, as they expressed frustration at what they described was slow government response.

… Instead of waiting for the OFWs to come to the designated shelters, Philippine officials should move to secure the proper exit clearances and secure alternative land or sea transport for their immediate evacuation as air travel in Lebanon has been disrupted by the airstrikes. Only 111 Filipinos have taken refuge in a shelter in Beirut, a mere tenth of the Filipinos working in Lebanon.

Back in 2015, when the security situation worsened in Libya where at least seven Filipinos were abducted, then freshly appointed Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario flew to Tunisia to personally direct the evacuation of 400 Filipinos across the border from Libya. According to the DFA, Del Rosario—who died in April last year—personally traveled several times to Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Egypt, which resulted in the repatriation of over 24,000 Filipinos from these countries torn by civil strife and other disasters.

No less than this kind of hands-on approach is needed by the government to spare any more Filipino blood in the raging conflict in the Middle East.

inquirer’s himala moment

… after “killing” Mary Jane Veloso in its headline and story of April 29, and its less than perfect “apology” of the 30th, the Inquirer followed up the fiasco with “A miracle happened” on the front page of its April 30 issue. In the same issue, another story quoted the Indonesian Attorney General as declaring that Mary Jane Veloso’s reprieve was “due to P-Noy plea.” Not satisfied with that, the fourth line of the same headline opined that “credit grabbing (was) in full swing,” in another swipe at those groups and individuals most media organizations habitually refer to as “militants.”

that’s from the may 11 post of melinda quintos de jesus’s center for media freedom and responsibility (CMFR), Reporting the Veloso Case: Biased, sensationalized, tasteless.

earlier, in social media, UP masscom deans, present and past (roland tolentino, nicanor tiongson, luis teodoro, georgina encanto), had released “Fact or Fiction? UP deans on Inquirer’s Mary Jane Veloso coverage,” also questioning the broadsheet’s competence and integrity, and its obvious bias against the left, including migrante and the lawyers org.

… on the front page of the April 30 issue, the PDI followed up that initial error of April 29 with an article entitled “A miracle happened,” as if human intervention had no role in keeping Veloso alive. Moreover, in the same issue, another story quotes the Indonesian Attorney General as declaring that Mary Jane Veloso’s reprieve was “due to P-Noy plea,” a diplomatic statement obviously made for the sake of courtesy and to preserve Indonesia’s good relations with the Philippines.

i would have let it all pass me by except that john nery, inquirer columnist and editor-in-chief of the broadsheet’s online operation, responded to the UP deans yesterday, may 12, basically calling out them out on their anti-administration bias.  which is par for the course.  naturally nery would rise to the challenge, defend the paper that has been home to him for the last 15 years even if only in a personal capacity, even if only to pit pro-admin opinion against anti-admin.

but nery astounds when he insists that “A miracle happened” and even cites mary jane’s mother celia as primary source sort-of.

… the four deans overreach, and betray their religious illiteracy. They seem to think that miracles happen in a vacuum, rather than precisely through human action. Of course humans intervened, starting with Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s decision to grant a temporary reprieve. That does not make the reprieve at the literal last minute any less miraculous in the eyes of many Filipinos. The deans’ criticism of the use of the word “miracle” is what is called cavilling, and (as I hope to show) cavilling of the partisan kind.

wait.   when i hear talk of miracles i think of the dead raised, water turned into wine, fish and loaves multiplied, all in a magical wave-of-a-wand kind of sequence.  are we talking the same religion here?

… The word “miracle” resonated with the public because that’s exactly how the last-minute reprieve appeared to many Filipinos: as an extraordinary fact, not easily explainable by the circumstances. Was there interpretation involved in the choice of the headline? Of course. Journalists are supposed not only to report what they see, but to interpret it—in part by offering the necessary context. I submit that “A miracle happened” offers exactly the right kind of context; in fact, Mary Jane’s own mother Celia is quoted in that story as saying, “Miracles do happen.”

well, that’s a little too convoluted for me.  but yes, i suppose, like EDSA 1986, a miracle!   but a “miracle” only in the sense of unexpected and wonderful, certainly not in the sense of unexplainable or unfathomable.  as with EDSA, and with elsa, walang himala.  it is obvious that there is a rational explanation for widodo’s change of mind, and media’s job is to work at ferreting that out instead of going for the easy way out.  a miracle, my foot.

there is no distracting from the original sin: that damning headline.  unlike many many others here at home and around the world who didn’t stop hoping for a last-minute stay of execution, inquirer had given up on mary jane by press time.  i wonder what they hoped for, whom they prayed for, in those pre-dawn hours.

ingrata! is so konyo

iyan na mismo ang mindset that feeds the patronage system that keeps the poor poor and the rich rich.  those who call mary jane veloso’s mother celia an ingrate for speaking out against the government rather than singing its praises are the ones who are showing their true colors — mga matapobre rin lang, as in, the poor should know their place, the poor have no breeding, the poor do not know any better than to be brainwashed by leftists, so why bother with them, ibitay.

it’s all very depressing, this backlash against the backlash.  it’s down and dirty and ugly and offensive, and i wonder if the palace truly thinks it will help elect pnoy’s annointed in 2016.

the poor are not so dumb anymore, especially about the OFW route.  decades of experience in dealing with recruiters of all kinds and with government and its regulations have raised awareness: the system sucks, it is stacked against the poor.  and when, like mary jane, the poor get into trouble, wala lang, wala man lang benefit of the doubt, malamang kasalanan nila.  it should not surprise that the hinanakit goes deep.  deep enough and painful enough to cry out, in the name of every poor and oppressed OFW.

but if we can’t deal with that and choose to continue arguing instead over who changed the indonesian president’s mind, then what i’d like to see is a credible master timeline, perhaps authenticated by president widodo mismo.

meanwhile, sharing this facebook status (public) by herbie docena that puts veloso bashers — both the masters and the servants — in their place.

Dapat kasi, pagkagaling sa airport mula Indonesia, dumerecho na si Celia Veloso sa Malacanang, lumuhod sa harap ni P-Noy at hinalikan ang kanyang mga paa. Aba, pasalamat nga sya P-Noy even bothered to lift a finger to help her daughter–nevermind that he could have done so much more in the last five years to prevent her from being condemned to death in the first place, nevermind that he was only forced to do so because the issue has become so explosive that it could further erode his remaining legitimacy, and nevermind that he actually refused to do what the French or Australian leaders actually did to back their appeal: they actually threatened to break relations with Indonesia. Eh sino nga ba naman si Mary Jane to expect more: isang kutong-lupang muchacha na eengot-engot pa!

This outcry over Celia’s criticism of the President speaks to how pervasive the submissive-slave mentality remains. It’s Typhoon Yolanda all over again: “Aba, sino ba naman yung mga taga-Tacloban para mag-demand ng mabilis na tulong mula sa gobyerno nila? Pasalamat nga sila may ginawa pa yung gobyerno eh.”

Tapos usually may ganito pa: “All my pity or support for this family just disappeared!” In other words: “Pasalamat nga sila pati AKO naki-simpatiya sa kanila eh! Eh sino ba naman sila!”

I imagine a Downton Abbey scene: The lord of the realm does something–something really effortless, something he was only forced to do for fear of social unrest–to help a lowly servant. But the servant, instead of bowing before the lord and and instead of praising him to the high heavens, complains that the master should have done so much more to help. The ladies and gentlemen, gathered in the salon, burst out in anger: What an ingrate! How dare she steps out of bounds! But so do all the servants gathered in the basement. Conditioned all their lives to accept that the only way they could climb the social ladder is to grovel before and kiss the asses of the master, they too burst out in anger: What an ingrate! How dare she steps out of bounds!

This, essentially, is what we’re witnessing today on our Twitter and Facebook feeds: servants and masters crucifying Mary Jane’s mother for breaking social expectations, for stepping out of her assigned place in the social structure (“wala sa lugar”), and, by so doing, attempting to repair and uphold that social structure –to keep people in their places (“ilagay sa kanilang lugar”)–through their anguished expressions of moral indignation.

But we all know how the kind of social order depicted in Downton Abbey will–or should–end.

For my yaya and all our OFWs

By Nicole del Rosario CuUnjieng

… Ana is but one of the now overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) whom our country has failed. Our political-economic system has not provided adequate resources and support to make upward mobility possible, so those without opportunity have voted with their feet and left our country. Invest Philippines writes: “Remittances from the nearly 10 million Filipinos abroad are the biggest change of the past decade in the Philippine economy…Remittances from Filipinos working abroad have become the economy’s second largest source of foreign capital…They have created an underlying floor for the economy that some economists believe accounts for about 4% annual economic growth and shielded the conservative Philippine elite from pressure to reform the status quo.”

Given the continuing and egregious inequality in our country, we likely would have already had a revolution had employment abroad not created a valve to release such social and economic pressure. Yet, even as the sweat of our overseas workers—who endure predatory exploitation and sacrifice their lives—provides crucial ballast to our economy, inclusive economic growth eludes us. The government hails the OFWs as the “bayani” of our country, and they truly are, yet such heroization of and support for the massive exportation of our people does not absolve our government and society from their duties to provide opportunity for Filipinos in their own country.

A friend in Hong Kong calculated for me what her maid earns working 4-5 days a week for her there. After subtracting the cost of her Hong Kong rent, she has approximately P42,000 a month. A public school teacher in the Philippines teaching two shifts of kindergarten students for 12 hours a day may make as little as 6,000 pesos a month. No wonder our country’s teachers, nurses, and even doctors continue to prefer to live as second-class citizens in Hong Kong, Qatar, and still more distant shores. They live their whole lives away, in the borrowed quarters of somebody else’s life, with somebody else’s family, taking care of another’s baby, while their own children grow up not knowing their mothers. We cannot continue to allow them to prop up our country while domestic corruption and indifference to the plight of our impoverished both at home and abroad squander their sacrifice.

The elite get off easily in this. The poor just want to get by, and so the rich feel no true pressure from them to implement socially progressive reforms or to create the conditions for others to share in their good fortune. Some anomalous examples of wealthy, self-made professionals exist, but largely what we have seen over the last half century in terms of change and of true wealth creation are merely the up-and-down movements of those who already had some kind of foot in the game. The idea of doing well for oneself here–of becoming wealthy in a legal and plausible way–does not exist for the vast majority of our people. While I understand that the reasons our economic growth has largely been jobless growth are myriad and complex, and that a deepening manufacturing sector portends more inclusive growth in the coming future, our measure of success as our economy grows must be our ability to lift people out of poverty and to create opportunity and possibility here at home. This is particularly owed given the painful source of much of the economic growth enjoyed over the last decade, and the lives that were sacrificed for it along the way.