roby’s romance with “freedom”

last october katrina was in the audience of tedxdiliman, the first in manila that was open to the public, sort of (one had to ask to be invited).  having watched ted videos before via joel, i had high expectations and was grateful to tv 5 for the livestream.  but out of the 8 (of 11) speakers i caught, only one’s talk measured up, boogie tence ruiz‘s.  unfortunately he was last, and he was rushed, pressed for time, ang labo.

one who wasn’t rushed, and went overtime, was roby alampay, former executive director of the Southeast Asia Press Alliance, a regional NGO dedicated to the promotion of journalist rights, who spoke of himself as “an economy of one.”  and i remember being struck, and dismayed, by his spin on freedom in the philippines: that in southeast asia we do freedom better than anybody else, it is our competitive edge, so why aren’t we using it to sell the country?  i wasnt sure i heard right, and hoped for an upload somewhere, so i could listen to him again.

and so it’s finally on youtube and i’ve watched and listened again, and i’m sorry to say i heard right.  a sorry example of flighty, ungrounded discourse.  i completely agree with katrina:

…academic freedom, artistic freedom, freedom of expression are all highly questionable when you come from here and know | feel | see that freedom is also overrated when it cannot will not put food on people’s tables and more and more people are falling below the poverty line.

alampay also glorifies philippine NGOs, and i can’t help but wonder if he’s in denial or simply doesn’t get it that NGOs and civil society hereabouts have lost a lot of credibility since dinky soliman and her ilk conspired with gma to unseat erap, and soon after, CODE-NGO made a killing of 1.8 billion php out of thin air by exploiting its ties with the arroyo government.

i wonder too if alampay’s thinking is truly shared by his NGO-civil society colleagues in the region.  certainly, if you’re coming from malaysia or singapore or vietnam where there is no freedom of expression, our freedom of expression is enviable.  but that is not to say that it is worth bragging about when what is expressed in media, besides showbiz gossip, is mostly spin and quite removed from the true state of the nation.

well, but he’s been away.  let’s give him a chance to catch up.  meanwhile, better to hold his tongue until he’s ready to talk economy-of-all.

Maximo “Junie” Kalaw (1940-2001)

10 years since he passed away, sylvia mayuga reminds his friends, her friends on facebook.  good to remember via Junie 2001, a piece i wrote in december that year for a small family publication remembering his life and death.

JUNIE 2001

Last Christmas when Junie phoned for an astrological reading of his year to come, I warned him that he was likely to get sick again if he didn’t take a long break asap from what otherwise promised to be a year full of stress, the kind that cancer feeds on. He said hindi puwede, he had commitments that could not be put off, work that he could not delegate, but yes, he would take care, he would try not to take on too much at a time, he would ask for help, he would relax and meditate a lot.

The last time I saw him was two months later, towards the end of February, when he was home for a couple of days on his way to, or was it on his way back from, Japan for a conference. He dropped off a 5-page resume of his environmental advocacy work, 1971-2000, for editing. He looked great, walking tall as always, a little grayer in the hair, a little more lined in the face, a little slimmer in the waist, but still sexy, and still obsessed with sustainable development. For a change, he asked me at once how much I wanted for the job. For a change, before I had seen how much work it would need, I said I would do it for nothing.

In June I heard the bad news via email from Patty A; she had seen him in London, the cancer had recurred. “He sounded fine, still full of dreams. He is trying to put things in order, wants to merge PIAF and the Maximo Kalaw Foundation, get an active working board to run it. But he looked very weak and had lost a lot of weight. He’s been to Madrid for treatment in an alternative clinic, now he’s back in New York after recovering some strength from the treatment. He will see how his health fares before making any decisions on chemotherapy. Hopefully he is recovering. I shall let him know you asked.”

In July Junie phoned from New York, asking me to look at a draft manuscript that he would send by email, and would a month be time enough for editing? When he called again the next day, I said it would make a nice slim volume to go with his first book Exploring Soul  & Society, but I would need the help of Jorge Arago (with whom I edited the first one) and Junie exclaimed, naku, kung si Jorge it might take a year! Why, I had to ask, how much time are the doctors giving you? A year to a year and a half at most. And at least? Six months or so. Aray. A lot of pain? Yes. Aray. In a month then, I promised.

Junie was not a writer, but he was a thinker and a seeker who kept up with the latest in spiritual and political discourse. Not only did he have his own ideas about how to effectively and appropriately address the critical problems of our times, particularly the problem of extricating the great majority of humans from poverty, he had first-hand experience of and insights on the obstacles in the way of change. He had much to say, and over the years he had learned to write, high-brow activist stuff, visions of an alternative wholistic future, written in the developmental jargon of the UN, for the powers-that-be who could / would lead the world to sustainable new highs.

Junie had been hoping to make it to Johannesburg, South Africa on September 2002 for the UN Summit for Sustainable Development. In the manuscript titled Making Sustainability Work / Ten Years after the Rio Earth Summit – A Personal Assessment, he goes over the ground covered since Rio ’92, tracking the initiatives of governments and business groups as well as NGOs and people’s organizations over the last decade, distilling lessons learned that will help us in the struggle ahead for a sustainable future as one human family and one earth community. Writing it he prepared for Johannesburg – he meant to be there, if not in body then in word and in spirit. Immortal Junie.

*

On the most fundamental level, as I see it, sustainable development depends on how any one person fulfills the critical obligations that spell the difference between a life lived according to the new paradigm I’ve tried to flesh out in this slim volume and a life lived, wittingly or unwittingly, in opposition to it.

*

Whether as producer or consumer, as one who contributes to the build-up or clean-up of waste, or in the choice of lifestyle that goes with one’s personality, income, and ambitions, one cannot avoid micro interior “summits” and the meaningful participation in it of the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of the individual and governance by the soul.

*

I have often reflected on how to be in the postmodern world with integrity, responsibility, and accountability. As I wrote in the introduction to my book Exploring Soul and Society (1997), I have used a framework for wholeness called Kabuoan – a framework that affirms for Filipinos their multi-level identity, a coherent ecology of values, and a transformative process of change in the inner and outer dimensions of personal and social life.

*

Soul-work has acquired a certain currency or vogue. It is a sign of the growing reaction to crass materialism and consumption, what now is called “Affluenza,” a product of our market-oriented and -driven development activities and our search for meaning in our lives, communities, and species.

*

All of the cosmological and spiritual systems that I have come across taught their truth in a system of interrelated parts and different levels of wholeness – as above, so below – so that it was unthinkable to imagine a sustainable global system without sustainable local and national sub-systems.

*

Sustainable development requires the nurturing of relationships though they be located in diametrically opposed perspectives, or across the great divide that we are prone to see between such as private and public, ecology and economy, people and nature, autonomy and codependency. It requires the preservation of sacred relationship values as material and form evolve. It is concerned with practical concerns, such as how to keep community values as we move from small village dwellings to condominiums in mega-cities.

*

Change begins with the Self. It seems to me that there is not much else over which we exercise near-total control apart from our own selves, which thus suggests the proper locus for authentic change.

*

I felt that to be without duplicity in the way I think, feel, and act must needs be the essence of the integrity of my being if I were to continue to have the freedom to move on to the truth of the next moment in my life’s journey. I found such a state to be essential in doing advocacy work, for it enables one to say what one feels without fear or without being beholden to anyone except to the truth.

***

Obituaries

By Flor Lacanilao

After retiring from UP over 10 years ago, reading obituaries has become a daily habit. When I come across a death notice on somebody who died at 50 or 60, I am thankful to be healthy at 70 and, mind you, with my hair still mostly black. Obituaries of people who die at the age of 80 or 90 make me wish I would live as long.

My interest in obituaries led me to conduct a survey of the death notices published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer from March to December in 2004. The survey covered 1,075 death notices, 620 of which were for men and 455, for women. Though not based on random sampling, the “survey” came up with some interesting findings.

On the average, men died much younger than women—71 against 78 years old. In 230, or 21 percent, of the obituaries, the profession of the deceased was shown. Nuns had the longest lifespan, averaging 85 years. The priests came next with an average of 80 years, followed by the medical doctors with 75 years, the military officers with 73, lawyers with 72, and engineers with 70.

Doctors, who are supposed to have studied the human body, die younger than priests by an average of five years. The 67 doctors in the obituaries even included women who, on the average, live longer than men.

Our obituaries, unlike in other countries, greatly vary in size, suggesting social status (117 were large: one-fourth page and bigger; and 319 were small: the size of a calling card). The average age of the dead in the large obituaries was 75; in the small ones, 72.

Many death notices and those who announce the death anniversaries of their loved ones request readers to pray for the eternal repose of the souls of the departed, never mind if they have been dead for years. I wonder how many readers heed their call for prayers. And I doubt if one could appeal the fate of a soul denied of eternal rest on Judgment Day.

I think we should have valid reasons for doing things, if we are to move forward. Common practice and tradition are reasons hardly good enough to justify our actions.

Excerpted from “Highblood: Obituaries and reasons”
Philippine Daily Inquirer, 9 January 2005

Mindanao from Moro eyes

By Randy David

A useful starting point for any analysis of the problem in Mindanao is the recognition that the Philippine government is not, and indeed has never been, in full control of Muslim Mindanao. The ubiquitous checkpoints that dot the region, manned by forces belonging to traditional warlords and rebel groups, concretely attest to this. To all intents and purposes, Philippine laws and institutions have never defined the framework of political rule in these parts. Periodic elections conducted by national agencies may indicate membership in the Filipino polity. And the presence of state-run schools may suggest integration into the national culture. But this is largely an illusion.

What we have here is not a sovereign state that disintegrated because it failed in its functions. This is rather an example of a state that, from its inception, could not hold sway over a swath of land it regards as part of its territory. It has used all the violent means at the disposal of the state to pacify the Moro people—to no avail. The veneer of order that exists today in the region has been won mainly by coopting the local power-wielders, rather than by forming active citizens. This method worked for as long as the traditional warlords remained self-centered and divided. Things changed when young leaders from these communities sought to unify their ethnically segmented people under one Bangsamoro banner.

Two distinct but related processes have followed from this. The first is the complex internal struggle for leadership among the different elements of Moro land. This struggle continues. The existing ethnic faultlines (e.g. Tausug, Maguindanao Maranao, and Lumad) are compounded by inter-generational conflicts and the assertion of rival ideological visions (Moro secular nationalism vs. Moro religious nationalism). The second is the transformation of the Bangsamoro people’s relationship to the Filipino nation-state as a result of the realignments within their community. As the idea of a self-governing Moro nation took shape, secession from the Philippine Republic loomed as a possibility. Unable to ignore this prospect, the Philippine government has offered regional autonomy as a compromise. Yet, despite this, many Filipino leaders still do not appreciate the validity of the Moro quest.

The Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) under Nur Misuari became the first beneficiary of this accommodation. Misuari was installed as the first governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), an entity created by the 1987 Constitution. The ARMM was supposed to be an experiment in limited self-government by the Moro people, but from the start, it offered little promise of succeeding. Moreover, the incompetence and corruption in its leadership hobbled the new regional government. The ARMM’s failure under Misuari was taken as confirmation of the inability of an imagined Moro nation to govern itself.

A new Moro leadership under Hashim Salamat reframed the vision of a Bangsamoro state, giving birth to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). Unlike the Misuari-centered MNLF, the MILF was more collective in its leadership. The organization continued to flourish after Salamat’s death, and earned the right to be the dominant voice of the Moro people. Meanwhile, ARMM passed on and became a plaything of traditional warlords, like the ruthless Ampatuans, who had no problem embracing the equally corrupt games of Manila’s politicians.

The MILF program was secessionist at the beginning. It specifically drew its vision of a desirable community from the core ethics of Islam. Basing itself in Maguindanao, it sharply distinguished itself from the Tausug-dominated MNLF. But what is truly remarkable about it is that in addition to the support it received from the Islamic countries, it managed to get the active backing of the United States. This gave it the standing and clout in the international stage that Misuari, in his heyday, never enjoyed.

Though it fell short of the dream of an independent state, the Moro “substate” concept that the MILF introduced into the 2008 Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MoA-AD) promised a more substantial autonomy than the MNLF got from the Ramos administration. Negotiators from both sides had worked on it for five years, hoping the agreement would be sealed before the end of the Arroyo term. Alas, the unpopularity of the Arroyo regime gave the whole enterprise the unwarranted stigma of a midnight deal being rushed. After the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional, there was no choice but to abort it.

One has to understand the sense of frustration and betrayal that this has created within the ranks of the MILF. In a sense they are back to zero. For trusting in a process that, in the end, yielded nothing, their leaders have suffered a great loss in credibility. Now, we expect them to rein in the hotheads among their commanders, and threaten them with all-out war if they don’t behave. It is as if it were so easy to end this conflict by sheer military means. Can we even imagine the scale of the humanitarian disaster that will result from a total war in Mindanao?

No, because the arrogant voices that call for total war are typically the ones who do not know that the Philippine state has never effectively established itself in Muslim Mindanao. They remain ignorant of the historic injustices that have been committed against the Moro people. They see only the death of Filipino soldiers, not the pain of people who have been stripped of their lands.