January 8, 2009
January 7, 2009
Coalition aims 10M votes for good government
Coalition aims 10M votes for good gov’t
MANILA, Philippines—A critical mass of 10 million voters is what a new movement aims to mobilize to bring about good governance ahead of and beyond the 2010 elections.
The Movement for Good Governance (MGG), a coalition of reform-minded organizations, business leaders and individuals, has three long-term goals—voter registration and empowerment, election reform and leadership development.
But it is focusing on the 2010 elections as a major opportunity to exercise good governance and elect new leaders, the group said in a press briefing on Friday.
The organizations at the core of the coalition are Kaya Natin, Youth Vote, Young Public Servants, Hope, Transparent Election.org, Reform Coalition and RCN Visition 2010.
Some of its key movers are Milwida Guevara, a former finance undersecretary; Guillermo Luz, a former Makati Business Club executive director; information technology expert Gus Lagman; artist and youth leader Jaime Garchitorena; retired Gen. Jose Almonte and comedian “Juana Change.”
According to Guevara, the strength of MGG is how it has put together “a group of ordinary people who want to make a difference, who have hope and who would like to put a claim that this is our country.”
Guevara, president of the Synergeia Foundation which works with local government units in improving basic education, said MGG was not endorsing any particular candidate for president but “it’s possible that via an organic process ahead of the elections, views may converge to endorse a set of leaders.”
With regard to the first of its goals, the MGG will support the registration of young and first-time voters starting this month, mobilize 10 million voters to sign up and support good governance reforms and then organize communication platforms like public debates to help Filipinos understand the issues better and choose candidates wisely.
Effective automation
With respect to election reforms, MGG seeks effective automation to achieve transparent and faster canvassing of voters.
“Let’s use technology not only to prevent cheating but to make the elections more transparent,” said Lagman, of Transparent Election.org, who proposes the uploading of electoral results to the Internet after the manual canvassing of votes in the schools.
Luz said the country must fix the electoral system so that good candidates would be encouraged to run for office.
He said an online system would allow the candidates, voters, watchers the media and even the overseas Filipinos to keep track of poll results.
“Everybody will have power of information at their fingertips and that makes 40 million of us poll watchers, far better than the half a million that Namfrel can put up,” said Luz, formerly executive director of the National Movement for Free Elections.
Lagman, who was also IT chief at Namfrel, has designed a program called “Open Election System” that can speed up the canvassing of votes.
MGG seeks to encourage and empower grassroots and overseas Filipinos to monitor election results in real time and use available technology such as mobile phones and the Internet to protect the sanctity of the votes.
The coalition also seeks to guarantee the ability of overseas Filipinos to participate in and possibly influence the 2010 elections.
Direct mandate
On leadership development, MGG seeks to identify, empower and support “progressive political leaders who are sincere and effective in promoting reforms towards good governance.”
“We want to build awareness, get people to run, get good candidates to run, get people to register and get poll watchers from all walks of life,” Luz said.
Almonte, who was national security adviser to President Fidel Ramos, said that the mandate for Charter change must come directly from the people.
To ensure that any constitutional amendments would not benefit incumbent leaders, Almonte has proposed a referendum to be held simultaneously with the 2010 elections to ask the people if they wanted the Constitution amended.
If incumbent officials or those elected in 2010 would not benefit from the changes, Filipinos would likely vote “yes” in such a referendum, he said.
Champions of the poor? by Solita Collas-Monsod
Get Real
Champions of the poor?
Thus are they exposed, the senators of the Republic, in particular the pretenders to the presidency of the country. The way they emasculated the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) under the guise of a six-month “extension,” or stood idly by, as their colleagues emasculated it, has made it clear that their protestations of concern for the poor are all sound and fury, signifying nothing. To add insult to injury, the Senate wants us to believe that this is for the benefit of the poor.
At issue was the continued operation of CARP, even for six months, as requested urgently by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, because Congress had been dragging its feet enacting an improved CARP legislation that addresses the flaws and shortcomings of the present law. One would think that continuing with the present law until a new one is passed was a straightforward request. Nothing objectionable, particularly since agrarian reform is a constitutional mandate.
But no. The large landowning interests who are either members of Congress or who exercise disproportionate power over it (“capture” is the word used for such a relationship) just want the program stopped. Over the last 20 years, they managed, through every means fair or foul, to keep over 80 percent of their land safe from redistribution, and they wanted to make that permanent.
And with Joint Resolution 19 that the Senate approved on third reading a couple of days ago, the landowners got what they wanted. While CARP indeed was “extended” for another six months, its heart and soul, or rather, its testicles (in keeping with the emasculation metaphor) were torn out. The landowners’ 1.2 million hectares will be theirs forever. The 80 percent shameful backlog will be untouched.
That the emasculation of CARP by removing compulsory acquisition (and allowing only voluntary modes) was uppermost in the minds of our legislators is clear from the transcript of the Senate proceedings, just before a vote was taken on the resolution.
For example, Sen. Mar Roxas, a presidential aspirant, wanted it clarified that the six-month period was to be used to pay for obligations arising from lands already acquired, but will not be used for new compulsory acquisition of lands heretofore not yet given notice of acquisition. To which Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile helpfully added, “In other words, the funding is extended up to June 30, 2009, with the caveat that there shall be no new compulsory acquisition of land under the Comprehensive Land Reform Program.” Roxas, thereafter, inhibited himself from voting — as per advise of counsel — although he said he was in favor of agrarian reform. The landowner kind?
Sen. Noynoy Aquino abstained even if CARP was the centerpiece program of his mother Cory Aquino’s administration.
There was Sen. Joker Arroyo, who proudly stated that “I am the author of the special provision … which says in effect that no amount from whatever source can be used for new acquisitions,” and then expressed concern because the provision was not incorporated in the resolution. So he wanted to know: even if it was not incorporated, will it be observed? The answer from Sen. Gregorio Honasan, chair of the Senate’s agrarian reform committee, was “yes.” Still seeking more reassurance, Joker asked: supposing the President vetoes that particular provision (no new acquisitions), can we be sure that no funds will be used for acquisitions? Honasan again answered in the affirmative. And Enrile added: “if the Department involved will violate this congressional intent, then in the next budget session we will see to it that they have no funding at all.”
Sen. Rodolfo Biazon wanted reassurance of another kind, and got it: that compulsory acquisition could be revived by legislation after June 30, 2009. Of course, said Honasan. That seemed enough for Biazon, because he did not ask the obvious question of, why, if that was so, compulsory acquisition had to be taken out at all.
Sen. Aquilino “Nene” Pimentel, the only one in the Senate who has actually focused on the plight and aspirations of the farmers, criticized the shortness of the extension period, and later explained that he would vote for the emasculated CARP, but only reluctantly, and because the alternative might be worse: No CARP funding at all. (Frankly, if push came to shove, I think that President Arroyo would find some money for CARP.)
Sen. Chiz Escudero, another aspirant for president (or vice president), said he was voting yes to the Resolution, but it was “conditional on Congress buckling down … and passing meaningful legislation … correcting the shortfalls of the existing program … [which] has not improved the quality of life of our people, particularly the beneficiaries of this program.” I wonder how the conditionality can be implemented. Moreover, his sweeping statement that the program has not improved the quality of life of the farmer beneficiaries is totally at variance not only with the objective facts, but also with the statements of the beneficiaries themselves. Escudero may not be a landowner, but he sure is mouthing the landowners’ lines.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson, still another presidential wannabe, asked only if the Senate resolution was the same as the House resolution. He voted for it, no reservations.
Sen. Loren Legarda, usually so loquacious, did not speak at all. She voted for it.
Sen. Manuel Villar, he who supposedly comes from the “poor,” was not even there to vote.
The final vote of the Senate? 14 for, 0 against, 2 abstentions, 7 absent.
Champions of the poor? What a laugh.
After Bonifacio
Public Lives
After Bonifacio
While often confused with National Heroes Day, Nov. 30 is a day we set aside to remember the heroism of Andres Bonifacio, the father of the Philippine Revolution. It is his birthday, the feast day of St. Andrew, after whom he was named. Most Filipinos do not remember when he died, or indeed, how he died. The manner of his death is one of those inconvenient truths we have expunged from our nation’s official narrative.
Like Jose Rizal, Bonifacio did not live long enough to see the country emerge from the shadows of Spanish rule. But unlike Rizal, who was martyred by the Spaniards, Bonifacio was killed by his own comrades. For refusing to recognize the leadership of Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo who was installed at the Tejeros Convention, he was tried for treason, and executed on May 10, 1897. He was 33. The founder of the Katipunan—the one, in the words of Carmen Guerrero Nakpil, “who had guts and gumption like no other,” had become, in the eyes of the new leaders, a danger to the revolution.
The elimination of Bonifacio did not advance the cause of the revolution. Soon after the infamous meeting at Tejeros, the Cavite towns held by Aguinaldo’s forces fell one after another. These defeats led straight to the negotiations that culminated in the pact of Biak-na-bato. This shameful agreement with the Spanish government provided for the surrender and voluntary exile of the Aguinaldo-led group to Hong Kong on Dec. 27, 1897, in exchange for P800,000. Fortunately, Filipinos did not heed their leaders’ call for the surrender of arms and the termination of the struggle. The revolution continued.
The fortunes of the revolution changed dramatically with the outbreak of the Spanish-American War. Riding on the worldwide sympathy for the Cuban revolution against Spain, the United States created the conditions that would justify declaring war against Spain. Less than a week after war was declared, Commodore George Dewey sailed to the Philippines and effortlessly destroyed the Spanish fleet on Manila Bay.
The leaders of the Hong Kong junta had been conferring with American representatives in Hong Kong and Singapore. They saw in the US intervention an opportunity to reclaim their leadership of the revolution at home. On the other hand, the Americans saw in the Filipino revolutionary forces an interim army that could keep the beleaguered Spanish soldiers busy pending the arrival of US troops. An American boat brought Aguinaldo and his fellow exiles back to the Philippines on May 19, 1898. Five days later, Aguinaldo announced the formation of a dictatorial government that acknowledged “the disinterested protection” of “the great and powerful North American nation.”
On June 12, 1898, barely a month after his return from Hong Kong, Aguinaldo proclaimed Philippine independence. By most accounts, this declaration was premature and flawed. But Aguinaldo was engaged in a complex political maneuver vis-à-vis Spain, the United States, and the rest of Filipino revolutionary movement itself. There was one good thing about June 12, however. On this day, Aguinaldo met Apolinario Mabini and made him his political adviser. Mabini never lost sight of the basic nationalist direction of the revolution. It was he who single-handedly prevented the Aguinaldo leadership from becoming a blind tool of elitist and foreign interests.
Conditions were changing very fast. At every point, the brilliant Mabini knew how the fledgling revolutionary government should respond. But time was not on the revolution’s side. The Spaniards had no intention of recognizing Filipino sovereignty; they would cede control of the islands only to the Americans. Still, the Filipinos wanted to show the world they were already in full control of their own country and that a functioning modern government was already in place.
And that is why the last six months of the year 1898, a hundred and ten years ago, became for Filipinos a frantic season of instant statecraft. Mabini had wanted the local governments to be fully formed under the command of a powerful executive before political power was shared with a legislature. But Aguinaldo had already issued an order to convene a national congress—mainly to create the impression of institutionalization at the national level.
The Malolos Congress convened in September 1898. Technically, it did not have the powers of a constituent assembly. But the delegates—a large number of whom were foreign-educated “ilustrados” [members of the educated class]—were keen to show the world that they knew how to create laws and to live by them. They also wanted to assert legislative power as a check on the executive. Accordingly, they proceeded to draft a constitution appropriate to an independent republic, using the French constitution as their working model. They created the nation, but remarkably they omitted any reference to its territory. They would not presume Muslim Mindanao’s membership in the new nation.
All these were overtaken by the Dec. 10, 1898 Treaty of Paris, by which Spain transferred sovereignty over the islands to the United States for $20 million. On Feb. 4, 1899, the young republic found herself at war with the new invader. But perhaps the unkindest cut of all was when, at the moment of truth, her educated sons, who, only a few months before, were busy writing the constitution, swiftly abandoned her in exchange for positions in the new colonial government.
Since then, the country has always needed the unerring vision of Mabini and the audacity of Bonifacio.
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Comments to public.lives@gmail.com
World leaders seek unity to fight financial crisis
The Philippine STAR – Headlines
| World leaders seek unity to fight financial crisis Updated September 25, 2008 12:00 AM |
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockman and Undersecretary General Shaaban M. Shaaban listen to President Arroyo address the 63rd session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
UNITED NATIONS – World leaders called Tuesday for international action to stem the financial crisis, urging cooperative solutions over US steps to counter a credit crunch that has spilled outside US borders to engulf global markets.
The opening of the annual ministerial meeting of the UN General Assembly was dominated by widespread concern over the economic health of the world – and the need for the major economic players to contribute to a revival.
While many leaders insisted on a global solution, US President George W. Bush assured officials that his government was on the cusp of containing the credit meltdown that has roiled markets and threatens to undercut development and poverty fighting efforts.
Bush said he realizes that other nations are watching how the US deals with the financial crisis, and he expressed confidence that Washington will act “in the urgent timeframe required” to prevent broader problems.
Bush said his administration is with the US Congress to come to fast agreement on a $700-billion bailout bill, in addition to other recent actions he called “bold steps” aimed at stabilizing markets and keeping credit flowing.
He did not ask for any action by other countries.
But French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who currently heads the European Union which includes some of Washington’s closest allies, insisted on a global solution.
He called for a wholesale reform of the global financial system, urging major economic powers to meet before the end of the year to examine the lessons of the crisis.
“Let us rebuild capitalism in which credit agencies are controlled and punished when necessary, where transparency … replaces opaqueness,” Sarkozy said. “We can do this on one condition, that we all work together in our globalized world.”
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a former labor leader, also called for a global solution to the financial crisis and lashed out at speculators who he blamed for the “anguish of entire peoples.”
“The global nature of this crisis means that the solutions we adopt must also be global and decided upon within legitimate, trusted multilateral fora, with no impositions,” Silva said.
As Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo graphically put it, “economic uncertainty has moved like a terrible tsunami around the globe, wiping away gains, erasing progress.”
“Just when we thought the worst had passed, the light at the end of the tunnel became an oncoming train, hurtling forward with new shocks to the global financial system,” she said. “The setbacks from these global shocks of the past year, and the past weeks, are real and profound. It will take time and perseverance to put the pieces back together.”
Addressing more than 120 world leaders and dozens of government ministers at the opening of the meeting, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon painted a grim picture of a world facing not only a financial crisis but food and energy crises as well as new outbreaks of war and violence and a “new rhetoric of confrontation.”
“We must do more to help our fellow human beings weather the gathering storm,” he said. “I see a danger of nations looking more inward, rather than toward a shared future. I see a danger of retreating from the progress we have made, particularly in the realm of development and more equitably sharing the fruits of global growth.”
Ban said he worried that nations are losing sight of the “new reality” – that there are “new centers of power and leadership in Asia, Latin America and across the newly developed world” – and that “in this new world, our challenges are increasingly those of collaboration rather than confrontation.”
“The global financial crisis endangers all our work – financing for development, social spending in rich nations and poor, the Millennium Development Goals to improve life for the poorest,” he said.
“If ever there were a call to collective action – a call for global leadership – it is now,” Ban said.
“We need to restore order to the international financial markets,” he said. “We need a new understanding on business ethics and governance, with more compassion and less uncritical faith in the ‘magic’ of markets. And we must think about how the world economic system should evolve to more fully reflect changing realities of our time.”
He urged world leaders to adopt a new trade deal to help developing countries at the Doha review conference later this year.
Ban’s focus on global financial challenges and new cooperation come in a General Assembly session confronting a host of challenges, including Western pressure on Iran for its nuclear program and continued threats of terrorism, issues which Bush addressed in his speech before the gathered leaders shortly after Ban spoke.
Bush said the international community must stand firm against the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran. He scolded Russia for invading neighboring Georgia. And he said that despite past disagreements over the US-led war in Iraq, members of the UN must unite to help the struggling democracy succeed.
“A few nations, regimes like Syria and Iran, continue to sponsor terror,” Bush said in his last speech to the 192-nation world body.
“Yet their numbers are growing fewer, and they’re growing more isolated from the world.”
“As the 21st century unfolds, some may be tempted to assume that the threat has receded. This would be comforting. It would be wrong.
“The terrorists believe time is on their side, so they’ve made waiting out civilized nations part of their strategy. We must not allow them to succeed,” he said.
Earlier, Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in a series of interviews, blamed US military interventions around the world in part for the collapse of global financial markets, and he said the campaign against his country’s nuclear program was solely due to the Bush administration “and a couple of their European friends.”
Ahmadinejad listened to Bush’s speech on Tuesday morning, and at one point gave a thumbs down.
His interviews came after Mohamed El Baradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned that he could not determine whether Iran is hiding some nuclear activities.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Ahmadinejad said: “The US government has made a series of mistakes in the past few decades.
“The imposition on the US economy of the years of heavy military engagement and involvement around the world… the war in Iraq, for example. These are heavy costs imposed on the US economy,” he said.
“The world economy can no longer tolerate the budgetary deficit and the financial pressures occurring from markets here in the United States, and by the US government,” he added.
In a separate interview with National Public Radio, Ahmadinejad said he does not want confrontation with the United States. He said he wants diplomatic relations to develop between the two countries and was willing, for example, to cooperate on upholding security in Iraq.
“We do not have confrontations with anyone,” he said. “The US administration interferes, and we defend ourselves.”
According to a report on Tuesday on the NPR Web site, Ahmadinejad claims that the “people of the world – the majority – actually support our stand.”
Israeli President Shimon Peres responded to the Iranian leader’s statement that one day Israel would be “wiped off the map.”
Ahmadinejad “calls the world to return to the age of darkness, hatred, threats, impatience, arrogance – doesn’t respect human life,” Peres said. “He thinks he’s the supreme judge of the world.”
Iran insists its nuclear activities are geared only toward generating power. But Israel says the Islamic Republic could have enough nuclear material to make its first bomb within a year. The US estimates Tehran is at least two years away from that stage.
Bush also is to meet Tuesday with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari. Topping their talks will be the series of suspected US missile attacks and an American-led cross-border ground assault in Pakistan’s volatile northwest that have angered public opinion.
The vice president of Sudan and leaders from Georgia, Lebanon, Kenya, Somalia, Liberia and Argentina are also among those addressing the General Assembly on Tuesday. – AP
Blog power by Amando Doronila
Analysis
Blog power
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The blog community went up in arms on the side of the De la Paz family shortly after the Dec. 26 mauling of its members at the Valley Golf Club allegedly by two sons of Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman over a breach of golf etiquette.
Businessman Delfin de la Paz, 56, and his son Bino, 14, both private citizens and powerless, filed charges of light physical injuries and child abuse with the Antipolo City public prosecutor on Monday against Hussein Pangandaman, 30, and Nasser Jr., 27, who is mayor of Masiut town in the southern province of Lanao del Sur. The Pangandamans are members of a powerful and influential political clan in Lanao del Sur.
The De la Paz family members accused the Pangandamans and their bodyguards of assaulting them in a violent fracas that marred the day after Christmas, a brawl that reverberated all over the country. It was the latest manifestation of the enduring power of provincial/regional warlords in post-modern Philippine political history. The ugly face of warlord culture returned with a vengeance in the supposedly civilized ambience of golf fairways where gorillas are not expected to be seen cavorting on the manicured green.
At first glance, the scales of justice appear unevenly balanced between the litigants. The complainants are plain citizens, while the defendants are men clothed with power and official authority.
The encounter marked for the first time the clash between the denizens of blogdom inhabited by users of Cyberspace and the official holders of power in the formal structures of government. The golf club encounter unveiled the constituency of this new and powerful force in public opinion which was mobilized to join the fray by a blog report written by De la Paz’s daughter, Bambee, 18, who narrated the details of the assault. The report became the basis of the criminal complaint lodged by the De la Paz family ahead of the counter-complaints also alleging physical injuries and child abuse on the part of the family victimized by the Pangandamans. The counter-suit lodged by the Pangandamans, which came within hours of the complaint filed by the De la Paz family, was reduced to copycat versions after Bambee jumped the gun on the use of new technology and stole the initiative from the Pangandamans, whose experience in counter-suits has been defined by the nomenclature of old politics which favors people holding power.
Eventually, after some foot-dragging the Department of Justice will announce the results of its investigation, but already a new people power movement, lodged in the Internet, has emerged and has intervened forcefully to seize the public opinion initiative. It has drawn people to take sides on behalf of the victims of injustice and the abuse of power by persons in authority. Within minutes of Bambee’s blog report the vast undercurrent of blog users came to the surface to add their own versions and knowledge of the Valley Golf Club incident, reinforcing the initial report of the De la Paz family. The bloggers’ perception invested credence to the victims’ narrative, even as the Pangandamans rely on the outmoded justice department’s fact-finding process for vindication. But the Department of Justice happens to be one of the least credible and most partisan departments of this administration.
What the Pangandamans and the administration failed to appreciate is that the reason the Valley Golf incident has caught fire rapidly is that it was ignited by an outrage over injustice by people in authority using their power and violence to trample down powerless people who dare protest infractions of the rules. The blog of the De la Paz girl tapped this undercurrent against abuse of power and injustice dealt to the underdogs.
The lawyer of the De la Paz family has sought suspension of Secretary Pangandaman and his taking a leave of absence while the justice department takes its time in investigating the incident for the good reason that he is in a position to influence the outcome of the inquiry.
The force that has intervened to influence public opinion on the side of powerless victims of violence and injustice is a new element feeding on the swiftness and untrammeled flow of information facilitated by the Internet. It cannot be censored by authorities just as the Xerox machine could not be censored by dictatorial regimes of the 1970s who felt challenged by the duplicating machines and not by the bulky printing presses used by independent papers to denounce regimes and their abuses.
Media studies have identified the blog, a creature of the Internet, as an instrument of what is called “interactive journalism” or “citizens’ journalism,” in which eyewitnesses of events write their own reports without formal accreditation as members of the institutionalized media organizations. This is what media studies call grassroots journalism with basic citizen participation, feeding the votaries of information with a variety of sources and perspectives. This approach has superseded the structured reports of the traditional reporter and news story seeking to describe all angles under the two-witness corroboration rule. This is the approach and the elemental dynamic of Internet-based journalism that the Pangandamans and people in public authority are contending with. It has been harnessed by the bloggers.
January 4, 2009
Change we do not know
Glimpses
Change we do not know
By Jose Ma. Montelibano
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 00:47:00 11/21/2008
Filed Under: Graft & Corruption, Poverty, Social Issues
You can sense it, like the quiet before the storm, the emergence of factors and forces that usually converge to create change, big change. The status quo seems unchallenged, and those who dominate it are gathering even more power. They have no reason to anticipate disturbance in the political field, and have managed so far to handle an unfolding economic debacle better than the more developed countries have. Still, you sense it.
Perhaps, it is the Obama wave of change. There is no evidence that an Obama presidency will be unduly critical of Gloria. In fact, it was always a belligerent Bush and a no-nonsense Condoleezza Rice that seemed very dangerous for someone who pulled out of the Coalition of the Willing. But Gloria survived them by being a political gymnast, and did not have to completely desert the Chinese, either.
Still, there is the Obama wave of change.
Or, there is still a rapidly unfolding economic disaster that has not yet revealed the depth of its bankruptcy. Like receiving medical results confirming that one has cancer, the usual first reaction is denial where many Americans, corporate and individual, find themselves in. Whatever Philippine monetary officials may say, the grim reality is that the peso is tied to the dollar and does not know how to free itself from that bondage. It is not meaningful to watch the peso’s strength, only the dollar’s weakness because the peso will fall with it.
And, there is Archbishop Angel Lagdameo. Almost from nowhere, the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) threatens to become a contrary voice to the dominant political force.
It is not the first time that Lagdameo has indicated a personal uneasiness with the level of corruption that pervades Philippine society. But in the past he was either tentative or greatly influenced by the fact that his fellow bishops were not solidly behind his critical stand. Today the archbishop appears to have reached a certain resolve that can catapult him to a platform of singular distinction.
Poverty and corruption have been around a long time. Because of that familiarity, Filipinos have developed a tolerant coping mechanism. Sadly, we have lowered the bar of our own ethics to accommodate that. It is the worst surrender of the Filipino people, and our greatest shame is the lack of grave concern for the millions who go hungry. Tolerance of evil because of its extended presence has kept revolution at bay, and it has not helped either that no revolutionary ideology has caught the natural empathy of Filipinos.
But poverty and corruption are not passive evils. They march forward and gain new territory whenever they can, whenever the forces of good weaken or withdraw. The nature of poverty and corruption, though, is that they create victims and more misery as they expand, and their temporary victory is the very poison pill that brings them closer to their own defeat. Man, after all, can tolerate wrongdoing but cannot tolerate the pain it brings indefinitely. A rebellion against evil is a matter of when, not if.
Hunger is one serious pain that triggers revolution faster than most other causes. In human history, it has mostly been hunger and violence at a certain level that have been the most popular reasons for radical responses by a population against its rulers. The administration would do well to go all out against hunger, not just on the ground where the hunger is but also in the dimension of public opinion where apathy is.
The Catholic Church, too, has no choice but to lead in the drive to mitigate and eliminate hunger by lending its powerful voice and influence. Continued silence or absence of manifest religious indignation against hunger will be a fatal mistake for a Catholic Church that has not only stopped growing but is steadily losing its flock to rival groups. Feeding the hungry is not just a favorite religious work of mercy but a primary condition for salvation. The nuance of a silent or inactive Church in the face of hunger will show a hypocrisy that will have deadly consequences.
It has to come to be that change is coming in a manner and form that will defy conventional parameters dictated by Philippine history. Just as Obama could not have defined in detail the change he promised, because the change he represents has no precedent in America’s history, so will the change that Filipinos will witness and participate in.
Strangely, the change will not be about Gloria although it will most definitely affect her; the change will be bigger than any personality, any issue. When the dominant convention will be threatened by a fresh gust of air full of nobility and higher aspirations, it will dig in for dear life. Its historical and current strength is not a pushover, and change itself, if it were not the nature of evolution, will have no chance in the Philippines.
The sustained unpopularity of Gloria, the sustained unacceptability of the Opposition, these are indicators that the Filipino is caught in between a rock and hard place. If the rock and the hard place were not locked in aggressive combat, then the Filipino has much more time to stay in between them. But they push hard against each other and will force the trapped Filipino to react in a way that is just as difficult to predict.
Filipino politicians will have little idea of what’s coming and the older ones nothing at all. Despite their intimacy with technology, McCain’s advisers and handlers did not even anticipate, and could not copy, what Obama did. And those who seek the kind of change they already know, like a change of leadership or exchange of positions, they, too, will be harshly surprised.
A friend told me how baffled he was at the convergence of change, at how many things get disrupted at the same time even though they seem unrelated. I told him that great change cannot happen without an unusual amount of serendipity. Great change must have not only a deep impact but a wide one at that. Remember People Power, the Berlin Wall, Solidarity of Poland and the collapse of communism in Russia—these happened in the same moment of historical time.
Are we in that zone again? Is Obama a signal, just as the collapse of an economic system? What else is about to erupt? Pray, then, and wish for the best because life may just have a special surprise for all of us.
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Responses may be sent to jlmglimpses@gmail.com.
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