COMMENTARY: by Francisco Lara, Jr.
Friday, 27 November 2009 12:19
LONDON (MindaNews/26 Nov) -- The Maguindanao massacre predicts the eruption of wider violence and conflict as the nation heads towards the 2010 elections. Yet to dismiss this incident as “election-related” is to miss the fundamental political and economic implications of this evil deed. The massacre is rooted in the shift in politico-economic sources of violence and conflict in Muslim Mindanao. It signifies the emergence of new-type warlords whose powers depend upon their control of a vast illegal and shadow economy and an ever-growing slice of internal revenue allotments (IRA). Both factors induce a violent addiction to political office.
Mindanao scholars used to underscore the role of “local strong men” who were an essential component of the central state’s efforts to extend its writ over the region. The elite bargain was built upon the state’s willingness to eschew revenue generation and to grant politico-military dominance to a few Moro elites in exchange for the latter providing political thugs and armed militias to secure far-flung territories, fight the communists and separatists, and extend the administrative reach of the state.
The economic basis of the elite bargain has changed since then. Political office has become more attractive due to the billions of pesos in IRA remittances that electoral victory provides. The “winner-takes-all” nature of local electoral struggles in Muslim Mindanao also means that competition is costlier and bloodier. Meanwhile, political authority may enable control over the formal economy, but the bigger prize is the power to monopolize or to extort money from those engaged in the lucrative business of illegal drugs, gambling, kidnap-for-ransom, gun-running, and smuggling, among others. The piracy of software, CDs and DVDs, and the smuggling of pearls and other gemstones from China and Thailand are seen as micro and small enterprises. These illegal economies and a small formal sector comprise the “real” economy of Muslim Mindanao.
The failure to appreciate how this underground economy, coupled with entitlements to massive government-to-government fund transfers, shapes prevailing notions of political legitimacy and authority in the region partly explains the inability of the central State to deal with lawlessness and conflict.
Political legitimacy in Muslim Mindanao has very little to do with protecting people’s rights or providing basic services. People rarely depend on government for welfare provision, and are consequently averse to paying any taxes. People actually expect local leaders to pocket government resources, and are willing to look the other way so long as their clans dominate and they are given a small slice during elections. Legitimacy is all about providing protection to your fellow clan members by trumping the firepower of your competitors, leaving people alone, and forgetting about taxes.
There were positive signs in the recent past, especially among the Moro women and youth who bore the brunt of conflict and who sought a different future. But achieving their aspirations depends on their ability to rise above clan structures and the dynamics of hierarchy and collective self-defense that bound its members. This dilemma was painfully exposed in the Maguindanao massacre, where Moro women who usually played a strategic role in negotiating an end to rido became its principal victims.
The sad thing about the recent massacre is that it could have been avoided. Everyone in Central Mindanao knew about the looming violence between the Ampatuan and Mangudadatu clans as early as March 2009, when the latter’s patriarch Pax Mangudadatu confronted Andal Ampatuan in a public gathering and made known his clan’s intention to challenge the latter’s political hold on Maguindanao. This threat was in turn based on the knowledge that Ampatuan was planning to undermine the Mangudadatus by fielding a challenger against them in Sultan Kudarat.
In short, the “looming” rido which pundits are predicting today actually started more than six months ago. Yet neither Malacañang nor the COMELEC, PNP, and the AFP made any attempt to monitor their activities, disarm their private security, demobilize their loyalists within the police and military, and ring-fence their camps.
Why?
The answer lies in the newfound role of Muslim Mindanao to national political elites. The region is known for a long history of electoral fraud. The difference today lies in its ability to provide the millions of votes that can overturn the results of national electoral contests, a situation brought about by the creation of a sub-national state (ARMM) and reinforced by the sort of democratic political competition in the post-Marcos era that makes local bosses more powerful and national leaders more beholden to them. This was the case in the presidential elections of 2004 and the senatorial race in 2007. It will serve the same purpose in 2010. Whose purpose is served by arresting Ampatuan in an election year? Certainly not those of the ruling coalition.
This partly explains the foot dragging and the lame treatment of principal suspects in the massacre. And to those pressing for limited martial rule in Maguindanao, beware what you wish for. Having a surfeit of troops on the ground can provide a superficial peace at best. At worse, it may facilitate the same type of electoral fraud in 2010, or leverage the firepower of the dominant clan over another.
In a region where the rebellion-related conflict between the GRP and the MILF received all of the national and international community’s attention and aid, NGOs such as International Alert and the Asia Foundation have often decried the ignorance and indifference of the government and donor agencies to community-based inter and intra clan violence. As International Alert asserts, it is time to focus on the confluence between both types and sources of violence and conflict. Indifference will only lead to more death and destruction as the election approaches, when a convergence between rebellion-related, and inter and intra clan conflict occurs as military forces and armed rebels take sides between warring clans and factions.
Mindanao scholars such as Patricio Abinales, James Putzel, and John Sidel have previously noted how local strong men made Mindanao, and how the region provided an ideal case of the country’s “imperfect democracy” and “political bossism”. More recently, the conflict scholar Stathis Kalyvas called attention to the birth of “ruthless political entrepreneurs” who shape and are shaped by the dynamics between states, clans, and conflict. The viciousness of the Maguindanao attack shows how these phenomena resonates here. It demonstrates the weak and narrow reach of the central Philippine state in Muslim Mindanao, and how the continued reliance on local strong men will not end the cycle of violence.
(Francisco Lara Jr. is Research Associate at the Crisis States Research Center, Development Studies Institute, London School of Economics.)
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Thursday, October 22, 2009
A nation of dimwits By Juan Mercado
Viewpoint
Philippine Daily Inquirer [First Posted 00:49:00 10/22/2009]
Filed Under: Books, Education, Government
Opinion Most Read RSS
Close this CAGAYAN DE ORO—For over a decade, Antonio Calipjo-Go skewered error-studded textbooks, bought with our taxes and hefty World Bank IOUs. The battered academician, this month, won vindication of sorts. Grudgingly, the Department of Education issued a 28-page booklet to more than half a million public school teachers. “Teaching Notes” correct “more than 450 errors found in 10 English textbooks,” the Inquirer reported.
Grade 1 to Grade 6 students use these books. And Go pinpointed most of those flaws. Use “Notes” for “correcting errors that may be [found],” Education Undersecretary Vilma Labrador gingerly wrote.
“Books are the carriers of civilization,” historian Barbara Tuchman said. “Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation silenced,” said the author of “The Guns of August.”
In December 2008, Go tossed in the towel in the battle to prevent our kids from sliding into a nation of dimwits. It led to nowhere, the 57-year-old whistleblower wearily said.
“Go sowed the wind by documenting multiple errors in books, from science, grammar, social studies to history,” Viewpoint noted. “He reaped the whirlwind.”
So did other whistleblowers before him. Ensign Philip Pestaño denounced, in 1997, misuse of Navy boats to haul illegal lumber and drugs. A Senate probe concluded he was murdered. But in the last 22 years, the military ombudsman hasn’t budged beyond securing counter-affidavits.
Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada testified on how a $132-million ZTE broadband contract ballooned to $329 million. Lozada has been fired, sued and harassed.
“If you have money, even the spirits will turn the mills for you,” the Chinese proverb says. And there’s big bucks in textbook publishing. DepEd last year bought 21.2 million English textbooks for grades 1 to 6. The bill: P666.6 million. Just one firm cornered P383 million for six books.
Big publishers and corrupt officials choreographed a smear campaign against Go. Some columnists didn’t take issue with errors he pointed out, like “Paoay is a province.” But they assailed Go’s integrity with charges that proved baseless.
Accord Go the right of reply, the Philippine Press Council asked. Go’s rejoinders have been ignored up to now. This is failure at self-regulation by individual newspapers.
Most papers, in contrast, scrupulously ensure fairness. But this lapse may yet sap media’s defense against the threat of compulsory right-of-reply measures, like HB 3306 and SB 2150.
“You shall know the truth,” Aldous Huxley once joshed. “And the truth will make you mad.”
Flawed textbooks infuriated parents, educators and private citizens. But their protests slammed against shekel power.
Frank Hilario drew up a timeline that depicts resistance to reform in “horror of errors in Philippine textbooks.” Read and weep:
1996. German national Helmut Haas finds 1,341 errors in his daughter’s textbooks: 194 in “Science and Health” and 420 in “Civics and Culture.” Rep. Raul del Mar prods the House to adopt corrective legislation.
1999. Enter Matt Dizon and Go. They pinpoint 950 factual errors and 550 typographical errors in a book sold to Marian School of Quezon City. The publisher incorporates corrections, but he does not acknowledge the work of Dizon and Go.
2000. Go finds flaws in books, from “Effective Language” to Asian history. In 2001, the series “Science and Technology for The Modern World” for high school students is scrubbed because of errors.
2002. In a full-page newspaper ad, Go points to 400 textbook errors and calls for reforms. In an Inquirer ad, in 2004, he fingers 431 factual and grammatical errors in the social studies and history textbooks, approved by DepEd.
2007. Two years after errors in history textbooks were revealed, the Senate discovered the same errors repeated. Another 100-plus “errors of fact” studded a new batch of Grade 3 social studies books.
Gross errors in chemistry in a General Science book is found by Sigrid S. Rodolfo, who holds a doctorate from Purdue University. Sen. Panfilo Lacson introduces Resolution 53 to probe a problem that refused to go away.
2008. Sen. Pia Cayetano follows suit. Nothing happens. Erika Sauler reports in an Inquirer series that despite a DepEd order, private schools use uncorrected texts. Sen. Manuel Villar gets into the act with Senate Resolution 822.
The Inquirer won this year a Citizens Mass Media Award for its textbook series.
Why is the pace of reforms so stretched out? Governments face a choice, Harvard University’s John Kenneth Gailbraith explained. Change one’s mind or prove there is no need to do so. “Almost everybody gets busy on the proof.”
The country is in debt to whistleblowers who, like Go or Lozada, slug away. The unsavory reality is that, like Somali pirates, bandits here often win. The targets vary—from jueteng, as Erap knows, to fertilizers, as Joc-joc Bolante can attest to.
But the bottom line is constant: crime pays handsomely. Thieves are not ostracized. They buy first places at table. Indeed, “the ultimate perversion is to call evil good.”
“Mangled textbooks mangle young minds,” noted Viewpoint on Dec. 3, 2008. “Miseducation sentences kids to life sentences in twilight ignorance. This locks them into poverty and unfulfilled potentials. And as these youngster go, so does the nation.”
(Email: juanlmercado@gmail.com)
Philippine Daily Inquirer [First Posted 00:49:00 10/22/2009]
Filed Under: Books, Education, Government
Opinion Most Read RSS
Close this CAGAYAN DE ORO—For over a decade, Antonio Calipjo-Go skewered error-studded textbooks, bought with our taxes and hefty World Bank IOUs. The battered academician, this month, won vindication of sorts. Grudgingly, the Department of Education issued a 28-page booklet to more than half a million public school teachers. “Teaching Notes” correct “more than 450 errors found in 10 English textbooks,” the Inquirer reported.
Grade 1 to Grade 6 students use these books. And Go pinpointed most of those flaws. Use “Notes” for “correcting errors that may be [found],” Education Undersecretary Vilma Labrador gingerly wrote.
“Books are the carriers of civilization,” historian Barbara Tuchman said. “Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation silenced,” said the author of “The Guns of August.”
In December 2008, Go tossed in the towel in the battle to prevent our kids from sliding into a nation of dimwits. It led to nowhere, the 57-year-old whistleblower wearily said.
“Go sowed the wind by documenting multiple errors in books, from science, grammar, social studies to history,” Viewpoint noted. “He reaped the whirlwind.”
So did other whistleblowers before him. Ensign Philip Pestaño denounced, in 1997, misuse of Navy boats to haul illegal lumber and drugs. A Senate probe concluded he was murdered. But in the last 22 years, the military ombudsman hasn’t budged beyond securing counter-affidavits.
Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada testified on how a $132-million ZTE broadband contract ballooned to $329 million. Lozada has been fired, sued and harassed.
“If you have money, even the spirits will turn the mills for you,” the Chinese proverb says. And there’s big bucks in textbook publishing. DepEd last year bought 21.2 million English textbooks for grades 1 to 6. The bill: P666.6 million. Just one firm cornered P383 million for six books.
Big publishers and corrupt officials choreographed a smear campaign against Go. Some columnists didn’t take issue with errors he pointed out, like “Paoay is a province.” But they assailed Go’s integrity with charges that proved baseless.
Accord Go the right of reply, the Philippine Press Council asked. Go’s rejoinders have been ignored up to now. This is failure at self-regulation by individual newspapers.
Most papers, in contrast, scrupulously ensure fairness. But this lapse may yet sap media’s defense against the threat of compulsory right-of-reply measures, like HB 3306 and SB 2150.
“You shall know the truth,” Aldous Huxley once joshed. “And the truth will make you mad.”
Flawed textbooks infuriated parents, educators and private citizens. But their protests slammed against shekel power.
Frank Hilario drew up a timeline that depicts resistance to reform in “horror of errors in Philippine textbooks.” Read and weep:
1996. German national Helmut Haas finds 1,341 errors in his daughter’s textbooks: 194 in “Science and Health” and 420 in “Civics and Culture.” Rep. Raul del Mar prods the House to adopt corrective legislation.
1999. Enter Matt Dizon and Go. They pinpoint 950 factual errors and 550 typographical errors in a book sold to Marian School of Quezon City. The publisher incorporates corrections, but he does not acknowledge the work of Dizon and Go.
2000. Go finds flaws in books, from “Effective Language” to Asian history. In 2001, the series “Science and Technology for The Modern World” for high school students is scrubbed because of errors.
2002. In a full-page newspaper ad, Go points to 400 textbook errors and calls for reforms. In an Inquirer ad, in 2004, he fingers 431 factual and grammatical errors in the social studies and history textbooks, approved by DepEd.
2007. Two years after errors in history textbooks were revealed, the Senate discovered the same errors repeated. Another 100-plus “errors of fact” studded a new batch of Grade 3 social studies books.
Gross errors in chemistry in a General Science book is found by Sigrid S. Rodolfo, who holds a doctorate from Purdue University. Sen. Panfilo Lacson introduces Resolution 53 to probe a problem that refused to go away.
2008. Sen. Pia Cayetano follows suit. Nothing happens. Erika Sauler reports in an Inquirer series that despite a DepEd order, private schools use uncorrected texts. Sen. Manuel Villar gets into the act with Senate Resolution 822.
The Inquirer won this year a Citizens Mass Media Award for its textbook series.
Why is the pace of reforms so stretched out? Governments face a choice, Harvard University’s John Kenneth Gailbraith explained. Change one’s mind or prove there is no need to do so. “Almost everybody gets busy on the proof.”
The country is in debt to whistleblowers who, like Go or Lozada, slug away. The unsavory reality is that, like Somali pirates, bandits here often win. The targets vary—from jueteng, as Erap knows, to fertilizers, as Joc-joc Bolante can attest to.
But the bottom line is constant: crime pays handsomely. Thieves are not ostracized. They buy first places at table. Indeed, “the ultimate perversion is to call evil good.”
“Mangled textbooks mangle young minds,” noted Viewpoint on Dec. 3, 2008. “Miseducation sentences kids to life sentences in twilight ignorance. This locks them into poverty and unfulfilled potentials. And as these youngster go, so does the nation.”
(Email: juanlmercado@gmail.com)
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Three - There's the Rub by Conrado de Quiros
"...indeed to this hour, what government we have is courtesy of the private sector where voluntarism has sprung like wildflowers. That is the bright spot in all this, the light amid the darkness, the blazing sun after the storm. Truly the Filipino rises to his finest self during trying times, the more trying the times, the finer the rising. Or it is in times of disaster that the Filipino ceases to be a disaster, thinking of others first before self."
Shared via AddThis
Photo credit: from internet email forward.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Word of the Lourd: Social Commentaries on YouTube
This one is Wang Wang ng Ina Mo!
"Daily newscast of TV5 which ventures into a fresh way of delivering the day's top stories...and MORE.
Monday - Friday, 11:00 pm
Name: TEN
TEN: The Evening News
Daily newscast of tv5 which ventures into a fresh way of delivering the day's top stories...and MORE.
Monday - Friday, 11:00 pm
Country: Philippines
Companies: tv5
Website: http://www.tv5.com.ph
by TV5EveningNews @ YouTube. Will definitely look out for more of the social commentaries of this guy... great use of technology.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Footnote to a false note
Theres The Rub [A column] By Conrado de Quiros
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:22:00 05/11/2009
Filed Under: Music, Entertainment (general), history, Customs & Traditions
I beg to disagree with some friends on this. “This” is the way Martin Nievera sang “Lupang Hinirang” in the Pacquiao-Hatton fight, which has brought him into a brawl with preservers of Filipino tradition. The fight has so far been lopsided, with many authority figures, from congressmen to historians, knocking him down with a chorus of irate voices.
I myself have no problems with it. In fact I have a couple of reasons for liking it.
The first has to do with the barb that Nievera went the route of show biz by aping the American singers (mostly black) who make the “Star-Spangled Banner” sound like Motown each time an American boxer takes to the ring. Which, as the nastier remarks go, is probably because Nievera is an American at heart and on paper. I leave others to argue where Nievera’s loyalties lie, though given all the open and closet “statehooders” here—Filipinos who long for the country to become a state of the United States—not least among the congressmen, I wouldn’t advise pressing this point too loudly.
But even if Nievera went show biz, what of it? Boxing is pretty much show biz, of the loud and glittery type. And though Nievera did not sing “Lupang Hinirang” traditionally, he did not disrespect it either, to use a word much favored by African-Americans.
The reason Americans do not mind their National Anthem sung like gospel (or its modern reincarnations; I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes hip-hop one day) is that they are secure in their patriotism. They are secure in their sense of country. They are secure in their loyalty to flag and country. Enough to withstand Jimi Hendrix’s “sacrilegious” interpretation of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” which he did in Woodstock, his awesome guitar blaring out the din of discord in protest against the Vietnam War. That version has since been elevated to iconic status by baby boomers.
Our prissiness with orthodoxy is in fact a symptom of an affliction as worrisome as swine flu. We like revering tradition because we prefer form over content, because we like showing our love of country in ritual rather than in practice. We like to build busts and monuments to the heroes without liking to follow their ideals and actions, which is really the best tribute to them. The religious equivalent of this is that we like to hear Mass and receive the sacraments without liking to live lives that are not given to lying, cheating, stealing and murdering.
It’s like that line in “Lupang Hinirang:” “Ang mamatay nang dahil say iyo” (“to die for you”). I’ve always said that was a perfect, if ironic, commentary on us. We’ve never had problems dying for country, we’ve always had problems living for it. I’ve always suggested—utter sacrilege!—changing it to, “Ang mabuhay ng dahil sa iyo” (“to live for you”).
My second point is: Why on earth should we regard tradition as intractable or unchangeable?
Even the Rock, or the Church, changes. I still remember the time when the Mass, which used to unfold with Latin incantations, gave way to idiomatic English. Or indeed, horror of horrors, when the Gregorian chant gave way to the “Guitar Mass.” Once things that threatened to make the faithful faithless, plain language and (middle-of-the-road) pop (if not rock) are rock-solid orthodoxy in Masses now.
In the case of historical tradition, I should think changes should not just be acceptable to us, they should be welcome to us. I say this because our lack of sense of history—truly notorious in that we can’t even remember the recent past—owes in great part to our tendency to embalm history. To treat it as something dead and gone and remembered only on the historical equivalents of All Saints’ Day. One natural consequence of this is to turn history into sacred text and the heroes into untouchable objects of worship.
I still remember how we used to look at Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio, Apolinario Mabini and the other heroes that way, courtesy of high school and college. Something the new wave of historians led by Renato Constantino corrected, turning them into ordinary folk who did extraordinary things in their time and place. No less, or more, than the activists did in their time and place. The process of demystification, or “humanization,” would culminate in historians like Ambeth Ocampo who would make Rizal et al. as contemporary as, well, Nievera’s rendition of the National Anthem.
Which makes me wonder why Ambeth in particular should disapprove of that rendition. I recall that when he was pilloried by purists for “watering down” history with his “pop” version of it, I wrote a column saying that far from detracting from the worth of history, he added to it. Specifically by making the past present, by making the dead living, by making history not history in the idiomatic sense of “we’re outta here” but history in the sense of current events. The power of history lies precisely in its being living history, or a “continuing past,” as Constantino put it. One would imagine that a continuing past uses the idioms or idiosyncrasies of the flowing present. That’s what makes the past worth remembering. That’s what makes the past worth living.
It’s not just that I don’t think Nievera has done any harm by his version, it is that I think he has done much good with it. Anything that hooks the youth in particular of this amnesiac country to their past, even if it feels like a right hook to those who take that past reverentially, is fine by me. History has been known to rock, history has been known to roll. Sometimes, history has even been known to OPM.
In any case, I have a lot of friends who’ve always thought the National Anthem wasn’t “Lupang Hinirang” but Juan de la Cruz’s “Ang Himig Natin.”
---------------------
Thanks to Bernadette for bringing this to my attention. FB is great!
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:22:00 05/11/2009
Filed Under: Music, Entertainment (general), history, Customs & Traditions
I beg to disagree with some friends on this. “This” is the way Martin Nievera sang “Lupang Hinirang” in the Pacquiao-Hatton fight, which has brought him into a brawl with preservers of Filipino tradition. The fight has so far been lopsided, with many authority figures, from congressmen to historians, knocking him down with a chorus of irate voices.
I myself have no problems with it. In fact I have a couple of reasons for liking it.
The first has to do with the barb that Nievera went the route of show biz by aping the American singers (mostly black) who make the “Star-Spangled Banner” sound like Motown each time an American boxer takes to the ring. Which, as the nastier remarks go, is probably because Nievera is an American at heart and on paper. I leave others to argue where Nievera’s loyalties lie, though given all the open and closet “statehooders” here—Filipinos who long for the country to become a state of the United States—not least among the congressmen, I wouldn’t advise pressing this point too loudly.
But even if Nievera went show biz, what of it? Boxing is pretty much show biz, of the loud and glittery type. And though Nievera did not sing “Lupang Hinirang” traditionally, he did not disrespect it either, to use a word much favored by African-Americans.
The reason Americans do not mind their National Anthem sung like gospel (or its modern reincarnations; I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes hip-hop one day) is that they are secure in their patriotism. They are secure in their sense of country. They are secure in their loyalty to flag and country. Enough to withstand Jimi Hendrix’s “sacrilegious” interpretation of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” which he did in Woodstock, his awesome guitar blaring out the din of discord in protest against the Vietnam War. That version has since been elevated to iconic status by baby boomers.
Our prissiness with orthodoxy is in fact a symptom of an affliction as worrisome as swine flu. We like revering tradition because we prefer form over content, because we like showing our love of country in ritual rather than in practice. We like to build busts and monuments to the heroes without liking to follow their ideals and actions, which is really the best tribute to them. The religious equivalent of this is that we like to hear Mass and receive the sacraments without liking to live lives that are not given to lying, cheating, stealing and murdering.
It’s like that line in “Lupang Hinirang:” “Ang mamatay nang dahil say iyo” (“to die for you”). I’ve always said that was a perfect, if ironic, commentary on us. We’ve never had problems dying for country, we’ve always had problems living for it. I’ve always suggested—utter sacrilege!—changing it to, “Ang mabuhay ng dahil sa iyo” (“to live for you”).
My second point is: Why on earth should we regard tradition as intractable or unchangeable?
Even the Rock, or the Church, changes. I still remember the time when the Mass, which used to unfold with Latin incantations, gave way to idiomatic English. Or indeed, horror of horrors, when the Gregorian chant gave way to the “Guitar Mass.” Once things that threatened to make the faithful faithless, plain language and (middle-of-the-road) pop (if not rock) are rock-solid orthodoxy in Masses now.
In the case of historical tradition, I should think changes should not just be acceptable to us, they should be welcome to us. I say this because our lack of sense of history—truly notorious in that we can’t even remember the recent past—owes in great part to our tendency to embalm history. To treat it as something dead and gone and remembered only on the historical equivalents of All Saints’ Day. One natural consequence of this is to turn history into sacred text and the heroes into untouchable objects of worship.
I still remember how we used to look at Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio, Apolinario Mabini and the other heroes that way, courtesy of high school and college. Something the new wave of historians led by Renato Constantino corrected, turning them into ordinary folk who did extraordinary things in their time and place. No less, or more, than the activists did in their time and place. The process of demystification, or “humanization,” would culminate in historians like Ambeth Ocampo who would make Rizal et al. as contemporary as, well, Nievera’s rendition of the National Anthem.
Which makes me wonder why Ambeth in particular should disapprove of that rendition. I recall that when he was pilloried by purists for “watering down” history with his “pop” version of it, I wrote a column saying that far from detracting from the worth of history, he added to it. Specifically by making the past present, by making the dead living, by making history not history in the idiomatic sense of “we’re outta here” but history in the sense of current events. The power of history lies precisely in its being living history, or a “continuing past,” as Constantino put it. One would imagine that a continuing past uses the idioms or idiosyncrasies of the flowing present. That’s what makes the past worth remembering. That’s what makes the past worth living.
It’s not just that I don’t think Nievera has done any harm by his version, it is that I think he has done much good with it. Anything that hooks the youth in particular of this amnesiac country to their past, even if it feels like a right hook to those who take that past reverentially, is fine by me. History has been known to rock, history has been known to roll. Sometimes, history has even been known to OPM.
In any case, I have a lot of friends who’ve always thought the National Anthem wasn’t “Lupang Hinirang” but Juan de la Cruz’s “Ang Himig Natin.”
---------------------
Thanks to Bernadette for bringing this to my attention. FB is great!
Monday, June 29, 2009
Our massacred peasants by F Sionil Jose
HINDSIGHT By F Sionil Jose Updated June 29, 2009 12:00 AM
The murder the other week of Rene Peñas, who led the Sumilao farmers in their march from Bukidnon to Manila, and the violent eviction of the demonstrators from the premises of Congress at about the same time, evoked painful memories of peasant travail in the past. Rene Peñas was certainly not the first farm leader to die at the hands of those who oppose agrarian reform. And those demonstrators in Congress belong to a devoted lineage of farmers who tried — and failed — to redress their sorry lot. Sure, the comprehensive agrarian reform program has been extended but so much has yet to be done, particularly in the coconut and sugar lands.
We are an agricultural country that should be able to produce enough food for ourselves, but this government, dominated as it has always been by landlords, has long ignored the peasantry. In a sense, its hierarchs have never grasped the profound nationalist and religious roots of the aspirations of our very poor as well as their rigid compulsion to revolt.
Let us start with the Colorums of Tayug, Pangasinan in 1931. My first informant on that mini-rebellion was the late Narciso Ramos, father of President Fidel V. Ramos. He was then a journalist in Asingan near Tayug, just like Rosales where I was born. He had written about the uprising, knew its origins in landlord oppression for in Asingan, as in Rosales, were believers of the faith.
Colorum is not the official name of that peasant group. The word is from the Latin mass, and they believed in quasi-religious chants and anting-anting (charms), which supposedly endowed them with superpowers. Soon after the word came to mean illegal objects like colorum jeepneys, colorum firearms and the like. Indeed, peasant organizations here and elsewhere in the developing world derive their triumphalist motive from religion.
I interviewed the Colorum leader Pedro Calosa twice in Tayug in the ‘50s when I was with the old Manila Times. It was the harvest season and I came upon him and his wife at work in the fields just outside the town. He was small and very dark. In his youth he had gone to Hawaii like so many young Ilokanos to work in the sugar and pineapple plantations there. While in Hawaii, he organized the farm workers. Deported home, he worked the land as a tenant farmer and started organizing the barrio folk.
Pedro Calosa claimed that the spirits of Rizal, Bonifacio, Mabini—all these illustrious dead—had entered his body. Why these heroes? Because they sacrificed for this land. We see in this simple explanation then the nationalist cant become flesh.
Calosa also said all the peasants in the country were bonded together by the soil and when the Colorums struck, they expected the entire peasantry would rise with them. It did not happen for though suffering had fired them, the rest who were oppressed had become comfortable with their chains. The Colorums holed up in the Catholic church until the following day when a Constabulary company from Manila arrived and dislodged them.
Like Rene Peñas of Sumilao, Pedro Calosa of Tayug was murdered; his passing evoked no outcry even from the poor he so tenaciously defended.
The Sakdal revolt erupted a scant four years after the failed Colorum uprising. The acknowledged founder of the Sakdal (to defend) movement was Benigno Ramos, a minor government functionary, Tagalog writer and eloquent rabblerouser. He advocated the partitioning of the haciendas and the expulsion of the United States. He was also pro-Japanese as were some politicians at the time who saw in the Japanese experience a possible model for our own modernization, as well as emancipation from Western imperialism. As a political party, the Sakdalistas were well knit, welded together by class feelings. On May 2, 1935, they seized municipal buildings in Laguna and Bulacan. The revolt was immediately crushed but not after many were killed. Benigno Ramos fled to Japan and returned during the Japanese Occupation. The Sakdals then morphed into the Ganap Party and formed the dreaded Makapili which brought death to many Filipinos. We see in the Sakdals, a nationalist peasant-based movement, corrupted into a tool of Japanese conquest.
In spite of its ignoble deterioration, like the Colorums, the Sakdals signify peasant support for revolution.
In the mid ‘50s in Laguna, in the shadow of Mt. Makiling, which is deified by many of the people in its environs. I met Valentin de los Santos, the leader of the Watawat ng Lahi — the Rizalista faction, later known as the Lapiang Malaya. He figured in the front pages of the newspapers in May 1967 when he led a motley band in a planned Malacañang demonstration. They paused in Taft Avenue in Pasay.
They were in gaudy red and white uniform with yellow capes, and were armed with long bolos. Like the Colorums, they believed that their pig-Latin chants and amulets made them invincible. The Constabulary challenged them and when the smoke of battle cleared, more than 30 of De Los Santos’ ignorant followers lay dead on the pavement. What a waste of human life! Had the military any sense of the past and learned from the Colorums and other nativistic peasant movements, they would have simply sent a sergeant in the resplendent regalia of a high-ranking officer, with golden epaulets and all that gleaming braid to mollify the farmers. Valentin de los Santos was arrested and confined to the Mandaluyong Psychopathic Hospital where he was murdered like Pedro Calosa,
The Hukbalahap (short for Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon or the People’s Army Against the Japanese) started as guerrillas during the Japanese Occupation and became the best organized guerrilla force; later demonized by the United States at the start of the Cold War in 1946. It became HMB (Hukbo Magpalaya ng Bayan) (Army to Liberate the People). I followed closely its genesis and eventual decay. I knew some of its leaders, Fred Saulo, Casto Alejandrino, the Lava brothers and Luis Taruc who became my compadre. Their iron commitment, their tremendous capacity for sacrifice were truly admirable.
Only the other day, Francisco Lava of the succeeding Lava generation and I were reminiscing about his forebears who certainly were not dirt poor tenant farmers. The Lavas, Casto Alejandrino belonged to the wealthy principalia as did Pedro Abad Santos whom Luis Taruc idolized. Juan Feleo of Nueva Ecija who was elected member of Congress in the early Forties was also one such paragon — rich, urbane, he gave up everything, his lands, his family, his life for the peasantry. I recreated Luis Taruc whom I knew best as Ka Lucio, the faded revolutionary in my novel Mass.
The Huks were eventually fractured not really by ideological disagreements or ethnic loyalties but by the unsinkable egoism of its leaders — the very same tragic flaw which sundered the New People’s Army and almost all of our fledgling political institutions.
An element of religiosity also suffused the Huks, not so much in their allegiance to the communist creed. Among the lower echelons was the same religiosity that infused the Colorums and the Sakdals. As Luis Taruc himself had confided — if he was a bit more opportunistic, he would have exploited that religiosity of his followers, some of whom had regarded him as possessed with unearthly powers, which explained his miraculous escapes.
The greatest tragedy during the administration of President Cory Aquino happened in the late afternoon of January 22, 1986 when some 20 farmer demonstrators were killed in Mendiola street by the military. How could such a tragedy occur? Whose fault was it? The farmers under Jaime Tadeo had wanted to see the President to press their claims for agrarian reform which Cory, in the previous election campaign, had promised. She was not ignorant of the agrarian unrest that cankered Central Luzon where her vast 6,000 hectare-hacienda is located — the sanctuary no less of the New People’s Army Commander, Dante Buscayno. She refused to see the farmers because, as she explained, “they had no appointment.”
It was all there on television for us to see — the volleys of gunfire, the frenzied dash for cover of the demonstrators, the dead and wounded sprawled on the pavement.
Prof. Toru Yano of the Kyoto Center of Southeast Asian Studies told me later that Cory was elected to get the Nobel Peace Prize that year after the triumph of EDSA I. Professor Yano who was the Asian member of that Nobel Committee said that senseless massacre aborted it.
In death, that tiller from Sumilao, at the very least, will be remembered for he had a name. But those who fell in Mendiola, and all over the world as well, those selfless men with the plow who feed us, will pass as anonymously as the beasts of burden that help make this sweet earth bear fruit. We who survive, who are sustained by their labor are yoked with them. If we can, nameless though they were, we must always remember what they did, render imperishable the terrible injustice of their dying — an outrage which will never be redressed. This, too, is the indelible shame we must bear for having elected to power the very same tyrants who forged their chains, and worse, became their remorseless executioners.
In the Senate, the most important agenda in Senator Loren Legarda’s 2010 platform is her espousal of agriculture, her hopes that eventually we will be able to feed 90 million Filipinos. In media, I salute the economist Solita Monsod for her dogged support for the peasantry, an advocacy backed by competent scholarship. Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales, the Catcholic Bishops’ Conference, too, and all those religious orders, the Jesuits— demand agrarian reform. We are grateful to the late Fr. Hector Mauri who devoted a lifetime to the welfare of the sacadas of Negros, so, too, to Fr. Arsenio C. Jesena, Archbishop Antonio Ledesma, and to so many young priests and nuns.
The revolutionary tradition fortified by the peasantry is the dimly remembered continuum in our history. Even the New People’s Army — in spite of its wretched failure after 40 years — is agrarian in its inspiration. I had asked Luis Taruc if any of the NPA cadres ever visited him to learn from him or, at the very least, establish that connection — and he said, no.
There, of course, lies what ails so many of the attempts to reform this country. The methods are not indigenized, the young revolutionists think they are reinventing the wheel.
For those of us who have plowed a fallow field and planted rice, who have watched the greening of the land, the transformation of emerald expanses into vistas of shimmering gold as the grain ripens — we know there is no sight more evocative than this, or a scent as fragrant as that of the newly harvested field. Verily, it is the peasants who understand the vibrant meaning of all these, of mother earth as the nation we must love and worship, our most precious gift from God. Such devotion is enshrined in our national anthem, sang by every schoolchild. To sing the anthem in its prescribed form, to honor our flag — these are much too little a price for us Filipinos to pay.
So then, if the peasant is the true nationalist — he could also be the sterling revolutionary who subscribes implicitly to what that Sakdal general, Salud Algabre said in 1935. “No rebellion ever fails — each one is a step in the right direction.”
Philstar
The murder the other week of Rene Peñas, who led the Sumilao farmers in their march from Bukidnon to Manila, and the violent eviction of the demonstrators from the premises of Congress at about the same time, evoked painful memories of peasant travail in the past. Rene Peñas was certainly not the first farm leader to die at the hands of those who oppose agrarian reform. And those demonstrators in Congress belong to a devoted lineage of farmers who tried — and failed — to redress their sorry lot. Sure, the comprehensive agrarian reform program has been extended but so much has yet to be done, particularly in the coconut and sugar lands.
We are an agricultural country that should be able to produce enough food for ourselves, but this government, dominated as it has always been by landlords, has long ignored the peasantry. In a sense, its hierarchs have never grasped the profound nationalist and religious roots of the aspirations of our very poor as well as their rigid compulsion to revolt.
Let us start with the Colorums of Tayug, Pangasinan in 1931. My first informant on that mini-rebellion was the late Narciso Ramos, father of President Fidel V. Ramos. He was then a journalist in Asingan near Tayug, just like Rosales where I was born. He had written about the uprising, knew its origins in landlord oppression for in Asingan, as in Rosales, were believers of the faith.
Colorum is not the official name of that peasant group. The word is from the Latin mass, and they believed in quasi-religious chants and anting-anting (charms), which supposedly endowed them with superpowers. Soon after the word came to mean illegal objects like colorum jeepneys, colorum firearms and the like. Indeed, peasant organizations here and elsewhere in the developing world derive their triumphalist motive from religion.
I interviewed the Colorum leader Pedro Calosa twice in Tayug in the ‘50s when I was with the old Manila Times. It was the harvest season and I came upon him and his wife at work in the fields just outside the town. He was small and very dark. In his youth he had gone to Hawaii like so many young Ilokanos to work in the sugar and pineapple plantations there. While in Hawaii, he organized the farm workers. Deported home, he worked the land as a tenant farmer and started organizing the barrio folk.
Pedro Calosa claimed that the spirits of Rizal, Bonifacio, Mabini—all these illustrious dead—had entered his body. Why these heroes? Because they sacrificed for this land. We see in this simple explanation then the nationalist cant become flesh.
Calosa also said all the peasants in the country were bonded together by the soil and when the Colorums struck, they expected the entire peasantry would rise with them. It did not happen for though suffering had fired them, the rest who were oppressed had become comfortable with their chains. The Colorums holed up in the Catholic church until the following day when a Constabulary company from Manila arrived and dislodged them.
Like Rene Peñas of Sumilao, Pedro Calosa of Tayug was murdered; his passing evoked no outcry even from the poor he so tenaciously defended.
The Sakdal revolt erupted a scant four years after the failed Colorum uprising. The acknowledged founder of the Sakdal (to defend) movement was Benigno Ramos, a minor government functionary, Tagalog writer and eloquent rabblerouser. He advocated the partitioning of the haciendas and the expulsion of the United States. He was also pro-Japanese as were some politicians at the time who saw in the Japanese experience a possible model for our own modernization, as well as emancipation from Western imperialism. As a political party, the Sakdalistas were well knit, welded together by class feelings. On May 2, 1935, they seized municipal buildings in Laguna and Bulacan. The revolt was immediately crushed but not after many were killed. Benigno Ramos fled to Japan and returned during the Japanese Occupation. The Sakdals then morphed into the Ganap Party and formed the dreaded Makapili which brought death to many Filipinos. We see in the Sakdals, a nationalist peasant-based movement, corrupted into a tool of Japanese conquest.
In spite of its ignoble deterioration, like the Colorums, the Sakdals signify peasant support for revolution.
In the mid ‘50s in Laguna, in the shadow of Mt. Makiling, which is deified by many of the people in its environs. I met Valentin de los Santos, the leader of the Watawat ng Lahi — the Rizalista faction, later known as the Lapiang Malaya. He figured in the front pages of the newspapers in May 1967 when he led a motley band in a planned Malacañang demonstration. They paused in Taft Avenue in Pasay.
They were in gaudy red and white uniform with yellow capes, and were armed with long bolos. Like the Colorums, they believed that their pig-Latin chants and amulets made them invincible. The Constabulary challenged them and when the smoke of battle cleared, more than 30 of De Los Santos’ ignorant followers lay dead on the pavement. What a waste of human life! Had the military any sense of the past and learned from the Colorums and other nativistic peasant movements, they would have simply sent a sergeant in the resplendent regalia of a high-ranking officer, with golden epaulets and all that gleaming braid to mollify the farmers. Valentin de los Santos was arrested and confined to the Mandaluyong Psychopathic Hospital where he was murdered like Pedro Calosa,
The Hukbalahap (short for Hukbo ng Bayan Laban sa Hapon or the People’s Army Against the Japanese) started as guerrillas during the Japanese Occupation and became the best organized guerrilla force; later demonized by the United States at the start of the Cold War in 1946. It became HMB (Hukbo Magpalaya ng Bayan) (Army to Liberate the People). I followed closely its genesis and eventual decay. I knew some of its leaders, Fred Saulo, Casto Alejandrino, the Lava brothers and Luis Taruc who became my compadre. Their iron commitment, their tremendous capacity for sacrifice were truly admirable.
Only the other day, Francisco Lava of the succeeding Lava generation and I were reminiscing about his forebears who certainly were not dirt poor tenant farmers. The Lavas, Casto Alejandrino belonged to the wealthy principalia as did Pedro Abad Santos whom Luis Taruc idolized. Juan Feleo of Nueva Ecija who was elected member of Congress in the early Forties was also one such paragon — rich, urbane, he gave up everything, his lands, his family, his life for the peasantry. I recreated Luis Taruc whom I knew best as Ka Lucio, the faded revolutionary in my novel Mass.
The Huks were eventually fractured not really by ideological disagreements or ethnic loyalties but by the unsinkable egoism of its leaders — the very same tragic flaw which sundered the New People’s Army and almost all of our fledgling political institutions.
An element of religiosity also suffused the Huks, not so much in their allegiance to the communist creed. Among the lower echelons was the same religiosity that infused the Colorums and the Sakdals. As Luis Taruc himself had confided — if he was a bit more opportunistic, he would have exploited that religiosity of his followers, some of whom had regarded him as possessed with unearthly powers, which explained his miraculous escapes.
The greatest tragedy during the administration of President Cory Aquino happened in the late afternoon of January 22, 1986 when some 20 farmer demonstrators were killed in Mendiola street by the military. How could such a tragedy occur? Whose fault was it? The farmers under Jaime Tadeo had wanted to see the President to press their claims for agrarian reform which Cory, in the previous election campaign, had promised. She was not ignorant of the agrarian unrest that cankered Central Luzon where her vast 6,000 hectare-hacienda is located — the sanctuary no less of the New People’s Army Commander, Dante Buscayno. She refused to see the farmers because, as she explained, “they had no appointment.”
It was all there on television for us to see — the volleys of gunfire, the frenzied dash for cover of the demonstrators, the dead and wounded sprawled on the pavement.
Prof. Toru Yano of the Kyoto Center of Southeast Asian Studies told me later that Cory was elected to get the Nobel Peace Prize that year after the triumph of EDSA I. Professor Yano who was the Asian member of that Nobel Committee said that senseless massacre aborted it.
In death, that tiller from Sumilao, at the very least, will be remembered for he had a name. But those who fell in Mendiola, and all over the world as well, those selfless men with the plow who feed us, will pass as anonymously as the beasts of burden that help make this sweet earth bear fruit. We who survive, who are sustained by their labor are yoked with them. If we can, nameless though they were, we must always remember what they did, render imperishable the terrible injustice of their dying — an outrage which will never be redressed. This, too, is the indelible shame we must bear for having elected to power the very same tyrants who forged their chains, and worse, became their remorseless executioners.
In the Senate, the most important agenda in Senator Loren Legarda’s 2010 platform is her espousal of agriculture, her hopes that eventually we will be able to feed 90 million Filipinos. In media, I salute the economist Solita Monsod for her dogged support for the peasantry, an advocacy backed by competent scholarship. Cardinal Gaudencio Rosales, the Catcholic Bishops’ Conference, too, and all those religious orders, the Jesuits— demand agrarian reform. We are grateful to the late Fr. Hector Mauri who devoted a lifetime to the welfare of the sacadas of Negros, so, too, to Fr. Arsenio C. Jesena, Archbishop Antonio Ledesma, and to so many young priests and nuns.
The revolutionary tradition fortified by the peasantry is the dimly remembered continuum in our history. Even the New People’s Army — in spite of its wretched failure after 40 years — is agrarian in its inspiration. I had asked Luis Taruc if any of the NPA cadres ever visited him to learn from him or, at the very least, establish that connection — and he said, no.
There, of course, lies what ails so many of the attempts to reform this country. The methods are not indigenized, the young revolutionists think they are reinventing the wheel.
For those of us who have plowed a fallow field and planted rice, who have watched the greening of the land, the transformation of emerald expanses into vistas of shimmering gold as the grain ripens — we know there is no sight more evocative than this, or a scent as fragrant as that of the newly harvested field. Verily, it is the peasants who understand the vibrant meaning of all these, of mother earth as the nation we must love and worship, our most precious gift from God. Such devotion is enshrined in our national anthem, sang by every schoolchild. To sing the anthem in its prescribed form, to honor our flag — these are much too little a price for us Filipinos to pay.
So then, if the peasant is the true nationalist — he could also be the sterling revolutionary who subscribes implicitly to what that Sakdal general, Salud Algabre said in 1935. “No rebellion ever fails — each one is a step in the right direction.”
Philstar
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
What’s happening in a Nueva Ecija town by Tonette Orejas
HARVARD TAKES NOTICE By Tonette Orejas
Philippine Daily Inquirer, Central Luzon Desk
First Posted 02:36:00 06/24/2009
MANILA, Philippines--A progressive municipality in Nueva Ecija, whose patron, Saint Isidore, was a farmer like most of its 47,000 people, has gained attention at the prestigious Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government (KSG) in Massachusetts.
“I never thought that the small things that we do in our small town—the things that the ‘great’ leaders of our country take for granted—will be magnified, felt and noticed here in Boston today,” Mayor Sonia Lorenzo of San Isidro in Nueva Ecija said in her presentation on governance and democratic leadership at a KSG conference last week.
The conference mainly tackled the ministry of Gawad Kalinga (GK), a Catholic Church-affiliated group that has helped more than one million Filipinos reach their dreams to own homes and live in peaceful, productive communities.
“What happened in San Isidro went beyond building houses and organizing communities. In our town, we applied in public governance the GK-style of working from the bottom,” she said in an interview by e-mail.
Her speech, “Creating a Culture of Change,” sums up for the first time the steps that local officials and residents have embarked on and hurdled together to take San Isidro out of the rut of traditional politics and really make local government serve the people.
Out of domestic duties
Lorenzo was hardly prepared for public governance. A chemical engineer, she went full-time in rearing four children.
But four days before the 1998 elections, her townmates plucked her out of domestic duties, pleading her to run for mayor when a candidate was disqualified. She won.
But the town was in a financial mess, the municipal employees demoralized and many of the residents distrustful of government.
GK came after a storm devastated the town. “Our partnership opened the gate for social transformation in San Isidro. We learned the effective way of addressing poverty through citizen’s participation. We learned the GK way,” Lorenzo recalled.
By that, she meant making people “co-own the issues and co-create the solutions to come up with a common response in addressing the issues.”
The result, she said, is a guide for “bottom-up governance that now prevails in the town.”
In this leadership style, she said “listening is the foundation to participation because it enabled us to respond to the right problems quickly.”
Their venues were multisectoral planning sessions. Local officials pushed this further by engaging students in doing basic surveys.
“This deepened their understanding of San Isidro; at the same time, it saved us from expensive survey,” she said.
Integrating people is a must.
“We found that when we strengthened the interest groups, we effectively spread the leadership and stewardship of the issues and empowered people who are concerned. In other words, we effectively decentralized governance and let citizens manage some of the response through advocacies and civic initiated projects,” Lorenzo said.
“We integrated the people into the work in order for us to deepen our understanding and make our responses more effective.”
People’s affirmation
It did not stop there. The officials had to ask the residents to validate the programs before actually doing the projects.
They also needed to change how they regard themselves in the change process.
“As we engaged institutions who can help, we went back to the people and slowly defined our accountabilities. We did this in order to ensure the success of the programs and maintain the trust of the funders,” Lorenzo said.
Making the people understand this new way of doing things was difficult. Barangay health workers, the frontline workers, put in the magic.
Trained in leadership and communication, they explained the goals of the local government and the roles of the residents.
Following their own score cards, they enrolled 95 percent of the population in the municipality’s health insurance program. No dole, it required the residents to pay their share of the dues.
“As we launched other programs, we slowly formulated a barangay-based health care system which became the basis for our Client Needs Centered Clinic. We still have a long way, but we have already addressed many pressing issues in health,” she said.
Zero infant mortality
The work is paying off and one of the best results is that, the town had zero infant death in 2008.
“Even with the flaring of dengue epidemic, we have kept the town dengue free last year, as well. And with the inevitable coming of H1N1, we are praying we can respond adequately,” Lorenzo said.
Sustaining the gains is another challenge.
“As much as we scaled down to the barangay, we also scaled up to expand the work. And we found GK to be a great venue for transformative learning. When we ran out of houses to build, we brought GK into the other programs we have. We brought GK to the schools. We brought GK to the work of the parishes. We brought GK to the [people’s organizations],” she said.
She added: “It was a whole new perspective of enabling people [to] participate and gradually making them accountable to the needs of the community.”
Local officials also integrated the GK approach into the curriculum of the College of Immaculate Conception (CIC) so students would learn it, according to Julia Embuscado, a teacher.
Nurturing the enabler
The fifth lesson is nurturing the enabler.
“We encountered many obstacles and resistance. This is when we realized that we needed more people on our side. As we work to build constituencies, we also engaged in leadership training to bring more people to the work,” Lorenzo said.
Ateneo de Manila University and CIC were called in to put together a master’s program for local executives. The 18-month program in public management seeks to enhance technical competencies.
San Isidro, Lorenzo said, has now become a “sanctuary” of engagements for change.
Next month, local officials will launch the Sinag Ecija Leadership and Social Accountability Institute. The institute will house the different initiatives that are ongoing on the ground.
Communities have their own score cards of what they want to attain and how to deliver the targets. Farmers have almost doubled their harvests from 80 cavans of rice to 150 cavans.
San Isidro’s income from taxes has increased by 515.61 percent from 1999 level, prompting the Department of Finance to classify the town into second class (annual income: P45 million-P55 million) from fourth (annual income: P25 million-P35 million).
Better electoral behavior
Citizens’ participation, Lorenzo said, “resulted in trust in governance and better electoral behavior.”
“While we still suffer and struggle through poverty and traditional politics, we present a clear avenue for change that people can follow,” she told participants in the KSG conference.
“We will think of innovative and practical means to preserve this freedom. We will extend ourselves to bridge the democratic gap that our country is now suffering from. We will continue to realize the republic that our country is chartered and not merely as our lawmakers profess. And most importantly, we will continue to integrate the needs of the poor into our policies. This is the ultimate measure of our transparency,” she said.
Filed Under: Elections, Health, Culture (general), Governance
Philippine Daily Inquirer, Central Luzon Desk
First Posted 02:36:00 06/24/2009
MANILA, Philippines--A progressive municipality in Nueva Ecija, whose patron, Saint Isidore, was a farmer like most of its 47,000 people, has gained attention at the prestigious Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government (KSG) in Massachusetts.
“I never thought that the small things that we do in our small town—the things that the ‘great’ leaders of our country take for granted—will be magnified, felt and noticed here in Boston today,” Mayor Sonia Lorenzo of San Isidro in Nueva Ecija said in her presentation on governance and democratic leadership at a KSG conference last week.
The conference mainly tackled the ministry of Gawad Kalinga (GK), a Catholic Church-affiliated group that has helped more than one million Filipinos reach their dreams to own homes and live in peaceful, productive communities.
“What happened in San Isidro went beyond building houses and organizing communities. In our town, we applied in public governance the GK-style of working from the bottom,” she said in an interview by e-mail.
Her speech, “Creating a Culture of Change,” sums up for the first time the steps that local officials and residents have embarked on and hurdled together to take San Isidro out of the rut of traditional politics and really make local government serve the people.
Out of domestic duties
Lorenzo was hardly prepared for public governance. A chemical engineer, she went full-time in rearing four children.
But four days before the 1998 elections, her townmates plucked her out of domestic duties, pleading her to run for mayor when a candidate was disqualified. She won.
But the town was in a financial mess, the municipal employees demoralized and many of the residents distrustful of government.
GK came after a storm devastated the town. “Our partnership opened the gate for social transformation in San Isidro. We learned the effective way of addressing poverty through citizen’s participation. We learned the GK way,” Lorenzo recalled.
By that, she meant making people “co-own the issues and co-create the solutions to come up with a common response in addressing the issues.”
The result, she said, is a guide for “bottom-up governance that now prevails in the town.”
In this leadership style, she said “listening is the foundation to participation because it enabled us to respond to the right problems quickly.”
Their venues were multisectoral planning sessions. Local officials pushed this further by engaging students in doing basic surveys.
“This deepened their understanding of San Isidro; at the same time, it saved us from expensive survey,” she said.
Integrating people is a must.
“We found that when we strengthened the interest groups, we effectively spread the leadership and stewardship of the issues and empowered people who are concerned. In other words, we effectively decentralized governance and let citizens manage some of the response through advocacies and civic initiated projects,” Lorenzo said.
“We integrated the people into the work in order for us to deepen our understanding and make our responses more effective.”
People’s affirmation
It did not stop there. The officials had to ask the residents to validate the programs before actually doing the projects.
They also needed to change how they regard themselves in the change process.
“As we engaged institutions who can help, we went back to the people and slowly defined our accountabilities. We did this in order to ensure the success of the programs and maintain the trust of the funders,” Lorenzo said.
Making the people understand this new way of doing things was difficult. Barangay health workers, the frontline workers, put in the magic.
Trained in leadership and communication, they explained the goals of the local government and the roles of the residents.
Following their own score cards, they enrolled 95 percent of the population in the municipality’s health insurance program. No dole, it required the residents to pay their share of the dues.
“As we launched other programs, we slowly formulated a barangay-based health care system which became the basis for our Client Needs Centered Clinic. We still have a long way, but we have already addressed many pressing issues in health,” she said.
Zero infant mortality
The work is paying off and one of the best results is that, the town had zero infant death in 2008.
“Even with the flaring of dengue epidemic, we have kept the town dengue free last year, as well. And with the inevitable coming of H1N1, we are praying we can respond adequately,” Lorenzo said.
Sustaining the gains is another challenge.
“As much as we scaled down to the barangay, we also scaled up to expand the work. And we found GK to be a great venue for transformative learning. When we ran out of houses to build, we brought GK into the other programs we have. We brought GK to the schools. We brought GK to the work of the parishes. We brought GK to the [people’s organizations],” she said.
She added: “It was a whole new perspective of enabling people [to] participate and gradually making them accountable to the needs of the community.”
Local officials also integrated the GK approach into the curriculum of the College of Immaculate Conception (CIC) so students would learn it, according to Julia Embuscado, a teacher.
Nurturing the enabler
The fifth lesson is nurturing the enabler.
“We encountered many obstacles and resistance. This is when we realized that we needed more people on our side. As we work to build constituencies, we also engaged in leadership training to bring more people to the work,” Lorenzo said.
Ateneo de Manila University and CIC were called in to put together a master’s program for local executives. The 18-month program in public management seeks to enhance technical competencies.
San Isidro, Lorenzo said, has now become a “sanctuary” of engagements for change.
Next month, local officials will launch the Sinag Ecija Leadership and Social Accountability Institute. The institute will house the different initiatives that are ongoing on the ground.
Communities have their own score cards of what they want to attain and how to deliver the targets. Farmers have almost doubled their harvests from 80 cavans of rice to 150 cavans.
San Isidro’s income from taxes has increased by 515.61 percent from 1999 level, prompting the Department of Finance to classify the town into second class (annual income: P45 million-P55 million) from fourth (annual income: P25 million-P35 million).
Better electoral behavior
Citizens’ participation, Lorenzo said, “resulted in trust in governance and better electoral behavior.”
“While we still suffer and struggle through poverty and traditional politics, we present a clear avenue for change that people can follow,” she told participants in the KSG conference.
“We will think of innovative and practical means to preserve this freedom. We will extend ourselves to bridge the democratic gap that our country is now suffering from. We will continue to realize the republic that our country is chartered and not merely as our lawmakers profess. And most importantly, we will continue to integrate the needs of the poor into our policies. This is the ultimate measure of our transparency,” she said.
Filed Under: Elections, Health, Culture (general), Governance
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
The True Decalogue by Apolinario Mabini
"To tell a man to be quiet when a necessity not fulfilled is shaking all the fibers of his being is tantamount to asking a hungry man to be filled before taking the food which he needs."
First. Thou shalt love God and thy honor above all things: God as the fountain of all truth, of all justice and of all activity; and thy honor, the only power which will oblige thee to be faithful, just and industrious.
Second. Thou shalt worship God in the form which thy conscience may deem most righteous and worthy: for in thy conscience, which condemns thy evil deeds and praises thy good ones, speaks thy God.
Third. Thou shalt cultivate the special gifts which God has granted thee, working and studying according to thy ability, never leaving the path of righteousness and justice, in order to attain thy own perfection, by means whereof thou shalt contribute to the progress of humanity; thus; thou shalt fulfill the mission to which God has appointed thee in this life and by so doing, thou shalt be honored, and being honored, thou shalt glorify thy God.
Fourth. Thou shalt love thy country after God and thy honor and more than thyself: for she is the only Paradise which God has given thee in this life, the only patrimony of thy race, the only inheritance of thy ancestors and the only hope of thy posterity; because of her, thou hast life, love and interests, happiness, honor and God.
Fifth. Thou shalt strive for the happiness of thy country before thy own, making of her the kingdom of reason, of justice and of labor: for if she be happy, thou, together with thy family, shalt likewise be happy.
Sixth. Thou shalt strive for the independence of thy country: for only thou canst have any real interest in her advancement and exaltation, because her independence constitutes thy own liberty; her advancement, thy perfection; and her exaltation, thy own glory and immortality.
Seventh. Thou shalt not recognize in thy country the authority of any person who has not been elected by thee and thy countrymen; for authority emanates from God, and as God speaks in the conscience of every man, the person designated and proclaimed by the conscience of a whole people is the only one who can use true authority.
Eighth. Thou shalt strive for a Republic and never for a monarchy in thy country: for the latter exalts one or several families and founds a dynasty; the former makes a people noble and worthy through reason, great through liberty, and prosperous and brilliant through labor.
Ninth. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: for God has imposed upon him, as well as upon thee, the obligation to help thee and not to do unto thee what he would not have thee do unto him; but if thy neighbor, failing in this sacred duty, attempt against thy life, thy liberty and thy interests, then thou shalt destroy and annihilate him for the supreme law of self-preservation prevails.
Tenth. Thou shalt consider thy countryman more than thy neighbor; thou shalt see him thy friend, thy brother or at least thy comrade, with whom thou art bound by one fate, by the same joys and sorrows and by common aspirations and interests.
Therefore, as long as national frontiers subsist, raised and maintained by the selfishness of race and of family, with thy countryman alone shalt thou unite in a perfect solidarity of purpose and interest, in order to have force, not only to resist the common enemy but also to attain all the aims of human life.
------------------------
Notes: Reposted from an ebook by Project Gutenberg.
Produced by Tamiko I. Camacho from page scans provided by University of Michigan.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Paalala sa mga mapagusapin ni Dr Jose P Rizal
Minsa'y dalawang magkaibigan ay nakatagpô ng isang kabibi sa tabi ng dagat. Pinagtalunang ariin ng dalawa't, at ang sabi ng isa'y
—Ako, aniya ang nakakitang una.
—Ako naman ang pumulot, ang sagot ng Kaibigan.
Sa pagtatalong ito'y humarap silá sa hukom at humingî ng hatol. Binuksan ng hukom ang Kabibi, at kinain ang laman at pinaghati sa kanilang dalawa ang balat.
Paalaala sa mga mapagusapin.
Project Gutenberg
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
CJ Puno to lead moral crusade by Jarius Bondoc
Sticker designed and produced by Pinoy Masons."TANZA, Cavite — Chief Justice Reynato Puno is to launch a moral crusade in view of an upsurge of support for his call for clean government. It will be a social movement with formal officers, including spiritual and lay leaders, but strictly no politicians. And its rollout will be before Holy Week, perhaps as early as March 27.
The fifth highest official of the land revealed all this to fellow-Masons who pressed him Saturday for prescriptions for the country’s decline. Institutions are breaking down, they had echoed the spreading fear. Puno replied that the Philippines might end up like other failed democracies. But moral resurgence can halt the slide.
Puno declined for now to name the movement leaders, saying only “there will be no more than ten.” Starting in Manila, they will form chapters nationwide. A think-tank of eminent persons will analyze the main issues and present solutions.
Later in a speech at the inaugural of Provincial Prosecutor Emmanuel Velasco as head Mason of this town, Puno expounded on his moral drive. The family, school, church, media and government are decaying, he quoted recent reports. (Newspapers of late have been criticizing the co-opting of such institutions as Congress, judiciary, business, and the military.) “Our moral fiber is in tatters,” Puno noted. “Filipinos have become inured to corruption. We have become insensitive to immorality. Some have become so callous with their wicked ways.”
For Puno, the spark for moral regeneration “is right there in our Constitution.” The Preamble not only implores “the aid of Almighty God,” but also uniquely mentions “love” among the basic principles. (He credits the insertion of “love” to the late Justice Cecilia Muñoz Palma, who headed the commission that framed the 1987 Constitution.)
In another address three weeks back, the Chief Justice had called for a “moral force” to direct the national course. This fired up sectors that have long been decrying the Arroyo admin’s corruption and attempts to prolong its tenure. Several groups then asked Puno to lead such a moral force. Two politicians who are planning presidential runs in 2010 offered to step aside so long as he joins the race. But Puno declared himself non-partisan."
[From the Philstar.com GOTCHA column of Jarius Bondoc. Updated February 16, 2009 12:00 AM]
The fifth highest official of the land revealed all this to fellow-Masons who pressed him Saturday for prescriptions for the country’s decline. Institutions are breaking down, they had echoed the spreading fear. Puno replied that the Philippines might end up like other failed democracies. But moral resurgence can halt the slide.
Puno declined for now to name the movement leaders, saying only “there will be no more than ten.” Starting in Manila, they will form chapters nationwide. A think-tank of eminent persons will analyze the main issues and present solutions.
Later in a speech at the inaugural of Provincial Prosecutor Emmanuel Velasco as head Mason of this town, Puno expounded on his moral drive. The family, school, church, media and government are decaying, he quoted recent reports. (Newspapers of late have been criticizing the co-opting of such institutions as Congress, judiciary, business, and the military.) “Our moral fiber is in tatters,” Puno noted. “Filipinos have become inured to corruption. We have become insensitive to immorality. Some have become so callous with their wicked ways.”
For Puno, the spark for moral regeneration “is right there in our Constitution.” The Preamble not only implores “the aid of Almighty God,” but also uniquely mentions “love” among the basic principles. (He credits the insertion of “love” to the late Justice Cecilia Muñoz Palma, who headed the commission that framed the 1987 Constitution.)
In another address three weeks back, the Chief Justice had called for a “moral force” to direct the national course. This fired up sectors that have long been decrying the Arroyo admin’s corruption and attempts to prolong its tenure. Several groups then asked Puno to lead such a moral force. Two politicians who are planning presidential runs in 2010 offered to step aside so long as he joins the race. But Puno declared himself non-partisan."
[From the Philstar.com GOTCHA column of Jarius Bondoc. Updated February 16, 2009 12:00 AM]
Welcome Blog Crusader!
Bahay Kubo - Nipa Hut. Photo from the Filipiana collection of the New York Public Library.Probably and most likely that is an apt description of this blog - "Blog Crusader".
A creature, much like an armchair critic who spew and claims to educate the masses on and in the comfort of a gilded life; who find commenting a filler for other aspects of his life. A "former" Pinoy, who by migrating to greener pastures have unconciously given up on the Philippines; much like a rat in a sinking ship. But a Pinoy nevertheless who still clings to his culture, speaking the same language, eating the same comfort food of his boyhood and who still calls the Philippines "home".
There were actually two major events that prompted this blog of sorts:
First and foremost, reading the social commentary of Katherine Mayo entitled "Isles of Fear" [which can be downloaded for free here]; a socio-political commentary about the Philippines under the American rule.
Much to my surprise, the scenes and stories depicted were so familiar, even today after more than half a century when Mayo et al transverse the islands and interviewed and observed what's happening in the whole archipelago.
While, I must admit that there were improvements in the lives of the common tao [common man], for me it wasn't enough.
Secondly, our collective "messianic hope" that a person of great stature will become the President of the country and will make the necessary changes in the lives of the people.
There were so many in the annals of our short history and independence. Today, the name of Chief Justice Reynato Puno is bandied around as our new saviour from the trapos [traditional politicians; to mean corrupt and self serving] come 2010 elections.
With the historic election of the first African-American President in Mr Barrack Obama, and with major financial problems besetting the US; the hopes of its constituents rest on Mr Obama's shoulders. We seem to find hope as well in this current climate. We want a Filipino Obama to lead us out of this wilderness we called corruption.
While I do not discount the importance of a morally centred leadership, a leader can only lead us to water, but can not make us drink it; to paraphrase the saying: "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink."
There is so much an excellent leader can do and that is what is hard with democracies - participatory democracy; you need to participate properly and intelligently to make the system work. One must know the platform of the politician you are voting into office, as well as his political party. One must also be conversant with the economics of the country and how your brand of democracy works. One must always be vigilant and all-knowingly of the current events to be able to comment and act and be part of the decision making process that is democracy. To voice out one's concerns to a government - that is the ideal situation.
But we live in a reality that is not at par with what we would hope for. All we can do is to educate ourselves and strive for that ideal - to make a difference not for ourselves but for our children and our children's children.
We can only hope and dream, much like Dr Jose Rizal, Gat Andres Bonifacio, Mahatma Gandhi, Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela et. al. for a brighter future. And more importantly, we must also act to attain those dreams and hopes!
A creature, much like an armchair critic who spew and claims to educate the masses on and in the comfort of a gilded life; who find commenting a filler for other aspects of his life. A "former" Pinoy, who by migrating to greener pastures have unconciously given up on the Philippines; much like a rat in a sinking ship. But a Pinoy nevertheless who still clings to his culture, speaking the same language, eating the same comfort food of his boyhood and who still calls the Philippines "home".
There were actually two major events that prompted this blog of sorts:
First and foremost, reading the social commentary of Katherine Mayo entitled "Isles of Fear" [which can be downloaded for free here]; a socio-political commentary about the Philippines under the American rule.
Much to my surprise, the scenes and stories depicted were so familiar, even today after more than half a century when Mayo et al transverse the islands and interviewed and observed what's happening in the whole archipelago.
While, I must admit that there were improvements in the lives of the common tao [common man], for me it wasn't enough.
Secondly, our collective "messianic hope" that a person of great stature will become the President of the country and will make the necessary changes in the lives of the people.
There were so many in the annals of our short history and independence. Today, the name of Chief Justice Reynato Puno is bandied around as our new saviour from the trapos [traditional politicians; to mean corrupt and self serving] come 2010 elections.
With the historic election of the first African-American President in Mr Barrack Obama, and with major financial problems besetting the US; the hopes of its constituents rest on Mr Obama's shoulders. We seem to find hope as well in this current climate. We want a Filipino Obama to lead us out of this wilderness we called corruption.
While I do not discount the importance of a morally centred leadership, a leader can only lead us to water, but can not make us drink it; to paraphrase the saying: "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink."
There is so much an excellent leader can do and that is what is hard with democracies - participatory democracy; you need to participate properly and intelligently to make the system work. One must know the platform of the politician you are voting into office, as well as his political party. One must also be conversant with the economics of the country and how your brand of democracy works. One must always be vigilant and all-knowingly of the current events to be able to comment and act and be part of the decision making process that is democracy. To voice out one's concerns to a government - that is the ideal situation.
But we live in a reality that is not at par with what we would hope for. All we can do is to educate ourselves and strive for that ideal - to make a difference not for ourselves but for our children and our children's children.
We can only hope and dream, much like Dr Jose Rizal, Gat Andres Bonifacio, Mahatma Gandhi, Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Nelson Mandela et. al. for a brighter future. And more importantly, we must also act to attain those dreams and hopes!
"To live is to be among men, and to be among men is to struggle, a struggle not only with them but with oneself; with their passions, but also with one's own."
Dr Jose Rizal - Letter to his family, Dapitan (c. 1884)
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