Laboring Poor

“In recent times the working people of the capital have become impossible to deal with, because they have read in our books truths too potent for them.” -          Restif de la Bretonne, quoted from the Enlightenment by Hampson

The renaissance of labor unrest in the cities especially Metro Manila in the Philippines evinces the long standing workers’ universal struggle for recognition of their rights to living wage, humane working condition, collective bargaining, and security of tenure. It is universally accepted that a strike is a legitimate weapon of the workers to push for their rights. Or else they will be left at the total mercy from capitalists.

While recognizing the right to strike, the Constitution has laid two conditions for a strike; it must be peaceful and it must be in accordance with the Labor Code has supplemented the conditions, that it must be consistent with the national interest. A peaceful strike is a strike all right but how can a message get across? I know that a heavy man leaves a deep footprint and that of the light man is wiped by a sweeping wind. Like the cases LRT, Meralco, manila hotel workers, through organizing they became big brick but they were facing bigger wall. As a result, they got laid off. A strike in accordance with the law is preposterous in the intent which is rooted in the injustices of the capitalists---violations of the same law which is supposed to protect the workers. The consistency with the national interest is never a question in the event of the strike since labor issues are always of national interest. Therefore any inconsistency with the labor sector’s concerns become inconsistent also with the national interest.

In a country where workers are overwhelming and capital is scarce, coupled with the aggression of globalization in the system, the government is rendered powerless in the might of capital. Government policies seem to sympathize with the capitalists’ problems especially in times of crisis but not the labor problems. It is easily swayed to favor the employers and readily willing to sacrifice the labor side. This was manifested in the pal crisis, LRT, Meralco, and manila hotel labor disputes. And now it is evident even in the proposed emergency or special powers asked by the President where there will be a moratorium in the CBA. The labor sector is found battling against two formidable enemies – the unjust capitalists and the capitalist government that is supposed to protect and promote the rights of the workers because they do not have the means to protect themselves. Generally the labor groups are offered a compromise which is short of selling their souls to the employer or make them bite the bullet. They are forced to accept harsh conditions which are unjust but made legal by the state.

Commonly the capital always inequitably claims the profits and products and leaves the smallest minimum to labor. The minimum wage law that could have appropriated a just share of labor in the production becomes stagnant even in depressed times. The Regional Wage Boards are set up primarily to determine the just and fair wage in each region but it becomes a ploy to divide and conquer the labor sector. The undying P125 nationwide wage increase is a dead-end in the RWBs so the advocacy efforts are geared toward the legislated process. But Congress cannot accommodate this since election is just around the corner. What more can the laboring poor do in the midst of plain injustices happening before their justice-seeking eyes? I dread the portent of Bastille. Even the Son of a laborer who was once denied of justice can find heaven in the earth of the struggle of the working class.

All Is Well That Ends Wealthy

“You must admit that there is happiness man alive because he is superior to all he possesses; but it is an empty life where nothing gives pleasure.”

                                                                        - Voltaire, Candide

            The Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) report on the wealth of President Estrada just confirms the long standing stain on the faces of the public officials now and then – graft and corruption. But not on the presidency please. I have this little glimmer of hope that somewhere in the public office there is still upright and unadulterated space, and I generously reserve that to the presidency. If there is any effort to influence, it must start from the top down to the bottom. I think it would be easier that way than the other way around but I am not denying the latter of its own course and I am not going to judge which way is better because more or less each one has a reason to think that way. With all the forces of doubts steering e closer to the truth, I am tempted to shed a light why people think public officials do conceal and keep the silence of wealth in office or after office.

            It is empirical to note that no public official retires from office forcibly through time or through legal mandate poorer than he was before taking office except a handful of the few that risked the resources of the known rich family for the service for the marginalized. One inspiring example would be former President Sergio Osmeña who sold some of the family’s assets to cover some costs of basic services to the people. However, during and in the post-Marcos era, the public belief was reaffirmed by the frenzied activities of the cronies or kamag-anak or mistahs and now the kumpadres and the first families. It is believed now that more critically-decided ventures of the government are made in the nocturnal sessions with the close “friends” of the president than in the usual cabinet meetings. Recently, one brave soul in the person of Sister Tan divulged the monopoly of the first family in the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) projects that, though seemingly legitimate, were expended mostly in the hands of the first family, Privilege indeed resides in the seat of power and emanates from the people who take the seat.

            Sadly, people nowadays engage in politics due to the mundane endeavors-prestige, power and wealth. Gone are the days when one seeks office due to his calling to serve faithfully. The vocation to public service becomes secondary or even non-existent to the mind and soul of the public officials. The idea of public service is reduced to attending weddings, neurological wake, birthdays and baptisms, year in and out. What happens now to the popular saying, public service is a public thrust? I remember Dolphy starting this when asked if he would run for an office, he said, “madali tumakbo, paano kung manalo?” I truly admire the guy’s response because there is no question of his winning ability but precisely, what is he going to do there? Exactly the same question goes to the people now in office who have barely 9 months to go, what have you done and what are you doing? It is hoped that they should not forget their accountability to the people. The people especially the oppresses are the main reasons why there are where they are. I suppose that they do not contribute to the dehumanizing of the oppressed instead join in the struggle to liberation. But I usually see them on the other side with the unscrupulous impeding the road to access education, health, social services and justice. Then I have come to understand and meet the natural evil of man. The “I” speaks on himself, wanting to own the world, be superior, in the process neglecting the social responsibility to others. The issue of graft and corruption as I am told is the fight between good and evil. I think we know which side belongs to public officials.

            In the World Bank report, 20% or 1/5 of the national budget is lost to corruption every year. That sizeable amount could have built a hundred thousands of classrooms or could have raised the public employees’ wage to a decent and living one or could have fed the many starving evacuees in the Mindanao war. And the lists can go on and on but it will not be taken back like the air we exhale. The report shows that the government is weak in setting up at least regulatory framework resulting to barely provision of basic services to the people, much less in strategic development planning. This, I believe, has prompted the President to wage war against graft and corruption in the SONA.

            Is the President ready to confront familiar faces in this war? Is he prepared to see himself just like in the mirror?

            In the same report, it is said that 22% of the public were victimized and only 8% complained. I think the hardly hit here are the poor people and I believe they are now ready to complain. But who will listen?

Mindanao Bites

“Mizpah!  The Lord watch between me and thee when we are absent from one another,”

  - Og Mandino, The Christ’s Commission

            In Mindanao, we have seen the faces of painful exodus of half a million Filipinos, we have heard the agonizing cries of the living and the dead, we have read their writings inscribed on the land of promises asking ‘why us’ from both the fighting and the victims, and we have talked literally about the pictures, words, and sounds of decades of conflict. Have we anyhow felt their trembling emotions of emptiness, having taken everything from them by war except pieces of questions and hope?

             During the Gulf war in 1990s, I followed the events, at that time, with awe and amazement of the new, high-tech artilleries of the American forces. It was how I saw the events just like in the movies, missing entirely the core message of war. One rocket-missile costing for about, I don’t know how much, but could have fed a hundred hungry children once hit the target causing deaths to the enemies, destruction of homes, seeding fear and trauma to the victims. Death which meant loss of father to a son, son to a father, brother to a brother, bred hatred, anger and revenge tarrying its time.

             Wars are essentially of the same kind of evil. They differ just in the fronts and they end just the same – no victors. When the government troops overran Camp Abubakar, I found it unacceptable to claim victory being a peace advocate and knowing that there is something more to come, waiting to exhale. True enough, it did come when a lesser jihad for all Muslims was called. Since then unlike in the movies, I do not see the ending or the plot of the story. As in chess, threats are more telling in sowing fear of losing that their execution.

            Since Bicol is many seas and islands away from Mindanao, I could barely empathize with our brothers and sisters who are directly or indirectly victims of the war. Not until I met a classmate in college whose husband was part of the team that overran Abubakar, until I heard the tale of a mother whose son is still there in the thick of action, and until I read a letter from a new mother who has just delivered a baby boy without a husband beside her. I saw their worries, fears, anxieties, and prayers in the guise of the seemingly cheerful faces, reserved in their eschewed looks in the eye, and in-between lines of the letter. Finally I had Mindanao through them, vivid, real, disturbing, piercing and ripping.

            Whether we admit it or not, the Mindanao question has ranged over us one way or another. Every day we are gaping witnesses to the tragedies, massacres, ambushes, crimes of our recent times that are either explicitly or obliquely expressions and forms of Mindanao question. A theory in psychology would point out that external events are attributed to the way we behave. Troubled, agitated yet defenseless. Jean Anouilh used to say, ‘there is nothing to do but scream.’

            Aray! (Complaint of pain).. Mosquitoes, rainy days are here again. (I feel a sudden lump in my throat when I read the Department of Health (DOH) report indicating that there have already been 24 dengue cases around the country.)

          Shhhhhh.... At once I need not move composure and poise under pressure are invoked to lure mosquitoes to come over to my side. Composure, poise and restraint under pressure to retaliate and get even are needed in conflict resolution and prevention.

             But mosquitoes bite randomly.


           Plak!! I think I’ve crushed the little things so hard. Now I have blood marked on my numb palm and shin. Of course, bites hurt.

           I have yet to learn from these mosquitoes. I want no more blood on my hand. 

"Who Owns Handiong's Land?"

When Israel was in Egypt’s land –

  Let my people go.

Oppressed so hard they could not stand
Let my people go.   - Margaret Walker, Jubilee

            This was the question of the 2000 symposium in Bicolandia’s agrarian history relative with the celebration of the Jubilee Year on a theme, “return the land” for the month of July with Professor Danilo M. Gerona of Ateneo de Naga University as the lecturer-speaker.

            Basically, the symposium laid down the historical background embodying the question back to the past. It was the same question that brought us back to the pre-colonial and colonial period and introduced us to the significant-elite people who virtually owned the whole peninsula during those times. We relived the eventful moments when quintessential ties with the friars would spell influence and riches. Interestingly, those elite landed people belonged to the families of non-Bicolanos in origin, flesh and blood.

            That was before as it is now. These landed influential families cling to the land supposedly to be enjoyed by all humanity with all its bounties and fruits. Only the few who, by the god of their grace, have shared with the blessings of creation while the many who, by the grace of their gods, religiously pray the supplications of their ancestors hoping that there is indeed a heaven. After the silence of centuries, the situation of landholdings in the region relatively abides at the expense of the fortunate few whom, by reason alien to earth but known to man, remain untouched.

            According to the 1995 unofficial data from the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) among the top 10 provinces with large land distribution balances, Albay and Camarines Sur occupied the first two slots with the most of backlog (Gono, 1996). On the 12^th anniversary of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) which would have set reforms in the centuries-old unjust structures this year, the Department claimed to have distributed 55% of the target 1,688,887 hectares since 1988 (Philippine Peasant Institute, 2000). The program envisions the Philippines as a nation of family-sized farms tilled, developed, and most importantly owned by the ordinary citizens who wanted all their lives a piece of land on their own homeland. Twelve years of hoping, of waiting in vain, many farmers cultivate laboriously the lands of others to fill the cups and plates of their masters while opting to be silent with the drizzle of generosity from the masters. Silence and discontent like those of lambs and caterpillars are hovering around the air wanting to be something, to have something to complete their existence.

            Moreover, the program was instituted to humanize the dehumanizing state of the tenant-farmers but the lack of political will on the part of the government, the delay of land distribution to the rightful beneficiaries, the arrogance and undue deference to the landlords have contributed to the dehumanizing process of the landless.

            And the question still persists today. But the die is cast and the river is crossed. The torch is lighted and the flame is burning. We can go nowhere but here. Let us stand and dig together to clear mountains. Let us all be Handiong, a hero who surmounted difficulty and won victory. Anyway, who is afraid to answer the question?

            Who really owns Handiong’s land? The answer lies in our hands. 

Tears Too Late

“If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.” -  (Shakespeare, Julius Caesar)

The recent stampede in a festival in Cambodia that killed at least 370 people caused me to recall the Payatas tragedy in July 2000. I wrote this article during that time.

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            In school we are taught to count balls, sticks and squares. As we grow, we learn to see numbers differently. Politicians translate them as votes, businessmen add them as profits, gamblers divine them as lucky combination, teachers and students present them as grades, and others treat them as they are – mere numbers, nothing more or less.

            And how do we see the 193 (and still counting) bodies found dead in Payatas? If we see it as 7 less to become 200, fine we are correct. However much as we would like to know our different views, we would never question those except our challenge to check those standpoints with our own values and conscience.

            Much have been said and written about the Payatas tragedy. We have had enough of the upbraiding and bickering of the government officials and politicos. We have heard too many of the pleas and cries of the aggrieved families who lost more than their sons, daughters, members of the families but their faces among the faceless wishful thinkers in the land of promises they consider their own. The land that feeds them has become the land that devours them. It is the same and where they built their houses with their dreams of a new life in the city, where they dig their living searching for a bottle of genie or lamp of luck everyday with unfailing vision of a better tomorrow than today. Each strike of the kalahig that pierces through the depth of the land is like stabbing their misfortune in life, hurting, lethargic yet healing, and forever hoping. Each material it hooks goes with the desire of having more, putting it in a basket of filling weight of surviving, carrying it where there maybe more. Paradoxically they subsist on something the city can live without. And they live nonetheless like us.

            We are different from them. Every day we go out with our kalahig, in our search for magis. We all look for the bottle of genie, and we oftentimes are fooled to go to the city in our attempt to find the lamp of luck. We are lured to the illusory lights of the city, brightness hard to ignore, too inviting to explore yet in its glitter, we are blinded by the danger and price of leaving our home and living away from it.

            Payatas is a home to a vagabond or to those who consider every place a home but definitely not a home to our children, our parents, our brothers and sisters, and our family. Still some people choose to live there, making it their home. Indeed, the rain chooses no stone to wet, and wet rolling stone gathers no moss.

            Out of 193, have you given it a thought of how many might be Bicolanos? Just a thought.