Philippine Collegian Tomo 97 October Issue

PHILIPPINE

COLLEGIAN

The Official Weekly Student Publication of the University of the Philippines Diliman

Volume 97 • Issue 21 • 20 pages Friday, 30 October 2020

#JunkRiceLiberalizationLaw

www.phkule.org

@phkule

phkule.upd@up.edu.ph

EDITORIAL EDITORIAL CARTOON • MARCY LIOANAG

PHILIPPINE COLLEGIAN The Official Weekly Student Publication of the University of the Philippines Diliman

INTERIM EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Kimberly Anne P. Yutuc ASSOCIATE EDITOR Marvin Joseph E. Ang BUSINESS MANAGER Polynne E. Dira NEWS EDITOR Richard C. Cornelio FEATURES EDITOR Beatriz M. Zamora GUEST EDITORS Sanny Boy D. Afable John Reczon E. Calay Kenneth Gutlay Sheila Ann T. Abarra STAFF Daniel Sebastianne B. Daiz Samantha M. Del Castillo Kent Ivan P. Florino Ma. Sophia Isabella S. Sibal

FAR FROM HUNGER Mamatay sa gutom o mamatay sa virus.

This has become a common dilemma for Filipinos struggling to survive daily amid the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for farmers who remain among the

The government should work on a “new normal” where those who toil for long hours in the fields are lifted from poverty, and towards a country that is self-sufficient and secured in food production.

02

poorest sectors in the country. But instead of securing their welfare in the face of an unprecedented hunger crisis, the Duterte regime has only aggravated the onslaught of the virus with its misplaced priorities and continuing neglect of the agriculture sector.

The government’s militaristic approach to the health crisis has inevitably pushed farmers deeper into poverty. Think-tank IBON Foundation estimates that around 2.5 million farmers and fisherfolk have been economically displaced by the imposition of enhanced community quarantine guidelines.

Several checkpoints across the country have hampered the movement of their produce and limited access to the markets. In the Mountain Province, mounds of decayed vegetables ended up getting disposed of.

Even as coronavirus cases surge in the country, farmers’ groups have been likewise forced to protest on the streets to decry the farmgate price of palay that has reportedly dropped to P12 per kilo, on average. This is even lower than the suggested retail price for face shield at P26 to P50 per piece, and around the cost of face mask at P10. Farmers have clamored to repeal the Rice Tariffication Law—which removed quantitative restrictions on rice imports—but their calls seem to have fallen on deaf ears, with some officials insisting that liberalization will later contribute to economic growth.

The government has responded by extending financial and livelihood assistance to displaced and affected farmers.

The Department of Agriculture had targeted to provide P5,000 cash subsidy to around 600,000 rice farmers under the Financial Subsidy to Rice Farmers. The distribution of aid, however, came slowly and fell short of the poor families’ needs during the pandemic.

It is no surprise then that the hunger incidence in the country hit 30.7 percent as of September, where around 7.6 million Filipino

households experienced involuntary hunger at least once.

This is the highest it has been since its previous record of 23.8 percent in March 2012, based on a Social Weather Stations survey.

But more than these, the government should work on a “new normal” where those who toil for long hours in the fields are lifted from poverty, and towards a country that is self-sufficient and secured in food production. The Duterte administration should finally recognize the rights of farmers to till their own lands and to determine their own production systems. It should heed the calls for a genuine agrarian reform bill, rather than intensifying its attacks against activists and dissenters.

In the face of a global pandemic unlike any other, those who serve as the backbone of the country’s economy should themselves be secure—far from being hungry or being targeted by the state—rather than being left at the periphery when it comes to the government’s policies. No peasant, who wakes up even before the crack of dawn to tend to the fields, should have to face the dilemma of either starving or dying of disease. •

COVER • MIKHAELA CALDERON

AUXILIARY STAFF Amelyn J. Daga Ma. Trinidad B. Gabales Gina B. Villas CIRCULATION STAFF Gary J. Gabales Pablito Jaena Glenario Omamalin

•••

UP Systemwide Alliance of Student Publications and Writers’ Organizations (Solidaridad) College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP)

•••

Kamia Residence Hall University of the Philippines Quirino Avenue, Diliman Quezon City

NEWS

@phkule

A sedative, not a stimulus package

Heavy price tag on ‘CREATE’ seen to drain PH revenue even after COVID-19 DANIEL SEBASTIANNE DAIZ The tax reform and stimulus package that the government has long boasted remains pending in the Senate as disagreements on certain provisions ensue between its proponents and the private sector.

Economists and workers’ and consumers’ rights advocates, however, are wary of the proposal as it may worsen the economy’s already bad shape.

Senate Bill 1357 or the Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises (CREATE) Bill is yet to receive second reading despite President Rodrigo Duterte’s strong backing.

Touted by economic managers as an aid to micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) amid COVID-19, CREATE is yet another incarnation of TRAIN 2, TRABAHO, and CITIRA Bills, all of which are parts of Duterte’s fiscal plan.

In its essence, CREATE seeks to implement an immediate fivepercent cut in the country’s corporate income tax (CIT) rate– currently at 30 percent–until 2022, and a gradual, one-percent cut every succeeding year until 2027 (see sidebar 1). To increase revenue, the proposal also plans to gut the perpetual tax incentives corporations have been enjoying.

Yet, in the middle of a pandemic and an economic recession, tax cuts might be the last thing the government wants.

At the same time, companies would be hard-pressed to let go of their tax incentives.

‘Stimulus on nothing’ CREATE hinges on the promise that cutting the CIT would encourage businesses to invest more, thus pulling the country out of an economic downturn, according to the Department of Finance (DOF).

However, given the dire situation right now, no company in its right mind would carry out a massive spending plan, UP School of Economics Professor Emeritus Raul Fabella said in an email to the Collegian.

Fabella said that companies would rather keep their profits than spend at a bad time like now. “The effect on investment is like ‘pushing on a string,’ nothing happens,” Fabella added, noting that such a “trickle-down” assumption is already bad at augmenting the poor’s share in the country’s wealth at normal times, more so during a recession.

Such point is proven by the Ramos and Arroyo-era CIT cuts which happened coincidentally during financial crises. Within years of implementation of these corporate tax breaks, the incumbent administration incurred greater debt (see sidebar 2). If the government is willing to forgo billions of revenues, Fabella said, then it risks increasing reliance on government borrowing to finance the much-needed aid for the hardest-hit sectors of the pandemic, like what is already happening now.

Aside from the deficit CREATE would trigger, large and foreign companies, despite the promised CIT cut, are now opposing parts of the bill as it would remove up to 13 percent of the tax reduction privilege they are benefiting from. This point of contention is a sticking point for some senators who are trying to introduce a “grandfather clause,” an amendment that excludes currently

SIDEBAR 2 Debt vs. CIT rate

1.2 Trillon

registered companies from the removal of tax incentives.

Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto is leading the charge for the proposed grandfather clause.

Denying corporations, especially export-based investors, their tax holiday might cause them to leave altogether, Recto said, adding that these incentives were placed shortly after Marcos’s ouster to give businesses a sort of sense of stability in doing business in the country. Keeping investor confidence high is supposedly necessary amid the pandemic.

For the independent policy group Action for Economic Reforms, weakening the government’s power to control incentives would run counter to CREATE’s aim to remove perpetual incentives, largely to big and foreign corporations. The DOF estimates that rationalizing incentives would raise an additional P441 billion or nearly four times the 2017 health budget.

Director Sonny Africa in an interview with the Collegian. If passed, the bill would slash P44.6 billion off the country’s coffers for 2020 only (see sidebar 3).

While the government sells CREATE to supposedly save MSMEs by letting them retain more of their earnings, official data, however, disagree. According to the DOF, only about 25 percent of CIT revenue comes from MSMEs, and the remaining 75 percent is paid by large corporations. CREATE’s tax cut, then, significantly benefits only large companies.

What the government could do, instead, is invest directly in MSMEs and their workers. Despite Bayanihan 1 and 2 being “too little” and “too late,” the government could build on the interventions like wage subsidies and direct cash transfers implemented in the now expired laws. The government has also just approved 20,100 applications for a loan of P55,000, on average, to MSMEs, Africa said. “The Duterte

‘Smokescreen’ With a tax reform package opposed by both progressives and big businesses, an opportunity opens up for policymakers to craft a truly responsive stimulus package which would solve shortterm problems, while setting off a sustainable fiscal plan.

For Fabella, farmers could use some help from the government by condoning their land reform “debt” to the state. Right now, the P800 million that farmers owe the government is nothing compared to the P625-billion deficit that CREATE would make for the next five years.

And this big loss of revenue would linger, possibly for years to come, said think-tank IBON Executive

SIDEBAR 1 Proposed CIT rates by CREATE Bill

35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% 2020 SOURCE: DOF

2020

2021

2022

2023

2024

2025

2026

(Current)

SIDEBAR 3 Projected revenue loss due to CREATE Bill

36% 35%

1 Trillon

government is using so-called benefits to MSMEs as a smokescreen to make large corporations richer,” he added.

Passing a tax reform package that benefits the rich during the pandemic seems as if it is just business-asusual for the administration, while COVID-19 continues to afflict common Filipinos, Africa noted.

Ultimately, the government must begin refocusing its fiscal priorities as it rebuilds the economy. This pandemic has shown that investment in the people and basic social services pays off during crises.

“This short-term revenue loss to boost corporate profits is unconscionable when the immediate needs are so great. The government cannot say there is no money to help the poor when it is giving hundreds of billions to the rich,” Africa said.

“Economic growth would be more robust and sustainable with vibrant Filipino farms and firms, and if the gains from the economy did not just accumulate in the hands of a few.” •

YEAR

AMOUNT in (PhP Millions)

34%

2020

33%

800 Billion

32% 600 Billion

31%

29% 200 Billion

SOURCE: BOT, BIR

28% 27% 2020• 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006*** 2005** 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998* 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 1991 1990

0

2021

10,000

30%

400 Billion

phkule.upd@up.edu.ph

* Ramos tax reforms begin ** 32% until July 14, and 35% onwards ***Arroyo tax reforms begin • As of August 30, 2020

2022

SOURCE: DOF

PAGE DESIGN AND INFOGRAPHICS • LEI ALIANZA

03

NEWS

PHILIPPINE COLLEGIAN

A year into Rice Tariffication, farmers suffer plunging palay prices, half-hearted COVID relief pro-peasant party-list Anakpawis, in a video interview with Kodao Productions, October 19.

Farmers are forced to sell below the current cost of production of at least P15 per kilo, factoring in inflationary costs from the 2018 TRAIN Law and all other conditions, according to the computation by Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP). The peasant group said that the current average price range of palay is P12 to P14 per kilo in most provinces, a far cry from what the government claims to be its farmgate price of P19 per kilo, on average (see sidebar), and not nearly enough for farmers to earn a decent income.

The Weekly Cereals and Fertilizers Price Monitoring, a survey conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority, purposively collects, among other price types, farmgate prices based on a sample of at most five respondents from each province. Though, even before the implementation of the RTL in February 2019, the farmgate prices of local rice had been in decline, such downswing accelerated ever since, most steeply so in mid-August 2019 amid reports of farmers in Nueva Ecija selling their harvest at as low as P7 to P8 per kilo.

JOEY ABESAMIS Despite farmers’ repeated calls to junk the Rice Tariffication Law (RTL), now over a year since its enactment, many senators, including one of the RTL’s main proponents, Senator Cynthia Villar, all of a sudden shifted gears and asked Agriculture Secretary William Dar to stop the Bureau of Plant Industry (BPI) from issuing any more rice import permits, especially at the same time as local farmers’ harvest season.

This backpedaling comes several months too late, as the unforgiving effects of the RTL, combined with the pandemic, have left local farmers practically penniless.

However, the Department of Agriculture (DA) estimates that the total rice imports will reach 2.6 million metric tons by December 2020, even greater than last year’s 2.3 million metric tons of rice imports and comprising over 20 percent of the country’s annual rice consumption.

Increasingly large volumes of rice importation have direct, long-lasting consequences as it slowly kills the palay industry, said Ariel Casilao, vice chairperson of

The farmgate price surged momentarily in the first months of the pandemic, amid panic buying, local governments’ relief efforts, and stockpiling regionally. April 2020, in particular, coincided with severe lockdowns and coronavirus restrictions. Yet, since then, the palay prices normalized to prepandemic levels in consecutive weeks, following the same downturn, as consumers’ demand diminished and imports edge out local produce in the market. With the peak harvest season in October, millers who fear losing any more revenue are even more discouraged from buying from local farmers.

“Malakas ang panawagan natin na ibasura [ang RTL] dahil tinamaan ang magsasaka ng bigas, pero hanggang ngayon ayaw pa nilang i-repeal. Hihintayin pa nila ang limang taon, kaya sinabi natin, aanihin pa ang damo, kung patay na ang kabayo?” said KMP Chairperson Danilo Ramos in an online interview with the Collegian.

In response to the continued drop in palay prices in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, farmers groups called for an urgent and efficient release of food and cash relief. But months into the pandemic, distribution of aid remains slow and

many farmers have yet to receive any aid.

“Lahat ng ito ay umabot sa puntong dumulo roon sa talagang tinamaan sila nang husto. Nawalan at hindi nakaabot yung ayuda, wala ngang subsidyo roon sa pagtatanim mo ng palay,” Casilao said. “Tuloy-tuloy ang atake sa mga komunidad ng mga magsasaka at mga organisasyon nito para tayo patahimikin at pahintuin sa isinusulong nating mga konkretong solusyon tulad ng economic stimulus package.”

Inefficient aid distribution In anticipation of even harder times, farmers already began petitioning the government, as early as March, to provide both cash assistance and production subsidies to lockdown-stricken farmers.

On top of the demand for a P10,000 emergency cash assistance to 9.7 million farmers and fisherfolk, KMP has also called for a production subsidy worth at least P15,000 for over two million rice farmers to boost local rice production. The latter has not materialized, but cash transfers did, though ploddingly.

Though programs for cash assistance and several others

have been approved, they have so far failed to disburse cash aid to farmers quick enough to be of immediate help.

As early as April, farmers’ group Bayanihan Para sa Agrikultura Laban sa COVID-19 asked the DA to expedite the release of the 2019 and 2020 appropriations for the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Fund, a program under the RTL for the provision of production subsidies, farm machinery and equipment, and seed development, among others.

But, as of October, only 32 percent of the P10 billion fund has been committed to specific agencies and projects, according to Dar. Back in July, the DA merely cited bureaucratic issues to justify the months-long delay in the release of the funds. Dar even admitted in a statement last August that farmers were expected to benefit from the program early next year at the earliest, by which time, however, farmers would have already spent most of this year struggling to survive with little to no income.

Another program is the Financial Subsidy to Rice Farmers, under the Bayanihan to Heal as One Act, which included P5,000 cash assistance each to only 591,246 of

SIDEBAR: Farmgate prices of palay from September 2018 to September 2020, averaged over the number of weekly updates in a month NOTE: The plot starts at Php. 10.00

Php. 20.00

Php. 15.00

Php. 10.00

19 019 019 019 19 0 2 2 L Y2 E2 Y H B I FE RC PR MA UN UL J J A A M

2 EC 01 8 JA 201 8 N 20 19

V

D

O

O

C

T

N

SE

PT

20 1

8

18

20

20

19 019 0 2 2 G T U A SEP

19 19 19 19 20 20 20 20 0 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 202 20 20 20 20 T V C N B H IL Y E Y G T C O NO DE JA FE RC PR MA UN JUL AU SEP A A J M

SOURCE: Weekly Cereals and Fertilizers Price Monitoring by the Philippine Statistics Authority

04

phkule.upd@up.edu.ph

@phkule

the 2.7 million rice farmers in the country, which Ramos described as being like a drop of rain in an entire forest.

The DA’s nationwide selfsufficiency program, Ahon Lahat, Pagkaing Sapat (ALPAS) Laban sa COVID-19, otherwise known as “Plant, Plant, Plant” program, received a mere P11.39 billion out of the total P389-billion fund released by the government as of September, or 2.9 percent of the total, meaning that aid has yet to reach even one percent of the total 9.7 million rural people.

This is not the only instance of the DA’s general lack of transparency, with the recent exposure of a possible repeat of the Fertilizer Fund Scam earlier this year. The DA was accused of buying overpriced fertilizer for P995 per 50-kilo bag in a compromised bidding, much higher than the current market price of P800 to P830 per bag.

“Ang masakit pa, doon sa kaunting tulong para sa magsasaka, [kinupit] pa ng opisyal ng pamahalaan, particularly ng DA. Sa tingin natin, hindi bababa sa P271 milyon yung [kinupit] nila.

Nagpapakita ito kung gaano sila kawalang malasakit,” Ramos said.

Crisis after crisis Ever since the RTL was signed into law, farmers, farm workers, and leaders of farmers groups like Renato Gameng, one of the founders of the San Francisco Farmers’ Association in Isabela, have campaigned for higher wages and farmgate prices of rice to forfend their bankruptcy.

Gameng was among those who signed a petition to junk the RTL in solidarity with his fellow farmers who had been affected by the law.

This must have likely led to his being red-tagged and suspicions that he is being followed and surveilled, he said in a media forum organized by the local chapter of Karapatan, a human rights watchdog, October 7.

He insisted, however, that the issue should be about the policy’s impacts on the ground, not about their political affiliations.

While the government would justify the RTL with claims that it would help Filipino farmers become more competitive amid liberalization, local farmers, without sufficient production support, stand little to no chance of competing with cheaper imported rice from countries like Vietnam or Thailand whose production costs are as low as P5 to P6, according to KMP. Vietnam has been able to reduce input costs and boost rice production by pouring money into farm infrastructure, irrigation projects, and rice research and development, which the Philippine government has yet to have much success in.

Farmers have long suffered from insecure land tenancy and ownership schemes and lack of production support. But, with the passing of the Rice Liberalization Law, the price of rice plummeted to as low as P7, and now stands at P10-14 per kilo, which has resulted in an estimated loss of P30,000 per farmer in recent years, according to Bantay Bigas. The government only mostly offered loans as COVID-19 relief instead of substantial unconditional cash.

MONIQUE JARDINICO AND NIKKI TENG

This had proven most problematic when the pandemic struck. The law, around this time, had induced a sharper plunge in palay prices. In fact, the current price of P12 per kilo of palay is just the equivalent of an empty sack or a kilo of hog feed and makes the commodity even cheaper than a COVID-19 mask. Early into the pandemic, farmer groups and advocates already called on the DA to increase government procurement of palay from local farmers. International organizations such as the World Bank and the World Economic Forum had warned of possible disruptions to the global food supply due to the pandemic, from increased costs of farming to export bans in major foodproducing countries.

In fact, Vietnam, the country’s biggest source of rice imports, was one such exporter that announced

PAGE DESIGN AND INFOGRAPHICS • KIMBERLY AXALAN

last March it was going to drastically cut exports to save food supply for its own people, sending DA officials scrambling to ensure the Philippines had enough rice inventory to last through the crisis. The DA initially proposed to import 300,000 metric tons of rice, which even the Philippine International Trading Corporation challenged until eventually, when Vietnam lifted its import ban, the plan was abandoned.

To fend off a food crisis, governments needed to find ways to boost their local production capacity for essential food and agricultural products. Hence, the need to focus on increasing government procurement of palay, which would directly address the decline in prices, advocacy group Action for Economic Reform wrote in a statement earlier this month.

The National Food Authority (NFA), whose sole mandate is to

ensure buffer stocking for calamities and emergencies, has the means and duty to buy palay at the standard P19 per kilo so that farmers are no longer forced to sell at the current farmgate price of P12.

Even though P7 billion from ALPAS COVID is set to be used to increase the funds of the NFA, palay procurement continues to be slow.

In August, NFA Administrator Judy Carol Dansal explained this away by pointing to the lack of rice milling facilities and the government’s low buying price.

Meanwhile, the DA continues to allow the BPI to give out rice import permits even during harvest season, and yet ironically still has trouble in efficiently rolling out much needed aid and subsidies to farmers.

Owing to the government’s relative lack of priority given to the country’s agrarian sector, food security has now been

compromised and millions of Filipinos are going hungry. In July, a report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization listed the Philippines as having the highest count of food-insecure citizens, with 59 million Filipinos going hungry from 2017 to 2019.

A change in policy is long overdue, especially during a pandemic, to break with the government’s decades-long insistence on opening the economy up to imports, despite local abundance in rice, poultry, livestock, fish, and more.

“Dapat ipatupad ang tunay na repormang agraryo at pambansang industriyalisasyon, at palitan ito ng bagong programang maglilingkod sa sambayanan,” said Ramos. “Hanggang hindi nagbabago, malamang ang dalawang taon ay paghihirap pa kay Pangulong Duterte.” •

05

NEWS

PHILIPPINE COLLEGIAN

How SAP shortchanged the poor and left millions in the lurch RICHARD CALAYEG CORNELIO

The words used to skirt around the brutality of poverty are telling.

“Involuntary hunger,” in particular, the term that independent pollster Social Weather Stations (SWS) prefers to describe “hunger due to lack of food to eat,” blunts the rough edges of the poor’s lived reality.

Some 7.6 million of such Filipino households have gone hungry at least once amid COVID-19, according to an SWS phone survey in late September. To illustrate, this is equivalent to more than twice the total number of families in Metro Manila and just a little shy of Australia’s, an entire country’s. This bumps up the hunger incidence to 30.7 percent, the highest such rate since March 2012. By 2020 standards, this might seem par for the course. Except it should not be, if indeed the government, as the president and his economic managers say, has done a good job at handing out emergency aid to those most in need.

Instead, the broader public is left to wonder where much of the roughly P360.1 billion released to fund pandemic-related measures has gone. The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has received nearly P200 billion to cover cash transfers, in two tranches, to 18 million families who are recipients of the Social Amelioration Program (SAP) under Bayanihan to Heal as One Act. From April to May, these households could expect from the first tranche a SAP grant worth a little over 75 percent of what they would earn in at least a month.

A family in Bicol, which has the lowest daily minimum wage rate among regions at P310, could get P5,000 from SAP, while a family in Metro Manila could get as much as P8,000 to make up for their P537 daily minimum wages lost. It should supposedly tide over any of SAP’s target beneficiaries (see sidebar 1).

If the SAP distribution for 18 million households, about 75 percent of the country’s 24.4 million estimated total, has been targeted well, not only poor and low-income households would benefit from it but also a modest portion of the lower middle-income class. The Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES) in 2018

06

estimates only around 830,000 Filipino households to be foodpoor, with per capita income less than the subsistence threshold.

But, where poverty manifests in gaps and gradients, just because you are not food-poor does not mean you are no longer vulnerable to economic shocks.

There is more to poverty than can be captured by official welfare indicators. A team led

by Jose Ramon Albert, a senior research fellow at the Philippine Institute for Development Studies, has proposed an income group typology that goes beyond simply profiling poverty and instead factors in inequalities even among the non-poor.

In a paper published in August, Albert and his colleagues used microdata of the 2018 FIES and defined “poor” as those with less than a monthly income of P10,957 for a family of five; the “low-income,” but not poor, as those with between P10,957 and P21,914; and the lower middleincome as those with between P21,914 and P43,828. These three groups collectively constitute around 18.5 million families.

The last category particularly comprises two-thirds of the country’s middle class.

Consistent with the profiles from the FIES, middle-income families are relatively well-heeled at first glance. They typically own a house, a smartphone, appliances like a washing machine and a TV. None of these, though, should be taken to mean a safeguard against the knock-on effects of a crisis as serious as a pandemic.

Ideally, at least 6.7 million lower middle-income households, along with 11.3 million low-income and poor households, could avail of DSWD’s SAP assistance to individuals in crisis situations (AICS). Yet only 17.7 million have been targeted as household beneficiaries, brushing aside those otherwise eligible and in most need (see sidebar 2).

Shoestring budget down south The highest discrepancy between SAP beneficiaries and the number of poor, lowincome, and lower middleincome (PLILMI) households is registered in Bangsamoro, which is coincidentally the poorest across the board, in terms of either poverty incidence or poverty gap index.

The 196,000 families left out from the DSWD’s list could have

easily been anyone of those that ticked the criteria for indigency.

In 2017, UNICEF Philippines and Coram International, a legal and research nonprofit, reported that stunting and wasting among children in what was then the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao were higher than the national average. According to the latest Labor Force Survey, the region’s unemployment rate, also higher than the national estimate, rose by 21.5 points from last year’s, a sign that its economy is losing ground as retrenchment and layoffs persist amid the pandemic.

Bangsamoro is also only the region where the majority of SAP beneficiaries, almost two-thirds, have already been identified as recipients of Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), a conditional dole-out that has been the centerpiece of the national poverty reduction strategy (see sidebar 3).

The 4Ps is said to have been expanded and enhanced, with certain conditionalities temporarily waived from February to March. Still, to be qualified for such a grant in the first place, families would have to file documentary requirements that not everyone could provide. Some sectors could not even pass as non-4Ps beneficiaries. Bakwit, or internally displaced persons, may be suffering most severely, having been uprooted from their homes and stripped of their livelihoods, but technically they cannot be covered by SAP unlike Bangsamoro’s original residents.

The pandemic could undermine the freshly established region’s transition to a more devolved autonomy, what many critics believe serves as a testing ground for President Rodrigo Duterte’s vision of federalism. But nearly five decades of clan feuds and conflicts between Moro secessionists and the Philippine government have already enfeebled local communities, said Rufa Cagoco-Guiam, a professor of anthropology, during a webinar with UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies on August 27.

“Even if they had planned on a series of activities that would redound to political reform in the BARMM, the period they have now has been taken over by the efforts to address COVID-19,” Cagoco-Guiam said.

Still, violence lingers in the region. Moro communities on lockdown have been caught in

the crossfire. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said that, in March alone, at the peak of COVID-19 when everyone hunkered down, about 76,906 families fled from more than a week of the military’s sustained offensives against the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters in Maguindanao.

The loosening of COVID-19 restrictions has later justified the deployment of more military troops on guard against the region’s homegrown extremist groups, some linked to the Islamic State. At any rate, it is a disastrous tradeoff. Militarism compounds burdens on a region riven by poverty and political discord.

Feeling the pinch Looking at just the number of SAP beneficiaries provides an incomplete picture of how wanting the emergency aid has been. A significant proportion of the nationwide SAP budget is somewhat skewed against regions with the higher share of total poverty severity index (see sidebar 4).

This metric, unlike poverty incidence and other poverty headcount statistics, is more sensitive to income distribution among the poor by putting more weight to each poverty gap data, which measures how far the poor are from the poverty line. While, to be sure, SAP budget allotment depends on the number of target beneficiaries, the amount of SAP subsidy given to each household could have been differentiated not just according to daily minimum wage but also by the degrees of vulnerability unique to each region.

Inflation, after all, has eroded the purchasing power of minimum wage earners. The daily minimum wage rates have not kept up with rising family costs of living. Using them as a sole determinant for the amount of SAP a family can receive fails to capture other dimensions of poverty particular to a region, such as availability or adequacy of income opportunities and social protection measures, access to productive resources and basic quality services, and level of public participation in policymaking.

Sure, not even income data, which the Philippine Statistics Authority uses in the FIES, can take all this into account and, in fact, misses, for instance, families

SIDEBAR 1 Target Beneficiaries of SAP of the DSWD

INFORMAL ECONOMY WORKERS • Directly hired or occasional workers (e.g. laundry maid) • Subcontracted workers (e.g. pakyaw workers) • Homeworkers (e.g. kasambahay, family driver) • Drivers of pedicab, tricycle, PUJs, PUVs, PUBs, taxi, transport network companies’ registered vehicles (e.g.

Angkas and Joyride drivers) • Micro-entrepreneurs and producers, operators of sari-sari stores and the like • Family enterprise owners (e.g. carinderia owners, vegetable vendors, street peddlers) • Subminimum wage earners (e.g. dishwashers, carinderia helpers) • Farmers not covered by 4Ps and SAP of the Department of Agriculture • Employees affected by DOLE’s recent “no work, no pay” policy • Stranded workers (e.g. construction workers stranded in construction sites)

VULNERABLE HOUSEHOLD MEMBERS • Senior citizens • Persons with disabilities • Pregnant and lactating women • Solo parents • Overseas Filipinos in distress • Indigent indigenous peoples • Underprivileged and homeless individuals • Other members of the vulnerable sectors

phkule.upd@up.edu.ph

@phkule

relying on the informal economy who do not earn regular wages.

Still, better than just minimum wage rates, poverty gap indices could have more precisely calibrated how much SAP subsidy a family in a region would need to keep them going in the meantime.

For example, a family in SOCCSKSARGEN would have to stretch P4,632, the average amount received from the first tranche, over two months, maxing it out at P77 a day. This could buy them a kilo of rice and very little else for a decent meal. This may be said about their counterparts in, say, Central Luzon, which has a far bigger proportion of the SAP budget, but the poor in SOCCSKSARGEN, given its second highest share of poverty severity next to BARMM, are at graver risk of dipping farther below the poverty line.

SIDEBAR 2 Percent deviation of SAP-AICS (1st tranche) beneficiaries from the number of poor, low-income, and lower middle-income households

REGION 1 0.60 -10.01 CAR REGION 2 -3.09 REGION 3 -13.18 -10.71 NCR REGION 4A -11.92 REGION 4B 2.94 REGION 5 2.54 REGION 6 REGION 7 REGION 8

0.61 -3.26 -1.96

REGION 9 REGION 10 REGION 11 REGION 12 REGION 13 BARMM

0.90 -2.71 -5.16 -2.54 -2.13 -27.83

Plague and privation The Duterte administration has not even distributed what measly sum the DSWD’s SAP could offer to the right people on the magnitude and at the speed it has promised.

The cash handout scheme has been rolled out patchily.

“Any targeting program is only as good as the data used to identify its beneficiaries,” VC Apostol and Laurence Go, analysts at Action for Economic Reforms, an independent policy group, wrote on their survey, in August, evaluating SAP distribution in Metro Manila. They

NOTE: The higher the deviation means there are more poor, low-income, and lower middle-income households than are targeted by SAP.

Data as of 11 October 2020

SIDEBAR 4 Proportion of SAP budget (1st tranche) received by a region vs. its share of poverty severity to total population

SIDEBAR 3 Target beneficiaries of SAP-AICS (1st tranche) per region 3M

Bubble size corresponds to average SAP subsidy per household

Poor, Low Income, and Lower Middle Income

15.00 4A

Target Number of Non-4Ps Families SAP-AICS Beneficiaries Target Number of 4Ps Families SAP-AICS Beneficiaries

NCR

3

Proportion of SAP budget (%)

2M

1M

10.00 6 7

11

1

5.00

5

12

8

10

2

9 4B 13

BARMM

CAR

0.00

0 REGION

4A

3

NCR

6

7

5

1

11

12

10

8

9

2

4B BARMM 13

CAR

PAGE DESIGN AND INFOGRAPHICS • JOHN RECZON CALAY

0

5

10

15

20

Share of Poverty Severity to Total Population (%)

cited instances of mistargeting, or when some households get both food and cash while others get neither. Interagency systems are scattershot. The DSWD coordinates with local governments to approve a list of beneficiaries who, however, have not been efficiently mapped out.

Issues of de-duplication and delayed validation of funds disbursed call into question the transparency and veracity of DSWD’s published data on SAP, according to think-tank IBON Foundation. The agency supposedly managed to pass out the first tranche over a month late in May. By then, the majority of 17.8 million beneficiaries, presumably rounded off to the 18 million the Bayanihan Act boasted of, had had to squeak by on their own as their savings dried out and lockdowns erratically slacked off or tightened up.

A memorandum from the DSWD on June 1 identified around five million more households as beneficiaries on the waitlist. But, eight days later, it effectively doubled back when an interagency task force subtechnical working group issued a joint memorandum circular downsizing the SAP’s second tranche would-be recipients to 12.1 million households, or only those in areas identified by the president’s office, as of June 15, to be under enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) and modified ECQ. The government has done far from enough with the first tranche and will barely do anything at all for the 10.6 million families excluded from the second tranche.

But about P10 billion remains unallocated and unspent and is now prematurely categorized as “savings,” said DSWD Secretary Rolando Bautista on September 22, during the Senate deliberations on the proposed P171-billion 2021 budget of the DSWD. That there is still an untapped portion of the P200 billion earmarked for emergency relief does not square with Duterte’s insistent tirades against his government’s supposedly drained funds. It is rather a matter of whether to hold them out on people who are living on increasingly less as COVID-19 drags on.

The poor will meanwhile grow destitute.

Their “involuntary hunger” could be read as an indictment of the bungled policy responses that have been forcing on them a state of penury they did not sign up for. Starving themselves at will is simply not a choice that they can afford, much less during a pandemic. •

07

NEWS

PHILIPPINE COLLEGIAN

The long path to economic recovery

Cash injection, ‘radical’ labor reforms eyed to revive workforce battered by pandemic DANIEL SEBASTIANNE DAIZ The outlook for the labor sector recovery remains bleak, despite the drop of unemployment from an alltime high of 17.7 percent in April to 10 percent in July. As a U-shaped or prolonged economic recovery looms, groups are now urging the government to take more radical steps to curb this yet steep unemployment curve in the country.

The situation is so dire that unemployment in the country is indeed high even in terms of government data. Such a rate has never before exceeded nine percent (see sidebar 1), despite the redefinition of unemployment back in 2005, when the Philippine Statistics Authority removed people who are not seeking work from the unemployed population, opening up the possibility of undercounting the unemployment rate.

For union leader Jerome Adonis of Kilusang Mayo Uno, the government must immediately implement long overdue reforms to the labor sector as the pandemic has only exposed how easily workers can fall prey to opportunistic schemes.

“Ginamit ng mga kumpanya ang COVID-19 para palitan ang mga regular nilang manggagawa ng kontraktwal,” Adonis said in a phone interview with the Collegian, reiterating their campaign for an end to contractualization and for a decent daily wage.

Workers’ bail-out Only with the addition of minimum safety nets like job security and a nationwide daily living wage can workers get through the pandemic or any future sudden economic recession. Even the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) thinktank, the Institute for Labor Studies (ILS), admits that by improving workers’ wages, the economy will recover faster.

For this, the government may expand its expired wage subsidy program to aid small firms in helping to keep their workers afloat. A worker can directly receive a sort of fixed stipend from the state so long as they remain employed, even if they can no longer work their regular hours. This differs from DOLE’s cash-for-work schemes like the COVID-19 Adjustment Measures Program (CAMP) and Tulong Panghanapbuhay sa Ating Displaced Workers Program (TUPAD).

The government had already had past programs for how wage subsidies would operate, noted UP School of Economics teaching fellow JC Punongbayan in an ILS forum, October 14.

Under the Small Business Wage Subsidy (SBWS) Program, rolled out through the Social Security System in two payouts in May and June, the government doled out up to P8,000 for each employee of an affected, nonessential small business, regardless of their employment status.

Employers should keep beneficiaries on the company’s payroll and the employee, on the other hand, cannot resign while under subsidy.

This program has since kept about 3.4 million jobs, as of April 22, according to the president’s report to Congress on Bayanihan 1. Yet, instead of augmenting the budget to improve and expand the program for, at least, the short term, the funding for the Small Business Corporation–one of the government’s largest financiers of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSME) and to which the funding for the SBWS is allocated–would no longer receive the supplemental funding it had from Bayanihan 1 and 2 (see sidebar 2).

Continuing the wage subsidy for small businesses is particularly

targeting, like the social amelioration program … which was too little, too slow, and too politicized.”

Not only would this reduce a worker’s reliance on their monthly wages, but this would also stabilize the country’s economy for now by stimulating consumption among the populace, Isa Artajo, a researcher from the ILS, noted.

Similar to the proposal of the ILS, some labor groups’ longstanding campaign for a P750 national daily wage would have a similar effect. In essence, increasing the purchasing power of the working population–which is about 70 percent of the country’s population–would significantly help spur the economy out of recession.

Workers from all regions stand to benefit from such a nationalized wage increase, for regional wages have become much lower than they were due to inflation (see sidebar 3).

Adonis remains firm: Maintaining the pre-pandemic labor practices of lack of security of tenure and low wages would only prolong, if not exacerbate, the country’s tanked economy.

Workers, he said, are frontliners, too, not just in this pandemic, but also of the country’s economy. If the government wants a quick way out of this recession, they must focus on helping laborers out, he said. •

SIDEBAR 3 Nominal vs. Real wages across the regions (in PhP)* 17.7%

18 16

NCR REGION 3

14

8.4%

12

10

REGION 7

REGION 6 REGION 11

5.3%

5% 5.6% 5.7%

6.6%

6%

6.7% 7% 7.5%

6.4%

7.1%

7.2% 7.4%

4

REGION 4A

10%

Before the pandemic, the highest unemployment rate recorded was 8.4% in 2005, coinciding when the PSA changed its definition of unemployment.

6.8%

7.4%

8% 7.4%

7.5% 7.8% 8.4%

6

Uniform, universal guarantee Adonis noted that the scope of current government aid, like TUPAD, CAMP, and the SBWS, have been restricted to those who are still employed by the time the subsidies were doled out, leaving possibly millions of retrenched Filipinos off the government’s radar. Aid must, ultimately, benefit all workers, he added.

The ILS proposes that the government, at least in the short term, implement a basic income guarantee.

This program would essentially entitle every adult Filipino, employed or not, to a monthly cash aid. “A basic income guarantee harmonizes the alphabet soup of [government] interventions,” said Punongbayan. “It does away with

SIDEBAR 1 Unemployment rate since 2005 Q2

20

8

important since some of them have been forced to temporarily close, said researcher Mira Tacadao of the ILS. Some 70.6 percent of the country’s MSMEs were affected in the month of September alone, according to the Asian Development Bank. It might take not just the remainder of the year for these businesses to recoup their losses, which, according to the Department of Finance’s projection, will amount to P465.3 billion because of COVID-19 restrictions.

REGION 10

2

REGION 1 2005

2008

2011

2017

2014

2020

Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

SOURCE: Labor Force Survey by the Philippine Statistics Authority, August 3, 2020

CAR Non-Plantation

REGION 2

Plantation

REGION 4B REGION 5

SIDEBAR 2 Funding of Small Business Corporation (in PhP) 2019

1.5 Billion

2020

1.5 Billion

2021

1.5 Billion

Non-Agricultural Nominal

CARAGA

Real

BARMM

NOTE Nominal wage is the wage as set by the government. Meanwhile, real wage is the purchasing power of the nominal wage and is adjusted for inflation.

REGION 8 10 Billion

REGION 12 REGION 9

(Proposed)

0

2

4

SOURCES: GAA, President’s Report to Congress on Bayanihan 1 and 2

08

6

8 GAA

10 SUPPLEMENTAL

100

200

300

400

500

*Data as of September 2020 SOURCE: National Wages and Productivity Commission

INFOGRAPHICS • KIMBERELY AXALAN

PAGE DESIGN • LEI ALIANZA

LATHALAIN

Sumuong at Pagliyabin ang Mundo* JOSEPH SEBASTIAN JAVIER

Walang dudang malaki ang impluwensya ng Simbahang Katoliko sa lipunang Pilipino.

Ngunit ano ba ang mahalaga nitong papel sa sekular na mundo, lalo ngayong may pandemya?

Labis na naging abala si Fr. Eduardo Vasquez, kura-paroko ng Our Lady of Grace Parish, nitong mga nakaraang buwan buhat ng pandemya. Malimit siyang nakikita sa mga eskinita sa Caloocan, suot, hindi sutana, kundi ang hazmat, nakaface mask, nakabalot ang mukha, at nakatalukbong ang ulo.

Sa kanyang pag-iikot, binabasbasan niya ng banal na tubig ang pinto ng mga bahay o mga residenteng nagsisilabasan kapag nalamang naririyan siya.

Namamahagi rin siya ng bigas, at kung minsan, dumadalaw sa mga burol upang mag-alay ng dasal at magbigay ng konsuwelo sa mga namatayan. Sa gabi, namimigay naman siya ng pagkain sa mga walang tahanan sa mga bangkebangketa ng lungsod.

Isang beses, dumalaw siya sa isang amang nagtangkang bawiin ang sariling buhay dala ng kawalan ng pag-asa bunsod ng krisis ng pandemya. Nakapaikot ang alambre sa leeg at nakabitin, kulay lila na ang balat nito at walang malay nang nadatnan. Mabuti na lamang at naisugod agad sa ospital kaya agad din itong nakaligtas. Ani Vasquez, tiyak siyang isa lamang ang lalaki sa daan-daang iba pa sa

bansa na nakararamdam ng labis na pighati at kawalang-pag-asa dulot ng pandemya; silang mga kailangang lapitan, kausapin, at ministruhan, patunay na lampas pa sa pagkakasakit ang dulot ng COVID-19.

Isa lang si Vasquez sa marami pang pari at relihiyosong tumutulong upang labanan ang kasalukuyang krisis pangkalusugan. Nariyan din ang Caritas Manila na namimigay ng pagkain sa mga mahihirap na pamilyang walang makain bunsod ng ipinataw na lockdown. Pati mga Katolikong paaralan, binuksan ang sariling mga pintuan upang maging pansamantalang tahanan ng mga walang matirhan. Malinaw na naging aktibo ang simbahan, bilang institusyong bahagi ng lipunang sibil, sa tugon laban sa pandemya.

Para kay Dr. Jayeel Cornelio, sosyolohista ng relihiyon at propesor sa Ateneo de Manila University, kawalan ang malimit na nararanasan ng karaniwang Pilipino ngayong panahon: kawalan ng trabaho at makakain, at pagkawala ng mga mahal sa buhay. Dalamhati at galit ang dulot ng mga biglaang kawalang ito.

At imbis na magbigay ng konsuwelo at kalinga, pagbabanta at karahasan pa ang tugon ng mga pinuno ng pamahalaan.

DISENYO NG PAHINA • LEI ALIANZA

Dito maaaring pumasok ang simbahan, bilang institusyong puwedeng magbigay ng mga payo at diskusyong makatutulong sa mga taong sama-samang iproseso ang mga nawala sa kanila. Diin ni Cornelio, taliwas sa akala ng marami, hindi lang pribadong bagay ang relihiyon, kundi institusyong panlipunan na may papel sa sekular na mundo.

Ayon kay Fr. Albert Alejo, isang Heswitang paring nakatanggap ng mga banta at sinampahan ng kasong sedisyon dahil sa pagpoprotesta laban sa laganap na patayan sa ilalim ng administrasyong Duterte, hindi sapat na sa pisikal at spiritwal na aspeto lang ang tuon ng simbahan.

Kailangan nitong makialam sa pulitika, maging boses sa kabila ng kawalang-habag at kawalanghustisyang nangyayari sa lipunan.

Sa kabila ng mga ganitong pagtulong, may mga tanong na lumulutang, may mas malawak na agam-agam na lumilitaw: ano ba ang tama at akmang papel ng Simbahang Katoliko sa isang lipunang sekular kung saan hiwalay ang paggana ng estado at simbahan, ayon sa saligang batas? Dapat bang makialam ang simbahan sa mga isyung panlipunan, o pumirmi sa loob ng kumbento, malayo sa mga nangyayari sa labas?

DIBUHO • RANIELLA MARTINEZ

Madalas marinig ang argumentong hindi dapat makisawsaw sa usaping pulitika ang simbahan. Malinaw ang atas ng saligang batas: Hindi dapat labagin ang pagkakahiwalay ng simbahan at ng estado. Ngunit mula sa punto de bistang ligal, ispesipiko ang ibig sabihin ng pagiging hiwalay na ito: bawal magtatag ng opisyal na relihiyon ang pamahalaan, at bawal ding maglaan ng pondo para sa mga institusyong relihiyoso. Hindi nito binubusalan ang mga simbahan; malaya pa rin silang magsalita at maghayag hinggil sa mga isyung panlipunan.

Hindi masisisi ang sinumang magsasabing nawalan na ng moral na awtoridad ang simbahan sa Pilipinas.

Maraming dahilan para magduda: mula sa mga abusadong prayle noong panahon ng pananakop hanggang sa pagharang sa mga batas na sa tingin nito’y taliwas sa aral ng Diyos katulad ng Reproductive Health Law, malaon na ang aktibong pagpigil ng simbahan sa mga progresibong reporma sa lipunan.

Ngunit malinaw ring malaki ang naging papel ng Simbahang Katoliko sa pagpapatalsik sa diktadura noong 1986, at sumunod pang mga taon.

Susi ang pakikialam at pakikisangkot nito upang ilantad ang mga pang-

aabuso noong batas militar, gisingin ang diwa ng taumbayan, at udyukin ang mga itong lumabas sa kanikanilang tahanan upang ipaglaban ang kalayaan at katarungan sa bansa. Ano pa at mga madreng may dala-dalang rosaryo at namimigay ng bulaklak ang naging mukha ng himagsikang ito, patunay na maaaring paghanguan ng tapang at matibay na pananalig ang simbahan sa panahon ng alinlangan.

Walang dudang mananatiling mahalagang parte ng buhay ng bawat Pilipino ang simbahan at relihiyon, ilang siglo man ang magdaan. Nasa kamay ng simbahan, kung gayon, ang pagpapasyang tumindig kasama ng malawak na hanay ng mamamayan at makiisa sa pagbabagong panlipunan, o manatiling kimi at walang kibo sa kabila ng laganap na kawalangkatarungan sa bansa.

Bukod sa pagbibigay ng makakain at konsuwelo sa mga naapektuhan ng pandemya, pagkakataon ito marahil para isipin ng simbahan kung saan ito lulugar sa lipunang sekular sa mga susunod na taon. •

* Hango sa kasabihang kadalasang imuugnay kay San Ignacio de Loyola, tagapagtatag ng Ordeng Heswita

09

PHILIPPINE COLLEGIAN • OKTUBRE 2020 Lalong binusabos ng pandemya ang kalunos-lunos nang kalagayang kinahaharap ng mga pesante ngayong taon. Papaliit ang lupang nasasakahan ng mga magsasaka, tinatambakan ang palaisdaang kabuhayan ng mga mangingisda, at pinapatag ang kabundukang tahanan ng mga katutubo noong una pa lang. Kung kaya, sa paggunita ng buwan ng mga pesante, ating alamin ang kanilang kalagayan, pahalagahan ang kanilang paglaban, at makiisa sa kanilang panawagan.

POLYNNE DIRA

LEVEI BIGCAS Alas-singko pa lamang ng umaga, abala na sa pagtatanim at paggapas si Mariel, na tinatawag ding Mayeng. Araw-araw niyang binabaybay ang mga nagtataasang damuhan at taniman sa itaas, kung saan sila nananahan, hanggang sa paanan ng bundok.

Kabilang si Mayeng sa mga Aeta ng Tarlac, at kasa-kasama niya ang pamilya sa pag-aani at pagbababa sa palengke ng mga inaning petsay, repolyo, at sitaw.

Aniya, suwerte kung maituturing ang pananahan nila sa kabundukan dahil hindi sila madaling madapuan ng sakit; kailangan lang nilang bumaba paminsan-minsan para makapagbenta ng mga gulay.

Ngunit simula nang magkaroon ng pandemya, pahirapan na ang pagbabagsak nila ng mga produkto sa sentro ng Tarlac. Bukod sa pangambang hatid ng pambabanta at pananakot ng pangulo’t militar, nariyan din ang takot nilang mahawaan ng sakit.

Gusto man nilang magbenta sa merkado, nilimitahan din ng mga awtoridad ang mga pumapasadang dyip na kaagapay nilang mga katutubong magbubukid sa paghahatid ng kanilang mga produkto sa mga

10

pamilihan. Dahil dito, iniimpok na lang muna ng iba sa kanilang mga tahanan ang ipagbibili sanang honey, luya, at gabi.

Hindi maalam sina Mayeng sa sakit na kumakalat ngayon dahil walang signal na nasasagap ang mga radyo at telebisyon sa kanilang mga tahanan. Umaasa lang din sa mga dumadayong doktor sina Mayeng para sa mura o libreng konsultasyon. Bibihira ang mga doktor na pumipirmi sa kanayunan, at madalas pa, sila at iba pang tumutulong sa mga katutubo ay sinisindak, ikinukulong, o dinarahas ng mga awtoridad.

Iniisip ni Mayeng kung bakit tila napag-iiwanan sila, hindi nagpapatuloy sa pamimigay ng tulong ang pamahalaan sa mga katulad niya ngayong kasagsagan ng krisis pangkalusugan. Kung tutuusin, mas malaki ang inilaang pondo ng pamahalaan para sa pagpapautang sa mga magsasaka kaysa sa ganap na pamamahagi ng subsidiya.

Maraming pamilya sa kanayunan ang mayroong mga anak na nais mag-aral, ngunit walang gadyet o internet. Parang hindi sumagi sa isip ng pamahalaan ang kanilang kalagayan; nagsimula ang klase nang walang sapat na kagamitan at tulong ang mga guro at mag-aaral mula sa gobyerno.

Banggit ni Mayeng, “Kami sa bulnerableng sektor, huli naming

natatanggap ang anumang serbisyo mula sa gobyerno.

Madalas pa nga ay wala talagang tulong mula sa gobyerno. Hindi kami prayoridad kailanman at madalas nakakalimutan.”

Kabi-kabilang pambabastos at pandarahas ang nararanasan ng mga katutubong tulad ni Mayeng sa kamay ng mga militar.

Kamakailan lamang, mayroong katutubong hinuli at sinampahan ng gawa-gawang kaso. Mayroon mang takot na namumuo sa kanila dahil sa kanilang seguridad at kalusugan, hindi naman sila tumitigil sa paglaban para sa kanilang karapatan.

Bukod sa pangangalaga at paglaban ng mga katutubo para sa kanilang lupang ninuno na madalas agawin ng pamahalaan upang ibenta sa dayuhan o sa mga kilalang negosyante sa Pilipinas, nariyan din sila para magsaka.

Ngayon, sa kanyang muling pagbalik sa itaas ng kabundukan kung saan siya nananahan, tulad ng milyun-milyong Pilipinong magsasaka at katutubo, hiling niyang nawa’y hindi sila madapuan ng sakit. Araw-araw silang susulong at lalaban upang iangat ang kani-kanilang mga panawagan na magkaroon ng kagyat na aksyong medikal at pagpapahalaga sa agrikultura, at edukasyon ang pamahalaan. •

Hindi bago ang agawbuhay na kondisyon ng mga magsasaka at manggagawang-bukid sa Negros tuwing panahon ng tiempo muerto.

Ngunit ngayong taon, mas malapit sila sa kamatayan mula sa pagkagutom dala ng pandemya.

Retirado na si Mang Butch Lozande mula sa pagiging operator ng makina sa Victoria’s Milling Company ngunit nananatili pa rin siyang kaisa ng mga manggawang bukid sa Negros bilang secretary general ng National Federation of Sugar Workers. Ang mga magsasaka na nagtatanim at nagaani ng mga tubo, at ang mga manggagawang bukid sa mga mill na nagpo-proseso ng mga inani upang maging asukal ang nagpapatakbo sa industriya ng tubuhan sa probinsya.

Sila man ang primaryang pwersa ng produksyon, hindi naman sila nabibigyan ng seguridad sa pamumuhay. Ang pagiging operator ni Mang Butch sa sugar mill ang tanging bumuhay sa pamilya niya sa loob ng pitong taon, at aniya, talagang mas mahirap na ang kalagayan ngayon ng mga manggagawa’t magsasaka sa tubuhan dahil sa pandemya.

Nang magsimulang magbaba ng mga polisiya sa quarantine ang pamahalaan sa kanilang probinsya noong Marso, pinagbawalang tumawid sa iba’t ibang mga barangay ang mga magsasaka.

Paralisado rin ang kalakhan ng transportasyon sa lugar, kaya kinailangang gumastos ng mas malaking halaga ng mga

manggagawa upang makapunta sa malayong pinagtatrabahuhan.

Lumuwag ang mga protocol noong Mayo, ngunit hindi naman dito nagtapos ang problema ng mga taga-Negros, dahil pagsapit ng buwang ito ay simula naman ng tiempo muerto. Sa susunod na limang buwan, kinakailangang maghanap ng mga magsasaka at manggagawa ng ibang trabaho upang mabuhay.

Madalas naman nilang nairaraos ang panahong ito, ani Mang Butch. Kung walang trabaho sa hasyenda, pupunta ang ilan sa siyudad upang maghanap ng maaaring mapasukan. Ang iba’y magmamaneho ng pedicab, maglalabada, papasok sa maliliit na konstruksyon, o kung malapit sa dagat, eekstra sila sa pangingisda.

Ngunit ngayong kasagsagan ng pandemya at pang-ekonomikong krisis, nagsasara ang mga negosyo at hindi makapaghahanap ng alternatibo ang mga nawalan ng trabaho sa hasyenda.

Nagdaraos ng bungkalan ang mga magsasaka’t manggagawa sa mga nakatiwangwang na lupa sa pagsubok na magkaroon kahit papaano ng araw-araw na pagkain.

Ngunit para sa ibang wala na talagang mapagpipiliian, napipilitan silang iparenta ang kanilang lupa.

Sa ganitong paraan napunta ang pagmamay-ari ng 70 hanggang 80 porsyento ng mga naipamigay na lupa sa magsasaka sa mga panginoong maylupa at korporasyon.

“Sino ba naman ang kayang mabuhay sa loob ng isang taon na di kakain ang pamilya mo habang hinihintay mo ang harvest time para magkapera ka sa tubuhan, mapakain pamilya mo at mapag-aral mga anak mo?” Ani Mang Butch.

DIBUHO • MARK VINCENT VILLANUEVA

@phkule

Ipinopokus ang probinsya sa pagluluwas ng tubo na isang beses lang sa isang taon ang anihan kaya naghihirap ang mga naninirahan dito. At bukod pa sa pana-panahon na ngang pag-empleyo sa kanila sa hasyenda, nasa halagang P700 hanggang P1,500 lamang kada linggo ang kinikita nila rito.

Kaakibat ng kakarampot na sahod, kahirapang magsaka noong Marso, at ngayong tiempo muerto na sinabayan ng pagkawala ng mga trabaho, wala nang anumang seguridad sa pamumuhay ang mga magsasaka’t manggagawa sa Negros. Marahil kalahati na ng kanilang katawan ang nakalubog sa kumunoy ng tuluyang pagkagutom.

Lugmok ang kondisyon ng mga manggagawa’t magsasaka sa Negros, kaya natural dito ang militansya ng komunidad upang ipaglaban ang kanilang karapatan at kabuhayan. Naging panangga ng pamahalaan ang Memorandum Order No. 32 at pagpapadala ng mga batalyon ng sundalo sa isla upang siilin ang mamamayan dito.

Kwento ni Mang Butch, gawain ng mga militar ang puntahan sa hasyenda ang mga magsasaka, lalo na ang mga lider ng mga pesanteng organisasyon, upang sabihan ang mga itong tigilan ang pagsama sa mga protesta, at sumuko upang mawala ang pangalan nila sa listahan ng mga rebelde. At sa isang pagkakataon, ani Mang Butch, tinipon ang mga magsasaka upang ipasigaw at ipakundena sa kanila ang organisasyong kinabibilangan nila.

Ngayong may pandemya, taktika naman ng militar na gamitin ang mga protocol upang gipitin ang mga manggagawa’t magsasaka.

Patuloy pa rin ang pagtatanim ng mga baril at bomba sa tirahan ng mga pesante, at pagsampa sa kanila ng mga gawa-gawang kaso.

Sa katunayan, isa si Mang Butch sa mga hinuli noong nakaraang taon sa sunud-sunod na raid na ginawa ng pulis sa opisina ng mga progresibong grupo sa Negros.

Dahil sa pananakot ng militar, dala na rin ng kasaysayan ng Negros sa karahasan ng mga ito, maraming magsasaka ang napwersang maging surrenderee ng New People’s Army, bagaman hindi sila rebelde. May ilan ding naglie-low, ani Mang Butch. Ngunit sa kabila nito, marami pa rin ang tumutuloy sa mga bungkalan at mga protesta, ibayong tapang at pag-iingat lang talaga sa kanilang mga sarili.

Ngayong Oktubre, buwan ng mga pesante, nakatakdang bumalik ang mga manggagawa’t magsasaka sa hasyenda. Kasabay ng pag-ani ng kanilang mga pinagpagurang tubo ay pagsibol din ng- pag-asang makaahon sila sa paghihirap, makamtan ang batayang karapatan, at mamuhay sa bawat araw nang hindi nagaagaw-buhay. •

SAM DEL CASTILLO Mahirap sukatin ang lawak at lalim ng dagat, pero para kay Danny*, 43 anyos na mangingisda mula sa Bacoor, Cavite, kaya itong tantyahin ng kanyang bangka at lambat. Bagaman nasa laot pa rin tayo ng pandemya, patuloy ang paglalayag ni Danny sa Manila Bay upang mangisda, buhayin ang kanyang pamilya. Ngunit habang tumatagal, paliit nang paliit ang tubig na maaari niyang baybayin, paunti nang paunti ang isdang maaari niyang mahuli.

Sapat na noon para kay Danny ang pumalaot at mangisda sa palibot ng Bacoor. Subalit ngayon, kailangan niya nang dumayo sa Maynila o Bulacan, na milya ang layo mula sa Cavite, para maghanapbuhay.

Tinatabunan na kasi ng lupa ang mga baklad nila, at nitong Oktubre, sinimulang tayuan ng bakal na bakod ang pampang ng Bacoor.

Sa dinami-rami ng planong reclamation project sa Manila Bay, isa pa lang ang 320-hektaryang Bacoor Reclamation and Development

Project ng lokal na pamahalaan ng Bacoor. Sakop ng proyektong ito ang buong kahabaan ng baybayin ng lungsod, mula Sineguelasan hanggang Zapote V. At gaya ng lahat ng reklamasyon sa Manila Bay, balak itong gawing sentro ng kalakalan at pabahay sa lungsod.

Layon din ng proyektong itong gumawa ng bagong pagkakakilanlan para sa Bacoor—urban at daluyan ng turismo. Ngunit sa ngalan ng huwad na pag-unlad, bubuwagin ng lokal na pamahalaan ang mga palaisdaan, at papalayasin ang higit-kumulang 700 pamilya ng mangingisda.

Mahigit 20 taon nang namamalakaya si Danny, at marami pang mangingisda liban sa kanya ang nabubuhay sa yamangdagat ng Manila Bay. Ito na ang pinagkakakitaan nila ng kanyang asawa, na nagbebenta ng arawang huli niya sa palengke. Ngunit bunsod ng restriksyon sa transportasyon, hindi na nila ito madala sa pamilihan,

KULTURA

at kung maibagsak man, pahirapan pa rin itong ibenta.

Maraming nahuhuli si Danny pero bilang na lang ang bumibili sa lokal na pamilihan sa kanila.

Napipilitan tuloy siyang dalhin sa fish port ang huli niya kung saan maliit na bahagi na lang ng dapat niyang kita ang natitira para sa kanya. Dapat niya pa kasing hatian ang mga kargador, mayroon ding porsyento ang mga tauhan sa daungan. Simula ng pandemya, halos 30 porsyento na lang ang kinikita niya kumpara sa dati niyang sweldo, na hindi pa arawaraw mayroon.

Lalo lang pinalulubog sa kahirapan ang mga mangingisda ng patuloy na reklamasyon sa Manila Bay sa kabila ng pandemya. Hindi na nga sila makabenta, bumaba pa ang bilang at kalidad ng mga isda dahil sa pagtatapon ng lupa at pekeng buhangin sa dagat, at higit, may banta pa ng demolisyon sa tirahan nila.

Ayon kay Danny, hindi kailangang maging siyentista upang masabing dagdag basura at nakalalason sa mga isda ang pekeng white sand sa Manila Bay. Kaya giit niya, dapat manatili sa bundok ano man ang galing doon dahil hindi ito kailanman magiging angkop para sa karagatan; dapat nang itigil ang reklamasyon, panatilihing para sa mga mangingisda ang Manila Bay. Ano mang gusaling itayo o lupang ibuhos nila, raragasa ang alon at lulubog din ito sa lalim ng karagatan. Dinadaluyong man ng mga reklamasyon ang Manila Bay, hindi nito basta-bastang maaanod ang malaon nang sistematikong pamumuhay at paghahanapbuhay ng mga mangingisda sa tabingdagat. •

*Hindi niya pangalan.

DISENYO NG PAHINA • REX MENARD CERVALES

tunay

na

11

PHILIPPINE COLLEGIAN • OCTOBER 2020

The Female of the Peasants*

STATE OF THE PEASANT WOMEN COMMUNITY IN THE PHILIPPINES MARY JUNE RICAÑA

From separating seeds to selling the harvests, peasant women take part in the whole process of farming. They are food security frontliners with unpaid care work extending from farms to tables, and yet, in the Philippines, they remain to be invisible workers. There is hardly any literature available on the state of the peasant women community in the country and the few existing ones are mostly inaccessible.

Cathy Estavillo, secretarygeneral of Amihan or the National Federation of Peasant Women, knows why: The government does not recognize women in farming.

It is against this background that peasant women organizations stand in fortitude, fight and resist the discrimination, harassment, and deprivation of their rights to livelihood and land. It is against this background that they show just who they are and what they are capable of as the female of the species.

Even so the she-bear fights Drenched in sweat and marked by the sun, Leticia’s long days in the farm usually end with her walking back home. To most of us, this may mean a cold and relaxing bath or a two-hour nap; but a peasant woman leads life differently. She comes home to the fear of not being able to provide food for her family and the added burden of having to teach her five children

12

their school modules.

The new normal has hit the peasant women community harder than most people. Despite the policy issued by the Department of Agriculture exempting farmers from the lockdown, there are numerous impediments that led to their loss of livelihood. The community quarantine has blocked their production and distribution processes, with suppliers prohibited from entering the farms, and farmers unable to sell their produce in markets due to the suspension of mass transportation.

According to Amihan, the remaining root crops and relief goods given by non-government organizations only lasted the peasant families for three days after the lockdown. As a result, farmers were forced to acquire loans with interest rates ranging from 10 to 15 percent, leaving them in huge debt.

On top of the adverse effects brought by the pandemic, the longstanding plight of peasant women on the severe wage gap among male and female farmworkers continues to fall on deaf ears.

Studies by the Philippine Statistics Authority in the past two years showed that the average wage gap is at P30, with peasant men and women earning P335 and P304.60 per day, respectively. In the palay sector, the gap is as high as P115 with farmers from Mimaropa earning P422.93 for males and P307.46 for females.

To a mother like Leticia who makes P200 a day, the salary of a female farmer is far from enough

for her family’s needs. In fact, her five high schoolers have to share one working smartphone for modular learning, which means that they have to take turns to access their classes.

Furthermore, the added burden of having to teach her children the lessons worries Leticia as her highest educational attainment is high school. “Nadagdagan ang pagsasakripisyo kasi magtuturo pa [ako] ng bata kahit hindi [ko] alam ang itinuturo dahil hindi [ako] nakapag-aral ng mataas na lebel,” she said. This is a concern that she and other peasant mothers share—due to the incompetence of the government, their children’s education would be limited by their misfortunes.

Between being a mother and a farmer, Leticia’s conviction as a peasant woman does not falter.

She, along with the peasant women all over the Philippines, continues to call for a science-based response to the pandemic and sufficient subsidy for all farmers.

Even so the cobra bites Kamatayan was the name of the guard who led the attack. He was backed by guards equipped with armalites. They were set to storm and fence Hacienda Yulo in August 2020, when peasant women and elderlies blocked their path, ready to fight for their land. ArmaLites were pointed to their faces but the indignance of the peasant women was bulletproof.

Farmers and peasant women have long lived in fear of what

happens to their lands and livelihood when the government decides to dislodge them. Seven out of 10 farmers in the country do not own the land they till. Despite various reform programs, the majority of these still belong to landlords and multinational corporations.

However, when the opportunity for land distribution does come, women are often disregarded and the land titles are given to men in the family. Because of this, peasant women are left to work as labor forces in agricultural plants and haciendas where they are subject to low and unfair wages and benefits compared with male workers.

The Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) of former president Corazon Aquino first acknowledged the role of women in farming by granting land titles to 250 of them. However, this was cut short when the peasant families of Hacienda Doronila-Araneta faced the threat of eviction after the 2014 Supreme Court ruling cancelled all the awarded lands issued through CARP. On top of the land deprivation of peasant families, the government is doing nothing to regulate the prices of their produce.

The agricultural liberalization has left the farmers empty-handed as they cannot compete with the rice import from Vietnam and Malaysia. Because of this, the price of palay has drastically dropped from P20 a kilo to P12, putting farmers, especially peasant women, in extreme poverty.

Even so, like the women of Hacienda Yulo, the peasant community remains undaunted as ever. Despite the efforts of the government to disenfranchise them, their cries for genuine agrarian reform, equal opportunities among peasant men and women, and the right to own land are loud and clear.

The female of the species is more deadly than the male Nearing the start of the 2018 barangay elections, the highways from Cordon, Isabela to Tuguegarao were filled with 800 ripped sacks vilifying activists as “terrorists” and “recruiters of the NPA.” Among the singled-out names is Cita Managuelod, AMBI Amihan Isabela leader and peasant advocate.

She has long been a critic of the government’s self-serving policies; thus, making her a target of efforts to silence activists.

In 2019, the 95th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army placed a P1-million bounty on Managuelod. She was also considered a persona non grata in various barangays of Isabela so as to limit her influence in the region. Managuelod believes that the elaborate efforts to attack her and peasant women organizations aim to create a pretense that they are not accepted by the people that the military claim to fight for.

The Duterte administration, driven by its militaristic and misogynistic principles, has waged

ILLUSTRATION • LOUISE SEJERA

@phkule

a war against its critics and is even more domineering towards the female ones. In the second quarter of 2020, the ripped sacks tactic once again surfaced and attacked the women’s group Amihan and Gabriela, reading, “GABRIELA, AMIHAN, KADAMAY NILOLOKO ANG MGA KABABAIHAN UPANG ABUSUHIN NG NPA.” The attempt to discredit peasant activists does not end at red-tagging and vilification. In the distribution of relief goods by local government units during the pandemic, peasant women leaders are made to fill-out forms that aim to profile them as members of mass organizations. As a result of this harassment, most peasant women leaders choose not to claim the aid provided by the taxes of the Filipino people.

Last April, with the hopes of helping the families who did not receive aid, Amihan, along with other peasant groups, organized a relief operation and a bagsakan, a way to sell the products of farmers from Central Luzon to Manila.

However, during the operation, their relief goods were confiscated for the sole reason that they brought along with them publicity materials for their organizations.

With 277 farmers, 36 of whom were women, slain during the Duterte administration, it is no secret that the government is unsparing against the activist peasant community. Nevertheless, when asked about how she feels towards the red-tagging and

FEATURES

threats she received, Managuelod’s first thought was not fear for her life.

Her immediate answer was that she worries about not reaching as many communities as possible due to the administration’s smear campaign.

In the face of a government adamant to silence its critics, Managuelod and the rest of the peasant women remain unfazed in their call to stop the killing of farmers and the militarization of LGUs, schools, churches, and communities, and to recognize their democratic right to organize and assembly.

It is clear that peasant women are treated with extreme injustice in the Philippines, what with the persistent discrimination, harassment, and deprivation of rights. However, as Estavillo puts it, “ang kababaihan, kapag na-organisa [at] namulat ay hindi na kimi o tahimik sa harap ng tumitinding kahirapan. Sila ay lalahok at lalaban sa matagal na pang-aapi at pagsasamantalang kanilang dinaranas sa buhay.”

From separating seeds to selling the harvests, peasant women take part in the whole process of farming, and their responsibilities do not end there. Their role extends from farmlands to households and to the streets, where their fellow women await them to fight for feminism and food sovereignty—all for a just and humane society. •

*The title of the article and its subheadings are based on Rudyard Kipling’s poem, The Female of the Species.

PAGE DESIGN • MA. SOPHIA SIBAL

13

KULTURA

KEYBOARD warriors Warriors LEVEI BIGCAS Isiniwalat ng pandemya ang pangunahing agenda ng kasalukuyang administrasyon—siilin ang batayang karapatan at ikubli ang kahirapang dinaranas ng mamamayan. Sa higit pitong buwang lockdown at kawalangtugon ng pamahalaan sa medikal na pangangailangan sa gitna ng krisis pangkalusugan, patuloy ang panawagan at diskusyon sa likod ng #OustDuterte.

Nag-umpisa ang kampanyang pagpapatalsik online dahil bukod sa dinig at tanaw, ramdam mismo ng sambayanan ang karahasan at pagkaganid ng rehimen ngayong kasagsagan ng pandemya. Kolektibo ang naging poot, galit at kagustuhan ng mamamayang makamtan ang hinahangad na kagyat na aksyon at solusyon, nang makabalik ang lahat sa normal na pamumuhay.

Bawiin ang yaman Ipinakita sa pamamagitan ng #OustDuterte ang siphayo ng mamamayan sa palpak at bigong tugon ng gobyerno sa mga suliraning kinahaharap ng bansa. Mayroong tsansang masindak ang gobyerno sa araw-araw na laman ng trends sa social media. Sa kabila nito, maaaring isulong ng pamahalaan ang mga natatagong agenda dahil mas maraming mamamayan ang lumalaban at nagpapahayag online kaysa sa labas.

Bago ang pandemya, mayroong hating pananaw ang mga netizen pagdating sa pulitika, kaya sinikap na maksimahin ng mga organisador ang online na espasyo upang makapagmulat. Iba’t ibang progresibong organisasyon ang nagdaos ng mga educational discussion, online meeting at webinar na tumatalakay sa kasalukuyang lagay ng bansa at ng nararapat na gawin upang mapatampok ang mga panawagan ng mamamayan.

Bukod sa #OustDuterte movement online, nagsagawa rin ng iba’t ibang donation drives para sa mga frontliner, mga manggagawa, magsasaka, at tsuper na nawalan ng trabaho ngayong kasagsagan ng pandemya. Nagkaroon man ng pagtutulungan at pagkakaisa online, nagmistula naman itong paunang solusyon lamang na wala nang bisa sa katagalan.

14

Ayon sa manunulat ng The Harvard Crimson na si Maria L. Smith, ang mga non-profit at charity ay hindi nilikha upang maging permanenteng solusyon sa ugat ng kahirapan at iba pang malalaking suliranin sa lipunan. Nagsisilbi lamang itong pansamantalang lunas na kalaunan ay hindi rin sustenable.

Maaaring maging maliit ang pagtingin ng administrasyon sa malalaking isyu tulad ng gutom at kahirapan, at patuloy silang aaasa sa donasyon ng mga pribadong sektor.

Marapat na maging salimbayan ang pagtulong sa mga nangangailangang mamamayan at sa kanilang panawagang makatanggap ng ayuda ngayong kasagsagan ng krisis pangkalusugan.

Sabay ang pagnanais ng mamamayang kumilos at lumaban para sa natatapakang karapatan at kalayaan, at makapagpasimula ng mga online protests. Banggit ng isang mananaliksik sa pulitika at social media ng University of Antwerp na si Jeroen Van Laer, dahil sa materyal na kondisyon ng mamamayan, naitutulak nila ang sarili sa paglaban sa naghaharing sistema. Dahil hindi matugunan ang pangangailangan sa arawaraw, kinailangan nilang kumilos, sa loob man o labas ng kanilang mga tahanan, at maging sa mga lugar na madalas pagdausan ng kilos-protesta.

Magkaisa nang masaklaw Sa tulong ng online movement, nakapag-oorganisa at nagkaroon ng mga sosyo-politikal na diskusyon.

Kabi-kabilang kilos protesta ang idinaos sa lansangan, dahil malalaking bilang din ng mamamayan ang sumasali sa diskusyon at pumipirma sa mga petisyon. Nanatiling bingi ang administrasyon sa mga hinaing ng mamamayan, at wala pa ring komprehensibong plano para sa mga nagkakasakit at nagugutom.

Tulad din ang Pilipinas ng ibang bansa, ang mga ordinaryong mamamayan sa iba’t ibang dako ng mundo ay aligaga sa pagtanaw ng tulong mula sa gobyerno na puro pansarili at politikal na interes lamang ang tinatanaw ngayong

kasagsagan ng pandemya. Tahasan ang pagkamkam ng kapangyarihan, pang-aabuso at pagsupil sa karapatang pantao.

Ilan lamang sa hashtags na nag-trend sa buong mundo ang #BlackLivesMatter, #NeverAgain, at #StandWithHongKong.

Ginagamit ito ng netizens upang makiisa sa mga diskursong sosyo-pulitikal na tumatalakay sa lagay ng mamamayan sa lipunan, mga nananamantala sa karapatan, at mga paraan kung paano lalaban at makakatulong sa pagbabago at pagpapahalaga sa karapatang pantao.

Sa Thailand, karamihan sa mamamayan ay nananawagan para sa sistematikong reporma sa demokrasya dahil ipinakukulong ng mga nasa administrasyon ang kanilang mga kritiko. Hindi na inalintana ang nagbabadyang panganib sa kanilang buhay kahit pa maaari silang masaktan o makulong at makakuha ng sakit, kung ang kapalit naman nito ay kalayaan at demokrasya.

Sa lagay ng mamamayan sa Estados Unidos, mayroong mga petisyon at diskusyong umusbong tungkol sa diskriminasyon dahil sa kulay ng balat. Nakapagprotesta na sila, ngunit hindi naman nawala ang diskriminasyon at inhustisyang nagaganap. Sa katunayan, kasalukuyan pa ring buhay ang administrasyong nagbibigay ng kalayaan, plataporma at pagkakataon sa mga mapang-abuso.

Bagaman naipapaabot sa iba’t ibang dako ng mundo ang mga kaganapan, kailangan pa rin ng mas malawak na pag-ugnay sa mamamayang hindi babad online. Kung hindi magiging katuwang sa pagkilos ang mamamayan offline, pare-parehas na magiging katulad lamang ng mga hayop na walang kamalay-malay na naghihintay para sa kusang pag-unlad ng kapaligiran.

Gapos lagutin Maliit na porsyento lamang ng mga Pilipino a n g naaabot ng mga impormasyong nagkalat online, kadalasan ay iyong mga Pilipinong may-kaya.

Simula nang mailunsad ang ouster movement, maaaring nasindak ang diktador ngunit hindi ito sumapat upang mapatalsik siya mula sa kanyang puwesto. Maaaring maging magaan

DIBUHO NI • MIKHAELA CALDERON

lamang sa mga nasa katungkulan ang mga isyung nagte-trending online dahil karamihan ng nakikiisa sa ouster movement o sa pumipirma sa mga petisyon ay mula rin sa hanay ng mga pribilehiyadong mamamayan lamang.

Noong dekada ’70, patuloy na dumaluyong sa madilim na lagay ng lipunan ang mga Pilipino, na di kalauna’y nagtulak sa kanila upang makiisa sa People Power Revolution noong 1986 sa EDSA. Mas mahirap ang moda ng pag-oorganisa noon kumpara ngayon dahil hindi ganoon kaabante ang paggamit ng teknolohiya noon. Kung mapapansin ngayong makabagong panahon, ang mga kabilang sa mga pangunahing sektor na mas kailangang dinggin ng administrasyon ay walang akses sa internet o teknolohiya. Mas uunahin pa nila ang pang-araw araw na pangangailangan at pangkain kaysa sa internet.

Ayon sa manunulat ng The Atlantic na si Antonia Malchik, epektibo ang mga pisikal na protesta lalo kung matatagpuan ito sa mga aksesibleng pampublikong espasyo, at mapapadalo ang mamamayan mula sa iba’t ibang sektor na mayroong iisang mithiin at panawagan.

Ang paggamit ng mga pampublikong espasyo ay parte ng pribilehiyo, proteksyon at kalayaan ng mamamayang bumubuo sa isang lipunan. Ang mga espasyong ito ang maaaring magbubuklod sa lokal na komunidad at sa administrasyong dapat na nagsisilbi rito.

Kasalukuyang sinisikap ng mga organisador na tumungo sa mga komunidad, dahil ngayong kasagsagan ng pandemya ay gipit at nagugutom ang mamamayan. Nais ng mga organisador na dinggin ang pangangailangan ng mga komunidad at kolektibo itong ipunin upang manawagan sa pamahalaan sa mga gaganaping protesta sa lansangan.

Bagaman nakatutulong ang teknolohiya sa pagpapakalap ng impormasyon at pag-sesentralisa ng mga ideolohiyang pulitikal na magiging kasangga sa pagkilos at paglaban sa mapagsamantalang pamahalaan, maaaring walang magbago kung ang galit at pangangailan ng mga tao ay maiipon at maikukubli lamang sa likod ng mga iskrin. •

DISENYO NG PAHINA• KIMBERLY AXALAN

OPINION

Reds FRANCIS TEJADA

There is an unprecedented public outrage over the redtagging of several artists who have spoken out on social issues. Indeed, not since the time of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo have we seen such a lively debate and strong push-back against the labeling of groups and individuals as “communist-terrorist.”

Red-tagging has been explained as the labeling of persons as members or supporters of the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army (CPP-NPA), which are underground groups and engaged in armed struggle against the Duterte regime. They have been described as “communist-terrorist,” with officials already invoking the anti-terror law even if no legal proceedings have been initiated.

The term CT or “communistterrorist” was a counter-insurgency term used by the US in the Vietnam War. But do you know who also used the term “communist-terrorist?” The Nazi party of Hitler used the same term to spread fear and later justify their fascist rule. (Is there still any doubt the term had fascist roots?)

In order to have a better understanding of the debate around red-tagging, we have to address the elephant in the room. We have to come to terms with what “Red” means. Why do these Reds exist in the first place?

How long have they been around, why are they still around?

The term “Reds” here refers to the underground groups of the Communist

Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army. They have been waging armed struggle since 1969. The CPPNPA survived and grew in strength under the Marcos dictatorship. At the time of its founding, the NPA was just small and had only several highpowered firearms. They also survived and outlived the succeeding regimes after Marcos. Each administration would set a deadline to finish off the Reds but will always fail.

Peace talks were initiated in 1986 then again in 1992, to try to find a political solution to the armed conflict.

The peace talks were intended to come up with agreements that would address the social roots of the armed conflict en route to a settlement or final peace agreement. The issues are not as complicated as they seem — human rights, land reform, national industrialization, national sovereignty, genuine democracy. No, the peace talks do not intend to establish a communist state (an oxymoron for Marxists because under communism there is no longer any state). Many of the issues being discussed in the peace talks are in fact bourgeois-democratic demands, similar to the revolutions in Europe, but this time from the perspective of the working class.

The peace talks would bog down when the Philippine government terminates or scuttles it for different reasons. But at the end of the day, it all boils down to one thing—the peace talks and its results threaten the status quo. That’s why land reform, national industrialization, national sovereignty, human rights, and democracy have become such dangerous concepts for the ruling elite. These will end the armed conflict but these will also take away the basis for foreign and elite rule in our country.

Red-tagging leveled up during the time of Arroyo when generals like Hermogenes Esperon, Jr. endorsed the wholesale labeling of activists,

PAGE DESIGN AND GRAPHICS • KIMBERLY AXALAN

journalists, church workers, and lawmakers as “enemies of the state.”

This was the peak of extrajudicial killings of activists, prompting United Nations Special Rapporteur Philip Alston to observe that the red-tagging or labeling of activists as members of the armed group NPA was a major factor in the rise of the killings. The mass movement pushed back against these attacks and the frequency of the killings lessened.

A case of rebellion which alleged the involvement of progressive partylist representatives as CPP members was filed in a Makati Regional Trial Court but was eventually junked by the Supreme Court in a landmark decision.

The oft-repeated line of the state forces is that legal activist groups are recruiting NPA members. The examples they cite are activists who once belonged to legal organizations and are next seen in the mountains and engaged in armed struggle.

That there are students, workers, and other individuals joining the underground shouldn’t really come as a surprise. Such was the case during the ’70s at the height of Martial Law. Many of the best and brightest of UP joined the underground resistance to Martial Law. Many were arrested, jailed, tortured, and killed. Their names have been enshrined at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani in Quezon City. Yes, many of the names engraved in the Wall of Remembrance were heroes and martyrs who were part of the armed

struggle against the dictatorship. They may have been considered “terrorists”

by Marcos but they remain heroes to the anti-dictatorship forces.

Since the conditions of poverty and injustice remained unchanged even after the Marcos regime, and after the peace talks collapsed in 1987, the armed struggle persisted. Peace talks happened again in 1992 but the basic agreements to end the armed conflict were still not achieved. In short, the conditions for armed conflict remained.

There may be different reasons a person would join the armed struggle. In the countryside, it is acknowledged that landlessness and feudal oppression drive peasants to join the NPA. But why would activists, especially those in the legal arena, decide to join the revolutionary underground?

There may be many reasons for them to join the NPA. One prominent activist from Davao, who was known to Duterte himself, went underground because of political persecution when trumped-up charges were filed against him. A general of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, Raymundo Jarque, sought refuge with the National Democratic Front in the ’90s because he could not find justice in the system he had once served.

Others join the underground because the space for dissent in the legal arena keeps shrinking.

Others join the underground because of the belief that the ruling elite, in their desire to stay in power, will always use violence against the people. Whatever their motivations may be, these are acknowledged to be personal choices and not organizational decisions.

An organization cannot just force someone to choose a difficult life filled with dangers to personal safety and security. It is presumed that those who do decide to take the road less traveled, do so after serious thought and out of a great sense of

selflessness. I have had schoolmates in UP who were martyred on the battlefield and I do not know them to be impulsive let alone stupid. I have the highest regard for my friends.

I do not see their lives as waste.

Their lives had deep meaning. They made the greatest sacrifice for their beliefs and principles, which is more than we can say for the many corrupt and abusive officials occupying high posts in government.

Rather than condemn them and slander their memory, society should be asking why they left their relatively comfortable lives to live in remote rural communities and be with the poorest of the poor. Society should confront the reality that armed struggle persists because there is something fatally flawed in our system.

If we go back to the Wall of Remembrance in Quezon City, and if we take a look at our history, being Red isn’t necessarily bad. As the late Atty. Romeo Capulong once said, “The validity and correctness of the armed struggle is neither a legal nor moral issue, it is a political and historical one.” History will judge its correctness. Right now, we should take a long, hard look at why armed struggle persists in our country and why peace talks have always been scuttled by the militarists.

We must call out those who seek to deny the root causes of the armed conflict by reducing everything to some shady conspiracy among activist “recruiters.” We must call out those who use red-tagging to intimidate and silence all forms of dissent. We must likewise demand peace based on justice and for the roots of the armed conflict to be finally addressed. •

This is a contributed article to the Collegian.

15

OPED-GRPX

Philippine Collegian Volume 97 • Issue 21

DIBUHO • MIKHAELA CALDERON

DUMI SA PAMANTASAN PAULA BENITEZ

Obligasyon mong tanganan ang interes ng nakararami nang may katapatan at kagalingan, at kung taliwas dito ang iyong mga aksyon, hindi ka marapat na maglingkod sa isang pampublikong pamantasan.

16

Hindi pa man ako tuluyang nakakapasok sa unibersidad, itinatak na ng bawat pagbati sa pagpasa ko sa UPCAT na ang pagiging iskolar ko ay katumbas ng paglilingkod sa bayan. Inaasahang bawat estudyanteng pinag-aaral ng taumbayan ay maglilingkod sa mamamayan. Inaasahan din naming mag-aaral na matututunan namin ang prinsipyo ng paglilingkod sa mga guro, sa mas nakatataas na tao sa UP. Ngunit ngayon, hayaan mong kami naman ang magturo sa iyo.

Naging maingay ang pangalan mo sa social media nitong mga nakaraang linggo, kinuwestiyon ang posisyon mo bilang executive vice president ng UP, at gaya ng dati, dahil ito sa maling mga rason.

Ilang beses ka nang binabatikos ng komunidad ng UP ngunit tila wala naman itong epekto, gayong patuloy ka pa rin sa paglalabas ng insensitibo at balikong mga pahayag.

Kamakailan lamang ay pinaratangan mong ginagamit ng mga Kaliwa ang pagkamatay ni Baby River upang isulong ang kanilang ideolohiya. Ngunit hindi ideolohiya, kundi simpleng pagkakaroon ng makataong pagtrato man lang, ang pinatatambol sa isyu nina Reina at ng kanyang anak.

Tinanggal ang kalayaan ni Reina nang taniman ng mga pulis ang kanyang tinutuluyan ng mga baril at granada. At mula kapanganakan ni Baby River hanggang sa kanyang

pagpanaw, ipinagkait ng kapulisan at ng Korte ang karapatan ng magina na mamuhay nang payapa at magkasama.

Ang tila kawalan mo rin marahil ng respeto sa pagkatao ng iba ang nagtulak sa iyong basta-bastang magbitiw ng rape joke, sabihing ang pagkakaiba ng rape, pagibig, at kasal ay nasa damit lang.

Hindi ko maatim na nagagawa mong magbitiw ng ganitong mga biro gayong ayon sa Philippine Commission on Women, higit 800 kaso na ng pang-aabuso sa mga babae at bata ang naitala mula lamang Marso 15 hanggang Abril 30 ngayong taon. Inaasahang mas marami pa ito dahil may mga biktimang hindi nagagawang makapagsumbong sa awtoridad.

Hindi naman ito ang unang beses na pinairal mo ang ganoong tipo ng atrasadong ideya.

Sapagkat hindi ba’t sinuportahan mo pa noon ang iyong kapatirang nahuling nanghahamak ng mga tao sa isang kumalat na group chat at nagdala ng kaguluhan sa loob mismo ng kampus? Nag-alok ka ng proteksyon sa kanila, at hanggang ngayon, wala pa ring anumang aksyon ang pamunuan ng UP upang parusahan ang mga nadawit.

Gaya ng mga taga-sunod ng pangulo ng bansa, nagiging kasangkapan ka upang magpalaganap ng maling mga balita. Isa kang doktor, at ngayon

#JunkRiceLiberalizationLaw

ay medical adviser ng InterAgency Task Force (IATF), ngunit ilang beses mong ipinakalat na ang epekto ng COVID-19 ay nakadepende sa parte ng katawang dinapuan ng virus. At tulad ni Duterte, sinisisi mo rin sa mga nagpoprotesta ang pagtaas ng kaso ng COVID-19, kahit na mismong gobyerno at IATF ay wala namang maayos na mga hakbangin upang tugunan ang pandemya sa bansa.

Kung tutuusin, ang pagkilos at aktibismong minamaliit mo ay esensyal sa pagbabagong panlipunang itinutulak ng UP. Tungkulin ng mga estudyanteng pinag-aaral ng sambayanan ang kilalanin ang kahirapan ng iba’t ibang sektor ng lipunan, at sikaping magtulak ng pagbabago sa kondisyong nakabatay sa mamamayan. Sa kabilang banda, tungkulin ng UP na maging espasyo upang mapagyaman ang ganitong mga uri ng pagkilos, maging santuwaryo ng mga marhinalisado at inaapi.

Ang pagprotekta ng ilang mga opisyal sa kasama nitong mismong naglalagay sa panganib sa buhay ng mga estudyante ay tuwirang pagtaliwas sa mga prinsipyong pinanghahawakan ng unibersidad.

Sapagkat paano masasabing ang pamantasang ay ligtas na espasyo kung nananatili rito ang mga taong nangre-red tag, gumagawa

ng masasamang biro? Paanong magiging para sa sambayanan ang pamantasan kung ang ilan sa mga pamunuan nito ay sila mismong nagsasawalang-bahala sa batayang mga karapatan?

Hindi na siguro nakakagulat na ganito ang katangian ng matataas na opisyales ng pamantasan dahil sa mahabang panahon, kalakhan ng bumubuo sa pamunuan ng UP ay mga taong itinatalaga lamang ng pangulo ng bansa. Natural na layo sila sa danas ng komunidad at hindi sila gumagana para sa interes nito kundi ng kung sinong nakaupo sa Malacañang. Tatlo lamang sa 11 miyembro ng Lupon ng mga Rehente ang kumakatawan sa buong komunidad ng unibersidad, kaya iba ang nagiging resulta ng mga pagpapasya para sa mga polisiya.

Ngunit bilang isang taong may mataas na posisyon sa pamantasan, bilang pampublikong opisyal, inaasahan dapat sa iyo at sa mga kasama mo ang huwarang serbisyo sa sambayanan.

Obligasyon mong tanganan ang interes ng nakararami nang may katapatan at kagalingan, at kung taliwas dito ang iyong mga aksyon, hindi ka marapat na maglingkod sa isang pampublikong pamantasan.

Marami na sa mga pinaglilingkuran mo ang nagbibigay ng puna sa iyo, at obligasyon mo, gayundin ng mga tulad mo sa pamunuan ng UP, ang magwasto. •

DISENYO NG PAHINA • SOFIA DELOS REYES

OPED-GRPX

@phkule

ABANDON COUNTERINSURGENCY, ABOLISH STATE VIOLENCE RICHARD CALAYEG CORNELIO

We may not witness a revolution in this lifetime, but the least we can do is pave the way for one, whether that means dismantling a policy hostile to change or reimagining a society purged of a legacy of terror.

A revolution, they say, is not a dinner party. Nor, they say, will it be televised.

Hardly is it ever said that too few revolutions take off in a lifetime to even begin to be neither of these things.

Waging one takes time, building on gains in dribs and drabs rather than by leaps and bounds. Along the way, movements may simmer down or fizzle out. But often they are brought to heel by the state’s own terror machine, which, in the Philippines, constitutes counterinsurgency forces paid and tasked to divine shape-shifting enemies where there is none, to inflate paranoia about dissenters in a miasma of lies and conspiracy theories.

It is a classic trope of casting about all kinds of allegations, the better to cover all the bases, to anyone even remotely exercising their basic political rights. It is hit-and-miss, but mostly nine clear misses out of ten cheap shots. Still, no matter how much we have tired of hearing officials redtag even wholesome personalities, how ridiculous and routine all this has been, our own instinctive shock surprises us.

To maintain this capacity for outrage is to challenge pervasive dishonesty. The Duterte administration is, of course, hardly the first to portray communists as an unambiguous evil, as a singular threat to public safety.

But the way it employs its networks and instrumentalities, at all levels of governance, to form the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), has so far made the most detrimental mockery of our democratic norms, with consequences far-reaching and even deadly.

The motivation for creating the NTF-ELCAC, as laid out in Duterte’s Executive Order 70 in December 2018, is the whole-of-nation approach, the full-blown, concerted project to stamp out Asia’s longest-running insurgency. This marks a sharp break with the president’s predecessors’ predominantly militaristic offensives against rebels, which, to be sure, have still not let up in the countryside.

But fascist overtures percolating through broader public discourse have, in concert, lately heightened manifold, in the form of witchhunts, propaganda, and wholesale vilification not just of activists but of critics, too.

The tactic is combative, hysterical, and exorbitantly expensive. The proposed budget for the NTFELCAC for 2021 soared, from its P622.3 million appropriation in 2020, to P19.3 billion. This skyrocketing budget boost is justified as lump-sum funds, not unlike congressional pork barrel, under the president’s Local Government Support Fund. The NTFELCAC, as a de facto secretariat, will disburse the biggest slice of the fund, like a finder’s fee, to some 840 villages allegedly cleansed of New People’s Army rebels.

National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon, Jr., who is the vice chair of the NTF-ELCAC, sounds the alarm on insurgents who he says maintain a stronghold in over 2,700 villages across the country. They deserve the rest of the task force’s budget, he says. Bankrolling such thinly veiled state-backed violence will meanwhile mean siphoning funds from what could be additional

A fundamental truth about teaching is that every pupil is different. Whether it is about their preferred fields or their individual skills, any student, when placed in the appropriate modular learning environment, has the capacity to grow. However, a global pandemic has put our adaptation skills to the test. Internet connections are as unstable as the idea of resuming on-site classes. Power outages are more abundant with the strike of Typhoon Molave, leaving students more disconnected from one another. Political leaders must prioritize funding for education, and must take more proactive steps in tackling the global crisis that is COVID-19.

Friday, 30 October 2020

spending for, say, protective services for individuals and families in difficult circumstances—a social protection measure set to receive only P12 billion in 2021—or assistance to indigent patients that has been allotted only P17.3 billion, on the heels of a pandemic that not even Duterte can promise will have blown over by next year.

Esperon said in a speech in January that the proposed bountylike budget for counterinsurgency would go to so-called development interventions in areas supposedly impoverished and pillaged by guerillas. This is twisted. Not only are Maoist rebels ideologically averse to such excesses, they have also only been documented to seize guns and munitions that might otherwise be used for the state’s own military adventurism. It is, in fact, the government’s lavish spending that needs to be reined in and accounted for.

No less than the Commission on Audit (COA) mulls a special audit of the NTF-ELCAC’s budget in previous years. “So it’s something that we have to look at carefully because the amount of money involved is not typical,” COA Chairperson Michael Aguinaldo said during a budget hearing in September. “You have this task force involving different departments. Those are issues that will really be looked at.”

The most the task force could seem to show for its pricey efforts are, among other political gimmicks, fabricated photos of alleged rebel surrenderees, televised appearances of the likes of Presidential

Communications Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy red-tagging a progressive think-tank, a slew of illegal arrests of activists on trumpedup charges, and junkets to Belgium, Bosnia, and Switzerland to lobby for cutting what the government insists to be so-called communist legal fronts’ aboveground sources of support overseas.

An audit may shed some light on where the funds have gone, which the NTF-ELCAC can, however, so easily explain away with bloated line items and rote rituals of bureaucratic rationalization. It is a stride short of interrogating the necessity for a wellstocked cohort of fabulists intent on imperiling lives, on invigorating fringe groups’ vile tendencies to inspire fear, to polarize the public, to isolate and target.

The call to defund the state’s counterinsurgency program, for one, acknowledges other budget priorities that have been proven more deserving of robust resources, more beneficial to underserved communities, than grasping at shadows for perceived threats. It also makes a case for an overdue pivot away from state violence in the long run. It captures how counterterrorism has only historically made a terrorist of the state itself, the only logical response to which is legitimate dissent that may be anything but peaceful.

We may not witness a revolution in this lifetime, but the least we can do is pave the way for one, whether that means dismantling a policy hostile to change or reimagining a society purged of a legacy of terror. •

ILLUSTRATION • PATRICIA POBRE

17

CROSSROADS WINA YLANAN

IN THE INTERLUDE The days and months seem to be blurring into each other.

It is hard to believe that it has already been eight months into the lockdown, much less so that midterms week is already coming around. I had spent the past few months juggling academics and working small jobs here and there, just to pitch in with paying for bills, since, right now, my mother is the only one working in the family. In all honesty, it has just been hard to distinguish one day from another.

In between all of the drudgery and seemingly endless flurry of work, however, worries about where I would be going from here inevitably crosses my mind. I had initially stepped inside the long halls of the Bio building, carrying my childhood dream of being a doctor, but the

DAMSELS IN DEFIANCE BEATRIZ ZAMORA

Machismo has been at the core of the state’s strategy in holding power.

It cowers before the sight of a woman who believes and stands for a cause bigger than herself.

18

past few years have not been easy, especially so on my old, wide-eyed, and impressionable freshie self. Now in my fifth year in UP, I find myself wondering if that truly is the path for me. A medical degree, after all, is no joke—considering how hard I have been struggling academically, and how hard my family has been struggling financially.

My mother has always been supportive of it, which I am thankful for, and she would even joke that I would be the first doctor amongst the Ylanans. She is a volunteer in our barangay clinic, and I had grown up joining her, at least once a week, when she would head there to work, usually on Saturdays when I did not have to go to school. But it had always been a lingering, unspoken thing between us that it would be

The current administration has declared war against many things and many people— drugs, the virus, human rights defenders. This list no doubt includes strong women.

This is not only made apparent by the sexist and misogynistic remarks of its military officials and even the president himself, but also by the active and unabashed efforts to discredit women in power as well, including Vice President Leni Robredo, and former Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno. Aside from them, many women activists have been slain by the Duterte administration.

In mid-October, female celebrities were added to the long list of people threatened by this administration’s ranking officials. This sparked the #NoToRedTagging #YesToRedLipstick campaign, following public outcry online against Parlade’s threats not only to Liza Soberano and other female celebrities, but to women in general.

difficult, because, even with her low-paying job, she ser ves as our small family’s breadwinner.

Me and my mom have always been close. But I was not exactly the best daughter, especially when I was younger and during my teenage years. It is embarrassing to think about, but there were many things I wanted to have but could not get, and it was especially difficult for me to come to terms with that when I was growing up. I have always tried to overcompensate for these by being an overachiever—even becoming a scholar in high school.

As spoiled as it may sound, I have never really been good at not getting the things I want, or, at least, accepting that fact of life. Thinking about pursuing my dreams of being a doctor kind of feels like that sometimes.

But at the end of the day, I have

For men like Parlade, women exist to be looked at and not heard. Celebrities like Soberano have always been praised for their physical attributes, but the applause stops when they use their platform to advocate their causes.

No matter the profession, men have always expected women to fit into their standards of beauty. When we fit within these conventions, we are reduced into objects of attraction. It is noticeable that, even in law school, we exert more effort into how we present ourselves more than our male blockmates. We are tacitly taught that “being pretty” is an asset, especially when the day comes that we go to court.

From birth to adulthood and even until death, Filipino women are forced to abide by patriarchal values.

While there is a constant effort to dismantle this culture, a step in the other direction renders nugatory

found it best not to think about these things so much, lest I find myself drowning in my own doubts again. It is best to focus on the here and now, on the dozens of deadlines I have, and on all the chores I have not finished.

Receiving the invitation to write for the Collegian was definitely an unexpected surprise, and I kind of felt like I was not even worthy of such a thing in the first place.

Though, honestly, I had my own reservations about joining, with my workload and all, but I figured this small tryst could, maybe, help me figure out things a little more, and help me put things into perspective.

So here I am, carving out a small space for myself—for my thoughts and hopes and lofty dreams—in the interlude between where I came from and where I would like to be. •

the victories that have been won for the cause in the past years. Sharmila Parman and, a doctorate degree candidate at the University of Cambridge, described the state’s attacks on women as a “war of attrition,” wherein the wins that have been gained for women’s rights are now being slowly undone.

This is exactly why the Duterte administration’s outright sexism is dangerous: It justifies the norm that causes many women to be victims of exploitation, sexual violence, and even murder.

Machismo has been at the core of the state’s strategy in holding power. It cowers before the sight of a woman who believes and stands for a cause bigger than herself. These women are the polar opposite of what the military stands for, which is why members of Gabriela and other women who express their dissent to the administration are targeted.

Parlade’s recent threats are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the struggles that women face in the Philippines. Most women, those who do not appear on big screens—some of whom are activists, journalists, to name a few—suffer from the consequences of machismo and macho-fascism.

Catcalling, domestic abuse, and sexual harassment are realities that women face every day.

While this may be the case, women never fail to stand up against sexist acts and remarks.

Outside of social media, women who do not have the platform and fame of female celebrities fight for the same cause on the ground— within their communities, their workplace, and even on the streets.

The modern Filipino woman is a woman fueled with rage and spits on the ground that men like Parlade walk on. •

phkule.upd@up.edu.ph

OPED-GRPX DIBUHO • MIKHAELA CALDERON

OYAYI SA UNOS MARVIN ANG

Esensyal ang mapagpalayang haraya sa pagbuo ng bata ng kani-kanilang konsepto ng kapayapaan. Subalit hanggang patuloy ang estado sa pagsikil sa karapatan ng mamamayan at ang walang habas nitong pangre-red tag at pagpaslang, patuloy lang ding mabubulid ang mga bata sa siklo ng pang-aabuso at kawalang-katarungan.

Makulay ang buhay sa maraming aklat at kwentong pambata. Hindi na bale kung ang sagabal sa iyong tagumpay ay tiranikong hari o makapangyarihang datu o sultan. Sa kinathang daigdig na ito na madalas ay iilang pahina lang, laging naiisahan ng pilyo ang tuso; laging nagwawagi ang kabutihan laban sa kasamaan.

Ngunit sa tunay na buhay, hindi ito ang laging kalakaran.

Nasa kalagitnaan ako ng pagsusulat ng poetika para sa aking tesis nang matisod ko ang balita tungkol kay Baby River, anak ng bilanggong pulitikal na si Reina Mae Nasino. Abril pa lamang ay nakatutok na kami sa kampanyang pagpapalaya sa mga bulnerableng bilanggong pulitikal bunsod ng COVID-19, kaya labis din kaming nadismaya sa naging desisyon ng Korte Suprema.

Sa huli, namaalam ang sanggol nang hindi man lang nakakarga, ni nahahawakan, ng kanyang ina.

30 October 2020 • www.phkule.org

Labis akong nanlambot sa balitang ito, gayong sentral sa aking isinusulat na tesis ay tungkol sa konsepto ng kapayapaan ng mga bata.

Karahasang maituturing ang pagkawalay ni Baby River makalipas ang isang buwan sa kanyang ina, kaya napagkaitan siya ng kalingang sana ay nakapagligtas sa kanyang buhay.

Ipinakita ng pagkakataong ito kung gaano kalupit ang mga pwersa ng estado sa mga batang katulad niya at inang walang ibang hangad kundi isang lipunang walang pagsasamantala. Sa kumpas ng pangulong astang Datu Usman, lahat ng ituro niya’t paratangan ay subersibong dapat ikulong at ipatapon sa dagat ng Maranaw. Milyonmilyong bata ang mauulila ng kanyang mga marahas na polisiya at palpak na tugon sa pandemya, at sa kaso ni Baby River, maging sila ay pwede ring maging biktima.

Hindi madalas paksain sa mga akdang pambata ang ganitong isyu, kaya

mabilis ding nakalalagos sa kamalayan kahit ng matatanda ang mga karahasang dulot nito. Ngunit ayon sa pagaaral ni Prop. Rosario Torres Yu, sa pamamagitan ng mga akdang pambatang mangahas na tumatalakay sa mga ganitong isyu, napupukaw ang kamalayan ng bata at nagagamit nila itong paraan upang sabihin ang hindi nila masabi sa mga nakakatanda.

Subalit sa kasalukuyan, iilan pa lamang ang nakatutugon sa hamong ito.

Marami rin ang nakukulong sa political correctness sa pagtalakay sa mga isyu na madalas, bagaman hindi sinasadya, tinatakpan ang karahasang dulot nito sa mga bata. Malinaw namang hindi “drama serye” ang sitwasyon ni Reina at Baby River, at marami pang batang inulila ng giyera kontra-droga, at kasalukuyang nabubulid sa karahasang dulot ng distance learning at pagkagutom.

Esensyal ang mapagpalayang haraya sa

pagbuo ng bata ng kanikanilang konsepto ng kapayapaan. Subalit hanggang patuloy ang estado sa pagsikil sa karapatan ng mamamayan at sa walang habas nitong pangre-red tag at pagpaslang, patuloy lang ding mabubulid ang mga bata sa siklo ng pang-aabuso at kawalangkatarungan. Paano nga ba maaasahang maging pag-asa ng bayan ang kabataan kung pagkapanganak pa lamang sa kanila ay tinatanggalan na sila ng karapatang mabuhay nang payapa at maging malaya?

Hamon, kung gayon, sa ating higit pang patampukin at palaganapin ang isyung kinahaharap ng bawat bata sa ating bansa.

Susi ang ating pakikiisa at pakikisangkot upang lumikha ng lipunang ligtas at may puwang para kina Reina at Baby R iver. Hindi naman habambuhay maghahari ang kadiliman, at tulad sa mga k wentong pambata, may makulay ding bukas para sa lahat ng mga bata. •

19

FEATURES

‘NO UPRISING FAILS’ Salud Algabre and the Sakdal Movement

NICOLAS BASILIO ANTONIO It was a time of deep contradictions. In the streets were protesters calling for land reform and the end of American hegemony. In Malacañang was a duplicitous figure who publicly cussed at foreign meddlers while gunning for their support in private.

One could be forgiven for thinking these are snapshots from the present. But these were the realities Salud Algabre came to know in the early 20th century Philippines.

President Manuel Quezon helmed the nation still in the process of coming to terms with the transition from one colonial master to another.

“Better a country ran like hell by Filipinos than one ran like heaven by the Americans,” he declared.

And ran like hell it was. Political machinations and vested business interests characterized—and compromised—the Quezon administration’s independence movement.

As a vassal of the secret American Empire, the Philippine economy was structured to prioritize US interests. The country’s landed elite who ran the political arena were more than happy to participate.

Cash crops exportable to the US like sugar and tobacco were grown in the haciendas. Who tended to these farms were but the countless peasants whose fate had been tied, often forcefully by circumstance, to the lands they would till for generations but could never hope to own.

Philippine Collegian Volume 97 • Issue 21 Friday, 30 October 2020

One of them was Salud Algabre. Born two years before the Philippine Revolution against Spain, Algabre had the blood of warriors in her veins. Her family fought the Spaniards, Maria Luisa Camagay, a historian, wrote in the 2013 anthology Women in Southeast Asian Nationalist Movements.

Ironically, it was the American education system that sparked the nationalist sentiments in Salud Algabre. “She recalled that it was through [school] that she internalized her identity as a Filipino and her love for her country,” Camagay recounted.

As a one-time beauty queen, Salud had no shortage of suitors.

But she fell in love with a bakery worker named Severo Generalla, a fellow Cabuyao native. Their marriage was characterized not only by mutual love for one another but for the nation they called home.

Both ended up as laborers in Manila: Salud as a seamstress and Severo in a tobacco factory. Like Salud, her husband had an astute sense of justice. Severo got involved in the labor movement, becoming the president of the Union Obreros de Tabaco de Filipinas where he fought to improve the working conditions of farm workers like him.

“Although Salud and Severo may have started life as members of the Filipino educated elite, they experienced growing

impoverishment. Severo’s involvement in the labor movement in Manila then forced him and Salud to return to their place of origin, now as landless peasants,” Camagay narrated.

In their hometown, the couple experienced firsthand the true meaning of injustice as they tilled land owned by an outrageously wealthy landlord who got most of the revenue without breaking a single drop of sweat.

“When we worked the land, we were cheated. The terms on the estate were 50-50. But we never got the agreed 50 percent,” Algabre recounted in an interview with the historian David Sturtevant in 1966.

Convinced that there had to be a more humane system, Salud, then 36, joined Sakdal, a movement founded by writer Benigno Ramos in opposition to American imperialism, which, back then, they had already linked to the injustice of the feudal hacienda system. Inspired by writer Èmile Zola’s scathing open letter against the French government, “J’Accuse,” Ramos called both their organization and publication “Sakdal,” a Filipino translation of the title of Zola’s piece.

The primary issue, then, was the means of attaining freedom. The Quezon administration was banking on the

Tydings-McDuffie Law that provided for a 10-year transition period before independence.

“The Sakdalistas viewed Quezon as being in cahoots with the Americans in withholding independence. They perceived him as misleading the people by saying that the Commonwealth government was transitional when in reality, he wanted US interests to continue in the Philippines,” wrote Camagay.

For Algabre and the Sakdalistas, freedom was not something to be begged for or something that could be granted by the Americans. It is a right that could only be declared by Filipinos themselves, they said.

“Nothing could solve our problem except independence,” Salud declared. “With independence, the leaders would cease to be powerful.

Instead, it would be the people who were powerful.”

For Salud, this power lay in having their own lands to till. No longer should land ownership be limited to landlords and politicians, she said. This fervent desire to liberate the nation eventually drove them to stage an armed uprising.

Leading an army of Sakdalista men, Salud managed to capture her hometown of Cabuyao on May 2, 1935.

Asked of her demands, she responded with “immediate, complete, and absolute independence.”

ILLUSTRATION • LOUISE SEJERA

But government soldiers managed to strike back the next day, storming the municipal hall where the Sakdalistas held fort.

They were overwhelmed, and the bodies of the slain Sakdalista men were displayed in the plaza as a warning to all would-be rebels.

Salud was jailed, her trial languishing for four years before she was sentenced to six to ten years in prison as a dissident. Asked if she had any regrets in staging a “failed” uprising, Salud proudly responded that no uprising fails.

“Each one is a step in the right direction. In a long march to final victory, every step counts, every individual matters, every organization forms part of the whole,” Salud Algabre said, hopeful, still, of the final victory to come. And hopeful she remained until her death on May 2, 1979— exactly 44 years after the uprising she led.

For UP anthropology professor and Algabre descendant Nestor Castro, celebrating his Lola Salud’s legacy is a necessary act of defiance in these times when the societal ills that prompted the Sakdalistas to revolt persist.

“Nananatili pa ring sunudsunuran ang ating pamahalaan sa dikta ng mga dayuhan, hindi pa rin nakakamit ng ating mga magsasaka ang tunay na reporma sa lupa,” Castro lamented. “[Kaya] dapat nating ipagpatuloy ang kanilang mabuting mga mithiin.” •

PAGE DESIGN • MA. SOPHIA SIBAL