If I’d make a wish for Christmas
Each day would be like Christmas night
When we put aside our fighting
Find the warmth that comes from giving
When the rushing world slows down for once
To share a song of joy
Then the noise will fade
Weary hearts will find themselves at ease
Throughout the world, all men will learn
To live in Christmas peace
If I’d make a wish for Christmas
Each man would be more like a child
Hearts that marvel at the small things
Love and laughter everlasting
And a worldwide wonder as we raise our eyes
To a million shining stars
Only then will we see the Baby Jesus in our hearts
What a miracle, the Heavenly King born in our hearts… If I’d make a wish for Christmas…
A boy with autism, a young volunteer, students and professionals with music in their hearts, a group that spreads the good news--all with hopes for quiet and peace in the land. Something beautiful was at work among them.
And so a Christmas song was born.
Some years ago, Marchan Padla, a young volunteer at Ang Arko ng Pilipinas, a l’Arche community that cares for mentally handicapped persons, wrote lyrics and a melody for a song. It was a song he dedicated to Raymond, an autistic boy who has become an inspiration to many who have come his way.
This song found its way to Hangad, a group of students and young professionals bound by their desire to know God and who, through their music, help others know God. Hangad’s music is recorded and distributed by the Jesuit Communications Foundations (JCF).
Marchan told Hangad that he wrote the song at the height of anti-Muslim violence during the Estrada administration. He titled the song “Raymond’s Lullaby”. This was to honor the boy with autism. Raymond could not stand the Christmas holiday noise in the city he had to be brought somewhere else every time the noise was too much for him. Autistic persons are generally very sensitive to sound and cannot stand noise at high levels. But Raymond is more than the sum total of his autistic self. Proof of this is the song that came to life.
“Raymond’s Lullaby” is the lead track of Hangad’s Christmas album “A Wish for Christmas”. Hangad (www.hangad.com) and JCF hope to raise funds for Arko and make people aware of Arko (www.angarkongpilipinas.com) and its mission to serve those with intellectual disabilities.
A booklet titled “I Walk with Raymond” written by Catholic priest Roderick Milne (of the Marist congregation) of New Zealand several years ago tells the story about Raymond and the people of l’Arche Punla (or Ang Arko ng Pilipinas) which is the Philippine branch of l’Arche. Fr. Milne ministered to Raymond during his stay in the Philippines.
Ang Arko-Punla is in Bayanihan Village in Cainta, Rizal. L’Arche, an international community, was founded by Jean Vanier. Well-known author Henri Nouwen’s “The Road to Daybreak” tells about Vanier’s work.
Raymond was about eight years old in 1988 when he was abandoned by his family. Ang Arko-Punla, then in Nagtahan, took him in. Raymond has since been with Ang Arko. Raymond does not speak but communicates by making noises and bodily movements. He needs to be assisted but otherwise he is physically healthy and is a brisk walker.
There are many special persons like Raymond who live in l’Arche communities. And there are many good individuals like Marchan Padla and Fr. Milne who have found their way to these communities to serve. Maybe you will, too. The music might lead you there.
It’s amazing how a little song and a person who cannot speak and who hates noise have connected a number of people who did not know one another in the beginning. Paolo Kalaw Tirol of Hangad was so inspired he worked with Marchan to give the song its musical form and arrangement. Julius Guevarra did the instrumental arrangement.
The other songs in “A Wish for Christmas” are “Child Emmanuel”, “Paskong Pinoy Medley” (from five Filipino Christmas staples) and “Silent Night”. I was told it is selling well at P120. The album and other JCF products—music, books, video, etc.—are available at Tanging Yaman Outlets at the Loyola House of Studies in Ateneo de Manila University. From there, you might want to visit Ang Arko in nearby Cainta.
Another music group that needs support for its brave and off-the-beaten track repertoire is the Andres Bonifacio Concert Choir that brought music to our Inquirer Christmas celebration last week. They came in simple Filipino costumes and regaled us with patriotic, indigenous and popular Filipino songs. Founder, composer and conductor Jerry Dadap also coaches the Inquirer choir. He wrote the musical “Andres Bonifacio: Ang Dakilang Anak Pawis.”
The Andres Bonifacio Concert Choir and the Andres Bonifacio Rondalla are under the Andres Bonifacio Music Foundation (ABMFI) which was founded in 1986. If you want to add nationalistic musical fire to your affairs, call the ABMFI at 9314882.
****
We all know now that: If it had been Three Wise Women (instead of men), they would have asked for directions, arrived on time, helped deliver the Baby Jesus, cleaned the stable, cooked dinner and brought practical gifts.
My addition: And they would have stayed on much, much longer to accompany the Holy Family during their flight into Egypt.
Today, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, let us remember and do something for the children and the infants who suffer because of neglect, widespread violence and disasters.
To those who sent Christmas text messages and did not get a reply from me, I wsh u a gr8 +mas @ a hp nu yr. In other words, I WISH YOU A GOOD AND MEANINGFUL CHRISTMAS AND A GREAT YEAR AHEAD. Remember how simply it all began.
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Reclaiming public water
A water rate hike in Metro Manila is upon us and Ek Sonn Chan is on my mind.
There is something that water managers, providers, consumers, conservationists, activists and worriers, etc. might need to read. It is “Reclaiming Public Water: Achievements, Struggles and Visions from Around the World.” It is about wide-ranging approaches in reforming urban public water systems that are being practiced in developing countries. It’s about vision and against-all-odds innovation. I don’t have the book but I have the abstract and lengthy discussion paper on it.
It was published in 2005 by the Netherlands-based prestigious Transnational Institute and Corporate Europe Observatory and has been going the rounds of international water forums. I picked up the abstract and several papers on water privatization at the recent Asia Europe People’s Forum in Helsinki. Water services privatization in debt-ridden developing countries was among the life-and-death topics discussed there. At first I thought, what’s water doing in debates on globalization and neo-liberalism? As I listened in I realized that water, or access to it, is no longer just a basic human right, it has also become a commodity, a merchandise, what with water services being privatized and taken over by giant multinationals out to make big profits.
The announcement on the water rate hike the other day was like a douse of cold water on consumers’ pre-Christmas warm-up. On New Year’s Day you’ll be paying more. That is also when the cold and dry season begins to be felt. Later, it segues into hot and dry, and humid too, and people will need to take a bath more often, wash clothes more often, water their plants more often. It is indeed ironic, for we have just experienced disasters of the watery kind that wiped out villages.
So are we wet or are we dry?
We’re getting a double whammy. For didn’t they announce earlier that there will be a water shortage in the national capital region (NCR) in the coming months? The water level in the reservoirs will dip while the rates will soar. Is this about the law of supply and demand?
When water services were privatized 10 years ago, consumers thought their water woes would end. I remember doing a front-page three-part series on big-time water thieves disguised as water suppliers of parched Paranaque. Privatization, the residents had hoped then, would ease their woes, and it did, but not entirely for the majority of Metro Manilans.
At the 2003 World Water Forum in Kyoto, private think tanks pushed and promoted private sector involvement. International financing institution and Northern governments backed them. Well, studies like the one by the London-based Public Services International Research Unit, have shown that “there is no systematic intrinsic advantage to private sector operation in terms of efficiency.” In fact, water multinationals, among them Suez, have had to withdraw from concessions in cities in Bolivia, Argentina and Tanzania. (Suez partnered with Benpres in the failed Maynilad.)
There is a new and growing awareness that public water operations deserve support as they are crucial in achieving the so-called Millennium Development Goals. And the good news, according to experts, is that good public water delivery is possible. There are new innovative models that are rooted in citizens’ involvement. “Reclaiming Public Water” documents these and cites ways of overcoming bureaucracy and other causes of public service failure.
A successful model is the “public-public partnerships” or PUPs where high-performing public utilities are matched up with those that are not performing so well for the purpose of sharing expertise.
At the March 2006 Water Forum in Mexico City, the PUP gained growing support. This was a significant shift from the earlier water forums (Hague 2000 and Kyoto 2003) where public water was hardly mentioned.
The Jubilee South-Asia Pacific Movement for Debt and Development’s study “Water Privatization in the Asia Pacific Region” presents privatization as “a deadly enterprise”. It cites the partnership between global giant Suez and the Lopez-owned Benpres (Maynilad Water Services) and the partnership between transnational United Utilities and Ayala Corporation (Manila Water Company). The World Bank had hailed these partnerships as the first large-scale water supply privatization in Asia.
The study also presents cases in the Asia-Pacific region. Privatization projects, the study says, are either explicitly included as part of loan criteria and conditionalities for borrowing countries or are prescribed for meeting fiscal targets required by international financial institutions.
Has privatization resulted in better services and affordable and safe water for many? Have other and better models been considered? There are now many studies on successful schemes in developing countries that the Philippines could learn from. Metro Manila’s failures need not be the lot of other areas that still need to have a good water system in place.
Ek Sonn Chan of Cambodia, 2006 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Government Service, has shown that things could be turned around if there is a will. Ek, an engineer and manager, was honored for his exemplary rehabilitation of a ruined public utility and bringing safe drinking water to a million people in Phnom Penh. Ek lost his entire family to the killing fields of the communist Khmer Rouge but he moved on to help in his country’s rehabilitation.
With world support Ek and his team embarked on a major overhaul of the water system and showed that it could be done. It was a heroic feat for a government bureaucrat.
Mabuting Pasko.
There is something that water managers, providers, consumers, conservationists, activists and worriers, etc. might need to read. It is “Reclaiming Public Water: Achievements, Struggles and Visions from Around the World.” It is about wide-ranging approaches in reforming urban public water systems that are being practiced in developing countries. It’s about vision and against-all-odds innovation. I don’t have the book but I have the abstract and lengthy discussion paper on it.
It was published in 2005 by the Netherlands-based prestigious Transnational Institute and Corporate Europe Observatory and has been going the rounds of international water forums. I picked up the abstract and several papers on water privatization at the recent Asia Europe People’s Forum in Helsinki. Water services privatization in debt-ridden developing countries was among the life-and-death topics discussed there. At first I thought, what’s water doing in debates on globalization and neo-liberalism? As I listened in I realized that water, or access to it, is no longer just a basic human right, it has also become a commodity, a merchandise, what with water services being privatized and taken over by giant multinationals out to make big profits.
The announcement on the water rate hike the other day was like a douse of cold water on consumers’ pre-Christmas warm-up. On New Year’s Day you’ll be paying more. That is also when the cold and dry season begins to be felt. Later, it segues into hot and dry, and humid too, and people will need to take a bath more often, wash clothes more often, water their plants more often. It is indeed ironic, for we have just experienced disasters of the watery kind that wiped out villages.
So are we wet or are we dry?
We’re getting a double whammy. For didn’t they announce earlier that there will be a water shortage in the national capital region (NCR) in the coming months? The water level in the reservoirs will dip while the rates will soar. Is this about the law of supply and demand?
When water services were privatized 10 years ago, consumers thought their water woes would end. I remember doing a front-page three-part series on big-time water thieves disguised as water suppliers of parched Paranaque. Privatization, the residents had hoped then, would ease their woes, and it did, but not entirely for the majority of Metro Manilans.
At the 2003 World Water Forum in Kyoto, private think tanks pushed and promoted private sector involvement. International financing institution and Northern governments backed them. Well, studies like the one by the London-based Public Services International Research Unit, have shown that “there is no systematic intrinsic advantage to private sector operation in terms of efficiency.” In fact, water multinationals, among them Suez, have had to withdraw from concessions in cities in Bolivia, Argentina and Tanzania. (Suez partnered with Benpres in the failed Maynilad.)
There is a new and growing awareness that public water operations deserve support as they are crucial in achieving the so-called Millennium Development Goals. And the good news, according to experts, is that good public water delivery is possible. There are new innovative models that are rooted in citizens’ involvement. “Reclaiming Public Water” documents these and cites ways of overcoming bureaucracy and other causes of public service failure.
A successful model is the “public-public partnerships” or PUPs where high-performing public utilities are matched up with those that are not performing so well for the purpose of sharing expertise.
At the March 2006 Water Forum in Mexico City, the PUP gained growing support. This was a significant shift from the earlier water forums (Hague 2000 and Kyoto 2003) where public water was hardly mentioned.
The Jubilee South-Asia Pacific Movement for Debt and Development’s study “Water Privatization in the Asia Pacific Region” presents privatization as “a deadly enterprise”. It cites the partnership between global giant Suez and the Lopez-owned Benpres (Maynilad Water Services) and the partnership between transnational United Utilities and Ayala Corporation (Manila Water Company). The World Bank had hailed these partnerships as the first large-scale water supply privatization in Asia.
The study also presents cases in the Asia-Pacific region. Privatization projects, the study says, are either explicitly included as part of loan criteria and conditionalities for borrowing countries or are prescribed for meeting fiscal targets required by international financial institutions.
Has privatization resulted in better services and affordable and safe water for many? Have other and better models been considered? There are now many studies on successful schemes in developing countries that the Philippines could learn from. Metro Manila’s failures need not be the lot of other areas that still need to have a good water system in place.
Ek Sonn Chan of Cambodia, 2006 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Government Service, has shown that things could be turned around if there is a will. Ek, an engineer and manager, was honored for his exemplary rehabilitation of a ruined public utility and bringing safe drinking water to a million people in Phnom Penh. Ek lost his entire family to the killing fields of the communist Khmer Rouge but he moved on to help in his country’s rehabilitation.
With world support Ek and his team embarked on a major overhaul of the water system and showed that it could be done. It was a heroic feat for a government bureaucrat.
Mabuting Pasko.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Climate change, the bigger enemy
While the Philippines was reeling from its yearly dose of typhoons, the worst of which struck recently, something related was happening elsewhere. The Twelfth Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Second Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol was taking place at the UN office in Nairobi, Kenya from Nov. 6 to 17.
Kenya’s vice president Moody Awori told the delegates: “We are gathered this morning on behalf of humankind because we acknowledge that climate change is rapidly emerging as one of the most serious threats humanity will ever face.”
On a local scale for us, first, it was typhoon Milenyo, then came Reming, then Seniang—all within a span of a month or two, and the last two typhoons within a week of each other. It was as if these superhowlers were trying to be in synch with the political storm that has been buffeting this be-stormed and benighted country these past months.
After the skies had cleared and the body count had begun there was the usual blame-throwing. To Phivolcs: Were the warnings loud enough and the mudslide-prone areas warned? To the local governments: Were the warnings relayed to communities concerned? To the residents: Why didn’t you heed the warnings? To despoilers and destroyers of forest covers: You must pay for the destruction you have wrought. And so forth and so on.
In the din of cries of grief and despair, amid the cacophony of fault-finding and blame-throwing and in the happy hum of the steady stream of aid that was pouring in, there was a little voice, inaudible almost, that rose. I don’t remember now who said it but I certainly heard it. The bigger enemy, someone said (I think it was a scientist who said it) is climate change. And it is bigger than the short-term solutions being presented on the ground.
Like, yes, we have natural weather occurrences that shouldn’t have resulted in such huge disasters if only… But these occurrences and their consequences are just raindrops when compared with the bigger global enemy that is climate change. Bigger in the sense that it affects the whole planet Earth and all its inhabitants—young and old, rich and very rich, poor and very poor, powerful and powerless…
It is bigger than politics and national boundaries, bigger than ideological, religious and ethnic strife, though, I might say, that all these human concerns also have something to contribute, directly or indirectly, to the meteorological problems of this planet. For the deadly wastes we send up to the atmosphere come down in a deadly way upon or heads and homes, on towns and cities, on hills and valleys. And it is mostly the poorest that are worst hit.
Father Sean McDonagh, author of many books on the environment and former resident of the Philippines, has come up with another book, his nth, “Climate Change: The Challenge to Us All.” Two years ago he wrote “The Death of Life: The Horror of Extinction”.
I have yet to get a copy of McDonagh’s recent opus but I learned that it got good reviews. I also received a copy of his essay “Climate Change: The Urgent Challenge to All”. I think “urgent” is the key word here.
Climate change has been in the international agenda since Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, McDonagh reminds. What has happened since then? Politicians have merely been paying lip service and have not confronted the problem because their advisers have thought the it would take probably 100 years before the effects of climate change would be felt, that these wouldn’t happened during their watch.
Well, many politicians and world leaders who were alive in 1992 are still around and they are seeing for themselves the drastic changes in the past few years.
In 2004, Sir David King, the chief scentific adviser to the British government said that “the problems arising from global warming are the biggest challenges facing governments.” McDonagh says scientists and scientific bodies around the word have since issued dire warnings about the effects of climate change on weather patterns, ocean habitats and flooding, biodiversity and access to potable water. Speaking of water, Metro Manila has been experiencing what waterless means, with a weather official hoping Seniang would blow into Central Luzon so the waters of Angat would be replenished.
It’s like choosing between a rock and a hard place, between death by drowning or death by thirst.
McDonagh says that Sir Nicholas Stern’s review of the “Economics of Climate Change” (published in Oct. 2006) constitutes the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle in terms of making a cast iron case for aggressively addressing global warming. With a combination of political leadership, the proper mix of carrot and stick in carbon tax to reflect the true cost of energy and support for new technologies, we could avoided the worst in climate change, he says.
A low carbon economy, McDonagh suggests, will offer new possibilities for business that could run to billions of dollars per year. It can no longer be “business as usual” while we are experiencing drastic extreme weather conditions, melting ice caps, rising ocean levels and massive extinction of the species.
While the Bush administration has not signed the Kyoto protocol, a number of US states and cities are willing to sign a Kyoto-like protocol beyond 2012, and everyone wishes growing economies like China, India and Brazil would also sign up to limiting greenhouse gas emissions after 2012.
Climate change is not just a scientific and economic issue. It is a moral one.
Kenya’s vice president Moody Awori told the delegates: “We are gathered this morning on behalf of humankind because we acknowledge that climate change is rapidly emerging as one of the most serious threats humanity will ever face.”
On a local scale for us, first, it was typhoon Milenyo, then came Reming, then Seniang—all within a span of a month or two, and the last two typhoons within a week of each other. It was as if these superhowlers were trying to be in synch with the political storm that has been buffeting this be-stormed and benighted country these past months.
After the skies had cleared and the body count had begun there was the usual blame-throwing. To Phivolcs: Were the warnings loud enough and the mudslide-prone areas warned? To the local governments: Were the warnings relayed to communities concerned? To the residents: Why didn’t you heed the warnings? To despoilers and destroyers of forest covers: You must pay for the destruction you have wrought. And so forth and so on.
In the din of cries of grief and despair, amid the cacophony of fault-finding and blame-throwing and in the happy hum of the steady stream of aid that was pouring in, there was a little voice, inaudible almost, that rose. I don’t remember now who said it but I certainly heard it. The bigger enemy, someone said (I think it was a scientist who said it) is climate change. And it is bigger than the short-term solutions being presented on the ground.
Like, yes, we have natural weather occurrences that shouldn’t have resulted in such huge disasters if only… But these occurrences and their consequences are just raindrops when compared with the bigger global enemy that is climate change. Bigger in the sense that it affects the whole planet Earth and all its inhabitants—young and old, rich and very rich, poor and very poor, powerful and powerless…
It is bigger than politics and national boundaries, bigger than ideological, religious and ethnic strife, though, I might say, that all these human concerns also have something to contribute, directly or indirectly, to the meteorological problems of this planet. For the deadly wastes we send up to the atmosphere come down in a deadly way upon or heads and homes, on towns and cities, on hills and valleys. And it is mostly the poorest that are worst hit.
Father Sean McDonagh, author of many books on the environment and former resident of the Philippines, has come up with another book, his nth, “Climate Change: The Challenge to Us All.” Two years ago he wrote “The Death of Life: The Horror of Extinction”.
I have yet to get a copy of McDonagh’s recent opus but I learned that it got good reviews. I also received a copy of his essay “Climate Change: The Urgent Challenge to All”. I think “urgent” is the key word here.
Climate change has been in the international agenda since Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, McDonagh reminds. What has happened since then? Politicians have merely been paying lip service and have not confronted the problem because their advisers have thought the it would take probably 100 years before the effects of climate change would be felt, that these wouldn’t happened during their watch.
Well, many politicians and world leaders who were alive in 1992 are still around and they are seeing for themselves the drastic changes in the past few years.
In 2004, Sir David King, the chief scentific adviser to the British government said that “the problems arising from global warming are the biggest challenges facing governments.” McDonagh says scientists and scientific bodies around the word have since issued dire warnings about the effects of climate change on weather patterns, ocean habitats and flooding, biodiversity and access to potable water. Speaking of water, Metro Manila has been experiencing what waterless means, with a weather official hoping Seniang would blow into Central Luzon so the waters of Angat would be replenished.
It’s like choosing between a rock and a hard place, between death by drowning or death by thirst.
McDonagh says that Sir Nicholas Stern’s review of the “Economics of Climate Change” (published in Oct. 2006) constitutes the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle in terms of making a cast iron case for aggressively addressing global warming. With a combination of political leadership, the proper mix of carrot and stick in carbon tax to reflect the true cost of energy and support for new technologies, we could avoided the worst in climate change, he says.
A low carbon economy, McDonagh suggests, will offer new possibilities for business that could run to billions of dollars per year. It can no longer be “business as usual” while we are experiencing drastic extreme weather conditions, melting ice caps, rising ocean levels and massive extinction of the species.
While the Bush administration has not signed the Kyoto protocol, a number of US states and cities are willing to sign a Kyoto-like protocol beyond 2012, and everyone wishes growing economies like China, India and Brazil would also sign up to limiting greenhouse gas emissions after 2012.
Climate change is not just a scientific and economic issue. It is a moral one.
Wednesday, December 6, 2006
Puta man o santa man
Man's discovery that his genitalia could serve as a weapon to generate fear must rank as one of the most important discoveries of prehistoric times. From the prehistoric times to the present, rape has played a critical function. It is a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.
-Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will
I used the above quote last year shortly after the rape of “Nicole” landed in the news and created a furor. I use it again now that a conviction has been made.
Puta man o santa man…. Whore or saint—neither one deserves to be raped. This has been playing in my head for days, before and after the decision on the Subic rape case and until now. At first I thought saying it in Filipino would sound too vulgar but I changed my mind when I read yesterday’s front-page news in the Inquirer.
No less than a bishop—Bishop Oscar Cruz—was lecturing women on how not to get raped, as if there was a way to get raped. As if rape could partly be women’s fault, as if they would have it coming and could bring it upon themselves because of their way of dressing or behaving. Because it is but natural for men to respond by raping? Come on. Hello? I could feel blood rising to my face.
I’m glad the Inquirer gave the quote prominence because it showed how many men, a bishop among them, still regard women, that is, as temptresses. “Womanhood is precious and noble, so it is not right for them to be flaunting it around.” That’s what the bishop said. Flaunt? Otherwise they could be raped? Should women be always fearful that the way they carry their womanhood could result in violence against their person?
Not that I approve of everything that women do with their bodies and of their distracting way of dressing in certain occasions. But I don’t wish that the celebrities who have three-fourths of their quivering mammary blobs exposed would be raped, mashed or groped. Sure, certain behaviors could have negative consequences. Like if you sit on a ledge of a building you could fall but this does not mean someone should push you to your death.
Rape is no longer a ``private crime.’’ The Anti-Rape Law of 1997 classifies rape as ``a crime against persons’’. For a long time rape was considered merely as ``a crime against chastity’’. This seemed to suggest that persons who were unchaste were fair game.
Defense lawyers who dredge up the sexual reputation of rape victims and cast aspersions on their morality to bolster their defense of the accused should know this strategy could boomerang on them.
Last year, when the Inquirer carried the banner headline that Nicole was not, repeat, not, a sex worker, women’s groups reacted strongly because the headline seemed to suggest that if Nicole was in fact one she was fair game. (The headline was a response to those who wondered what she was.)
The crime of rape should have nothing to do with the chastity of the victim. Rape is not merely a sexual offense or a crime against chastity but a crime against persons and against the State. As one feminist lawyer had said, ``Rape is not a crime against the hymen. It is a crime against the whole person.’’ It is a crime of the strong against the weak, a crime of conquest. Speaking of conquest, the Subic rape case took on a political color because the accused were citizens of a former colonizing nation who still throws its weight around.
Did you see that burly American who was throwing his weight around to shelter Lance Corporal Daniel Smith after his conviction? But our policemen were there to do their job. He even tried to stop the media from following in a car. I wish someone had yelled at him, “You, (@#&!*>) American, you are on Philippine soil!” I wish our police had pinned him down but they seemed intimidated. Dinaan sa laki.
Smith did not deny he had sex with Nicole, but it was consensual, he insisted. Well, that’s what rapists always say—that their victims wanted it and so why are they crying rape? That’s what 91-year-old American Jesuit Fr. James Reuter, a revered figure in these islands, is stressing again and again. That it was consensual sex as Smith alleged. This makes Nicole a liar. Had he talked to Nicole?
I find Reuter’s interventions so pathetic. The most he could have done was simply to listen to what Smith had to confess (whether or not Smith is a Catholic) and give it the seal of confession. In contrast, the Filipino Protestant pastor who had been regularly ministering to Smith and the other accused simply stuck to the spiritual and left the legal to the lawyers and the judge.
The other night there was this news on TV about a big box that was dumped beside the road. When a poor man opened it he found a whole human body inside it. That’s what the US servicemen did to Nicole. They dumped her on the pavement, with her pants worn the wrong way and with a used condom hanging somewhere. Is that how consensual sex is supposed to end? And then they zoomed off to their waiting ship like felons fleeing the scene of a crime.
What woman in her proper mind (Nicole was drunk) would consent to be carried out of a club on the back of a man and into a van, and in the presence of five or six other men, have sex with one of them while the vehicle was moving? And when it was over, be dumped on the side of the road, looking disheveled and dazed?
Last year Sen. Francis Pangilinan said that 3,000 rape cases against Americans have been dismissed in the Olongapo City court. Smith’s conviction in Makati is a first.
Congratulations to Nicole’s lawyers.
-Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will
I used the above quote last year shortly after the rape of “Nicole” landed in the news and created a furor. I use it again now that a conviction has been made.
Puta man o santa man…. Whore or saint—neither one deserves to be raped. This has been playing in my head for days, before and after the decision on the Subic rape case and until now. At first I thought saying it in Filipino would sound too vulgar but I changed my mind when I read yesterday’s front-page news in the Inquirer.
No less than a bishop—Bishop Oscar Cruz—was lecturing women on how not to get raped, as if there was a way to get raped. As if rape could partly be women’s fault, as if they would have it coming and could bring it upon themselves because of their way of dressing or behaving. Because it is but natural for men to respond by raping? Come on. Hello? I could feel blood rising to my face.
I’m glad the Inquirer gave the quote prominence because it showed how many men, a bishop among them, still regard women, that is, as temptresses. “Womanhood is precious and noble, so it is not right for them to be flaunting it around.” That’s what the bishop said. Flaunt? Otherwise they could be raped? Should women be always fearful that the way they carry their womanhood could result in violence against their person?
Not that I approve of everything that women do with their bodies and of their distracting way of dressing in certain occasions. But I don’t wish that the celebrities who have three-fourths of their quivering mammary blobs exposed would be raped, mashed or groped. Sure, certain behaviors could have negative consequences. Like if you sit on a ledge of a building you could fall but this does not mean someone should push you to your death.
Rape is no longer a ``private crime.’’ The Anti-Rape Law of 1997 classifies rape as ``a crime against persons’’. For a long time rape was considered merely as ``a crime against chastity’’. This seemed to suggest that persons who were unchaste were fair game.
Defense lawyers who dredge up the sexual reputation of rape victims and cast aspersions on their morality to bolster their defense of the accused should know this strategy could boomerang on them.
Last year, when the Inquirer carried the banner headline that Nicole was not, repeat, not, a sex worker, women’s groups reacted strongly because the headline seemed to suggest that if Nicole was in fact one she was fair game. (The headline was a response to those who wondered what she was.)
The crime of rape should have nothing to do with the chastity of the victim. Rape is not merely a sexual offense or a crime against chastity but a crime against persons and against the State. As one feminist lawyer had said, ``Rape is not a crime against the hymen. It is a crime against the whole person.’’ It is a crime of the strong against the weak, a crime of conquest. Speaking of conquest, the Subic rape case took on a political color because the accused were citizens of a former colonizing nation who still throws its weight around.
Did you see that burly American who was throwing his weight around to shelter Lance Corporal Daniel Smith after his conviction? But our policemen were there to do their job. He even tried to stop the media from following in a car. I wish someone had yelled at him, “You, (@#&!*>) American, you are on Philippine soil!” I wish our police had pinned him down but they seemed intimidated. Dinaan sa laki.
Smith did not deny he had sex with Nicole, but it was consensual, he insisted. Well, that’s what rapists always say—that their victims wanted it and so why are they crying rape? That’s what 91-year-old American Jesuit Fr. James Reuter, a revered figure in these islands, is stressing again and again. That it was consensual sex as Smith alleged. This makes Nicole a liar. Had he talked to Nicole?
I find Reuter’s interventions so pathetic. The most he could have done was simply to listen to what Smith had to confess (whether or not Smith is a Catholic) and give it the seal of confession. In contrast, the Filipino Protestant pastor who had been regularly ministering to Smith and the other accused simply stuck to the spiritual and left the legal to the lawyers and the judge.
The other night there was this news on TV about a big box that was dumped beside the road. When a poor man opened it he found a whole human body inside it. That’s what the US servicemen did to Nicole. They dumped her on the pavement, with her pants worn the wrong way and with a used condom hanging somewhere. Is that how consensual sex is supposed to end? And then they zoomed off to their waiting ship like felons fleeing the scene of a crime.
What woman in her proper mind (Nicole was drunk) would consent to be carried out of a club on the back of a man and into a van, and in the presence of five or six other men, have sex with one of them while the vehicle was moving? And when it was over, be dumped on the side of the road, looking disheveled and dazed?
Last year Sen. Francis Pangilinan said that 3,000 rape cases against Americans have been dismissed in the Olongapo City court. Smith’s conviction in Makati is a first.
Congratulations to Nicole’s lawyers.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
The essential Scholastican
What fruits had we tasted? What pearls had we found? What seeds had been sown in our young lives, and have they grown into great trees? What did we get, what did we give? What food, what richness, what strengths did we take along when we set out into the wilderness?
Did we discover the hidden wells and the orchards? Did we search for life among the ruins? Did we listen, did we speak? Did we laugh and did we weep? Did we hearken, did we heed? And as we journeyed on, who have we become—for ourselves, for others, for God?
Much have been given us and much is to be given back—and forward. The late Sister Caridad Barrion OSB, dean of St. Scholastica’s College for almost two decades, never tired of reminding generations of Scholasticans to give. Her mantra: “You cannot give what you do not have.”
And so we had to fill ourselves first, to drink, by drawing from the deep. To be steeped in a Benedictine tradition of learning for the heart, a way of life so ancient yet ever new. Ora et labora. Pray and work. And study too, for weren’t the Benedictine monks known since the fifth century to be keepers and spreaders of wisdom and knowledge, the bearers of light during the Dark Ages when barbarians threatened to destroy Western civilization?
St. Scholastica’s College marks its glorious 100th year on December 3. On Sept. 14, 1906 five German Missionary Benedictine Sisters arrived in Manila to become the pioneers of an institution of learning for women and girls. They had come to serve the poor but were disappointed when something else they had not expected was thrust upon them: the education of those who had relative material affluence and future influence. And so with typical German grit, they went to work--to teach, to shape, to mold, to discipline (sometimes too severely—and I should know) so that their wards would become “women of character”. Well, the pioneers did not come straight out of the Bavarian Kulturcampf for nothing.
Last Sunday, we launched “Daughters True: 100 Years of Scholastican Education, 1906-2006”, a great book that summarizes a century as distilled in the minds, hearts and lives of generations of Scholasticans. It is history, yes, for it serves up a lot, not just about St. Scho and its evolution, but the Philippine context as well. But it is more than just history, it is also a book of insights and experiences--sublime, hilarious, serious, unforgettable because true-to-life--delivered in so many ways by more than 60 Scholasticans from different corners of these islands and the world.
Scholasticans from across 100 years and from all walks of life shared the essence of their lives by drawing from their own life journeys. Five long major chapter essays (thematic) hold the book together and are spiced up by dozens of short scrumptious pieces and hundreds of vintage photographs (some to-die-for antiques) in duo tone. (Book size 8 by 11 in matte coated paper, more than 300 pages between hard covers.) Already several bookstores have called to inquire if they could have some.
You don’t have to be a Scholastican to appreciate the book. For it says a lot about culture, education, being Filipino, being Christian, being women and “daughters true”. How we become.
The major themes are the school’s history and evolution through the years, the different levels and their thrust, women’s education and empowerment, education for justice, Scholastican activism, Scholastican spirituality, the school’s neo-Romanesque and art deco architecture, the 36 outstanding Scholasticans (Pax awardees from 1979 to 2006, Pres. Corazon Aquino among them) who wrote some of the pieces.
But as I said, the short essays (even the lists) are the spice and garnish that make the book even more palatable. I do not like to pick out names and essays lest I be accused of favoritism. But I must mention the editors—Neni Sta. Romana Cruz, Paulynn Paredes Sicam, Karina Africa Bolasco and myself. Lynett Villariba, the Inquirer’s art and design director, gave the book a great look never before seen in books about institutions.
This book was four years in the making. It was the brainchild of then school president Sr. Mary John Mananzan OSB (now mother prioress) who made sure “Daughters True” became “daughters through”. Sr. M. Soledad Hilado OSB saw us through the 100 years with her sharp eye and solicitude.
I wrote one of the major essays, “The Essential Scholastican: The Roots and Fruits of Her Spirituality” which is not about spirituality above the clouds but on terra firma. It was wonderful to hear Scholasticans from all walks of life share their process of becoming. For what is spirituality if not (according to theologian Fr. Percy Bacani MJ) “a style, unique to the self, that catches up all our attitudes in communal and personal prayer, in behavior, bodily expressions, life choices, in what we support and affirm and what we protest and deny”?
Mother Irene Dabalus OSB sums up the ideal Scholastican thus: “God-grounded, God-enthralled, God-enamored, she swings into the lives around her and feels for the sufferings and struggles of others.”
This same life force, Mother Irene adds, is active in Benedictine education known for that combination of a passion for the truth in academic pursuits, and compassion shaped by a sense of community, prayer and service to others.
“This was all there in our college days, this vision of life which united a deep thirst for the Spirit and a grounding in God, and the work of calling forth the best resources in life, goodness and peace out of each one of us…and the whole of creation.”
Ut in omnibus glorificetur Deus. That in all things God may be glorified.
Did we discover the hidden wells and the orchards? Did we search for life among the ruins? Did we listen, did we speak? Did we laugh and did we weep? Did we hearken, did we heed? And as we journeyed on, who have we become—for ourselves, for others, for God?
Much have been given us and much is to be given back—and forward. The late Sister Caridad Barrion OSB, dean of St. Scholastica’s College for almost two decades, never tired of reminding generations of Scholasticans to give. Her mantra: “You cannot give what you do not have.”
And so we had to fill ourselves first, to drink, by drawing from the deep. To be steeped in a Benedictine tradition of learning for the heart, a way of life so ancient yet ever new. Ora et labora. Pray and work. And study too, for weren’t the Benedictine monks known since the fifth century to be keepers and spreaders of wisdom and knowledge, the bearers of light during the Dark Ages when barbarians threatened to destroy Western civilization?
St. Scholastica’s College marks its glorious 100th year on December 3. On Sept. 14, 1906 five German Missionary Benedictine Sisters arrived in Manila to become the pioneers of an institution of learning for women and girls. They had come to serve the poor but were disappointed when something else they had not expected was thrust upon them: the education of those who had relative material affluence and future influence. And so with typical German grit, they went to work--to teach, to shape, to mold, to discipline (sometimes too severely—and I should know) so that their wards would become “women of character”. Well, the pioneers did not come straight out of the Bavarian Kulturcampf for nothing.
Last Sunday, we launched “Daughters True: 100 Years of Scholastican Education, 1906-2006”, a great book that summarizes a century as distilled in the minds, hearts and lives of generations of Scholasticans. It is history, yes, for it serves up a lot, not just about St. Scho and its evolution, but the Philippine context as well. But it is more than just history, it is also a book of insights and experiences--sublime, hilarious, serious, unforgettable because true-to-life--delivered in so many ways by more than 60 Scholasticans from different corners of these islands and the world.
Scholasticans from across 100 years and from all walks of life shared the essence of their lives by drawing from their own life journeys. Five long major chapter essays (thematic) hold the book together and are spiced up by dozens of short scrumptious pieces and hundreds of vintage photographs (some to-die-for antiques) in duo tone. (Book size 8 by 11 in matte coated paper, more than 300 pages between hard covers.) Already several bookstores have called to inquire if they could have some.
You don’t have to be a Scholastican to appreciate the book. For it says a lot about culture, education, being Filipino, being Christian, being women and “daughters true”. How we become.
The major themes are the school’s history and evolution through the years, the different levels and their thrust, women’s education and empowerment, education for justice, Scholastican activism, Scholastican spirituality, the school’s neo-Romanesque and art deco architecture, the 36 outstanding Scholasticans (Pax awardees from 1979 to 2006, Pres. Corazon Aquino among them) who wrote some of the pieces.
But as I said, the short essays (even the lists) are the spice and garnish that make the book even more palatable. I do not like to pick out names and essays lest I be accused of favoritism. But I must mention the editors—Neni Sta. Romana Cruz, Paulynn Paredes Sicam, Karina Africa Bolasco and myself. Lynett Villariba, the Inquirer’s art and design director, gave the book a great look never before seen in books about institutions.
This book was four years in the making. It was the brainchild of then school president Sr. Mary John Mananzan OSB (now mother prioress) who made sure “Daughters True” became “daughters through”. Sr. M. Soledad Hilado OSB saw us through the 100 years with her sharp eye and solicitude.
I wrote one of the major essays, “The Essential Scholastican: The Roots and Fruits of Her Spirituality” which is not about spirituality above the clouds but on terra firma. It was wonderful to hear Scholasticans from all walks of life share their process of becoming. For what is spirituality if not (according to theologian Fr. Percy Bacani MJ) “a style, unique to the self, that catches up all our attitudes in communal and personal prayer, in behavior, bodily expressions, life choices, in what we support and affirm and what we protest and deny”?
Mother Irene Dabalus OSB sums up the ideal Scholastican thus: “God-grounded, God-enthralled, God-enamored, she swings into the lives around her and feels for the sufferings and struggles of others.”
This same life force, Mother Irene adds, is active in Benedictine education known for that combination of a passion for the truth in academic pursuits, and compassion shaped by a sense of community, prayer and service to others.
“This was all there in our college days, this vision of life which united a deep thirst for the Spirit and a grounding in God, and the work of calling forth the best resources in life, goodness and peace out of each one of us…and the whole of creation.”
Ut in omnibus glorificetur Deus. That in all things God may be glorified.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Workers’ rights and garment labels
“Sr. Stella L.”, a 1984 multi-awarded Mike de Leon-Pete Lacaba film, was on cable TV a few nights ago. While watching it I recalled the hot afternoon we spent at a location where several strike scenes in that movie were shot. A bunch of us women journalists were there as extras shouting “Welga! Welga!” We did it for free. The shooting was in an old bodega-like place that was made to look like a cooking oil factory.
It was quite an outing, what with an award-winning bunch there—Vilma Santos playing Sr. Stella L., the late Tony Santos as Dencio, Laurice Guillen as the other Sr. Stella or the “tokayo”, Anita Linda and several “nuns” linking arms with the workers in the picket line. There was Sr. Stella L. emerging from her baptism of fire and delivering an impassioned plea on behalf of the strikers. And there we were, taking it all in under the scorching sun. It was like the real thing. We each had an orange drink after that.
What timing, I thought while I was watching it again after 22 years and waiting for the credits to roll so I could catch our names. For I had received an urgent call from the Workers Assistance Center (WAC) in Cavite. This was concerning the on-going strike at the Cavite Export Processing Zone (CEPZ). Unlike the “Sr. Stella L.” strike that was in a small local factory, the strikes at the CEPZ are in foreign-owned companies.
I went around CEPZ some years ago to do a labor-day series on the strikes there and to interview CEZ workers, particularly young women and how they lived. I visited some of them at their congested lodging houses where the lodgers took turns in using double-deck beds because, they reasoned, anyway they worked and slept in shifts. They didn’t have beds to call their own. One of the companies on strike was producing sacred images that were exported to Europe.
The ones on strike now since Sept. 25 are workers of two Korean-owned companies—Chong Won Fashion, Inc. and Phils. Jeon Garments Inc.—suppliers of garments of big and known companies abroad. The former supplies products to Gap, Wal-Mart, Target, American Eagle Outfitters, Mervyn’s and White Stag while the latter produces for DKNY, Hanes, Al-alseel, O/X, Dream Station, etc. Name it. You might be wearing some of the labels that came from the CEPZ.
Last week the Inquirer ran an editorial (“Condemned”) on the strike but the strike remains unresolved. In Chong Won Fashion, the strikers are raising the issue of unfair labor practices such as refusal to bargain, illegal suspension of union officers and members and discrimination of union officers and members on overtime affecting 210 union members and more than 700 contractual workers.
In Phils. Jeon Garments the issues are refusal to bargain, union busting, illegal dismissal of the union’s president Emmanuel Bautista. One hundred eighty five of the 400 regular rank-and-file employees are union members.
One of the interesting developments in these two strikes is the intervention of the big foreign firms for which the Korean companies at the CEPZ supply garments. By writing to Pres. Arroyo, these corporate entities are weighing in with the strikers. They are stressing their awareness of the importance of labor rights in their global operations.
Here are some familiar brand names and labels that you usually see on garments and product ads but which went (brand logo and all) to their representatives’ letter of appeal to the President. American Eagle Outfitters, Gap Inc., Jones Apparel Group, Liz Claiborne Inc., PVH, Polo Ralph Lauren and Wal Mart.
And here are excerpts from their common letter that say something about their corporate conscience.
“As companies buying apparel products from the Philippines, we write to bring your attention to a matter of urgent concern. As you know, there have been recent reports of alleged violent attacks on striking workers and the assaults and killings of labor rights promoters. Our industry is alarmed by such reports and urges your immediate attention to the situation. We are particularly disturbed about allegations that Municipal and Export Processing Zone police may have been involved in some of these attacks and assaults. In addition we are concerned about the reports that Export Processing Zone authorities have banned some striking workers from entering the CEZ.
“We urge your government to take proactive measures for ensuring the physical safety and for protecting the rights of workers and labor rights promoters.”
But the pleasant giveaway of their corporate values is this:
“As companies that seek to source in countries and from suppliers that share our commitment to ensuring respect for workers’ rights, we believe that local and human and labor rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can play an important role by partnering with manufacturers and governmental entities as well as suppliers and companies to help improve labor pratices and working conditions in the apparel industry. These NGOs should be able to express their views and carry out their legitimate role freely and without fear of violence.
“Additionally, we strongly believe that individuals working in factories that produce our goods must have the right to associate freely, join organizations of their choice and bargain collectively without unlawful interference. Workers should have the opportunity to work and live in an environment free from the threat of physical violence or harm.”
When you look at your garments’ brand labels, think of the labor rights of those who made them.
It was quite an outing, what with an award-winning bunch there—Vilma Santos playing Sr. Stella L., the late Tony Santos as Dencio, Laurice Guillen as the other Sr. Stella or the “tokayo”, Anita Linda and several “nuns” linking arms with the workers in the picket line. There was Sr. Stella L. emerging from her baptism of fire and delivering an impassioned plea on behalf of the strikers. And there we were, taking it all in under the scorching sun. It was like the real thing. We each had an orange drink after that.
What timing, I thought while I was watching it again after 22 years and waiting for the credits to roll so I could catch our names. For I had received an urgent call from the Workers Assistance Center (WAC) in Cavite. This was concerning the on-going strike at the Cavite Export Processing Zone (CEPZ). Unlike the “Sr. Stella L.” strike that was in a small local factory, the strikes at the CEPZ are in foreign-owned companies.
I went around CEPZ some years ago to do a labor-day series on the strikes there and to interview CEZ workers, particularly young women and how they lived. I visited some of them at their congested lodging houses where the lodgers took turns in using double-deck beds because, they reasoned, anyway they worked and slept in shifts. They didn’t have beds to call their own. One of the companies on strike was producing sacred images that were exported to Europe.
The ones on strike now since Sept. 25 are workers of two Korean-owned companies—Chong Won Fashion, Inc. and Phils. Jeon Garments Inc.—suppliers of garments of big and known companies abroad. The former supplies products to Gap, Wal-Mart, Target, American Eagle Outfitters, Mervyn’s and White Stag while the latter produces for DKNY, Hanes, Al-alseel, O/X, Dream Station, etc. Name it. You might be wearing some of the labels that came from the CEPZ.
Last week the Inquirer ran an editorial (“Condemned”) on the strike but the strike remains unresolved. In Chong Won Fashion, the strikers are raising the issue of unfair labor practices such as refusal to bargain, illegal suspension of union officers and members and discrimination of union officers and members on overtime affecting 210 union members and more than 700 contractual workers.
In Phils. Jeon Garments the issues are refusal to bargain, union busting, illegal dismissal of the union’s president Emmanuel Bautista. One hundred eighty five of the 400 regular rank-and-file employees are union members.
One of the interesting developments in these two strikes is the intervention of the big foreign firms for which the Korean companies at the CEPZ supply garments. By writing to Pres. Arroyo, these corporate entities are weighing in with the strikers. They are stressing their awareness of the importance of labor rights in their global operations.
Here are some familiar brand names and labels that you usually see on garments and product ads but which went (brand logo and all) to their representatives’ letter of appeal to the President. American Eagle Outfitters, Gap Inc., Jones Apparel Group, Liz Claiborne Inc., PVH, Polo Ralph Lauren and Wal Mart.
And here are excerpts from their common letter that say something about their corporate conscience.
“As companies buying apparel products from the Philippines, we write to bring your attention to a matter of urgent concern. As you know, there have been recent reports of alleged violent attacks on striking workers and the assaults and killings of labor rights promoters. Our industry is alarmed by such reports and urges your immediate attention to the situation. We are particularly disturbed about allegations that Municipal and Export Processing Zone police may have been involved in some of these attacks and assaults. In addition we are concerned about the reports that Export Processing Zone authorities have banned some striking workers from entering the CEZ.
“We urge your government to take proactive measures for ensuring the physical safety and for protecting the rights of workers and labor rights promoters.”
But the pleasant giveaway of their corporate values is this:
“As companies that seek to source in countries and from suppliers that share our commitment to ensuring respect for workers’ rights, we believe that local and human and labor rights non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can play an important role by partnering with manufacturers and governmental entities as well as suppliers and companies to help improve labor pratices and working conditions in the apparel industry. These NGOs should be able to express their views and carry out their legitimate role freely and without fear of violence.
“Additionally, we strongly believe that individuals working in factories that produce our goods must have the right to associate freely, join organizations of their choice and bargain collectively without unlawful interference. Workers should have the opportunity to work and live in an environment free from the threat of physical violence or harm.”
When you look at your garments’ brand labels, think of the labor rights of those who made them.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Cheap drugs from India a boon
India has gotten giant drug manufacturers worried. It has challenged the patents on some of the world’s biggest money-making drugs. It has gone into manufacturing of low-cost drugs that would benefit the world’s poor. While India has stumped the big brand-name players, it has given poor nations such as those in Africa with huge numbers of AIDS cases a reason to be thankful.
Well, count the Philippines among the beneficiaries. But can’t the Philippines do the same?
I have been interested in India’s in-your-face kind of upstartness in putting the Goliaths of the drug industry on the defensive (or is it offensive?)
A story in yesterday’s Inquirer said that the government-run Philippine International Trading Corporation (PITC) will bring in up to P1 billion worth of low-cost medicine in 2007 to make essential drugs affordable to Filipinos. These will be sourced mainly from India and Pakistan. PITC has, in fact, been doing this but next year’s big batch is getting giant drug multinationals even more worried. PITC sells these cheap medicines through its network of Botika ng Bayan and Botika ng Barangay.
So Pfizer took legal action against PITC, saying that it has no assurance its patent rights would not be violated. With the support of international development agency Oxfam, medicine users picketed Pfizer to stress “patients’ rights over patent rights”. There.
Time magazine has come out with stories on India’s drug manufacturing time and again. Aravind Adiga wrote that India’s generic-drug makers are flooding international markets with cheap copycat pills, infuriating behemoth rivals from the US and Europe. These so-called copycat pills may not be “signature” or branded but they are not adulterated or less potent. Their components are like the branded ones. And they’re cheaper.
Wrote Adiga: “The notion that India’s upstart pharmaceutical firms could be a threat to Goliaths such as Pfizer and Merck might sound as hard to swallow as cod-liver oil. India is the world’s fourth largest drug producer by volume, but its fragmented industry of 20,000 companies is still stunted in terms of revenues. (In 2002), the total value of India’s drug sales including exports came to $6.5 billion, less than the $8 billion Pfizer raked in from a single blockbuster product, its anticholesterol drug Lipitor.”
Yet, Time reported, India’s copycat drug firms are becoming a headache for big multinationals. For not only are these Indian drug firms expanding to the US and Europe, they are also challenging patents so that cheaper alternatives could become widely available.
One of the challengers is Yusuf Hamied, chair of the Indian drug company Cipla who declared in 2001 that he was going to sell AIDS drugs to Africa less than four percent of the price charged by multinationals. A couple of years later, Hamied declared, “Today, the daggers are drawn.”
Hamied has been described as “the good doctor”. Devastated after seeing an AIDS-stricken friend waste away and die, he set out to do something. In his article for Time, Meenkshi Ganguly described Hamied as an organic chemist and owner of drug firms who made it his mission to find the magic drug. So when Glaxo Wellcome’s AZT and 3TC AIDS cocktails hit the market with promising results, Hamied and his researchers went to work.
Hamied’s Cipla has made anti-AIDS drugs available to the French NGO Medicins Sans Frontieres for less than $1 dollar a day ($350 per year) for the poor. “A humanitarian price,” Hamied said.
Indian laws allow the manufacture of already patented drugs as long as the process is different from the patented one. Because manufacturing cost in India is relatively low, Cipla is able to sell its medicines at a fraction of the cost of the original. $350 per patient per year for the Cipla AIDS cocktail as against $15,000 for the original.
The multinationals did not take this sitting down and howled protests saying India violated intellectual property rights. But these MNCs have long been accused of making giant profits out of poor people’s illnesses. Even after they have recovered the cost of research, their drugs remain overpriced, indirectly sending those who cannot afford the drugs to their deaths.
Medicins Sans Frontieres had even argued that some drugs were developed using US public funds and the companies that made them have already made a lot of profits so why the high cost?
And what did Hamied have to say of his drugs? “Just use the bloody thing. So what if I don’t make a profit on AIDS drugs. That is not the be-all or end-all…To say all Indians are pirates is very good PR. If I am a pirate, I am a thief. If I am a thief I have broken a law. But I abide by the laws of the land.”
Such unnerving effrontery if one may call it that. The man has nerve.
Here in the Philippines, it is not the AIDS cocktail that is causing a furor. The Inquirer report said the dispute revolves also around the importation of amlodipine besylate, the active ingredient of Pfizer’s anti-hypertension drug Norvasc, from what Pfizer said are “unauthorized sources” in India and Pakistan.
PITC argued that it is merely making medicines affordable for poor Filipinos and paving the way for an early regulatory approval so that the product could be marketed in the Philippines when the patent on Norvasc expires in June 2007. Pfizer looks at this an infringement on its intellectual property rights.
Gamot sa high-blood, anyone? Patent rights or patients’ rights?
Well, count the Philippines among the beneficiaries. But can’t the Philippines do the same?
I have been interested in India’s in-your-face kind of upstartness in putting the Goliaths of the drug industry on the defensive (or is it offensive?)
A story in yesterday’s Inquirer said that the government-run Philippine International Trading Corporation (PITC) will bring in up to P1 billion worth of low-cost medicine in 2007 to make essential drugs affordable to Filipinos. These will be sourced mainly from India and Pakistan. PITC has, in fact, been doing this but next year’s big batch is getting giant drug multinationals even more worried. PITC sells these cheap medicines through its network of Botika ng Bayan and Botika ng Barangay.
So Pfizer took legal action against PITC, saying that it has no assurance its patent rights would not be violated. With the support of international development agency Oxfam, medicine users picketed Pfizer to stress “patients’ rights over patent rights”. There.
Time magazine has come out with stories on India’s drug manufacturing time and again. Aravind Adiga wrote that India’s generic-drug makers are flooding international markets with cheap copycat pills, infuriating behemoth rivals from the US and Europe. These so-called copycat pills may not be “signature” or branded but they are not adulterated or less potent. Their components are like the branded ones. And they’re cheaper.
Wrote Adiga: “The notion that India’s upstart pharmaceutical firms could be a threat to Goliaths such as Pfizer and Merck might sound as hard to swallow as cod-liver oil. India is the world’s fourth largest drug producer by volume, but its fragmented industry of 20,000 companies is still stunted in terms of revenues. (In 2002), the total value of India’s drug sales including exports came to $6.5 billion, less than the $8 billion Pfizer raked in from a single blockbuster product, its anticholesterol drug Lipitor.”
Yet, Time reported, India’s copycat drug firms are becoming a headache for big multinationals. For not only are these Indian drug firms expanding to the US and Europe, they are also challenging patents so that cheaper alternatives could become widely available.
One of the challengers is Yusuf Hamied, chair of the Indian drug company Cipla who declared in 2001 that he was going to sell AIDS drugs to Africa less than four percent of the price charged by multinationals. A couple of years later, Hamied declared, “Today, the daggers are drawn.”
Hamied has been described as “the good doctor”. Devastated after seeing an AIDS-stricken friend waste away and die, he set out to do something. In his article for Time, Meenkshi Ganguly described Hamied as an organic chemist and owner of drug firms who made it his mission to find the magic drug. So when Glaxo Wellcome’s AZT and 3TC AIDS cocktails hit the market with promising results, Hamied and his researchers went to work.
Hamied’s Cipla has made anti-AIDS drugs available to the French NGO Medicins Sans Frontieres for less than $1 dollar a day ($350 per year) for the poor. “A humanitarian price,” Hamied said.
Indian laws allow the manufacture of already patented drugs as long as the process is different from the patented one. Because manufacturing cost in India is relatively low, Cipla is able to sell its medicines at a fraction of the cost of the original. $350 per patient per year for the Cipla AIDS cocktail as against $15,000 for the original.
The multinationals did not take this sitting down and howled protests saying India violated intellectual property rights. But these MNCs have long been accused of making giant profits out of poor people’s illnesses. Even after they have recovered the cost of research, their drugs remain overpriced, indirectly sending those who cannot afford the drugs to their deaths.
Medicins Sans Frontieres had even argued that some drugs were developed using US public funds and the companies that made them have already made a lot of profits so why the high cost?
And what did Hamied have to say of his drugs? “Just use the bloody thing. So what if I don’t make a profit on AIDS drugs. That is not the be-all or end-all…To say all Indians are pirates is very good PR. If I am a pirate, I am a thief. If I am a thief I have broken a law. But I abide by the laws of the land.”
Such unnerving effrontery if one may call it that. The man has nerve.
Here in the Philippines, it is not the AIDS cocktail that is causing a furor. The Inquirer report said the dispute revolves also around the importation of amlodipine besylate, the active ingredient of Pfizer’s anti-hypertension drug Norvasc, from what Pfizer said are “unauthorized sources” in India and Pakistan.
PITC argued that it is merely making medicines affordable for poor Filipinos and paving the way for an early regulatory approval so that the product could be marketed in the Philippines when the patent on Norvasc expires in June 2007. Pfizer looks at this an infringement on its intellectual property rights.
Gamot sa high-blood, anyone? Patent rights or patients’ rights?
Wednesday, November 8, 2006
Tabang Mindanaw study on Sulu
“The security situation in Sulu is COMPLEX and has to be understood in all its facets if a lasting solution is to be found.”
This sums up the results of a recent survey that Tabang Mindanaw did on behalf of Pagtabangan BaSulTa. The Assisi Foundation was behind the endeavor.
The report entitled “Developing a Culture of Peace for Sulu” is a review of the peace and order situation in Sulu based on a survey conducted in 18 towns of the province. The respondents were composed of religious leaders, traditional leaders, women, the youth and the economic sector.
But what is this “culture of peace” that the report is invoking? The report uses the United Nations definition which is “a set of values, attitudes, modes of behavior and ways of life that reject violence and prevent conflicts by tackling their root causes to solve problems through dialogue and negotiations among individuals, groups and nations.”
The research team, headed by Victor M. Taylor and Abraham Idjirani, ran the survey that focused on the people’s views on their personal situation, the province, security, factors that contribute to the present situation and factors needed to improve the situation.
“Complex” is the key word used to summarize the survey findings. Civil servants, development agencies and the myriad stakeholders in the province are advised to take heed. Anyone aspiring to work in Sulu is advised to read the report in order to appreciate Sulu’s complex landscape especially the historical and cultural context in which this complexity is being played out.
Why is the situation the way it is, and what can be done about it?
The report first gives a brief account of Sulu’s “glorious and troubled history”. It goes back to the time when Sulu was at the crossroads of trade between China and Europe up until the mid-19th century, then the entry of Spain, the US and the attacks on the predominantly Muslim Moro homeland that went on for a long time.
The report also reminds that Sulu was the nerve center of the Moro secessionist fighting that broke out in the 1970s. Brief peaceful interludes were experienced in the 1950s and 1960s then things changed when martial law was imposed in the 1970s. Today, conflict is very much a part of the Sulu scene.
The survey results show that 82 percent of all respondents feel that things are more difficult for them today, with 74 percent citing the economic situation as the reason. Seventy two percent feel the situation in the province is chaotic. Among the reasons are security (35%), governance (30%), economic (28%) and religion (4%).
While 62 percent of the respondents feel that their respective communities are peaceful, a much greater majority (83.3%) believes that the province of Sulu as a whole is in turmoil.
Security factors cited are the unstable peace and order situation, frequent killings, clan conflicts, armed conflicts (among them the conflict between the military and the Moro National Liberation Front) and other armed groups like the Abu Sayyaf.
One of the issues the report addresses is terrorism. Not all acts of violence could be labeled terrorism or should be linked to terrorist groups, the report explains. They become acts of terrorism only when it is clear that the intent is to achieve a political or ideological objective. Making sweeping labels only aggravates the problem and it often wrongly justifies illegal courses of action on the part of the authorities.
One of the interesting portions of the report tackles the role of civil society in communities in Sulu. It points out the “seeming passiveness of civil society in doing its share to proactively address the issue of peace in Sulu and bridge the gap between the populace and the authorities.” It is as if the people are resigned to their fate and have become mainly passive spectators of events swirling around them. And when civil society does move, it is often in a confrontational manner that results in the deepening of animosities between concerned sectors.
This is not to say that nothing has been done by civil society. In the past months civil society in Sulu has broadened to include the business sector which used to be a separate category. There are venues for coming together. One of them is the Task Force on Peace and Unity which is a gathering of individuals and groups from the academe, Muslim and Christian groups, NGOs, business and government.
Last March civil society groups, government agencies, the military and police and the MNLF held a ground-breaking workshop in Jolo to discuss the future of the province. One of the results was the formation of a core group that focuses on peace and order.
But more needs to be done. Civil society must realize that the work for peace is not theirs alone. Ordinary citizens must know that they have a role to play. Civil society must therefore be a channel of information on issues and events that affect the people’s lives. It should provide venues for discussions and airing of different points of view. It should be able to bridge the gap between the people and government authorities (officials, military, police).
Of course, the religious sector’s role is one of the most important in this predominantly Muslim province. The Sulu Ulama Council for Peace and Development has done a lot through its radio program Ulanig sin Kasajahitraan or Echoes of Peace.
(I love the sound of the first three syllables—Kasaja. It sounds like the Visayan kasadya which means merry or festive. I hope I can use the name someday.)
If you want a copy of the Tabang Mindanaw report, send email to tabang@tabangmindanaw.org
This sums up the results of a recent survey that Tabang Mindanaw did on behalf of Pagtabangan BaSulTa. The Assisi Foundation was behind the endeavor.
The report entitled “Developing a Culture of Peace for Sulu” is a review of the peace and order situation in Sulu based on a survey conducted in 18 towns of the province. The respondents were composed of religious leaders, traditional leaders, women, the youth and the economic sector.
But what is this “culture of peace” that the report is invoking? The report uses the United Nations definition which is “a set of values, attitudes, modes of behavior and ways of life that reject violence and prevent conflicts by tackling their root causes to solve problems through dialogue and negotiations among individuals, groups and nations.”
The research team, headed by Victor M. Taylor and Abraham Idjirani, ran the survey that focused on the people’s views on their personal situation, the province, security, factors that contribute to the present situation and factors needed to improve the situation.
“Complex” is the key word used to summarize the survey findings. Civil servants, development agencies and the myriad stakeholders in the province are advised to take heed. Anyone aspiring to work in Sulu is advised to read the report in order to appreciate Sulu’s complex landscape especially the historical and cultural context in which this complexity is being played out.
Why is the situation the way it is, and what can be done about it?
The report first gives a brief account of Sulu’s “glorious and troubled history”. It goes back to the time when Sulu was at the crossroads of trade between China and Europe up until the mid-19th century, then the entry of Spain, the US and the attacks on the predominantly Muslim Moro homeland that went on for a long time.
The report also reminds that Sulu was the nerve center of the Moro secessionist fighting that broke out in the 1970s. Brief peaceful interludes were experienced in the 1950s and 1960s then things changed when martial law was imposed in the 1970s. Today, conflict is very much a part of the Sulu scene.
The survey results show that 82 percent of all respondents feel that things are more difficult for them today, with 74 percent citing the economic situation as the reason. Seventy two percent feel the situation in the province is chaotic. Among the reasons are security (35%), governance (30%), economic (28%) and religion (4%).
While 62 percent of the respondents feel that their respective communities are peaceful, a much greater majority (83.3%) believes that the province of Sulu as a whole is in turmoil.
Security factors cited are the unstable peace and order situation, frequent killings, clan conflicts, armed conflicts (among them the conflict between the military and the Moro National Liberation Front) and other armed groups like the Abu Sayyaf.
One of the issues the report addresses is terrorism. Not all acts of violence could be labeled terrorism or should be linked to terrorist groups, the report explains. They become acts of terrorism only when it is clear that the intent is to achieve a political or ideological objective. Making sweeping labels only aggravates the problem and it often wrongly justifies illegal courses of action on the part of the authorities.
One of the interesting portions of the report tackles the role of civil society in communities in Sulu. It points out the “seeming passiveness of civil society in doing its share to proactively address the issue of peace in Sulu and bridge the gap between the populace and the authorities.” It is as if the people are resigned to their fate and have become mainly passive spectators of events swirling around them. And when civil society does move, it is often in a confrontational manner that results in the deepening of animosities between concerned sectors.
This is not to say that nothing has been done by civil society. In the past months civil society in Sulu has broadened to include the business sector which used to be a separate category. There are venues for coming together. One of them is the Task Force on Peace and Unity which is a gathering of individuals and groups from the academe, Muslim and Christian groups, NGOs, business and government.
Last March civil society groups, government agencies, the military and police and the MNLF held a ground-breaking workshop in Jolo to discuss the future of the province. One of the results was the formation of a core group that focuses on peace and order.
But more needs to be done. Civil society must realize that the work for peace is not theirs alone. Ordinary citizens must know that they have a role to play. Civil society must therefore be a channel of information on issues and events that affect the people’s lives. It should provide venues for discussions and airing of different points of view. It should be able to bridge the gap between the people and government authorities (officials, military, police).
Of course, the religious sector’s role is one of the most important in this predominantly Muslim province. The Sulu Ulama Council for Peace and Development has done a lot through its radio program Ulanig sin Kasajahitraan or Echoes of Peace.
(I love the sound of the first three syllables—Kasaja. It sounds like the Visayan kasadya which means merry or festive. I hope I can use the name someday.)
If you want a copy of the Tabang Mindanaw report, send email to tabang@tabangmindanaw.org
Wednesday, November 1, 2006
Limbo un-rocked
Today, Nov. 2, is All Souls Day, the day for our dear departed. But feast-loving Filipinos always do the feasting and remembering in advance as if there might be no more tomorrow. And so Nov. 1, All Saints Day, is what Filipinos consider araw ng mga patay.
We Filipinos have a way of advancing the calendar to suit our festive mood. Well, All Souls Day is the harbinger of the Christmas season. Tomorrow the Christmas season “officially” begins in these islands. It will last for two months.
But hold on awhile to the 11th month. We all have our early memories of this November feast that sends Filipino families in droves to their old hometowns. Celebrations in the provinces are so much more folksy and Pinoy, unlike those in Metro Manila where the feast has taken on an American macabre flavor that I find corny and TH.
On the solemn side of memory lane, some melodies refuse to die. I can still sing the first and last lines of the Latin Gregorian chant that the Benedictine sisters chanted during the Mass for the Dead in the beautiful neo-Romanesque chapel in school. “Dies irae, dies illa, solvet saeclum in favilla…” Translated as, “Nigher still, and still more nigh, Draws the day of prophecy…”
It ends with the soaring, “Lacrymosa dies illa, Qua resurget ex favilla…” “Full of tears and full of dread, is the day that wakes the dead…”
Oh, it soaked my soul and shook the ramparts of my young heart.
This being the season that makes us ponder life after death, there is now no reason to wonder where limbo is. The vacuous place has been erased from the afterlife. The Roman Catholic Church had created that place during the Middle Ages, last year the magisterium decided to delete it. (Will so-called plenary indulgences be the next to go?)
Blame the creation of the limbo hypothesis on the concept of the stamp of original sin and the outdated way that it was taught.
Last year Pope Benedict XVI abolished the concept of limbo, the place where, Catholics were made to believe, the souls of un-baptized children went. The year before he died, Pope John Paul II had created a commission to come up with a “more coherent and illuminating” doctrine on this neither-here-nor-there place in the Great Beyond.
Pope Benedict XVI (Cardinal Josep Ratzinger then) had presided over the first sessions before he became Pope. A report said that he is on record as saying that limbo has no place in modern Catholicism. In 1984 he was already quoted as saying that limbo had “never been a definitive truth of the faith”.
Limbo has been scrapped.
Limbo comes from the Latin word limbus that means edge or boundary. It was supposed to be the transit area for the souls of the people who lived good lives but died before the resurrection of Jesus two millennia ago. Only on the Last Judgment will they all move on to heaven. Neat arrangement.
Limbo was also supposed to be the permanent home of the babies who died in infancy (and the fetuses too) that didn’t get freed from original sin through baptism. There they were supposed to live in a state of natural happiness, whatever that means.
Here’s something I read: “In the Divine Comedy, Dante depicts limbo as the first circle of hell, located beyond the river of Acheron but before the judgment seat of Minos. The virtuous pagans of classical history and mythology inhabit a brightly lit and beautiful—but somber—castle which is seemingly a medievalized version of Elysium. (A) semi-infernal region, above limbo or the other side of Acheron, but inside the gate of Hell also exists—it is the vestibule of hell and houses so-called ‘neutralists’ or ‘opportunists’ who devoted their lives neither to good nor to evil…” A place for fence sitters and opportunists!
Now that limbo has been demolished, where did its occupants proceed? Or where were they all the time? In heaven, I presume.
Nowhere in the Bible is limbo mentioned, but it is supposed to be the “bosom of Abraham” which is twice mentioned in the Bible. This bosom is supposed to be a blissful state where the good and the righteous of the pre-Jesus era await their eternal reward. It is neither heaven nor hell, it is a transit lounge before entering paradise.
I read somewhere that the gospel story about the “good thief” who was crucified and died beside Jesus is a case that should tweak this limbo theory. Jesus promised him that they would be together “this day” in paradise. Right away?
Well the answer, some say, is in the punctuation mark, the comma. (The celebrated writer Pico Iyer has a great essay on the comma and what it can do.) Did Jesus say, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with me in paradise” or “Truly I say to you today, you shall be with me in paradise”? The latter means that the thief had to wait in limbo until the resurrection made it possible for him to enter the Pearly Gates.
This is grist for biblical nitpickers. I bring this up only to say it is good that limbo has been deleted from the file folders, it has been erased from the landscape of the afterlife. But the word limbo will stay in colloquial lingo. It means neither here nor there.
The limbo of the afterlife had nothing to do with the limbo dance that originated in the Caribbean. Limbo rock comes from Jamaican English limba or to bend (from the English limber). Limbo rock we all know. It uses a stick below which dancers must bend backwards as they proceed. Limbo dancing is believed to have started from cramped and smelly slave ships that brought Africans to the Americas.
That was not limbo, that was hell. But the real hell is where slave traders—the modern-day ones, specially--should go.
We Filipinos have a way of advancing the calendar to suit our festive mood. Well, All Souls Day is the harbinger of the Christmas season. Tomorrow the Christmas season “officially” begins in these islands. It will last for two months.
But hold on awhile to the 11th month. We all have our early memories of this November feast that sends Filipino families in droves to their old hometowns. Celebrations in the provinces are so much more folksy and Pinoy, unlike those in Metro Manila where the feast has taken on an American macabre flavor that I find corny and TH.
On the solemn side of memory lane, some melodies refuse to die. I can still sing the first and last lines of the Latin Gregorian chant that the Benedictine sisters chanted during the Mass for the Dead in the beautiful neo-Romanesque chapel in school. “Dies irae, dies illa, solvet saeclum in favilla…” Translated as, “Nigher still, and still more nigh, Draws the day of prophecy…”
It ends with the soaring, “Lacrymosa dies illa, Qua resurget ex favilla…” “Full of tears and full of dread, is the day that wakes the dead…”
Oh, it soaked my soul and shook the ramparts of my young heart.
This being the season that makes us ponder life after death, there is now no reason to wonder where limbo is. The vacuous place has been erased from the afterlife. The Roman Catholic Church had created that place during the Middle Ages, last year the magisterium decided to delete it. (Will so-called plenary indulgences be the next to go?)
Blame the creation of the limbo hypothesis on the concept of the stamp of original sin and the outdated way that it was taught.
Last year Pope Benedict XVI abolished the concept of limbo, the place where, Catholics were made to believe, the souls of un-baptized children went. The year before he died, Pope John Paul II had created a commission to come up with a “more coherent and illuminating” doctrine on this neither-here-nor-there place in the Great Beyond.
Pope Benedict XVI (Cardinal Josep Ratzinger then) had presided over the first sessions before he became Pope. A report said that he is on record as saying that limbo has no place in modern Catholicism. In 1984 he was already quoted as saying that limbo had “never been a definitive truth of the faith”.
Limbo has been scrapped.
Limbo comes from the Latin word limbus that means edge or boundary. It was supposed to be the transit area for the souls of the people who lived good lives but died before the resurrection of Jesus two millennia ago. Only on the Last Judgment will they all move on to heaven. Neat arrangement.
Limbo was also supposed to be the permanent home of the babies who died in infancy (and the fetuses too) that didn’t get freed from original sin through baptism. There they were supposed to live in a state of natural happiness, whatever that means.
Here’s something I read: “In the Divine Comedy, Dante depicts limbo as the first circle of hell, located beyond the river of Acheron but before the judgment seat of Minos. The virtuous pagans of classical history and mythology inhabit a brightly lit and beautiful—but somber—castle which is seemingly a medievalized version of Elysium. (A) semi-infernal region, above limbo or the other side of Acheron, but inside the gate of Hell also exists—it is the vestibule of hell and houses so-called ‘neutralists’ or ‘opportunists’ who devoted their lives neither to good nor to evil…” A place for fence sitters and opportunists!
Now that limbo has been demolished, where did its occupants proceed? Or where were they all the time? In heaven, I presume.
Nowhere in the Bible is limbo mentioned, but it is supposed to be the “bosom of Abraham” which is twice mentioned in the Bible. This bosom is supposed to be a blissful state where the good and the righteous of the pre-Jesus era await their eternal reward. It is neither heaven nor hell, it is a transit lounge before entering paradise.
I read somewhere that the gospel story about the “good thief” who was crucified and died beside Jesus is a case that should tweak this limbo theory. Jesus promised him that they would be together “this day” in paradise. Right away?
Well the answer, some say, is in the punctuation mark, the comma. (The celebrated writer Pico Iyer has a great essay on the comma and what it can do.) Did Jesus say, “Truly I say to you, today you shall be with me in paradise” or “Truly I say to you today, you shall be with me in paradise”? The latter means that the thief had to wait in limbo until the resurrection made it possible for him to enter the Pearly Gates.
This is grist for biblical nitpickers. I bring this up only to say it is good that limbo has been deleted from the file folders, it has been erased from the landscape of the afterlife. But the word limbo will stay in colloquial lingo. It means neither here nor there.
The limbo of the afterlife had nothing to do with the limbo dance that originated in the Caribbean. Limbo rock comes from Jamaican English limba or to bend (from the English limber). Limbo rock we all know. It uses a stick below which dancers must bend backwards as they proceed. Limbo dancing is believed to have started from cramped and smelly slave ships that brought Africans to the Americas.
That was not limbo, that was hell. But the real hell is where slave traders—the modern-day ones, specially--should go.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
The scent of coconuts
One should indulge in life’s little pleasures even while the world goes berserk and the ugly side of politics is constantly spoiling the landscape of our lives. Food is comfort and we look to so-called comfort food, the food that brings back pleasant memories and feelings, when things go awry.
It was good to savor the flavors and scents of the food of Bicolandia last Monday at the EDSA Shangri-la where the two-week (Oct. 23 to Nov. 3) Gayon Food Feast is now going on. This is being co-promoted by the Department of Tourism’s Bicol Regional Division under Maria O. Ravanilla.
Gayon is short for magayon (Bicol for beautiful) and where the name of the awesome Mayon Volcano of Albay is supposed to have come from. Extend the suffix and you have magayunon or very beautiful; magayunonon means very, very beautiful. You could extend the suffix some more to push the meaning to the extreme.
My verdict? The food was not just masiram (delicious), it was masiramon (really delicious). I say this not because my cousin Didette N. Peralta (who co-owns and runs Legazpi City’s Small Talk Café) was one of the guest cooks but because the flavors did Daragang Magayon (the maiden in Bicol legend) proud. And I judged the spread as it was—somewhat fusion cuisine--not as the home cooked, slow-food fare that purists might pine for. There was pasta pinangat, for example, and Bicol express served on tomato halves. Quite neo-, those. But the real pinangat was there in its coconut-y glory.
I am only half-Bicolana (and half Ilongga) so my judgment would not be that of a true-blue Bicolana. Special guest Honesto General, author of “Coconut Cookery” and an excellent cook, would make a better judgment. I only enjoyed what I ate.
Albay congressman Edcel Lagman who delivered the post-prandial speech had fire in his mouth while speaking about the triumvirate of Bicol cuisine—sili (hot pepper), pili and coconut. These, I suspect, are what bring out the oragon (that X factor) in Bicolanos. But more than the other two, I think it is the coconut that really defines Bicol cuisine. Pili nut sweets (for desert) could be absent, and the sili’s fire could be toned down, but the coconut has to be there in the right amount.
Speaking of coconuts, a new book on the wonder tree of all time was recently launched. “Coconut: The Philippines’ Money Tree” by Dr. Renato M. Labadan tells all there is to know—about the coconut. Root, fruit, flower, palm, juice, oil, trunk, husk, shell—and how Filipinos could squeeze and use all of its parts in order to earn from this tree of trees.
Last year, I wrote about Dr. Conrado Dayrit, his coco-discoveries and his book “The Truth About Coconut Oil: The Drugstore in a Bottle”. The book focused on virgin coconut oil (VCO) which is claiming its rightful place as food ingredient and medicine after the decades of badmouthing and blacklisting done by the West in order to promote its own oils.
Labadan’s coffeetable-type book weighs more than two kilos (the case included), or the weight of about two coconuts. It didn’t have to be this heavy and this big, if you ask me. It contains a lot of photographs and information on how the coconut could work wonders for this country and its people. It’s easy to read but, as I said, too heavy to hold on one’s lap.
Here’s peek. Labadan traces the original home of the coconut and then concludes that the weight of evidence points to Southeast Asia. He then goes on to the beginning of the development of a viable industry during the Spanish colonial times.
And what is the original coconut? Alas, no one coconut can claim “genetical purity” because of cross-pollination and hybridization. Labadan does classify the many different types now in existence, the makapuno included.
While many are going loco over coco virgin oil or VCO as food and medicine, little is known about coconut nectar. Labadan introduces the recently discovered uses of this sap. No, it is not the coconut water from the fruit. Coconut nectar is the concentrated sap from the inflorescence or the coconut “flower”. I know the tuba comes from this inflorescence, but the nectar that Labadan talks about is a discovery of Dr. Gerino Macias who invented an apparatus similar to that of a honeybee that processes honey. The resulting viscose coconut nectar is touted to be some kind of wonder food and cure-all too, like the VCO.
The fruit is, of course, the crowning glory of this money tree. The meat or the “white solid endosperm” of the fruit is the part that is most used as food. (The ubod, the nectar and the tuba come from other parts.) By itself, this edible part of the fruit can build an industry, as in the case of VCO, cooking oil, copra, nata de coco, and now, coco-diesel for vehicles.
Now fiber nets from the husk are the rage especially for environmental purposes, that is, to prevent erosion. Recently Justino Arboleda won the BBC’s World Challenge prize and the Global 100 Eco-Tech Award for his coconet.
Labadan does not forget to take up the controversial, coco-levy funds collected in billions from poor coconut farmers during the Marcos regime that, until now, has not been fully accounted for.
There’s more to this book than just the tree, its fruit and its many parts. A whole chapter is devoted to the coconut farmer and another chapter on the coconut industry and the major players. And more importantly how they coconut industry could be improved.
Labadan (rmlabadan@yahoo.com) is an agriculturist. He finished at the University of the Philippines and Cornell University in the US. This 1970 TOYM awardee also has a master’s degree in business administration from the Ateneo University.
It was good to savor the flavors and scents of the food of Bicolandia last Monday at the EDSA Shangri-la where the two-week (Oct. 23 to Nov. 3) Gayon Food Feast is now going on. This is being co-promoted by the Department of Tourism’s Bicol Regional Division under Maria O. Ravanilla.
Gayon is short for magayon (Bicol for beautiful) and where the name of the awesome Mayon Volcano of Albay is supposed to have come from. Extend the suffix and you have magayunon or very beautiful; magayunonon means very, very beautiful. You could extend the suffix some more to push the meaning to the extreme.
My verdict? The food was not just masiram (delicious), it was masiramon (really delicious). I say this not because my cousin Didette N. Peralta (who co-owns and runs Legazpi City’s Small Talk Café) was one of the guest cooks but because the flavors did Daragang Magayon (the maiden in Bicol legend) proud. And I judged the spread as it was—somewhat fusion cuisine--not as the home cooked, slow-food fare that purists might pine for. There was pasta pinangat, for example, and Bicol express served on tomato halves. Quite neo-, those. But the real pinangat was there in its coconut-y glory.
I am only half-Bicolana (and half Ilongga) so my judgment would not be that of a true-blue Bicolana. Special guest Honesto General, author of “Coconut Cookery” and an excellent cook, would make a better judgment. I only enjoyed what I ate.
Albay congressman Edcel Lagman who delivered the post-prandial speech had fire in his mouth while speaking about the triumvirate of Bicol cuisine—sili (hot pepper), pili and coconut. These, I suspect, are what bring out the oragon (that X factor) in Bicolanos. But more than the other two, I think it is the coconut that really defines Bicol cuisine. Pili nut sweets (for desert) could be absent, and the sili’s fire could be toned down, but the coconut has to be there in the right amount.
Speaking of coconuts, a new book on the wonder tree of all time was recently launched. “Coconut: The Philippines’ Money Tree” by Dr. Renato M. Labadan tells all there is to know—about the coconut. Root, fruit, flower, palm, juice, oil, trunk, husk, shell—and how Filipinos could squeeze and use all of its parts in order to earn from this tree of trees.
Last year, I wrote about Dr. Conrado Dayrit, his coco-discoveries and his book “The Truth About Coconut Oil: The Drugstore in a Bottle”. The book focused on virgin coconut oil (VCO) which is claiming its rightful place as food ingredient and medicine after the decades of badmouthing and blacklisting done by the West in order to promote its own oils.
Labadan’s coffeetable-type book weighs more than two kilos (the case included), or the weight of about two coconuts. It didn’t have to be this heavy and this big, if you ask me. It contains a lot of photographs and information on how the coconut could work wonders for this country and its people. It’s easy to read but, as I said, too heavy to hold on one’s lap.
Here’s peek. Labadan traces the original home of the coconut and then concludes that the weight of evidence points to Southeast Asia. He then goes on to the beginning of the development of a viable industry during the Spanish colonial times.
And what is the original coconut? Alas, no one coconut can claim “genetical purity” because of cross-pollination and hybridization. Labadan does classify the many different types now in existence, the makapuno included.
While many are going loco over coco virgin oil or VCO as food and medicine, little is known about coconut nectar. Labadan introduces the recently discovered uses of this sap. No, it is not the coconut water from the fruit. Coconut nectar is the concentrated sap from the inflorescence or the coconut “flower”. I know the tuba comes from this inflorescence, but the nectar that Labadan talks about is a discovery of Dr. Gerino Macias who invented an apparatus similar to that of a honeybee that processes honey. The resulting viscose coconut nectar is touted to be some kind of wonder food and cure-all too, like the VCO.
The fruit is, of course, the crowning glory of this money tree. The meat or the “white solid endosperm” of the fruit is the part that is most used as food. (The ubod, the nectar and the tuba come from other parts.) By itself, this edible part of the fruit can build an industry, as in the case of VCO, cooking oil, copra, nata de coco, and now, coco-diesel for vehicles.
Now fiber nets from the husk are the rage especially for environmental purposes, that is, to prevent erosion. Recently Justino Arboleda won the BBC’s World Challenge prize and the Global 100 Eco-Tech Award for his coconet.
Labadan does not forget to take up the controversial, coco-levy funds collected in billions from poor coconut farmers during the Marcos regime that, until now, has not been fully accounted for.
There’s more to this book than just the tree, its fruit and its many parts. A whole chapter is devoted to the coconut farmer and another chapter on the coconut industry and the major players. And more importantly how they coconut industry could be improved.
Labadan (rmlabadan@yahoo.com) is an agriculturist. He finished at the University of the Philippines and Cornell University in the US. This 1970 TOYM awardee also has a master’s degree in business administration from the Ateneo University.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Yunus: ‘Poor women are good credit risk’
The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation (RMAF) is on Cloud 9 because 1984 Awardee for Community Leadership, Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh, is this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner. The RMAF was 22 years ahead of the Nobel in recognizing Yunus’ work among the poor.
The Dalai Lama received his RM Award (Asia’s Nobel, so-called) in 1959, 30 years before his Nobel in 1989. Mother Teresa got her RM Award in 1962, 17 years earlier than her Nobel.
This means that Asia, the RMAF of the Philippines in particular, is not behind, it is in fact way ahead, in recognizing its own home-grown heroes and, yes, long before these persons have become familiar names in the world.
Yunus was only 44 when he received the RM Award in 1984, one of the youngest in RMAF’s roster of laureates. Now there is an RM award for Emergent Leadership for those below or on the threshold of 40. Yunus was quite surprised that he was chosen at that time because Grameen banking (microfinance) for the poor was not yet a byword. This is what Yunus said in 1984:
“I still cannot make out how the trustees of this prestigious foundation could notice a small effort such as ours, which has reached only some 100,000 in a population of more than 90 million. (As of July 2006, the population is 147.3 million - Inquirer Research Dept.) I can only admire the foundation for taking a big risk in choosing me…”
Because of the Nobel Peace Prize, Yunus will surely be quoted very often these days, listened to, queried. His words and work will be dissected.
Let’s listen some more to what this economist, said in 1984. Do we recognize a glimmer of the grand possibilities?
“As a student of social science, I could not feel comfortable with what I learned. When it came to applying this knowledge in solving real problems, it appeared toothless. I continued to get a feeling that the knowledge that we present in the discipline of social science is replete with pretensions and make-believe stories…
“Social scientists enjoy being up above in the sky and having a panoramic bird’s-eye view over a wide horizon…The view from the sky without the supportive close-up view from the ground merely encourages you to take recourse to daydreaming.
“Not all people have access to a bird’s-eye view. Poor people don’t. They are too busy eking out a survival for themselves with their worm’s-eye view…Poverty can be better understood if we look at it from the ground level at a very close range. Then, instead of generating billions of words about it, we can find ways to cope with it.
“Poverty is not caused by a person’s unwillingness to work hard or lack of skill. As a matter of fact, a poor person may work very hard—even harder than others—and he has more skill and time than he can use. He languishes in poverty because he does not receive the full worth of his work. Under the existing social and economic institutional arrangements, someone else always comes in between and skims off the income that was due to him. The existing economic machinery is designed in such a way that it allows this process of grabbing to continue and gather strength every day, so that the earnings of others can make a handful of people richer and turn a large number of people into paupers.
“A poor person cannot arrange a larger share or return for his work because his economic base is paper-thin. If he can gradually build up an asset-base, he can command a better share. Land to the landless will help build up this base. There are other forms of assets that will improve his economic situation. Credit, for example; it is a liquid asset. The recipient of credit can decide which particular tangible form he will convert this asset into…With financial resources at his disposal, an individual is free to build his own fate with his own labor. Nothing can match the spirit of a free human being…
“Removal of poverty must be a continuing process of creation of assets by the poor at a steady rate. Poor people know what they must do to get out of the rut. But the people who make decisions refuse to put faith in their ability…”
For more on Asia’s greats like Yunus, read RMAF’s series of books on the RM awardees, “Great Men and Women of Asia”. I found writing some of the stories in the books very inspiring because many of these great men and women were just like you and me when they set off.
I had the chance of listening to Yunus when he was here in 2001 to address “Grameen replicators”. He mentioned then that the RMAF award helped boost the microfinance movement that he started in the 1970s in a small village in Bangladesh through small loans to the poor, especially women. The Grameen way has since taken root in many parts of the world.
When asked why Grameen has a bias for women, Yunus replied: “Because women are good people. Poor women are a good credit risk, even in the most difficult economic times. They are the best judge of their own situation and they know best how to use credit when it is available, especially when supervised and encouraged by their peers. Small business loans pave the way to breaking their poverty cycle. In just one program operating in Southern Luzon, over 1,000 women and their families crossed the poverty line between 1997 and 2000.”
The Grameen-style microfinance movement is growing in the Philippines. In 2001 repayment rate was at 93 percent. Interested in mocrofinancing? Contact Philnet at philnet@mozcom.com.
Microfinance is not in the curriculum of business schools. Maybe it is learned first and best in the school of the heart. And on the ground, like Yunus did.
The Dalai Lama received his RM Award (Asia’s Nobel, so-called) in 1959, 30 years before his Nobel in 1989. Mother Teresa got her RM Award in 1962, 17 years earlier than her Nobel.
This means that Asia, the RMAF of the Philippines in particular, is not behind, it is in fact way ahead, in recognizing its own home-grown heroes and, yes, long before these persons have become familiar names in the world.
Yunus was only 44 when he received the RM Award in 1984, one of the youngest in RMAF’s roster of laureates. Now there is an RM award for Emergent Leadership for those below or on the threshold of 40. Yunus was quite surprised that he was chosen at that time because Grameen banking (microfinance) for the poor was not yet a byword. This is what Yunus said in 1984:
“I still cannot make out how the trustees of this prestigious foundation could notice a small effort such as ours, which has reached only some 100,000 in a population of more than 90 million. (As of July 2006, the population is 147.3 million - Inquirer Research Dept.) I can only admire the foundation for taking a big risk in choosing me…”
Because of the Nobel Peace Prize, Yunus will surely be quoted very often these days, listened to, queried. His words and work will be dissected.
Let’s listen some more to what this economist, said in 1984. Do we recognize a glimmer of the grand possibilities?
“As a student of social science, I could not feel comfortable with what I learned. When it came to applying this knowledge in solving real problems, it appeared toothless. I continued to get a feeling that the knowledge that we present in the discipline of social science is replete with pretensions and make-believe stories…
“Social scientists enjoy being up above in the sky and having a panoramic bird’s-eye view over a wide horizon…The view from the sky without the supportive close-up view from the ground merely encourages you to take recourse to daydreaming.
“Not all people have access to a bird’s-eye view. Poor people don’t. They are too busy eking out a survival for themselves with their worm’s-eye view…Poverty can be better understood if we look at it from the ground level at a very close range. Then, instead of generating billions of words about it, we can find ways to cope with it.
“Poverty is not caused by a person’s unwillingness to work hard or lack of skill. As a matter of fact, a poor person may work very hard—even harder than others—and he has more skill and time than he can use. He languishes in poverty because he does not receive the full worth of his work. Under the existing social and economic institutional arrangements, someone else always comes in between and skims off the income that was due to him. The existing economic machinery is designed in such a way that it allows this process of grabbing to continue and gather strength every day, so that the earnings of others can make a handful of people richer and turn a large number of people into paupers.
“A poor person cannot arrange a larger share or return for his work because his economic base is paper-thin. If he can gradually build up an asset-base, he can command a better share. Land to the landless will help build up this base. There are other forms of assets that will improve his economic situation. Credit, for example; it is a liquid asset. The recipient of credit can decide which particular tangible form he will convert this asset into…With financial resources at his disposal, an individual is free to build his own fate with his own labor. Nothing can match the spirit of a free human being…
“Removal of poverty must be a continuing process of creation of assets by the poor at a steady rate. Poor people know what they must do to get out of the rut. But the people who make decisions refuse to put faith in their ability…”
For more on Asia’s greats like Yunus, read RMAF’s series of books on the RM awardees, “Great Men and Women of Asia”. I found writing some of the stories in the books very inspiring because many of these great men and women were just like you and me when they set off.
I had the chance of listening to Yunus when he was here in 2001 to address “Grameen replicators”. He mentioned then that the RMAF award helped boost the microfinance movement that he started in the 1970s in a small village in Bangladesh through small loans to the poor, especially women. The Grameen way has since taken root in many parts of the world.
When asked why Grameen has a bias for women, Yunus replied: “Because women are good people. Poor women are a good credit risk, even in the most difficult economic times. They are the best judge of their own situation and they know best how to use credit when it is available, especially when supervised and encouraged by their peers. Small business loans pave the way to breaking their poverty cycle. In just one program operating in Southern Luzon, over 1,000 women and their families crossed the poverty line between 1997 and 2000.”
The Grameen-style microfinance movement is growing in the Philippines. In 2001 repayment rate was at 93 percent. Interested in mocrofinancing? Contact Philnet at philnet@mozcom.com.
Microfinance is not in the curriculum of business schools. Maybe it is learned first and best in the school of the heart. And on the ground, like Yunus did.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Sikat
The Catholic Church in the Philippines sets aside the second Sunday of October as Indigenous People’s Sunday and October might as well IP month.
An NGO that has been working for almost 10 years for the education of IPs is Sikat or Schools of Indigenous Knowledge and Tradition or Silungan ng Katututbong Kaalaman at Tradisyon. The Filipino word sikat means shine and when the accent is placed on the second syllable, it means celebrity, a person of note and achievement. Sikat is a non-church, non-profit, non-stock movement that aims to make the IPs find their rightful place, their place of pride, under the sun through education. Not just any education but an education that is attuned to the IP’s way of life—their culture, language, livelihood, habitat, and everything that defines them. This means developing a “culturally responsive education for indigenous peoples”.
Behind Sikat and supporting it every step of the way is the Asian Council for People’s Culture (ACPC).
In December 1997, a group of people from various regions and faiths gathered for the first National Trainers’ Training in order to share and build visions for a national network of cultural workers and community educators. That meeting gave birth to Sikat and the network of schools.
Al Santos, Sikat executive director and founding member says: “In establishing community-owned culturally responsive schools, we create linking pathways for the promotion of indigenous education among various tribes across the country.”
Community-owned means the people build the schools with their hands, run them, staff them and, most of all, help in making a curriculum that is suited for the IP children. This does not mean isolating themselves or setting themselves apart, this means strengthening their children’s rootedness so that they do not become alienated from their origins. Then they could face the rest of the world with pride—pride in their ancestry and everything that nurtured them—even sharing indigenous knowledge and wisdom that many of them had been ashamed of or wished to forget.
There are now dozens of Sikat schools all over the country. These are mostly in the primary level. While there are now schools in the tertiary level (not Sikat’s) that offer specialized curricula for IPs and those planning to work among IPs, there is no way for an interested IP to get to this level without going through the primary level.
But how could IP communities have primary schools in the highlands if there are no trained teachers? Who is the teacher who will walk through forests primeval and across mountains to get to a remote place on earth? Is it worth it? You bet it is, or must be, for I have met teachers who’ve done this. But they are few. And how long could they last?
One of the solutions to the dearth of teachers is to get trainable ones from the communities themselves. They need not be college degree holders or board passers. Training such teachers is what Sikat has done successfully. Why wait forever for someone with a teacher’s diploma to fall from the sky? The children are growing up fast and can’t remain ignorant and illiterate forever.
In Sikat schools the children learn not only the three Rs but also about themselves. The Sikat school is a strong pillar for empowerment. It transmits knowledge crucial to the survival of the tribes. It encourages students to learn their own languages and protects their identity and rights as IPs. It sustains community cycles and events. In others words, the Sikat school is woven into the cultural fabric of the IP community.
Making this work is not an easy task. It involves tri-partite efforts and involvement of the IP community, the NGO and the local government. Local government units (LGUs) have been responsive, Santos says, and why not, it is their constituencies that would benefit from this type of innovative education. Needless to say, they also need to put in local funds to make Sikat happen.
Now the problematic part. While Sikat education could well serve the learning needs of the IPs up to a certain point, how do they move on from there if their teachers have not gone through the regular qualifying exams and their schools aren’t accredited? Although teachers have gone through Sikat training modules and are definitely well equipped to teach, many have not gone beyond elementary or high school. How will their students go to the next level, high school or college, if the Department of Education has not accredited these schools?
This is what is being worked out, Santos points out. The DepEd really needs to address this concern.
There are IP communities that are not so remote, whose children have access to regular schools. Despite their poor and special background, these children have adjusted and made it to the mainstream. But by going mainstream so early, how much of their sense of roots have they lost and exchanged for what is alien?
Sikat does not merely address the problem of education, it is blazing a trail for the IPs to be educated through a rich and meaningful way. I couldn’t help thinking, well, the farther the purer, but then one can’t remain isolated in this day and age. Education and integration is the key, but integration with pride and dignity. But preservation, too, of timeless wisdom and knowledge that are as old as the hills.
Donate old phone books to the women of the Alay Kapwa Christian Community that makes beautiful bags and baskets out of them as a means of livelihood. Pls. drop them at the home of Maring Feria on 3 Taurus Bel-Air 3, Makati. Tel. 8956234.
An NGO that has been working for almost 10 years for the education of IPs is Sikat or Schools of Indigenous Knowledge and Tradition or Silungan ng Katututbong Kaalaman at Tradisyon. The Filipino word sikat means shine and when the accent is placed on the second syllable, it means celebrity, a person of note and achievement. Sikat is a non-church, non-profit, non-stock movement that aims to make the IPs find their rightful place, their place of pride, under the sun through education. Not just any education but an education that is attuned to the IP’s way of life—their culture, language, livelihood, habitat, and everything that defines them. This means developing a “culturally responsive education for indigenous peoples”.
Behind Sikat and supporting it every step of the way is the Asian Council for People’s Culture (ACPC).
In December 1997, a group of people from various regions and faiths gathered for the first National Trainers’ Training in order to share and build visions for a national network of cultural workers and community educators. That meeting gave birth to Sikat and the network of schools.
Al Santos, Sikat executive director and founding member says: “In establishing community-owned culturally responsive schools, we create linking pathways for the promotion of indigenous education among various tribes across the country.”
Community-owned means the people build the schools with their hands, run them, staff them and, most of all, help in making a curriculum that is suited for the IP children. This does not mean isolating themselves or setting themselves apart, this means strengthening their children’s rootedness so that they do not become alienated from their origins. Then they could face the rest of the world with pride—pride in their ancestry and everything that nurtured them—even sharing indigenous knowledge and wisdom that many of them had been ashamed of or wished to forget.
There are now dozens of Sikat schools all over the country. These are mostly in the primary level. While there are now schools in the tertiary level (not Sikat’s) that offer specialized curricula for IPs and those planning to work among IPs, there is no way for an interested IP to get to this level without going through the primary level.
But how could IP communities have primary schools in the highlands if there are no trained teachers? Who is the teacher who will walk through forests primeval and across mountains to get to a remote place on earth? Is it worth it? You bet it is, or must be, for I have met teachers who’ve done this. But they are few. And how long could they last?
One of the solutions to the dearth of teachers is to get trainable ones from the communities themselves. They need not be college degree holders or board passers. Training such teachers is what Sikat has done successfully. Why wait forever for someone with a teacher’s diploma to fall from the sky? The children are growing up fast and can’t remain ignorant and illiterate forever.
In Sikat schools the children learn not only the three Rs but also about themselves. The Sikat school is a strong pillar for empowerment. It transmits knowledge crucial to the survival of the tribes. It encourages students to learn their own languages and protects their identity and rights as IPs. It sustains community cycles and events. In others words, the Sikat school is woven into the cultural fabric of the IP community.
Making this work is not an easy task. It involves tri-partite efforts and involvement of the IP community, the NGO and the local government. Local government units (LGUs) have been responsive, Santos says, and why not, it is their constituencies that would benefit from this type of innovative education. Needless to say, they also need to put in local funds to make Sikat happen.
Now the problematic part. While Sikat education could well serve the learning needs of the IPs up to a certain point, how do they move on from there if their teachers have not gone through the regular qualifying exams and their schools aren’t accredited? Although teachers have gone through Sikat training modules and are definitely well equipped to teach, many have not gone beyond elementary or high school. How will their students go to the next level, high school or college, if the Department of Education has not accredited these schools?
This is what is being worked out, Santos points out. The DepEd really needs to address this concern.
There are IP communities that are not so remote, whose children have access to regular schools. Despite their poor and special background, these children have adjusted and made it to the mainstream. But by going mainstream so early, how much of their sense of roots have they lost and exchanged for what is alien?
Sikat does not merely address the problem of education, it is blazing a trail for the IPs to be educated through a rich and meaningful way. I couldn’t help thinking, well, the farther the purer, but then one can’t remain isolated in this day and age. Education and integration is the key, but integration with pride and dignity. But preservation, too, of timeless wisdom and knowledge that are as old as the hills.
Donate old phone books to the women of the Alay Kapwa Christian Community that makes beautiful bags and baskets out of them as a means of livelihood. Pls. drop them at the home of Maring Feria on 3 Taurus Bel-Air 3, Makati. Tel. 8956234.
Wednesday, October 4, 2006
Billboards from hell(2)
There’s a (2) up there because I used the same title last year when the Anti-Billboard Coalition (ABC) whipped up a storm. Many storms have come and gone since that time and billboards have continued to collapse on highways, vehicles, transport systems, structures and human beings except on those who put them up.
Someone suggested I use the title “Death by billboard”.
The man who instantly died after he was hit by a falling billboard was probably still being embalmed when this outdoor advertising executive said on national TV something like this: Milenyo was a strong typhoon and things standing were expected to fall, among them trees, electric posts and billboards. If we ban billboards, he said, we might as well ban trees and electric posts.
Ano raw? Trees aren’t marijuana. You don’t have to be a true-blue greenie to know the basics about trees. And electric posts? Many have contributed to the ugliness of the metropolis because of the entangled wires they weave around them but they stand there for a purpose. And we expect our power providers to someday do away with unsightly wiring.
But the billboards? The mushrooming thousands of billboards on top of buildings, along roads and superhighways? And throw in the smaller ones that hang on lamposts, columns and street railings. What purpose do they serve?
I do believe in advertising but not in the use of billboards and hangings that litter the landscape. Sure, advertising adds to the vibrancy of the economy, and if well done, informs and educates consumers about product choices, it increases sales volume and helps lower prices, etc. As an industry it also gives jobs to a lot of people. But it could go overboard in content and method and become exploitative, offensive, destructive and dangerous.
The billboard overkill is an example. Now every outdoor ad agency and its clients want a piece of that wall, that roadside, that skyline, even the blue above.
I suspect that if billboards were banned altogether, manufacturers would be happy, equally happy. This would level the playing field, so to speak. Manufacturers, all of them, no longer need to spend for that kind of advertising. Hey, there’s still print, TV, radio, word of mouth, events sponsorship, even charity and social advocacy.
We’d just have a handful of losers—those who invested their money in the uglification of the environment and those who work for them. But there is life down the road when it is all cleaned up just as there should be life after jueteng.
EDSA is not my regular route but when I drove through there a few days ago, I was aghast at how cluttered it has become. No more piece of blue sky in one’s peripheral vision, just the darkening horizon. The whole beyond has been obstructed by rows upon rows of screaming ads that are not just there to be seen but to be read as well. Oh yes, I’ve caught myself reading some of those ads while driving. Careful, those billboards may not flip over but your vehicle might.
This brazen assault on your senses just blows your mind to billboard hell. How have we come to this?
Last year I received a letter from a reader who complained that the letter M (which stands for Mary) on the Antipolo Marian shrine has been obstructed by the giant M or twin arches of McDonald’s. Well now, what do you say to the church officials who run the San Carlos and Guadalupe Seminaries along EDSA who have allowed their haven of green (for the motorists’ eyes) to be taken over by the advertisers? How many pieces of silver did they earn?
Billboards were once made of hand-painted metal sheets. Now they are made of plastic sheets that come out of giant printing machines. I once saw a team preparing to hoist up a billboard. The sheets flowed like a river and covered the whole sidewalk.
This reminded me of the European artist Kristo who covered entire structures with canvas and then had them photographed. He mummified entire landscapes for the duration of his outdoor exhibition. He was making a statement while the population watched in awe and puzzlement. Our advertising and billboard industries leave nothing for the imagination.
Someone should do a Kristo and use discarded tarpaulin from billboards and wrap an entire landscape. That would be a statement.
The issue now against billboards is not just their content. It is their proliferation. It is the inconsiderate, wanton, crude, rude desire to call attention and to sell. Manufacturers plaster giant pictures of their products everywhere. Cell phones, garments and accessories, food, health and beauty products, real estate, accessories, hardware. Just as guilty are the self-styled evangelists, politicians, movie promoters and TV stations.
The bucolic and beautiful landscape in the provinces that beckon people home—it too is now groaning under the weight of billboards. We have become a billboard wasteland.
Once upon a time billboards stood parallel to the highway. Now they are placed on a diagonal position or on a right angle to the road so that they can face, overwhelm and distract motorists.
The billboard disease has spread to the rest of society. Now, everybody just hangs or nails anything on an empty space. ``Tubero’’, ``room 4 rent’’, ``lady bedspacer’’ and ``manghihilot’’ announcements have been around for a long time but now you have ``Happy Fiesta’’ and ``Congratulations graduates’’ from councilor so-and-so.
As of last year, Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago already had two bills pending. Senate Bill 1714, the ``Anti-Billboard Act’’ seeks to regulate the placement of billboard signs. SB 1668 is ``an act prohibiting officers from claiming credit through signage announcing a public works project.’’
Billboard advertising—big or small—should be banned altogether.
Someone suggested I use the title “Death by billboard”.
The man who instantly died after he was hit by a falling billboard was probably still being embalmed when this outdoor advertising executive said on national TV something like this: Milenyo was a strong typhoon and things standing were expected to fall, among them trees, electric posts and billboards. If we ban billboards, he said, we might as well ban trees and electric posts.
Ano raw? Trees aren’t marijuana. You don’t have to be a true-blue greenie to know the basics about trees. And electric posts? Many have contributed to the ugliness of the metropolis because of the entangled wires they weave around them but they stand there for a purpose. And we expect our power providers to someday do away with unsightly wiring.
But the billboards? The mushrooming thousands of billboards on top of buildings, along roads and superhighways? And throw in the smaller ones that hang on lamposts, columns and street railings. What purpose do they serve?
I do believe in advertising but not in the use of billboards and hangings that litter the landscape. Sure, advertising adds to the vibrancy of the economy, and if well done, informs and educates consumers about product choices, it increases sales volume and helps lower prices, etc. As an industry it also gives jobs to a lot of people. But it could go overboard in content and method and become exploitative, offensive, destructive and dangerous.
The billboard overkill is an example. Now every outdoor ad agency and its clients want a piece of that wall, that roadside, that skyline, even the blue above.
I suspect that if billboards were banned altogether, manufacturers would be happy, equally happy. This would level the playing field, so to speak. Manufacturers, all of them, no longer need to spend for that kind of advertising. Hey, there’s still print, TV, radio, word of mouth, events sponsorship, even charity and social advocacy.
We’d just have a handful of losers—those who invested their money in the uglification of the environment and those who work for them. But there is life down the road when it is all cleaned up just as there should be life after jueteng.
EDSA is not my regular route but when I drove through there a few days ago, I was aghast at how cluttered it has become. No more piece of blue sky in one’s peripheral vision, just the darkening horizon. The whole beyond has been obstructed by rows upon rows of screaming ads that are not just there to be seen but to be read as well. Oh yes, I’ve caught myself reading some of those ads while driving. Careful, those billboards may not flip over but your vehicle might.
This brazen assault on your senses just blows your mind to billboard hell. How have we come to this?
Last year I received a letter from a reader who complained that the letter M (which stands for Mary) on the Antipolo Marian shrine has been obstructed by the giant M or twin arches of McDonald’s. Well now, what do you say to the church officials who run the San Carlos and Guadalupe Seminaries along EDSA who have allowed their haven of green (for the motorists’ eyes) to be taken over by the advertisers? How many pieces of silver did they earn?
Billboards were once made of hand-painted metal sheets. Now they are made of plastic sheets that come out of giant printing machines. I once saw a team preparing to hoist up a billboard. The sheets flowed like a river and covered the whole sidewalk.
This reminded me of the European artist Kristo who covered entire structures with canvas and then had them photographed. He mummified entire landscapes for the duration of his outdoor exhibition. He was making a statement while the population watched in awe and puzzlement. Our advertising and billboard industries leave nothing for the imagination.
Someone should do a Kristo and use discarded tarpaulin from billboards and wrap an entire landscape. That would be a statement.
The issue now against billboards is not just their content. It is their proliferation. It is the inconsiderate, wanton, crude, rude desire to call attention and to sell. Manufacturers plaster giant pictures of their products everywhere. Cell phones, garments and accessories, food, health and beauty products, real estate, accessories, hardware. Just as guilty are the self-styled evangelists, politicians, movie promoters and TV stations.
The bucolic and beautiful landscape in the provinces that beckon people home—it too is now groaning under the weight of billboards. We have become a billboard wasteland.
Once upon a time billboards stood parallel to the highway. Now they are placed on a diagonal position or on a right angle to the road so that they can face, overwhelm and distract motorists.
The billboard disease has spread to the rest of society. Now, everybody just hangs or nails anything on an empty space. ``Tubero’’, ``room 4 rent’’, ``lady bedspacer’’ and ``manghihilot’’ announcements have been around for a long time but now you have ``Happy Fiesta’’ and ``Congratulations graduates’’ from councilor so-and-so.
As of last year, Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago already had two bills pending. Senate Bill 1714, the ``Anti-Billboard Act’’ seeks to regulate the placement of billboard signs. SB 1668 is ``an act prohibiting officers from claiming credit through signage announcing a public works project.’’
Billboard advertising—big or small—should be banned altogether.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Where to take your electronic junk
The good news is that we (from Metro Manila and other major cities) no longer have to search far for an “electronic junkyard” where our unwanted stuff could be consigned to, sorted properly for reuse or recycled. There is a way to prevent the rise of Payatas-like wastelands made up of toxic and harmful non-biodegradables such as computers, cellphones, microwaves ovens, electronic toys and gadgets, batteries and the like. Wall-size TVs, and tiny MP3 players and digital cameras will soon join the march to these junkyards.
Walk through the Jurassic Park that is your house or office and identify the electronic dinosaurs that have been sitting in dusty corners for years. At some point they reached obsolescence or were beyond repair. Where do you take them if there are no takers? They shouldn’t be consigned to the garbage dumps or coral reefs. They could be toxic and hazardous to living things. So where do these hardware go and wait to be reincarnated or recycled?
Some years ago I brought a car trunk-ful of these stuff to a vocational school of electronics that had use for them. I was so thankful they took them all—from cordless phone to dot matrix printer to radio/tape recorder that’s been silent for 20 years plus so many more. But I forgot to bring the 1993 laptop whose manufacturer is now extinct. It’s still waiting to be properly laid to rest.
The greenies have answers to questions pertaining to wet garbage and other biodegradable matter. But when it comes to the electronic gadgets, few could come up with concrete solutions as simple as where, what, how, when. Like, where should deadly dead batteries go besides the garbage dump?
This column piece is a recycled one, by the way, a chip off a long one, happily rewritten to announce a piece of good news: the Waste Trading Market or Recyclables Collection Event (RCE).
For several years now the Philippine Business for the Environment (PBE) has been running a yearly RCE that encourages groups, communities, institutions and individuals to bring their recyclables to buying stations (usually big open spaces). Junk (bottles, cans, ink cartridges, paper, etc.) could be exchanged for cash or new ones. This activity helps divert still useful materials from the landfills to the recycling industry. Donate your old, broken down computers, TV, aircon, cell phones, fax machines, laptop, adaptors, batteries, etc. but if there are buyers, that would be great. The goal is to not let these things end up in the dumpsites.
Starting Oct. 6 and every first Friday of the month thereafter, the “Waste Market” will be at Goldcrest parking lot, Arnaiz Ave., Makati. Starting Oct. 20 and every third Friday of the month thereafter, it will be at the Ayala Alabang Town Center (in front of St. Jerome Parish, parking lot 4), Muntinlupa. This is a pilot project that will run till December.
And where do all the electronic junk (or so-called non-traditional waste) go? PBE has a tie-up with HMR Enviro-cycle Philippines that has a plant in Sta. Rosa. Participating recyclers have complied with Department of Environment and Natural Resources requirements. They are not supposed to recycle, not discard stuff in the landfill.
Over the past years, RCEs have collected some 91 10-ton dump trucks of waste and diverted these from landfills. The estimated economic value of the waste may not be huge but the good done for the environment cannot be quantified.
The PBE office is on the 2nd floor of DAP Building, San Miguel Ave., Pasig City. Tel 6353670, 6352650 to 51. The RCE coordinator is Nancy Pilien. The executive director is Lisa Antonio. The chair is Edgar Chua, CEO of Shell.
Computer recycling is not new. One US group that I discovered on the Internet some years ago has this come-on: ``We recycle surplus micro computer equipment to maximize its economic value and minimize its environmental impact.’’ Back Thru the Future Micro Computers, Inc. had some terrifying data at that time.
``Did you know? Of 350 million desktop computers sold since 1982, 50 % (175,000) of these machines are in storage today. According to the National Safety Council only 6% of all PCs manufactured are recycled, while 70% of all major appliances are.’’
The company has several strategically located warehouses in the US. Proximity to sources of discarded equipment helps reduce freight costs. ``The simple fact’’ Back Thru said, ``is that as new technology becomes less expensive the cost of removing the old technology becomes a major cost factor in an upgrade budget. The value of the old equipment may no longer cover the cost of removal...
``The cost of recycling has increased dramatically…with the huge quantities of older equipment displaced in large corporations…There is not a single biodegradable item in a computer and they don’t belong in a landfill. Monitors are actually considered hazardous waste, and in many communities are banned from curbside pickup.’’
If you want to know more about computer recycling, go to an old link, www.american.edu/projects/mandala/TED/COMPUTER.HTM. The paper on this topic starts off by saying, ``When a big electronics company announces a big investment plan, interest usually centers on what products the company would be manufacturing. No one would ask the company what would happen to these products--personal computers, fax machines, microwave ovens, televisions--when they reach the end of their useful lives...’’
Not too long ago I watched a TV report about computer waste from a western country being shipped to a remote place China where people dismantle the machines to get at precious pieces of metal. The result: a horrible wasteland littered with computer debris.
Walk through the Jurassic Park that is your house or office and identify the electronic dinosaurs that have been sitting in dusty corners for years. At some point they reached obsolescence or were beyond repair. Where do you take them if there are no takers? They shouldn’t be consigned to the garbage dumps or coral reefs. They could be toxic and hazardous to living things. So where do these hardware go and wait to be reincarnated or recycled?
Some years ago I brought a car trunk-ful of these stuff to a vocational school of electronics that had use for them. I was so thankful they took them all—from cordless phone to dot matrix printer to radio/tape recorder that’s been silent for 20 years plus so many more. But I forgot to bring the 1993 laptop whose manufacturer is now extinct. It’s still waiting to be properly laid to rest.
The greenies have answers to questions pertaining to wet garbage and other biodegradable matter. But when it comes to the electronic gadgets, few could come up with concrete solutions as simple as where, what, how, when. Like, where should deadly dead batteries go besides the garbage dump?
This column piece is a recycled one, by the way, a chip off a long one, happily rewritten to announce a piece of good news: the Waste Trading Market or Recyclables Collection Event (RCE).
For several years now the Philippine Business for the Environment (PBE) has been running a yearly RCE that encourages groups, communities, institutions and individuals to bring their recyclables to buying stations (usually big open spaces). Junk (bottles, cans, ink cartridges, paper, etc.) could be exchanged for cash or new ones. This activity helps divert still useful materials from the landfills to the recycling industry. Donate your old, broken down computers, TV, aircon, cell phones, fax machines, laptop, adaptors, batteries, etc. but if there are buyers, that would be great. The goal is to not let these things end up in the dumpsites.
Starting Oct. 6 and every first Friday of the month thereafter, the “Waste Market” will be at Goldcrest parking lot, Arnaiz Ave., Makati. Starting Oct. 20 and every third Friday of the month thereafter, it will be at the Ayala Alabang Town Center (in front of St. Jerome Parish, parking lot 4), Muntinlupa. This is a pilot project that will run till December.
And where do all the electronic junk (or so-called non-traditional waste) go? PBE has a tie-up with HMR Enviro-cycle Philippines that has a plant in Sta. Rosa. Participating recyclers have complied with Department of Environment and Natural Resources requirements. They are not supposed to recycle, not discard stuff in the landfill.
Over the past years, RCEs have collected some 91 10-ton dump trucks of waste and diverted these from landfills. The estimated economic value of the waste may not be huge but the good done for the environment cannot be quantified.
The PBE office is on the 2nd floor of DAP Building, San Miguel Ave., Pasig City. Tel 6353670, 6352650 to 51. The RCE coordinator is Nancy Pilien. The executive director is Lisa Antonio. The chair is Edgar Chua, CEO of Shell.
Computer recycling is not new. One US group that I discovered on the Internet some years ago has this come-on: ``We recycle surplus micro computer equipment to maximize its economic value and minimize its environmental impact.’’ Back Thru the Future Micro Computers, Inc. had some terrifying data at that time.
``Did you know? Of 350 million desktop computers sold since 1982, 50 % (175,000) of these machines are in storage today. According to the National Safety Council only 6% of all PCs manufactured are recycled, while 70% of all major appliances are.’’
The company has several strategically located warehouses in the US. Proximity to sources of discarded equipment helps reduce freight costs. ``The simple fact’’ Back Thru said, ``is that as new technology becomes less expensive the cost of removing the old technology becomes a major cost factor in an upgrade budget. The value of the old equipment may no longer cover the cost of removal...
``The cost of recycling has increased dramatically…with the huge quantities of older equipment displaced in large corporations…There is not a single biodegradable item in a computer and they don’t belong in a landfill. Monitors are actually considered hazardous waste, and in many communities are banned from curbside pickup.’’
If you want to know more about computer recycling, go to an old link, www.american.edu/projects/mandala/TED/COMPUTER.HTM. The paper on this topic starts off by saying, ``When a big electronics company announces a big investment plan, interest usually centers on what products the company would be manufacturing. No one would ask the company what would happen to these products--personal computers, fax machines, microwave ovens, televisions--when they reach the end of their useful lives...’’
Not too long ago I watched a TV report about computer waste from a western country being shipped to a remote place China where people dismantle the machines to get at precious pieces of metal. The result: a horrible wasteland littered with computer debris.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
The Pope’s language
A marine scientist, upon seeing the damage of the recent oil spill on Guimaras, is likely to say to his fellow scientists, “The biota exhibited a 100 percent mortality response.”
We journalists would write, “All the fish died.” It thunders in its simplicity and you couldn’t get more dramatic than that.
Author Kurt Vonnegut says that his favorite line among James Joyce’s stories is from the short story “Eveline”. The sentence: “She was tired.” At that point, Vonnegut says, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do.
“Simplicity of language,” he says, “is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively 14-year-old: ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’”
The subject of simplicity in language—and its sacredness—was going through my mind while I was going over the lecture that Pope Benedict XVI delivered at the University of Regensburg in Germany last week. It was not a papal “to the city and to the world” (Urbi et Orbi) speech, by the way, only a lecture for a select group of intellectuals in an academic compound.
A sentence in that lecture has so infuriated Muslims who felt that Islam was demeaned. That sentence was not the Pope’s own words. The Pope was merely quoting a Byzantine emperor who bashed the Prophet Mohammed’s way of spreading the faith. (I do not wish to repeat that sentence here.) The Pope thought the emperor said it “with a startling brusqueness” but he went on to quote it anyway in his lecture. By quoting that statement, the Pope wanted to merely illustrate a point. He did not say he agreed or disagreed with it.
Well, the Pope should have made himself clear in the next breath, because how were the Muslims to know that the offending sentence’s intent was not something also his?
The Pope’s lecture that I read—four times the length of this column—was not easy. It was an English translation from German and the subject was philosophy and more.
The Pope has said he was sorry his words (the quote he used) caused offense, something he did not mean. He did not say he was sorry that he used the quote. If the Pope was deliberately testing the waters or proving something by using that offending quote, then he certainly got some answers from the way Muslims reacted.
Many documents and encyclicals of global significance have come from the popes of recent years and one could easily say that these were not crafted by the individual popes alone but were the handiwork of theologians and experts from various fields. Same with the brief speeches and homilies they deliver during their papal visits.
But the Pope’s lecture in Regensburg (much like his controversial 2004 “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and the World” while still the Josef Cardinal Ratzinger) seemed like he crafted it by his lonesome. A lecture is the lecturer’s own, something straight out of the lecturer’s mind.
The Vatican website calls this piece “Lecture of the Holy Father” and has the title “Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections.”
The Pope began and reminisced as only he could: “It is a moving experience for me to be back again in the university and to be able once again to give a lecture at this podium. I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn. That was in 1959, in the days of the old university made up of ordinary professors…There was lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties. Once a semester there was a dies academicus, when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making a genuine experience of universitas…
“The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties…(I)t was once reported that a colleague had said that there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God.”
Well, after those sweet reminiscences the Pope dived briefly, but intensely, into the subject of Islam and Christianity, the Koran and the Bible, and the face-off between Byzantine II Paleologus and his educated Persian interlocutor. It was here that that offending statement by the Byzantine emperor was quoted.
One more paragraph on God’s nature according to Islam and Greek philosophy and then the Pope segued into God’s transcendence and otherness, the “de-hellenization of Christianity”, dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today.
Taste the flavor of Pope Benedict XVI’s language.
“A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures…
“For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding.”
That offending quote in the early part did not stray there accidentally. It was put there for a reason. For at the end of his long lecture about a subject that was above ordinary mortals (Jesus spoke more simply), the Pope again took up the debate between the Byzantine emperor and his Persian interlocutor. Once more, he stressed reason as the basis for a great dialogue, not debate, of cultures.
Great. But by then, one would have become bewildered, befuddled and lost in that arcane language that you either knew or didn’t know what offended you.
We journalists would write, “All the fish died.” It thunders in its simplicity and you couldn’t get more dramatic than that.
Author Kurt Vonnegut says that his favorite line among James Joyce’s stories is from the short story “Eveline”. The sentence: “She was tired.” At that point, Vonnegut says, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do.
“Simplicity of language,” he says, “is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively 14-year-old: ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’”
The subject of simplicity in language—and its sacredness—was going through my mind while I was going over the lecture that Pope Benedict XVI delivered at the University of Regensburg in Germany last week. It was not a papal “to the city and to the world” (Urbi et Orbi) speech, by the way, only a lecture for a select group of intellectuals in an academic compound.
A sentence in that lecture has so infuriated Muslims who felt that Islam was demeaned. That sentence was not the Pope’s own words. The Pope was merely quoting a Byzantine emperor who bashed the Prophet Mohammed’s way of spreading the faith. (I do not wish to repeat that sentence here.) The Pope thought the emperor said it “with a startling brusqueness” but he went on to quote it anyway in his lecture. By quoting that statement, the Pope wanted to merely illustrate a point. He did not say he agreed or disagreed with it.
Well, the Pope should have made himself clear in the next breath, because how were the Muslims to know that the offending sentence’s intent was not something also his?
The Pope’s lecture that I read—four times the length of this column—was not easy. It was an English translation from German and the subject was philosophy and more.
The Pope has said he was sorry his words (the quote he used) caused offense, something he did not mean. He did not say he was sorry that he used the quote. If the Pope was deliberately testing the waters or proving something by using that offending quote, then he certainly got some answers from the way Muslims reacted.
Many documents and encyclicals of global significance have come from the popes of recent years and one could easily say that these were not crafted by the individual popes alone but were the handiwork of theologians and experts from various fields. Same with the brief speeches and homilies they deliver during their papal visits.
But the Pope’s lecture in Regensburg (much like his controversial 2004 “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and the World” while still the Josef Cardinal Ratzinger) seemed like he crafted it by his lonesome. A lecture is the lecturer’s own, something straight out of the lecturer’s mind.
The Vatican website calls this piece “Lecture of the Holy Father” and has the title “Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections.”
The Pope began and reminisced as only he could: “It is a moving experience for me to be back again in the university and to be able once again to give a lecture at this podium. I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn. That was in 1959, in the days of the old university made up of ordinary professors…There was lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties. Once a semester there was a dies academicus, when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making a genuine experience of universitas…
“The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties…(I)t was once reported that a colleague had said that there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God.”
Well, after those sweet reminiscences the Pope dived briefly, but intensely, into the subject of Islam and Christianity, the Koran and the Bible, and the face-off between Byzantine II Paleologus and his educated Persian interlocutor. It was here that that offending statement by the Byzantine emperor was quoted.
One more paragraph on God’s nature according to Islam and Greek philosophy and then the Pope segued into God’s transcendence and otherness, the “de-hellenization of Christianity”, dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today.
Taste the flavor of Pope Benedict XVI’s language.
“A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures…
“For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding.”
That offending quote in the early part did not stray there accidentally. It was put there for a reason. For at the end of his long lecture about a subject that was above ordinary mortals (Jesus spoke more simply), the Pope again took up the debate between the Byzantine emperor and his Persian interlocutor. Once more, he stressed reason as the basis for a great dialogue, not debate, of cultures.
Great. But by then, one would have become bewildered, befuddled and lost in that arcane language that you either knew or didn’t know what offended you.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Surging like ‘The Oceanides’
Helsinki--After days of Nordic food, bottomless coffee, workshops, talk shops, civil society networking and so-called “open space” discussions (throw in a few films), the 450 participants of Asia-Europe People’s Forum 6 (AEPF 6) held in Helsinki called it a day.
There was no evidence of rice and spice deprivation withdrawal among the Asians as they were very vocal, as victims and potential victims of neo-liberalism should be. Asians and Europeans of the G&D (grim and determined) grassroots variety have, once again, found their collective voice. On the fourth day, they let it all hang out at a city square through songs, dance, mime and a “people’s soup kitchen” courtesy of the Finns.
Here in the land of a thousand lakes, the land of the revered composer Sibelius, (for cellphonephiles, the land of Nokia), Asian and European voices swirled and rose, like the ocean’s roiling surge in Sibelius’ symphonic poem “The Oceanides”. (Finland is just a wee bit larger in area than the Philippines but has a population of only five million. Compare that to our 80 million plus, or just Metro Manila’s 10 million.)
As AEPF ended, the object of its trajectory, the Asia Europe Meeting (Asem) was about to begin, with government leaders in attendance, GMA among them. These Asian and European leaders forge political and economic links that could spell the race to the top for some or the race to the bottom of the ocean (the Pacific, particularly) for many. Together, the Asem member states have influence over half the world’s GDP.
AEPF, the vibrant people’s forum that it was, ended on a high note, clamoring to push the people’s alternative agenda to the attention of Asian and European heads at Asem.
AEPF 6 holds its big assembly parallel to Asem that meets every two years alternately in Asia and Europe. Asem 2008 will be held in China and already, AEPF is wondering whether it could also hold its own there. At the plenary, the distinguished Susan George, fellow of the Netherlands-based Transnational Institute, described China with foreboding as the worst example of communism and capitalism.
Well, Chinese "NGOs" (read: government-supported) at AEPF were getting it on the chin. And why not, they came with propaganda installations that showed Tibet as a happy place, (no)thanks to China. But that is another story.
George warned that unbridled competition between Asia and Europe is destroying the European social model. “European leaders who tell us that the European Union needs to accept open markets, labor flexibility and deregulation are pretending we can do the impossible—compete with China and other low-wage but high-skill, high-tech countries.”
Asia-Europe relations, she stressed, must be based on cooperation rather than competition if a race to the bottom on wages and social welfare standards is to be avoided. George was also concerned that the European Commission is using trade negotiations to undermine the development of public services and greater equality within Asia.
Charles Santiago, director of Malaysia-based Monitoring Sustainability of Globalization and member of the AEPF organizing committee agreed. “With the WTO discussions stuck somewhere between the intensive care unit and the crematorium, there is fear and concern from the Asian side that the EU will aggressively pursue its trade and investment objectives through bilateral agreements,” he said.
AEPF 6 hoped to provide ways for Europeans and Asians to cooperate rather than accept competition as a way of life.
Neo-liberalism, the evil that AEPF has bashed to a pulp, remains a global threat. I asked delegate Dr. Alfredo Robles of De la Salle University for a layman’s definition and he called it “a night watchman’s concept of the state, it means privatization, deregulation, liberalization, with minimal state intervention in the economy.”
But AEPF, he said, could provide strategies for exchange and an articulation of alternative views. It can also influence official processes, say, in Asem. Well, Asia-Europe Business Forum (AEBF) has a voice within Asem while AEPF, the people’s voice, has to cry out loud in order to be heard up there. AEPF seeks to be recognized as an independent forum and as having a legitimate role in the Asem process.
“Asem has a continuing democratic deficit,” AEPF’s closing statement said. “Asem has concentrated on promoting cooperation between governments and representatives of business interests, and its agenda has been geared towards trade, investment and political issues. The economic pillar has promoted pro-market policies as opposed to alternative people-centered policies.”
In other words, AEPF said, there has been no attention to learning from those who have felt the effects of the imposed development patterns—the farmers and workers in both continents, for example.
The groups within AEPF must go beyond constantly talking to one another and project the AEPF’s socially-oriented agenda more forcefully through concrete moves. They should make use of the different forms of media. But first, they must speak simply and carry a big picture, give their concerns a human face. What does it look like down there?
For example, Finland’s reindeer herders are a threatened lot because of too much logging in prime forests—an issue brought up at AEPF through film. Tapio, the God of the forest in Finnish mythology must be angry. Also, the issue of Asian labor and migration in Europe was among the hotly discussed topics at AEPF. And so, before flying home I made sure I picked up some related stories—the Filipino au pair problem in Europe, for example—for a special feature.
I also picked up some smoked reindeer cold cuts from the Finnish deli.
There was no evidence of rice and spice deprivation withdrawal among the Asians as they were very vocal, as victims and potential victims of neo-liberalism should be. Asians and Europeans of the G&D (grim and determined) grassroots variety have, once again, found their collective voice. On the fourth day, they let it all hang out at a city square through songs, dance, mime and a “people’s soup kitchen” courtesy of the Finns.
Here in the land of a thousand lakes, the land of the revered composer Sibelius, (for cellphonephiles, the land of Nokia), Asian and European voices swirled and rose, like the ocean’s roiling surge in Sibelius’ symphonic poem “The Oceanides”. (Finland is just a wee bit larger in area than the Philippines but has a population of only five million. Compare that to our 80 million plus, or just Metro Manila’s 10 million.)
As AEPF ended, the object of its trajectory, the Asia Europe Meeting (Asem) was about to begin, with government leaders in attendance, GMA among them. These Asian and European leaders forge political and economic links that could spell the race to the top for some or the race to the bottom of the ocean (the Pacific, particularly) for many. Together, the Asem member states have influence over half the world’s GDP.
AEPF, the vibrant people’s forum that it was, ended on a high note, clamoring to push the people’s alternative agenda to the attention of Asian and European heads at Asem.
AEPF 6 holds its big assembly parallel to Asem that meets every two years alternately in Asia and Europe. Asem 2008 will be held in China and already, AEPF is wondering whether it could also hold its own there. At the plenary, the distinguished Susan George, fellow of the Netherlands-based Transnational Institute, described China with foreboding as the worst example of communism and capitalism.
Well, Chinese "NGOs" (read: government-supported) at AEPF were getting it on the chin. And why not, they came with propaganda installations that showed Tibet as a happy place, (no)thanks to China. But that is another story.
George warned that unbridled competition between Asia and Europe is destroying the European social model. “European leaders who tell us that the European Union needs to accept open markets, labor flexibility and deregulation are pretending we can do the impossible—compete with China and other low-wage but high-skill, high-tech countries.”
Asia-Europe relations, she stressed, must be based on cooperation rather than competition if a race to the bottom on wages and social welfare standards is to be avoided. George was also concerned that the European Commission is using trade negotiations to undermine the development of public services and greater equality within Asia.
Charles Santiago, director of Malaysia-based Monitoring Sustainability of Globalization and member of the AEPF organizing committee agreed. “With the WTO discussions stuck somewhere between the intensive care unit and the crematorium, there is fear and concern from the Asian side that the EU will aggressively pursue its trade and investment objectives through bilateral agreements,” he said.
AEPF 6 hoped to provide ways for Europeans and Asians to cooperate rather than accept competition as a way of life.
Neo-liberalism, the evil that AEPF has bashed to a pulp, remains a global threat. I asked delegate Dr. Alfredo Robles of De la Salle University for a layman’s definition and he called it “a night watchman’s concept of the state, it means privatization, deregulation, liberalization, with minimal state intervention in the economy.”
But AEPF, he said, could provide strategies for exchange and an articulation of alternative views. It can also influence official processes, say, in Asem. Well, Asia-Europe Business Forum (AEBF) has a voice within Asem while AEPF, the people’s voice, has to cry out loud in order to be heard up there. AEPF seeks to be recognized as an independent forum and as having a legitimate role in the Asem process.
“Asem has a continuing democratic deficit,” AEPF’s closing statement said. “Asem has concentrated on promoting cooperation between governments and representatives of business interests, and its agenda has been geared towards trade, investment and political issues. The economic pillar has promoted pro-market policies as opposed to alternative people-centered policies.”
In other words, AEPF said, there has been no attention to learning from those who have felt the effects of the imposed development patterns—the farmers and workers in both continents, for example.
The groups within AEPF must go beyond constantly talking to one another and project the AEPF’s socially-oriented agenda more forcefully through concrete moves. They should make use of the different forms of media. But first, they must speak simply and carry a big picture, give their concerns a human face. What does it look like down there?
For example, Finland’s reindeer herders are a threatened lot because of too much logging in prime forests—an issue brought up at AEPF through film. Tapio, the God of the forest in Finnish mythology must be angry. Also, the issue of Asian labor and migration in Europe was among the hotly discussed topics at AEPF. And so, before flying home I made sure I picked up some related stories—the Filipino au pair problem in Europe, for example—for a special feature.
I also picked up some smoked reindeer cold cuts from the Finnish deli.
Wednesday, September 6, 2006
Asian-European sounds in Helsinki
HELSINKI—Here in the land of revered Finnish composer Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) Asian and European peoples’ voices are being aired loudly. Here is a symphony of sounds, so to speak, rising, blowing with the cold Baltic wind that is getting colder by the day.
The event is the Asia-Europe Peoples’ Forum 6 (AEPF 6) for NGOs and civil society organizations (CVO) that are non-state and non-corporate. The theme is “People’s Vision: Building Solidarity Across Asia and Europe”.
What better way to start than with a short ferry boat ride and an informal dinner-gathering of kindred spirits at Suomenlinna Island, a historic tourist site just off the city. After that it was back to the city and the tasks ahead. Time for long words and CVO-speak.
AEPF aims to bring all these voices from the ground to the official Asia Europe Summit (ASEM) and create alternatives to ASEM’s “neoliberalist agenda”.
ASEM would be to Asia and Europe as APEC is to Asia-Pacific and the US. Well, more or less. Heads of state, Pres. Macapagal-Arroyo, among them, are attending ASEM. ASEM consists of the member countries of the European Union (EU), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and East Asian countries China, South Korea and Japan.
AEPF (which I am attending) consists of NGOs and civil society groups from all European and Asian countries. Created in 1996, AEPF has had forums every two years that paralleled the ASEM summit. The last one was in Vietnam. These forums are meant to give a venue for CVOs in Asia and Europe to discuss issues that affect their respective regions. (Not to confuse this with AEBF or Asia-Europe Business Forum which is also going on.)
Asian and European CVOs have called for more civil society participation in ASEM but this is not happening. These groups have had to make their own parallel gathering in order to call attention to issues on the ground. Coming out together in a big way calls the attention of world leaders and decision-makers. The Philippines has a good representation in AEPF, most the non-communist left mostly, and why not, it is also the NGO/civil society hub of Asia.
As a bi-regional network, AEPF has indeed opened a new chapter in people-to-people relations and among CVOs in Asia and Europe. Socio-economic and political experts from both regions have recognized the significance of intergovernmental relations and concerted responses to issues.
Besides strengthening linkages in these two regions, AEPF has made lobby visits to ASEM member countries to bring up the Asian financial crisis and call for an Asia Monetary Fund, European development cooperation and the EU-Latin American regulation.
AEPF has also done research on the impact of economic instruments such as the Investment Promotion Action Plan and the Trade Facilitation Action Plan developed by ASEM.
There have been exchanges on privatization of water utilities in Asian cities and the involvement of European companies. The reconciliation process in the Korean peninsula and security issues have also been discussed in the past. The AEPF network has been expanded with the inclusion of Vietnamese groups and requests from Chinese groups for inclusion.
AEPF bewails the “narrow economic focus” of the ASEM process that results in the “severe marginalization” of key concerns such as human rights, equitable development, democratization and environmental protection. Government-civil society dialogue has yet to be concretized.
AEPF sees EU-Asia relations to be in an interesting stage. Both are seeking positions in the global trade and the geo-political state of affairs. For EU, it is the inclusion of new countries, deepening integration and major constitutional issues.
In Asia, things continue to unfold. There is the restructuring of the labor market, migration, deregulation and privatization of public services. Asia also hopes to be a fully integrated region with the establishment of East Asian Community modeled after the EU.
The question: How united could East Asia be with its “patchwork of political discord, territorial conflict and economic equality”? Asia has much to learn from the EU experience.
AEPF’s long-term goal is to establish itself as a leading forum for advancing a critical understanding of Asia-Europe relations through research excellence, policy formulation and campaigning. “Critical mass” is important if it is to sustain its interregional connectivity, expertise and collaboration. It hopes “to develop into a hub of networks with genuine national and international significance leading to multilateralism from below.”
AEPF’s target groups from below are trade unions, peasant and farmers organizations, food sovereignty networks, environmental movements, human rights and development groups, women’s movements, indigenous peoples’ movements, peace movements, debt and trade justice campaigns, academics and students. Throw in the media, parliamentarians, policy makers in government, and ASEM-related institutions. It’s a very potent brew.
Deliberations, discussions and debates are still going on among the stakeholders. More on the aftermath next time.
So much for long words and CVO jargon. Tomorrow, AEPF’s last day, there will be a meeting with ASEM delegates and the drafting of the Final Declaration. And a street carnival at the center of Helsinki.
The event is the Asia-Europe Peoples’ Forum 6 (AEPF 6) for NGOs and civil society organizations (CVO) that are non-state and non-corporate. The theme is “People’s Vision: Building Solidarity Across Asia and Europe”.
What better way to start than with a short ferry boat ride and an informal dinner-gathering of kindred spirits at Suomenlinna Island, a historic tourist site just off the city. After that it was back to the city and the tasks ahead. Time for long words and CVO-speak.
AEPF aims to bring all these voices from the ground to the official Asia Europe Summit (ASEM) and create alternatives to ASEM’s “neoliberalist agenda”.
ASEM would be to Asia and Europe as APEC is to Asia-Pacific and the US. Well, more or less. Heads of state, Pres. Macapagal-Arroyo, among them, are attending ASEM. ASEM consists of the member countries of the European Union (EU), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and East Asian countries China, South Korea and Japan.
AEPF (which I am attending) consists of NGOs and civil society groups from all European and Asian countries. Created in 1996, AEPF has had forums every two years that paralleled the ASEM summit. The last one was in Vietnam. These forums are meant to give a venue for CVOs in Asia and Europe to discuss issues that affect their respective regions. (Not to confuse this with AEBF or Asia-Europe Business Forum which is also going on.)
Asian and European CVOs have called for more civil society participation in ASEM but this is not happening. These groups have had to make their own parallel gathering in order to call attention to issues on the ground. Coming out together in a big way calls the attention of world leaders and decision-makers. The Philippines has a good representation in AEPF, most the non-communist left mostly, and why not, it is also the NGO/civil society hub of Asia.
As a bi-regional network, AEPF has indeed opened a new chapter in people-to-people relations and among CVOs in Asia and Europe. Socio-economic and political experts from both regions have recognized the significance of intergovernmental relations and concerted responses to issues.
Besides strengthening linkages in these two regions, AEPF has made lobby visits to ASEM member countries to bring up the Asian financial crisis and call for an Asia Monetary Fund, European development cooperation and the EU-Latin American regulation.
AEPF has also done research on the impact of economic instruments such as the Investment Promotion Action Plan and the Trade Facilitation Action Plan developed by ASEM.
There have been exchanges on privatization of water utilities in Asian cities and the involvement of European companies. The reconciliation process in the Korean peninsula and security issues have also been discussed in the past. The AEPF network has been expanded with the inclusion of Vietnamese groups and requests from Chinese groups for inclusion.
AEPF bewails the “narrow economic focus” of the ASEM process that results in the “severe marginalization” of key concerns such as human rights, equitable development, democratization and environmental protection. Government-civil society dialogue has yet to be concretized.
AEPF sees EU-Asia relations to be in an interesting stage. Both are seeking positions in the global trade and the geo-political state of affairs. For EU, it is the inclusion of new countries, deepening integration and major constitutional issues.
In Asia, things continue to unfold. There is the restructuring of the labor market, migration, deregulation and privatization of public services. Asia also hopes to be a fully integrated region with the establishment of East Asian Community modeled after the EU.
The question: How united could East Asia be with its “patchwork of political discord, territorial conflict and economic equality”? Asia has much to learn from the EU experience.
AEPF’s long-term goal is to establish itself as a leading forum for advancing a critical understanding of Asia-Europe relations through research excellence, policy formulation and campaigning. “Critical mass” is important if it is to sustain its interregional connectivity, expertise and collaboration. It hopes “to develop into a hub of networks with genuine national and international significance leading to multilateralism from below.”
AEPF’s target groups from below are trade unions, peasant and farmers organizations, food sovereignty networks, environmental movements, human rights and development groups, women’s movements, indigenous peoples’ movements, peace movements, debt and trade justice campaigns, academics and students. Throw in the media, parliamentarians, policy makers in government, and ASEM-related institutions. It’s a very potent brew.
Deliberations, discussions and debates are still going on among the stakeholders. More on the aftermath next time.
So much for long words and CVO jargon. Tomorrow, AEPF’s last day, there will be a meeting with ASEM delegates and the drafting of the Final Declaration. And a street carnival at the center of Helsinki.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Arvind Kejriwal’s battle against corruption
So young and so brave. The opposite of that now-famous line that once aptly described a Filipino bureaucrat-turned politician: So young and so corrupt.
Arvind Kejrawal of India is this year’s Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Emergent Leadership. Only 38 years old, Kejrawal has spent six years now fighting corruption that is so ingrained in India’s bureaucracy. It has not been a desperate, useless battle though. His efforts have yielded results and benefited the simple and the lowly whose concerns might not have merited the attention of the high and the mighty.
I caught up with Kejrawal the other day during the launching of RM Award Foundation’s (RMAF) 3rd, 4th and 5th volumes of “Great Men and Women of Asia” (Anvil Publishing)—must-haves for school libraries. Kejrawal battles must indeed soon be part of the inspiring stories in these books (for which I have written a number of stories) that should inspire the young and confound the wise and, uh, wily.
(RMAF formal awarding ceremonies will be held tonight at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Inquirer founding chair Eugenia “Eggie” Apostol is this year’s awardee for Journalism, Literature and Creative Comm
unication Arts.)
Kejrawal finished engineering but landed in the Indian Revenue Service early on. It’s most everyone’s dream to work in the civil service, Kejrawal explained. As a deputy commissioner for income tax, he saw bribe-taking as a matter of course. He saw how this affected ordinary citizens. In the beginning, Kejrawal’s appeals to tax officials were for naught so he and several kindred spirits initiated a Public Interest Litigation directing the department to implement a transparency plan. This was followed by a non-violent protest and a warning that the media would be around.
Kejrawal took a leave from his job and with his group, Parivartan (meaning “change”), first zeroed in on the government-run electricity department where paying of bribes was the order of the day. Any transaction made by consumers—electrical installation, complaints on bills, and the like—meant grease money.
Parivartan pushed and popularized its “Don’t pay bribes!” campaign. It offered consumers a hand by facilitating their dealings with the electricity department. In no time Parivartan was able to demand action on thousands of cases without a cent being handed over to bribe takers.
Kejrawal explained that there are two types of bribery—the extortional and the mutual. The first is common in government offices where people go to get things done. But, you can’t have it if you don’t pay bribe. The second happens between the bribe-taker and the briber. Your tax due could be lowered in your favor if you give the taxman something. Both profit from the deal.
This is not something new. But discovering innovative and successful means to curb it is always a challenge.
Because of what Parivartan started, the Delhi Right to Information Act of 2001 was soon passed, giving citizens the right to inspect government documents, follow up and demand to know what government agencies are doing or have done.
Kejrawal and Parivartan first put this law to use in a New Delhi slum area by monitoring a public works project. Not long after, residents did a “social audit” of 68 more projects. They held meetings and street plays, conducted public hearings and revealed their findings of misappropriations and embezzlement in 64 projects in the amount of seven million rupees.
The residents of that area learned how to monitor projects block by block and examine contracts before projects are started.
Another case involved wheat and rice rations for the poor. Parivartan discovered and exposed how 90 percent was being skimmed off by government officials in collusion with traders.
But boldness and alacrity on the part of the bribe-busters had a price. One Parivartan member was brutally attacked but luckily survived. (He is here with Kejrawal.) Some 5,000 residents staged protests and a “rations fast” to demand a clean-up. The government acted.
Kejrawal pointed out that not every one in the bureaucracy is corrupt. “But honesty may not get you the best post,” he said. There is a chain from the bottom to the top and the honest one who becomes a “block in the chain” could be relegated to the sidelines, he said.
And what about the work they had started by helping people do “no-bribe” transactions? Yes, they were worried about dependency, Kejrawal admitted, and they could not always be there to watch over everything.
And so the next step was to draft a citizen’s “Right to Information” form that contained the citizens’ rights as well as their demand to know the status of their complaint, request or transaction. It is a weapon, a strong way of saying to officials concerned: “I expect service from you.”
Within three months 200 people who used this method were able to get the service they needed.
Now on its seventh year, Parivartan has only 10 full-time members but it has trained 1,700 volunteers from about 700 organizations. Paarivartan, Kejrawal explains, is more of a movement rather an institution. As such, it is not registered and operates without institutional funding. It gets its support from ordinary citizens who want to see it continue. It has linked up with NGOs across India so more ordinary citizens, the poor especially, would be empowered and the government would be accountable to them.
Kejrawal always reminds that services should be delivered honestly and conscientiously because the citizens, the poor especially, are entitled to them.
Arvind Kejrawal of India is this year’s Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Emergent Leadership. Only 38 years old, Kejrawal has spent six years now fighting corruption that is so ingrained in India’s bureaucracy. It has not been a desperate, useless battle though. His efforts have yielded results and benefited the simple and the lowly whose concerns might not have merited the attention of the high and the mighty.
I caught up with Kejrawal the other day during the launching of RM Award Foundation’s (RMAF) 3rd, 4th and 5th volumes of “Great Men and Women of Asia” (Anvil Publishing)—must-haves for school libraries. Kejrawal battles must indeed soon be part of the inspiring stories in these books (for which I have written a number of stories) that should inspire the young and confound the wise and, uh, wily.
(RMAF formal awarding ceremonies will be held tonight at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Inquirer founding chair Eugenia “Eggie” Apostol is this year’s awardee for Journalism, Literature and Creative Comm
unication Arts.)
Kejrawal finished engineering but landed in the Indian Revenue Service early on. It’s most everyone’s dream to work in the civil service, Kejrawal explained. As a deputy commissioner for income tax, he saw bribe-taking as a matter of course. He saw how this affected ordinary citizens. In the beginning, Kejrawal’s appeals to tax officials were for naught so he and several kindred spirits initiated a Public Interest Litigation directing the department to implement a transparency plan. This was followed by a non-violent protest and a warning that the media would be around.
Kejrawal took a leave from his job and with his group, Parivartan (meaning “change”), first zeroed in on the government-run electricity department where paying of bribes was the order of the day. Any transaction made by consumers—electrical installation, complaints on bills, and the like—meant grease money.
Parivartan pushed and popularized its “Don’t pay bribes!” campaign. It offered consumers a hand by facilitating their dealings with the electricity department. In no time Parivartan was able to demand action on thousands of cases without a cent being handed over to bribe takers.
Kejrawal explained that there are two types of bribery—the extortional and the mutual. The first is common in government offices where people go to get things done. But, you can’t have it if you don’t pay bribe. The second happens between the bribe-taker and the briber. Your tax due could be lowered in your favor if you give the taxman something. Both profit from the deal.
This is not something new. But discovering innovative and successful means to curb it is always a challenge.
Because of what Parivartan started, the Delhi Right to Information Act of 2001 was soon passed, giving citizens the right to inspect government documents, follow up and demand to know what government agencies are doing or have done.
Kejrawal and Parivartan first put this law to use in a New Delhi slum area by monitoring a public works project. Not long after, residents did a “social audit” of 68 more projects. They held meetings and street plays, conducted public hearings and revealed their findings of misappropriations and embezzlement in 64 projects in the amount of seven million rupees.
The residents of that area learned how to monitor projects block by block and examine contracts before projects are started.
Another case involved wheat and rice rations for the poor. Parivartan discovered and exposed how 90 percent was being skimmed off by government officials in collusion with traders.
But boldness and alacrity on the part of the bribe-busters had a price. One Parivartan member was brutally attacked but luckily survived. (He is here with Kejrawal.) Some 5,000 residents staged protests and a “rations fast” to demand a clean-up. The government acted.
Kejrawal pointed out that not every one in the bureaucracy is corrupt. “But honesty may not get you the best post,” he said. There is a chain from the bottom to the top and the honest one who becomes a “block in the chain” could be relegated to the sidelines, he said.
And what about the work they had started by helping people do “no-bribe” transactions? Yes, they were worried about dependency, Kejrawal admitted, and they could not always be there to watch over everything.
And so the next step was to draft a citizen’s “Right to Information” form that contained the citizens’ rights as well as their demand to know the status of their complaint, request or transaction. It is a weapon, a strong way of saying to officials concerned: “I expect service from you.”
Within three months 200 people who used this method were able to get the service they needed.
Now on its seventh year, Parivartan has only 10 full-time members but it has trained 1,700 volunteers from about 700 organizations. Paarivartan, Kejrawal explains, is more of a movement rather an institution. As such, it is not registered and operates without institutional funding. It gets its support from ordinary citizens who want to see it continue. It has linked up with NGOs across India so more ordinary citizens, the poor especially, would be empowered and the government would be accountable to them.
Kejrawal always reminds that services should be delivered honestly and conscientiously because the citizens, the poor especially, are entitled to them.
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