Posts published during May, 2009

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May 11, 2009

Labor Day in Manila ’09 (Part 2)

Labor Day or Mayo Uno was also a day when Filipino workers’ organizations and unions, together with allied organizations, reiterated and reaffirmed the call for the approval of the P125 across-the-board wage increase which the government has slept on for the past decade, despite the fact that even if it was approved today, it would already be short of the average cost of living.

The government and big business line, of course, is to equate wage hikes with job cuts and to ultimately pit jobs and wages against each other, where the contradiction is not supposed to exist.

Contrary to claims of government officials in cahoots with big businesses, a P125 wage increase is doable. Just look at the profit margins of any big business in the country. An IBON Foundation study, for one, claims that “the increasing labor productivity of local workers, or the ratio of national output to employment, has been steadily increasing over the past decade.” It added that “between 1999 and 2006, labor productivity has increased by 56.3% in nominal terms and 13.1% in real terms (taking inflation into account). This shows that employers could afford to grant the P125 wage hike, which would necessarily trim their profit margin but will certainly not push them to bankruptcy.”

The unwillingness of government and big businesses to pay their workers decent wages, is simply a manifestation of, aside form the excessive greed of CEO’s and capitalist junkies, the inherent unjust character of the current capitalist order.

From Quiapo, the demonstrators proceeded across Quezon Bridge onto Liwasang Bonifacio, where the annual Labor Day program, led by KMU (Kilusang Mayo Uno) and Anakpawis, is held.

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May 10, 2009

Kabataan launches countdown before 2010 elections

365 days to go

“Kabataan, tayo ang pagbabago.”

This was the message of Kabataan Party-list together with other youth and student groups as they launched a “˜youth countdown to 2010′ today.

Kabataan Party-list kicked off the countdown with a Voters’ Registration and Education campaign dubbed, “˜We Are Change‘.

Other sponsors of the effort were the National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP), Student Alliance for the Advancement of Democratic Rights in UP (STAND-UP), College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP), Student Christian Movement, League of Filipino Students, Kabataang Artista para sa Tunay na Kalayaan, Anakbayan and Youth ACT Now (Youth for Truth and Accountability Now).

Kabataan Party-list Rep. Mong Palatino said, “We are aware of numerous initiatives by various sectors to launch voters’ awareness and education projects and we express our desire to cooperate with them. “˜We Are Change,’ however, signifies the forging of youth unity for youth empowerment and active participation for change in 2010 and beyond. This is our very own countdown to change, initiated by the youth. Kabataan, tayo ang pagbabago.”

Palatino said that the We Are Change campaign aims to reach the 11 million first-time voters for 2010.

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May 9, 2009

Labor Day in Manila ’09 (Part 1)

Last May 1 was International Workers’ Day, a day when workers around the world and allied sectors of society demonstrate their collective strength and their collective call for better wages and better working and living conditions.

Here in the Philippines, storms of protest all over the nation marked Labor Day as calls to stop the retrenchment and wage cuts resounded in the streets. In Manila, tens of thousands converged along Espana and marched to Liwasang Bonifacio.

It was my second Labor Day rally. My first one was back in 2007. My friends from UP, colleagues from Kabataan Party and I started our Labor Day participation with a protest action at Philcoa at noon, together with residents of communities around UP and jeepney drivers in campus.

Past noon, we took jeepneys to the rally’s assembly point along Espana, near the University of Sto. Tomas. For an hour or so, people from various groups and sectors converged until our numbers swelled to the thousands.

I was carrying a flag of Kabataan Party from Espana till past the Quezon Boulevard Underpass when a colleague of mine took my flag so that I could take photos of the march to Liwasang Bonifacio. I raced up to one of the pedestrian overpasses in Quiapo and took shots of the long march. Indeed, the entire stretch of Quezon Boulevard from the underpass to the bridge was filled with demonstrators. Images like these one don’t usually get to see in traditional media.

[with news reports from arkibongbayan.org]

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May 8, 2009

University Student Council Turnover ’09

Last April 20, we had a turnover ceremony for the University Student Council (USC). That pseudo-officially ended our terms as members of the University Student Council. Good luck to incoming USC for 2009!

The turnover ceremony was a joint ceremony. The outgoing and the incoming editorial leadership of the Philippine Collegian also had their part of the program.

It felt a little anticlimactic for me. After all, involvement in campus issues has never really been confined to the USC, for me. And I didn’t feel that anything ended that day. Even engaging colleagues from the other parties in debates, surely, didn’t end that day–even if it was goodbye to the long and harrowing GA’s we regularly had, when we just couldn’t agree on some issues at all. Though, I’d have to say despite all that, we managed to get along somehow in the end, some more than others, politics aside of course.

Simultaneously, UP Administation officials, USC 2008 and Senator Richard Gordon unveiled a bust of Wenceslao Vinzons, which the Senator commissioned to do, in honor of the hero to whom the historic and quintessential hub of university activism and politics was named after. There were also dozens of brods present too–since Vinzons, the Senator, and a handful of members of the incoming and outgoing University Student Council are members of the Upsilon Sigma Phi.

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May 7, 2009

Arroyo order phony unless generals punished

On P25M reward for informants on political killings

Kabataan Party-list Rep. Mong Palatino today said that President Arroyo’s order to put up a P25 million fund for a reward system for informants on political killings is phony and hypocritical unless she punishes her generals.

“Several independent investigations, fact-finding missions and official inquiries have all pointed to the military as culprits in cases of extra-judicial killings, abductions, harassment and torture yet not one general or military official has been punished despite glaring physical or circumstancial evidence,” Palatino said.

Palatino cited, for instance, United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or special executions Philip Alston’s report and star witness on the Cadapan-Empeno case Raymond Manalo’s testimony.

Alston, in 2007, criticized the military for being in a `state of total denial’ of the involvement of its members in political killings, while Manalo requested for protection in a sworn statement submitted to the Supreme Court after he recounted his first-hand account of abduction, detention and torture by the military before escaping on August 13, 2007. Manalo also positively identified Ret. Gen. Jovito Palparan in a military camp where he claimed he saw abducted University of the Philippines students Karen Empeno and Sherlyn Cadapan being kept and tortured.

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Malalison Island, Culasi, Antique

April 16, 2008. Early the next day after we arrived in Culasi, we all got up early and went on a short drive from our friend’s home, to the beach near the municipal hall to take a pump boat to Malalison Island.

The island is one of the three island barangays of Culasi, and is the nearest one to the coast, with a distance of around 4 kilometers. It was a 20-minute pump boat ride to the island. Ours, though, took longer because we requested for the boat to go around the entire island before docking at the main beach.

The island was a relatively small island, with still some unspoiled coves and rugged stone cliffs. One can probably enjoy taking a peaceful hike around the island, though that we weren’t able to do.

After around ten to fifteen minutes around the island, we finally dock at main hook-shaped beach. Our friend from Culasi told us the beach was comparable to Boracay (which incidentally was relatively near Culasi). Indeed, it was. Not better, but comparable. The sand was just as white, though not as fine or powdery, and the waters just as crystal clear, even clearer.

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May 5, 2009

‘Pork virus’ more lethal and costly than swine flu

Account for Vegas spending, solons told

Lawmakers who went to Las Vegas for Manny Pacquiao’s match should also be quarantined for a different kind of virus.

“Unfortunately, it will take more than the regular quarantine procedures to do the job. Simple quarantine procedures might not be enough in this case.” Kabataan Party-list Rep. Mong Palatino said.

“This virus has long infected the House of Representatives. Lavish lifestyle, questionable assets and expensive junkets are some of its symptoms,” Palatino pointed out.

Palatino called it the “˜pork virus‘, which he described as far more deadly and costly than the swine flu.

“Unfortunately, this virus takes toll on the lives of ordinary, poor people. The “˜pork virus’ bleeds everyone else except the host dry,” he explained.

Palatino said the first step for cure is for lawmakers and other government officials to be transparent in all their transactions.

He then urged his fellow lawmakers who flew in to Las Vegas to account for their expenses.

“Transparency will dispel any public doubt on possible irregularities. A government official with a clean conscience need not be afraid of public scrutiny,” he said.

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From Miag-ao, Iloilo to Culasi, Antique

Since the GASC (General Assembly of Student Councils) was able to select the new Student Regent in just a day, everyone had an extra day off to leave UP Visayas earlier and to go to Guimaras or to Iloilo City or to wherever they wanted to go around.

Some of us decided to take on a friend’s offer to visit their town of Culasi, Antique. Little did we know that Culasi, Antique was a good four to five hours away from Miag-ao, Iloilo. That northern part of Antique is actually closer to Caticlan and Boracay already than it is to Miag-ao. The bus also has to pass through some mountain range which separates Antique from Iloilo, or from the rest of Panay for that matter. The tallest mountain in Panay Island can be found in Culasi, Antique, by the way (sorry, random information).

It was pretty easy to get a ride to Culasi. After lunch, we just had to walk a few hundred meters to the highway from the UP Visayas campus and wait at a pedestrian shed for buses that regularly ply the road from Iloilo City to Antique.

I think I’ve mentioned it a few years before when I took a bus from Infanta to Manila, but I really have a penchant for taking long, open-air provincial bus rides–all the wind, the sights, sounds, smell, and the people gives for a relatively authentic traveling experience.

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May 4, 2009

On “Ako Mismo”

Ako Mismo

I signed up for this, with all the buzz it has created this weekend. But I was quite disappointed by the things people have been committing themselves to doing. Sure, by all means, let us pay our taxes, register to vote, obey traffic rules, sweep the floor, pray, smile at others, be nice, be proud to be pinoy! Aba, dapat lang. Isn’t that what one is supposed to do regardless of any campaign for social change? Isn’t that what we are already doing? Let’s not stop doing it, fine. But please, it reeks of great naivete to think that doing things we are already doing will change Philippine society.

I don’t wish to offend anyone. I have friends from many advocacy campaigns of this type. But let me explain my reservations whenever I’m invited into these campaigns. My problem with “Ako Mismo” and the dozens of other “I” campaigns that have been initiated (and have flopped) these past years, is that it fosters an illusion that mundane individual efforts to do good, and nothing more, is enough to change society. These are well meaning campaigns, but I don’t think they actually call for positive action or call for change. These are calls for neutral action–to do things we’re supposed to be doing anyway.

What I think is dangerous about campaigning for this is that it neutralizes a person’s capacity to do more than what one is supposed to do in the first place. It’s like, fine, just pay your taxes, smile at people, sweep your backyard, do things within your comfort zone and that’s enough to change society. It’s not. Let us not justify the laziness or the inability of the middle class to get out of their comfort zone to change society.

These are the types of campaigns, believe it or not, that people in power or in government and big businesses employ to maintain the status quo, simply because doing ‘simple everyday good things’ do just that and nothing more. It effectively cloaks their part in the equation as to why we are where we sadly are. It makes you forget their role in sustaining the rotten order of society. It makes you think of questioning their policies or their authority as simple pagrereklamo. And worse, it demonizes those who do that. “Forget about the corruption and the repression we commit, just do your own little nice things!” And even worse, it blames the individual Filipino for all the problems he is experiencing!

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Student Regent Selection ’09 (Part 2)

The day after the KASAMA sa UP (Katipunan ng mga Sangguniang Mag-aaral sa UP) National Council Meet was the GASC’s (General Assembly of Student Councils) Student Regent Selection deliberations at the CFOS (College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences) Auditorum of UP Visayas, Miag-ao. I forget how many exactly were the student councils who were represented in the assembly, around thirty-three, I think.

As I’ve mentioned, there were only two of us who were nominated to the GASC. Me, from UP Diliman, and Chaba from UP Los Banos. The deliberations started off with an individual presentation of our vision for the office, and our programs of action–platform, if you may call it that. Then, it was grill-time, with both of us in front answering the same set of questions alternately. It was amusing at times since we were responding to the issue-based questions with relatively the same answers, which was no surprise since we are both from the militant political parties in our respective campuses. There were also personal questions, and questions which were deliberately and hilariously out-of-this-world.

After the first grilling, it was lunch time. Chaba and I were isolated from the rest of the assembly, so as not to tarnish the integrity of the student councils’ votes, apparently. So the both of us had lunch in a separate table with our chaperon. An hour after, the entire campus was on black-out, so the assembly was called off till electricity came back.

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