Analysis
Social volcano
By Amando Doronila
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:55:00 04/18/2008
MANILA, Philippines—In the past 22 years, only two social volcano eruptions took place in the Philippines on a scale that toppled ruling regimes, the first in February 1986 and then in January 2001. Both EDSA People Power I and II were not violent risings. They involved mass participation in street protest movements. None was ignited by hunger or high food prices.
Last week, World Bank president Robert Zoelick warned that 33 nations around the globe were at risk of social unrest, with riots breaking out in Africa, Indonesia and Bangladesh in food lines formed by the hungry poor. In Haiti, the government of Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis fell after rioting erupted over food prices. Parliament dismissed his government for its failure to respond to arrest rising food prices in a country of 8.5 million people, 80 percent of whom live on less than $2 day. Rice prices had doubled to $70 for a 50-kilogram bag, and by $8 (15 percent) in a few weeks.
The violence in the food lines highlights the changed dynamic and social environment in which these recent social explosions took place. The dynamic is defined by the fact that violence and civil disorder were directly provoked by food shortages and food prices. A number of the social explosions that toppled regimes and ideologically structured social and political systems since the 1980s were driven by middle-class constituencies, not by the distress of the poor.
There were no mass movements involved in the violent explosions over prices. Food prices hit the bottom line of human endurance to suffering because of empty stomachs. The fuse leading to the stomach is short and burns swiftly.
The explosions in Egypt, Burkina Faso in West Africa, Haiti, Indonesia and Pakistan were spontaneous outbursts from the poor. The hungry did not require professional agitators to drive them to the streets.
The security forces, armed with high-tech weapons of mass dispersal, have no answer to these violent flare-ups of the poor. They cannot use the traditional response of launching witch hunts for political and ideological “enemies of the state.” They can’t find these enemies in the hungry stomachs of the poor. If the riot police counter mob violence with state violence, it could only make things worse. The hungry poor would be left with no choice but to die in the food lines. The inevitable result of this hard-line approach is carnage in the streets that could provoke mass outrage and send the noisy and opportunistic, risk-averse middle class to the streets in huge numbers.
This new element of the spontaneous revolt of the poor against food prices is what makes the current food price crisis far more dangerous to political stability and regime survival than People Power-like, nonviolent mass movements. We can’t realistically expect another People Power uprising to extricate us from the danger of a social explosion triggered by unrest on the food lines of the poor.
The ground rules on civil unrest have radically changed, despite our tendency to opt for non-confrontational action, such as mass civil disobedience. This time, food prices have erased the People Power solution. The People Power formula is passé, irrelevant as a shield to avert the rebellion of the muted poor. The hungry poor are rewriting in their own honest way the rules of social explosion.
The government can’t seek comfort in the fact that it is a fortress surrounded by a high-tech military led by sycophantic generals more concerned about their career security than about the success of measures undertaken so far by civilian authorities to ensure adequate rice supplies, at least during the coming lean months and to keep food prices down to avert a violent explosion in the food lines. Some high administration officials seek solace in the record that the country has been spared food riots during rice crises of the past. The ground is seeded with ingredients pre-disposing it to violent explosions.
This government is ill-prepared to avert such a social explosion. It is in fact sitting on the crater of a social volcano. Food price inflation has led to worsening poverty incidence in the country. According to the National Statistics Coordination Board, poverty incidence worsened to 33 percent of the population in 2006 from 30 percent in 2003. “Inflation is one reason why some people fall below the poverty line,” according to acting Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Augusto Santos.
Government economists have reported to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo that inflation has risen beyond 5.0 percent since February. The National Statistics Office reported that inflation accelerated to 6.4 percent in March, from 5.4 percent in February and 4.9 percent in January. Santos said the economists’ study showed that inflation would soon reach 8.0 percent, beyond the official assumption of 3.0-5.0 percent for 2008. This swift inflation increase has prompted the government to review the gross domestic product target of 6.3-7.0 percent this year. What is more of concern to the administration is not meeting the target but the immediate impact of inflation which might send the poor rioting in the streets.
A study by the International Monetary Fund shows that Filipino households belonging to the lowest 10 percent in terms of spending capability use 64.8 percent of their income to buy food. Inflation is their worst enemy, as it is government’s nemesis. This group comprises the poorest of the poor, the bulk of the consumers of the subsidized rice from the National Food Authority (NFA).
It is in the NFA food lines where the social volcano is sighted. It is in these rice lines where the volcano is likely to explode. It is the social tinder box.
|
