How did the midterm elections affect the urban poor? More than any other group, the poor need free elections to improve their lives, but the simple truth seems to be that in the last poll exercise they hardly benefited. It was partly their own doing.
As in the poem, my heart leapt up when I beheld in Thursday’s Inquirer a report that the Metro Manila Development Authority will conduct a census of squatters to prepare for their relocation.
I have been monitoring the hunger incidence statistics of the Philippines as reported quarterly by SWS for over ten years, as long as I have been involved with the Gawad Kalinga movement. Because I was a late-comer in anti-poverty work at that time, I remained observant but quiet. I thought I could not speak up when I was just like most people I knew then—uninterested, uninvolved and concerned with a million other things.
Just when the Philippines is about to rise, it is afflicted by another ailment—the rule of political dynasties, where spouses, siblings, offspring and other family members take turns at government posts, effectively blocking democratic representation.
Secretary General Jose Ramon Albert of the National Statistical Coordination Board reported that poverty incidence remained unchanged between 2006 and 2012.
There are times you’d think the Philippines is getting better under the Aquino administration. To be sure, all the accolades that the administration—President Aquino, in particular—has been getting lately provide additional materials for great-sounding press releases from the President’s spokespersons and his allies. Together with the favorable survey results, these accolades could lead people to believe that the Aquino administration is doing just fine in running the country.
The late feisty lawyer Haydee Yorac, when approached by distraught persons complaining about their mayor (newly elected or reelected, I don’t remember), stared down the complainants and, with characteristic brusqueness, said: “Bakit, ibinoto ko ba ang mayor nyo (Why, did I vote for your mayor)?”
President Aquino wants to be a reformist president, and he’s doing a good job at reforming society. His “daang matuwid” resonates with the people, and is something they want: a clean, honest government that cares. But they also want a decent life, and that he hasn’t yet provided.
This is in response to Ma. Ceres P. Doyo’s column titled “Sainthood for Archbishop Oscar Romero” (Inquirer, 5/2/13). I like what she stated in that column: The poor say they are not against reproduction and they are not against health.
The public release of new official statistics last April 23 was a great milestone in the monitoring of poverty in the Philippines. It was the first step into a system of officially counting the poor at least annually, rather than only once every three years.
Poverty in the Philippines cannot be effectively and substantially resolved. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men cannot raise at least 5 million Filipino families out of poverty, not for as long as they do not change the way they look at the poor.
Poverty rates remain very high in the Philippines, despite its recent economic successes. As in other countries, the rich, and the rich alone, have benefited from economic growth. Some of the country’s children have all the food, comfort, education opportunities, recreation and travel they need, while others, the greater number, are hungry, often stunted, live in crowded, violent neighborhoods, and can’t benefit from school because they are often hungry, lethargic and unmotivated.
