Category Archive for: gobyerno

komentaryo

why free the morong 43?

Of course the answer must only be why the hell not? But, that’s getting ahead of this story, one that’s only tragic and nothing else, because while we insist that we hold freedom and democracy dear in this country, we will turn a blind eye to the oppression(s) of others, and will for the most part refuse all rationality because they are redder than most, they are activist of the kind that we don’t like or accept.

But also it is tragic because it can only be about Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and the number of activists detained, killed and disappeared under her government. It can also only be about President Noynoy Aquino at this point, because his government will want to grant amnesty to 300 military mutineers and wish them a happy Christmas, but this same government will wash its hands of the Morong 43. Let the courts decide PNoy says. When exactly did we begin trusting our courts, I ask. And when did it become acceptable for double standard to be policy?

Because that is what’s obvious if we consider the silence about the case of the Morong 43. The double standard here is so in our faces, it has become white noise on increased volume.

For it can only be double standard that keeps the fight to free the Morong 43 from being a national issue. It can only be double standard if you now want to stop reading this, because you yourself think that the Morong 43 does not deserve freedom.

Because common sense points to the fact that they do. Common sense will make you say, goodness gracious, is this martial law? Because it sure looks like it: on the early morning of February 6 2010, as 43 health workers were preparing for the last day of health training in the house of Dr. Melecia Velmonte in Morong Rizal, they were raided by the military. Using a warrant with a name none of the 43 health workers had, the house was searched, phones were confiscated, and the 43 men and women we’re illegally arrested.

It took days before they were given the chance to talk to their lawyers, even longer to be seen and treated by their own doctors. When later it is revealed that they were tortured, it was no surprise given the illegal detention.

The health workers have since become known as the Morong 43. They’ve been in illegal detention for the past 10 months. Currently, two of the women are in the Philippine General Hospital after giving birth while in detention, five of them are in Camp Capinpin, 36 in Camp Bagong Diwa.

The latter is where Andal Ampatuan Jr. is on tight watch for the massacre of 57 journalists in Ampatuan, Maguindanao. Only the heartless would think the health workers deserve to be in the same space as someone like him.

I could go into the details of the case, give you the SEC registration numbers of the organizations that co-sponsored the health training, give you Dr. Velmonte’s CV and each of the two doctors, one registered nurse, two midwives and 38 volunteer community health workers to prove that they are not members of the New People’s Army as the military alleges, but you can – and should –go on and read about that elsewhere.

What I will say is this: if there is a valid warrant of arrest, and there are valid charges against the Morong 43 – and any other activist from pink to red for that matter – then wouldn’t it be easiest to just file a case against them and bring them to court? Why illegally detain them? Why treat them as guilty when their arrest was not only without effective warrant, it remains as a suspicion still that the 43 are members of the NPA?

Yes, the Morong 43 has been in jail for the past 10 months based on the suspicion that they are communist guerrillas. And as the military, the rightists, the anti-Left, insist that the Morong 43 – and all activists – deserve what they get in the hands of the military, the United Nations since 2007 has insisted otherwise. And right there, you’ve got the deadlock. Or the status quo.

The burden is on us who could for all intents and purposes talk about the case of the Morong 43 and show it more compassion, give them 43 more kindness. Or are we all so scared of activists these days, do we all think them the noisy minority as the Aquinos have called them? Or are we all agreeing with the military when it says that because Luis Jalandoni of the National Democratic Front said that the Morong 43 must be granted amnesty, that this in fact makes them members of the NPA?

Except that for this to be logical it would mean saying that everyone who has called for the freedom of the Morong 43 are suspect, too. This would include: former Department of Health secretaries Esperanza Cabral, Jaime Galvez-Tan, and Alberto Romualdez plus 100 others health workers who have signed a petition to free the 43; the University of the Philippines Manila that has put up a site for the Morong 43; the 150,000 nurse-members of the National Nurses United (NNU) in the US which has called for the release of the 43, as well as the International Association of Democratic Lawyers also based in the US which has asked PNoy to free the 43. Let’s not even begin with the senators and politicians, foreign visitors and the Catholic priests via the CBCP, who have called for the Morong 43’s release, because that would only make things more absurd.

But maybe the most absurd thing here, and the most tragic, is a general disregard for freeing the 43, one that I measure across traditional media and online journalism, blogging, social networking, tweeting and everything else in between. We will blog about the Ampatuan Massacre, type in those statuses of indignation on its anniversary, feature it on our documentaries, but we won’t do it as much – if at all – for the Morong 43. We will riddle our sites with statements and statuses, re-blog and re-tweet many other things and issues, change our profile photos as soon as we’ve got new pictures, but we will not do anything – not a word – for the 43 health workers.

You know that idiom that goes not lifting a finger? Well, in the age of the internet that un-lifted finger is heavier than it seems, because it matters more. The bombardment of words, images, opinions is the name of the game for something – anything! – to go viral. We’ve got no control, and sometimes it surprises us, doesn’t it. Like when the Pinoy female FB community kept that breast cancer awareness campaign going and going by putting the color and design of their bra on their statuses. Like when the Pinoy tweeting community forced Mai Mislang to cease and desist from tweeting.

Like now, when we can spend time to Google cartoon characters for our profile pics and not put up a status for the freedom of the Morong 43. Like now, when they’ve been on hunger strike for seven days and we’ve yet to see an outpouring of support.

We have yet to. And I say this because I have hope. I have hope in our capacity at discernment and confidence in our ability to look at the facts of this case and judge it to the advantage of the Morong 43 fight for freedom. I have hope in common sense, including the sense of compassion and kindness, given the hunger strike, given the fact that only the helpless in the face of injustice would do it, aka, Ninoy Aquino. I have hope in today, Human Rights Day, and our ability to see that the detention of the Morong 43 is nothing but a violation of the human rights we should always be celebrating and holding close to our hearts.

I have hope in Justice Secretary Leila de Lima, the heavens bless her. I have hope in the Commission on Human Rights changing our minds today: because they’re calling for the release of the Morong 43.

I have hope in our capacity to see that human rights must be accorded every human being, you or me, health worker or military officer, activist of every kind.

I have hope in our collective ability to free the Morong 43. As I hope, I write.

komentaryo

Lucio Tan wins again? (DOLE naman!)

or why that San Mig Light will taste infinitely better now

because in whose mind would it be normal and rational, just and fair, to lay off 2,600 employees favouring one of the richest Filipinos of 2009. really, now. Lucio Tan’s net worth then was at $1.7 billion dollars. that’s P78 BILLION PESOS. This year, he’s second richest in the land, with a net worth of  $2.1 billion dollars, that’s close to P90 BILLION PESOS (89.67 to be exact).

at ayon sa DOLE, kawawa naman ang mayaman ano, kase babagsak na ang business niya, kaya ayan, tanggalin na lang natin ang mga manggagawa niya!

This is also a man whose tax evasion cases were dismissed on a technicality during Erap’s time – Tan was a crony of Erap’s and earlier of Marcos. It explains, doesn’t it, how he got away with evading taxes that amounted to P25 billion pesos in 2005, which in 2000 was estimated to be at P25.27 billion (yes, I refuse to let go of that .27 billion).

i know i digress, here, but i think this digression points to the Department of Labor and Employment’s (DOLE) inability to see Tan as bigger than his current oppression of workers in Philippine Airlines. it points to how DOLE in fact seems to be treating Tan as its very own crony, siding from the beginning with PAL, even having meetings with its officials, as if it is PAL that is aggrieved in this situation.

let’s be clear here: we should feel no pity – at all – for Tan and his PAL management. they are not the oppressed here. and if you think otherwise, you should read up. or maybe try being an employee for once, and then talk to me about oppression.

because oppression is when you’re issued a gag order that disallows you to talk about your salary – not because it’s big mind you, but because it’s lower than most other pilots. in August, 27 pilots resigned because wanted better wages. but this resignation was also about taking a stand against the way they were being treated by Tan and PAL management.

before this, 11 co-pilots had been forced to resign by PAL management because they wanted these pilots to fly planes under Air Philippines and Aero Filipinas – both owned by Tan. the point? these pilots would be hired as contractual employees, which means their wages would be cut in half, low as it already is in PAL.

as bad as this kind of treatment? some pilots aren’t forced to resign, but they are forced to take on flights for Air Philippines on top of the flights they do for PAL. that’s being employee in two companies! correction, that’s forced employment in two companies both owned by he who is called the “most notorious crony capitalist” Tan.

and no, this isn’t just about the pilots. flights have been undermanned, which can only mean overworked flight attendants with the same pay.  female flight attendants are also being force to retire at 40, versus 60 for male employees; a maternity leave also means no pay and no benefits. ground  crew also hear of their impending forced resignations in order to be re-hired on a contractual basis in Tan’s various spin-off companies.

but it can only get worse. Tan and PAL management did want to work on these spin-off companies so they might gain more profit, but this wasn’t in the form of hiring old workers on a contractual basis; it was to outsource employment which makes imperative the termination of 2,600 workers.

this is what’s in the news at this point, the DOLE decision being released as it was on November 1. the irony would be nice were it not tragic, too. and just reason for anger.

you ask why didn’t PAL employees hold a strike earlier? why did they wait for things to be so bad, to come to a head, to pile up like this? a history lesson might be in order:  12 years ago in retaliation against striking workers, the PAL management terminated 600 pilots and almost 2,000 members of the cabin crew. and yes, that case of wrongful termination is still in our courts.

so you see, Lucio Tan has gotten away with murder in this country, in so many ways, and too many times. governments have let him kill, time and again.

it might be good to remind PNoy that his mother, seeing as she is always invoked by him and his sisters, never dealt with Lucio Tan – in fact Cory was seen as hostile towards Tan, thank goodness.

and just in case this isn’t enough to convince PNoy that his delegation of this job has fallen on horrible hands. read the DOLE’s justification of its decision, it’s so naive – or maybe just blind – to the workings of a capitalist empire like the one Lucio Tan’s creating for himself. DOLE believed PAL when the latter said it has been suffering financially the past two years, though a look at PAL’s own milestones shows that it has done nothing in the past two years but to acquire and to expand. it sure doesn’t look like a business that’s suffering. Cebu Pacific might have beaten it already, but that doesn’t mean it’s in the red.

oh and just so you know, in 1998 PAL also used as excuse financial difficulties to defend its downsizing of operations and termination of employees. but too, maybe all it takes is to imagine how far Lucio Tan’s money – the one that’s declared in and everything else extraneous to those richest man in the Philippines numbers – could go into spending on PAL employees’ wages or just making lives better all around.

but too, there’s an even easier question to ask: if Lucio Tan is second richest man in this country, howthef*#@! can the same man have a business that’s going under?

ULOL.

komentaryo

some heart for Hubert

because it was Mama and I who watched and remembered with a heavy heart the story of the Vizconde Massacre on Cheche Lazaro Presents three nights ago, with stories of its victims. and when i say victims, i don’t just mean the family of Lauro Vizconde, he who has kept the house where the murders happened, he who has kept rooms exactly the way they are, living with such violence must be a tragedy in itself, too.

but as well, and this is the truth, the victimization of the Webb family, and how CLP showed what must be true of any family that has lost a member to prison: it is broken and in pain and in constant suffering.

i empathize on this level, having a good friend C in the same prison as Webb for the past 10 years, with no freedom in sight. he who had plans with us, a pretty solid barkada from college, he who we were/are sure is innocent. and i feel that for all of us who know him, there is a broken heart always, a missing, a loss, because he can’t be in our lives anymore, hasn’t been there for 10 years. and yes, that’s even when we visit him in Muntinlupa every time our lives allow, but as our lives outside happen this does become more and more difficult.

New Bilibid Prisons, on a RockEd-volunteer-in-bilibid-wednesday

so i know what Mrs. Webb means when she talks of the humiliation of being body-searched — yes, as in kapkap nang walang pakundangan. i know how it feels when Jason speaks with an amount of anger and frustration. and i understand when Freddie Webb says that Hubert is innocent, he is positive, as Rene Saguisag is, as Winnie Monsod is.

because i am positive too, that C is innocent, but is doing time in jail, one of five fall guys for a crime that was done by a collective they had the bad luck of being part of. and Bilibid is payment enough, i think, 10 years in Bilibid is payment enough. for people who just might be innocent, for people who were judged guilty by our courts despite evidence to the contrary.

because there are many things extraneous to a criminal case in our courts, yes? there is a media circus and public outcry that any judge would be pressured by, even when they deny it. what i remember clearly about Hubert etal at the time they were being tried in court was this: we wanted them rich boys to go to jail. in our collective minds Hubert etal had proven us right about how the sons of the more powerful and rich are spoiled brats. how they always needed to get their way, how they would never take no for an answer.

we believed because we had already judged Hubert etal. just like we would believe any random set of fratmen to be guilty of a frat gantihan turned murder. just like we would already presume someone guilty, given our own issues as a society, making it impossible to prove anyone innocent really.

that is ultimately the sadness of this society, as it is the tragedy of our justice system. in the end, i think we are all victims, some more than others, some more painful and broken than others. some doing time in jail, others left with only inevitable distance.

komentaryo

dear P-Noy, on Teachers Day 2010

which has just passed, this day that should be more momentous than most because you yourself spoke of your own teachers at this speech you delivered to commemorate it two days ago. there is no person who was not affected by a teacher in a good way, and that teacher need not be in the classroom.

in the ideal world though, in a world where education is all important in a real sort of way, that teacher would be in the classroom, inspiring students to become teachers too, if not become productive/honest/compassionate citizens of nation. but that is an ideal, and this is not the most ideal of situations we’re in as you yourself say.

but maybe we must start with agreeing on this: if we value education and learning, we must first and foremost value our teachers, and yes, even more so public school teachers. no government has done so in the longest time. no government has cared truthfully and sincerely enough.

why? because it isn’t an easy task to value teachers. because this isn’t about spending on infrastructure and giving students textbooks. to value teachers is to hear them out, to hear them out is to know that their lives within the halls of the public school system are really and truly the most horrid for any teacher across the world. the answer to the question of “why?” is so simple that i will, instead, take you up on all the things you said you are doing for teachers’ benefit and welfare.

(1) you said you were going to build infrastructure where it is needed, and yes it is needed as pictures of overfilled public school classrooms must be floating in your head, as we know of how 60 students fill up classrooms across this country.

BUT. won’t dividing this 60-student classroom just mean having the same teacher running across two rooms, repeating the same lesson? and then imagine doing that in those uniforms with horrible thick and hot tela, and the required heeled shoes, and tadah! a teacher who suffers because there are now more classrooms, but still the same number of teachers.

2) in aid of de-congesting our public schools, you say that there’s now the Government Assistance to Students and Teachers in Private Education or GASTPE, which is suppose to “make our private school system better so that it can be a viable alternative for parents who want to put their kids to school.”

I translated this section of your speech from Filipino with a smirk. because you don’t need to change anything in the private school system: you need to talk to them owners of private schools to bring down their tuition fees. because in fact, parents who used to be able to afford private schools have been bringing their kids to public schools. the private school tuition fees have killed the middle class families, believe you me. so to think that you can use the private school to decongest the public school? HAH!

3) you say that to help teachers “develop their skills” you are for the National Competency-Based Teacher Standards or NCBTS which will give teachers a whole new set of rules to follow, and some guidelines on which they will be tested, through which they will learn the new ways of teaching.

my question is this: have you seen the NCBTS? the only way it will be used properly and effectively is if all public school teachers are made to go on leave for a full year, un-learning what they’ve practiced all these years, and learning these new ways of teaching and learning. give them a year off with pay, where they will learn to teach again using the NCBTS, during which they can go through real seminars for their areas of specialization, and for English skills as well. have the peace corps teach our public schools for a bit, get volunteers from the private school system (where teachers are paid infinitely better). or sige, compromise tayo: give public school teachers time off with pay, even if just twice a week, thrice if you include saturdays, and have them go through seminars for all the changes you want for a full year or two. it’s only though something like this that this NCBTS plan of yours will be fruitful.

otherwise, it will just be something that will be used by the tenured/regular faculty members in public schools to threaten the job security of the younger/contractual/casual faculty members. and just so you know, as a perfect example of how the NCBTS will just be another test that will not be a measure of teachers’ competencies, check out the fantastic grammar on this site that talks precisely about NCBTS.

your government has said that the “wrong identification of the problem leads to the wrong solution.” well, this is exactly what ails your decisions with regard to education in this country, no matter the kindness of Bro. Luistro’s heart.

you think our problem is the lack of two years in our curriculum: the real problem is that the current curriculum for 10 years isn’t being taught well and doesn’t have corresponding relevant/correct/ critical textbooks for the times. you think our problem is too much homework for kids: the real problem is that this homework is nothing but a reflection of the kind of (non-)teaching that goes on in most public schools, where copying off the board and memorizing without understanding is the point. you think our problem is that our teachers are incompetent: the bigger problem is that they aren’t given enough respect and value to be wanting to teach better and learn more in the process.

the bigger problem is that competent contractual faculty members are at the mercy of the tenured regularized faculty members in the public schools. and while this is not to generalize, you need to have a sense of this struggle, and with whom the change can lie: the teachers who are still excited about teaching are DepEd’s and CHED’s allies.

but protect them. protect our teachers. allow them an amount of job security even when they’ve only been teaching in for a year. don’t treat the academe like a government office where regularization takes forever: teaching is a highly skilled job. telling teachers they need years to gain tenure is to say that they’re nothing but workers. kill off that bundy clock: it’s the worst kind of oppression for teachers who work overtime every day, planning lessons and checking papers outside the classroom, researching and studying on their own outside of school. to require teachers to stay in school beyond their class time is only fair if the schools are equipped with the things that make studying and checking and planning lessons easy: an internet connection, a good school and teachers’ library, desks and tables for studying and writing versus desks that are attached to each other, assembly line style.

protect the teachers, P-Noy, by taking steps to pay them what’s due them from the GSIS and the SSS, where teachers are treated horribly, from which I personally got my benefits a full 22 months after I needed it. protect the teachers, P-Noy by paying them better when you require them to serve during elections.

and quite simply P-Noy, protect teachers by giving them a salary increase. and just in case you think they don’t deserve it, here’s the truth.

when I taught in a public school last year (SY 2009-2010) I was forced to bundy in for six hours a day, regardless of my hours in the classroom. six hours times 10 days (which is half the month that I’m required to be in school) equals 60 hours for the 7,000 pesos or so that I would get on the 15th and 30th of every month. subtract the amounts taken by Pag-Ibig and GSIS and PhilHealth (all of which I have yet to receive IDs for), and that goes down to about P6,500. that means I would get P108 pesos per hour.

yes you read that right: that’s P108.00 pesos per hour. sakto lang sa pamasahe at pagkain. kulang pa para sa pentel pen, manila paper at white board marker na ako pa ang bumibili dahil ang haba ng pila sa paghingi sa school.

if you want to value your teachers, P-Noy, start by telling your Congress to sign House Bill 2142 or the “Public School Teachers’ Salary Upgrade Act” which only has 48 signatures out of 277 house representatives. if you want to value your teachers P-Noy, do so by treating them a little better than you would your regular employee. you are telling your teacher that the future is in their hands, that you want them to mold minds and change this country’s children’s perspectives about the world. this is an infinitely bigger responsibility than that which falls on the shoulders of too many — if not most — government officials.

the public school teacher’s life is really quite difficult enough. it would do your government well to see that everything you’ve wanted to do thus far will not mean any concrete or tangible change in the educational system, and is only going to make things worse.

and yes, P-Noy, if you’re a teacher like me, who’s taught within the tragedies and travesties of the public school’s space(s), you would know that making things worse is the easiest thing to do.

komentaryo

month three of P-Noy: notes of a pinay*

and so it must be said, that September might have been the best month ever for P-Noy, at least compared to those first two months where things just weren’t going his way, or his way just seemed to be going wrong.

the past month, P-Noy conveniently left the country for a visit to the US at around the same time that the Incident Investigating and Review Committee (IIRC) submitted its report on the August 23 hostage tragedy to Malacanang. in the midst of questions on the report — on the fact that it was sent to China before it was revealed to us, on the fact that what we finally saw lacked the section on the IIRC’s recommendations — P-Noy left, with a 57-person delegation to go to the US and address a United Nations delegation.

and as they celebrated the 25 MILLION PESOS to be spent on that trip, it became clear that we were really just hungover from GMA and the kind of spending she did, that we are out to just draw these comparisons, forgetting that 25 MILLION PESOS is a fluggin’ huge amount for any trip. this amount, given the number of travel companions of P-Noy (which apparently includes his barber, baka nga naman humaba ang hair niya, baket ba), could be bigger than that of the Queen of England‘s (oh but maybe sister Kris would be proud?).

but let’s forget about that amount, why don’t we? after all, what should matter is that he has done well, he has done us proud. he delivered a speech at the UN General Assembly, where he promised justice and the fulfillment of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, where he enjoined the world to come up with its own people power (naks) towards balancing inequality and finding unity (naks ulit).

never mind that injustices continue in the country, ones that for some reason P-Noy doesn’t want to handle differently from his predecessor: there are the extrajudicial killings and the forced disappearances of activists, there remain political prisoners including the Morong 43.  maybe P-Noy needs to be reminded that the UN itself had sent Special Rapporteur Philip Alston to the country in 2007, and he promptly “convincingly attributed” these injustices to the armed forces. now i imagine that the P-Noy government thinks (1) that those armed forces aren’t his, which therefore absolves him of responsibility, and (2) that he has delegated this to CHR Head Etta Rosales who will promptly act on this.

if the former is true, then P-Noy has every reason to Free All Political Prisoners, yes? if the latter is true, then P-Noy has every reason to Free All Political Prisoners, yes.

but there’s more to that US trip than just that UN speech. P-Noy also brought home the bacon, the ham, some eggs to boot, all of which are extensions of or improvements on previous agreements with transnational American companies, none of which mean being freed from our foreign debt, something that was offered to Cory during her time, something that i wish P-Noy would ask for now, because i have to believe that it’s possible to repeal all debt.

more than anything else, versus how this US trip might have “saved” the Philippines in whatever way (including meeting Obama, naks, one more time!), the fact is that it was P-Noy who was saved by this trip from what was going on in Manila while he was away.

there was the question of jueteng, the ensuing debate, the truth that what’s needed is a creative alternative to it, versus its abolition which is downright impossible. make the government alternatives better than the illegal jueteng, and it will kill the latter. send me an email if you want a copy of this proposal, which really is premised on good ol’ common sense and a whole lot of living in a province where jueteng lords it over.

there was the attempted demolition of a squatter community in North Edsa QC, in favor of the Ayalas who are going to build (another!) mall on what was government property. now i don’t know about P-Noy, but conversations must be had with people from squatters’ communities because only then will he find that (1) they are squatters in Manila because they are victims of land grabbing and its contingent devaluation of rural livelihood in the provinces to big landowners (like the Cojuangcos) and developers (like the Ayalas); and (2) some of these individuals and households put out money to have the right to this space: there’s always money exchanged between squatters/vendors and local government officials and police. this is all under the table of course, and more than anything explains why Pinoys who live in squatters areas think they have a right to the space. the province-to-city migration meanwhile tells us what the government needs to develop for the squatter problem to be solved. (and pray tell, anti-squatter people, how it is productive that you are nothing but anti-squatter people who are ready to pounce on these people?)

ah, all these P-Noy left behind for his OICs to handle or mishandle. when he finally came home, he did so with a bang by saying that he was now for a birth control and family planning policy, which does tie in — though not completely — with the Reproductive Health Bill.

i can only cross all my fingers and toes that P-Noy doesn’t back down in the face of this Pinoy Church. that he doesn’t back down in the face of the devout Catholics in his life, which include his sisters.

that he doesn’t fear excommunication, reprimand, the loss of the Pinoy Church’s support. because in fact it’s about time that we see the separation of Church and State in this country. because only then will women cease to be sacrificial lambs to notion(s) of morality and correctness, the ones that maims and kills them every day.

come on P-Noy, you can do it!

*because the Aquino sisters are already counting down the months to their brother’s and family’s freedom from us all, seeing us as the burden in their lives as if their brother didn’t choose to run for office and didn’t want to win.