Category Archive for: komentaryo

kultura

The Reality of the Disappeared

The premise of the disappeared is their silence. In Desaparesidos, Lualhati Baustista’s latest novel, what one is treated to is an articulation of these silences that the disappeared bear, over and above the lives that they live as names on a list of people who have been captured and jailed, raped and tortured, and killed. And while you might say Bautista has done this before, or that this story about the Marcos dictatorship is old hat, Desaparesidos is anything but a mere repetition. It is not a sequel of any sort to Dekada ’70, but is a re-telling of that time in history and how we are clearly and inextricably linked to it, even when we’d rather imagine otherwise. And it’s precisely because of this that it’s an important read for the times. (more…)

komentaryo

questioning the usual

an essay by Ninotchka Rosca, aptly titled The Usual Can Be Criminal, on the ways in which our notions of womanhood and the roles we play, allow for us all to be victims.

such an enlightening read, even when we can only truly imagine what our domestic helpers are going through as they sacrifice their own families for a life of discrimination elsewhere. my favorite quotes:

“Household work has been historically women’s slave shackles, rendering her a service unit in the family power structure, stunting her growth and development, erasing her sense of self.”

“<…> having a household servant impacts even the employer who slides into this semi-feudal role of patriarch and patron. I hope others will seriously develop a political economy of housework. A serious one.”

komentaryo

post-SONA blues 2: what’s in a txt (message)?

In her last SONA, the one thing that seemed like a good thing was this:

Para sa mga namamasada at namamasahe sa dyip, sinusugpo natin ang kotong at colorum upang mapataas ang kita ng mga tsuper. Si Federico Alvarez kumikita ng P200 a day sa kaniyang rutang Cubao-Rosario. Tinaas ito ng anti-kotong, anti-colorum ngayon P500 na ang kita niya. Iyan ang paraan kung paano napananatili ang dagdag-pasahe sa piso lamang. Halaga lang ng isang text.

 

Texting is a way of life. I asked the telecoms to cut the cost of messages between networks. They responded. It is now down to 50 centavos.

The first paragraph was complete with the presence of Manong Federico, in a barong, obviously uncomfortable, but who apparently had more reason to be there than elsewhere. The second was greeted with canned applause, and GMA’s wide smile.

But of course it took only a day to realize that the promise of 50 cents per txt message is an empty one.

Both Smart and Globe have been selling their own versions of “unlimited text messaging” for the longest time, where you pay a certain amount for a fixed number of txts within your network. For Smart’s Unlimitxt for example, you pay P20 for 100 txts to other Smart numbers, plus 10 free txts to other networks; Globe’s version of this is called EverybodyTXT20. These promos in fact, defeat the point of GMA’s promise.

Which as it turns out, can only be availed of if and when we pay P20 pesos to register for the 50-cents-per-txt promise. And you wonder: given the P20 pesos=100 txts promos, why would you settle for a P20 pesos for 50-cents-per-txt promo? Considering that both these options only last a certain amount of time – which, by the way, is never mentioned in these telecom companies’ advertisements, nor was it mentioned by GMA – none ofthis makes rational sense.

Malacanang’s press office itself released a statement talking about the telecom companies’ promise to continue with their “promos” – all of which require a P20-peso registration fee. Without realizing it, that press statement admitted to one thing about its boss: that she had lied through her teeth about the 50-cents-per-txt promise.

Kaya pala isang sentence lang ang inaksaya ni GMA sa pangakong ito. Mas mahaba pa ang pasakalye gamit ang kuwento ni Manong Federico.

And without knowing it, GMA, in her desperate need to make a promise – any promise! – that would deserve some amount of celebration from the ignorant and/or ill-informed, had opened up a can of worms. As TxtPower via Tonyo Cruz has pointed out, if there’s anything that these promos tell us, it’s that both Globe and Smart are overpricing their consumers with the standard rate of P1.00 per txt, and even with a false promise of 50 cents per txt. TxtPower also insists that it’s entirely possible that without interconnection charges and GMA’s beloved VAT, both of which can be removed, txt messaging could cost as low as P1.00 for 100 txt messages.

TXTPower: one point. GMA: liar with zero points.

Globe and Smart: m/tr/illions of pesos in profit.

komentaryo

post-SONA blues: LFS one point, Dep Ed zero

Other than the fashion both inside and outside the halls of Congress (which will be topic for another entry), what’s also exciting about the President’s annual SONA are the discussions that lead up to it, where once a year, media actually sort of asks the right questions (finally!). Then again, with a past SONA to diss, and a new one to compare it to, how can any show go wrong?

And so on the new TV show Harapan with Korina Sanchez and Ted Failon last Monday sat Vencer Crisostomo, secretary-general of the League of Filipino Students, and Department of Education Undersecretary Vilma Labrador, face-to-face (kasi nga harapan, hindi ba?) to talk about GMA’s presidential promises on education. Suffice it to say that in this harapan, Crisostomo had the upper hand, primarily because he was faced with a Dep Ed undersecretary who, like her boss GMA, had her way with truth. That is, she had a way of lying by not talking about the full picture of our public schools.

So Labrador says with pride in her voice and a sparkle in her eyes that the teacher to pupil ratio has consistently been kept down to 1:35 or 1:36, thanks to GMA’s administration. Barely able to contain his laughter, Crisostomo responds that this is only so because the classrooms have been cut in half — as in literally in half with makeshift walls! — so instead of 1 teacher to 70 pupils, it can truthfully be said that it’s now 1 teacher to 35 students at any given time.

He also points out that it’s the logic of having three shifts – that is, three different classes – for any given day, any teacher, and every halved classroom, that allows for the 1:35 ratio to be true. In fact Dep Ed Order No. 62, s 2004, speaks of these shifts as a way of solving the problem of classroom shortage, which at that point was at 51,947. Inthe said order, it’s even recommended that for certain public schools, they must have as many as four shifts, not three, and the maximum number of students for every classroom is set at 65. Wait, is that a whole, or a halved classroom?

But Labrador seemed surprised at Crisostomo’s response, if not flabbergasted. How could she respond? Well, with no answer at all. So she starts talking about statistics on the number of graduates in public schools, and how statistically, the numbers have been consistent. To which of course Crisostomo responds by mentioning the now higher drop out rate, which would technically allow for the number of graduates to be consistent, because you’re not counting the growing number of students who leave school because they can’t afford it.

But public schools are suppose to be free, yes? Failon asks. No, according to Crisostomo, as there are fees that students continue to be required to pay, to which Labrador says, report those schools that still have fees and the Dep Ed will take care of it. To which Crisostomo says, “hindi naman maiiwasan ‘yon.” Because really, if a school has to collect money for a bathroom that students can use, or an electric fan to ease the heat of a classroom with 70 students, who would complain?

Meanwhile, Labrador is left with nothing to say, and nothing to be proud of. Someone should’ve warned her that speaking of truths based merely on gov’t statistics, doesn’t hold in the face of someone like Crisostomo who has a real sense of what it is that actually happens on the ground, in the public schools, that half the time seems to only be a theory to the Dep Ed and GMA.

Of course it helped that Crisostomo was not your grim-and-determined scary activist. For most of Harapan, his charm was difficult to miss, informed as it was with knowing that truth was on his side – the kind that sustains organizations like his, because it is the truth that is lived by the majority who aren’t invited to speak in shows like this one.

LFS: one point. Dep Ed: zero.

komentaryo

don’t forget the woman

it’s easy to get lost in the mudslinging that goes into debates about any bill that touches on reproductive health and its contingent issues (contraceptive use, family planning) in this country. what with the notions of morality and rights, the Church and the State, religion versus the law, that get thrown in for good measure. talaga naman, the weak at heart would rather not say anything. baka nga namang matawag ka pang imoral (which, given the Church’s definition isn’t a bad thing at all), o demonyo.

minsan, mas madaling pagtawanan, the things that are revealed about our institutions in the midst of issues like this. one can’t help but laugh, for example, at the outmoded ways in which the Church views its devotees as: (a) living sexless lives or (b) responsible, compassionate and intelligent adults, who aren’t wont to give in to sexual needs. anyone who does research on this issue will also be brought to sites like this one, where Pro-Life people insist on keeping families smaller by what they call the “mucus method” – where women will keep track of their vaginal discharge, (maybe even touching it and smelling it for good measure, you can never be sure after all), so that they know when they can have sex (which is of course dependent on whether or not they want to have children).

recently though, the laughter has been a pained one. the kind that’s premised on a fear of the Church and its ability to insist on things political using their notion of morality. particularly given the ways in which GMA has tried her best to keep this institution happy – even if only through her silences and wry smiles. it’s even harder to be hopeful when all we hear from her comes from Gov. Joey Salceda, who has the gall to reduce the issue and the government’s stand to this: “There’s very little pressure for drastic change in the policy, which the President says she wants to be consistent,” he said. He added partly in jest, “Apparently, there are no people going out on the streets calling for less sex because it is sinfully delightful.” what a pointless thing to say.

along with the silence, or stupid soundbites, from GMA’s camp, there’s the Church and its believers, coming out in droves, talking about immorality and death, and all the possible evils that a reproductive health bill will bring on. where we talk about population control, they’ll say but the population’s fine, what we need are economic policies to take care of our admittedly growing number. where we talk about impoverished families with too many children, they say but i have eight children, and i’m perfectly happy! where we talk about parents’ right to choose how many children to have, when to stop having children, and how to keep from having children; they’ll point a finger and scream: a culture of sin, a culture of evil! anti-life advocates!

but this is not, cannot simply be, a debate that’s about pro-life versus pro-choice. that debate, to begin with, is premised on an abortion law, not a reproductive health bill. a bill, that in its current version continues to insist that abortion is illegal in this country. when the Church and its cohorts say otherwise, they are lying.

what this bill does call for is medical attention for the half a million women who go through illegal abortions every year, in some godforsaken dirty room in the bowels of our urban spaces. what it does insist on, is the right of every woman to choose for herselfwhat kind of method to use, if she wants to have less children, or none at all, given the sexual relationship she’s embroiled in, within or outside of marriage.

what the Consolidated Reproductive Health Bill knows is that while it would be great to imagine that all Pinoy husbands will not insist on sex when their wives don’t want it, or when their wives say it’s a “bad time” (because you know, my mucus isn’t right); while it’s fantastic and ideal to imagine that the youth aren’t sexually active too early for their age; while it would be great if all single Pinoy adults were sexually responsible; in reality, in truth, these ideals aren’t what we’re working with.

it only takes a more intelligent assessment of the ideologies that surround relationships and marriage in this country to see that this can’t simply be about couples deciding privately how they can grow their families. here, in the land of poverty and miseducation, marriage and patriarchy, couples living in shanties and unable to afford basic services, have 8, 9, 10, 11! children; women die at childbirth, children die before they turn one, more before they turn five; and the women who do want and need to control their pregnancies can’t afford the choices available.

what this highlights, and which discussions on pro-(culture-of-)life forget, is that ultimately, a reproductive health bill is about women and their right to their bodies.

and it is when we speak of women that we must acknowledge their diversity: not all women want children, or want many of them, and some women just enjoy having a husband/lover and the sexual relationship that allows; not all women want to focus on their mucus or the calendar, and risk getting pregnant given the uncertainty of these methods; a majority of women in this country are poor, uneducated or miseducated about their rights and the roles within the family, and don’t know any better than to accede to their husband’s sexual whims and demands; and while their lives seem to be made of the same cloth as your daily soap opera, these women’s lives are real and painfully true.

even when it’s not you or me, na nakakapit na sa patalim, stuck between a rock and a hard place, we must be able to imagine that woman. she who’s more than willing to batter the body and risk one’s life, instead of bringing out another unfed, malnourished baby into the world, and make life more difficult than it already is.

to forget that this is about women’s choices, their bodies and their lives, is to gloss over the fact that women – as much as the children- are victims of the current state of things, too. to forget the woman who is central to the reproductive health bill, is to imagine that we are all the same, that our bodies aren’t our own, that the Church can decide on our bodies for us.

anti-reproductive-health-bill advocates conveniently forget that some women have the luxury of choice and the capacity to spend on these choices. others can only imagine their choice to be among stealing formula milk for another newborn, throwing their pregnant selves down a flight of stairs, or leaving their newborns in a trashcan somewhere in the metro. at least give these women the choice to keep from getting pregnant to begin with. then we can truly say that we promote a culture of life. that we respect life – the child’s, the man’s and the woman’s. regardless of whether they’re rich or poor.