Category Archive for: pulahan

komentaryo

on #noynoying & Rocamora’s failed response

if there’s anything that #noynoying must take credit for, it is more than just that it has trended and landed in international media sites. the activist youth sector — and when i say that i mean Anakbayan — must take credit too for the fact that #noynoying has annoyed the likes of Joel Rocamora enough to speak out against it.

and boy, does he speak out. and does he draw those lines like no one else has done. and boy does he reveal so much more about his kind of activism even as he imagines that what he did was discredit completely the ideological political line upon which Anakbayan and #noynoying stand.

this is the only explanation for Rocamora invoking the concept of the RA (reaffirmist) activists in his essay for rappler.com. here he was drawing a line, one that he must have thought was important to make, yet other than that title he lets it slide and nowhere in the essay does he explain what it means. then he ends with the national democrats as the bane of development as he and PNoy believe it to be.

now i will not pretend that i am equipped to discuss the RA-Rejectionist dichotomy and division at length, but it doesn’t take a genius to see that Rocamora, as does Llamas, are wanting to make a distinction between themselves and the RA activist. and while it would be exciting to find out how they identify themselves as separate from the national democrat, it seems the better question is: what have they done as non-RA activists, as non-national democrats?

alas Rocamora doesn’t quite tell us that in his defense of PNoy — which is really all that his rappler piece was. there Rocamora spoke like he’s with the President day-in day-out, he spoke with all credibility about how the president is no lazy man, about how he is hardworking and diligent behind the scenes (woohoo!). yet it seems that because Rocamora was so ready to point a finger at the kind of activism that has brought about #noynoying, he failed at properly responding to it, too.

the proper response being about oil price hikes and tuition fee increases. the proper response being one that’s about the question of what it is the PNoy government is doing about either of these two things, other than having a Dept of Energy that says it is beyond their control, and a Commission on Higher Education (CHED) that calls on schools to be “prudent” in hiking up its tuition fees. probably the better response, seeing as the PNoy government’s tendency is to think that the answer “we can’t do anything about it” is a valid one, is for Rocamora’s kind of activist to respond to the question of why.

why are they not up in arms about the fact that instead of actually truly thinking about the majority who suffer with these oil price hikes, this PNoy government has celebrated its ability at putting together short-term dole-out programs like the Pantawid Pasada program? why are they not up in arms about the growing number of children who will not have access to education because their parents will have no money for it?

why are Rocamora and his kind of activist not insisting that the CHED memorandum that includes miscellaneous fees in consultations for tuition fee increases be honored this year instead of next year, when the only reason it has yet to be honored is because it missed its February 28 deadline? what can they say about CHED statistics that say that for every 10 students who graduate from high school only 2 will go on to college, and for every 10 students in college only 2 will graduate?

where does Rocamora stand on the issue of the value added tax on oil, which presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte has said is not anti-poor, yet it is 12% of what we pay for all petroleum products? where does Rocamora stand on the fact that since the Oil Deregulation Law of 1999, we have been treated to about P15 pesos overpricing on all petroleum products? what does Rocamora have to say about the IBON Facts and Figures claim that 58% of total revenues from VAT go to debt servicing and not to social services as Malacanang claims? or the fact that a Dept of Finance official has said Malacanang is about to get a whooping 4-billion-peso windfall from VAT within March? what do the good non-natdem activists have to say about this:

Initial estimates of IBON indicate that the oil firms have been charging an additional 20-22% more for diesel, for instance, than is called for by the increases in the price of Dubai crude. Meanwhile, Shell, Chevron and Petron have reported net income of at least Php152 billion over the period 2001-2010. The government is also benefiting from high oil prices, collecting Php239.6 billion in oil VAT revenues in the last five years, or an average of some Php48 billion per year.

certainly we all knew that #noynoying was not so much about what PNoy is like behind the scenes; #noynoying was always — and is — about how PNoy has responded to the issues of these times, the ones that we feel in the pits of our stomachs because prices are at an unprecedented high, and confidence in our capacity to avail of basic services is at an unprecedented low. #noynoying is about PNoy saying the most absurd thing on this side of oil price hike earth:

“There is an economic reality that if something becomes cheaper, normally, there will be more consumption of it—universal po ‘yan,” Aquino told reporters Sunday night in Baguio City.

“Kunwari ‘pag tumataas ‘yung presyo ng fuel, syempre magtitipid ka, gagamitin mo lang ‘yung kailangan mo. So ‘yung kailangan natin angkatin is ‘yung dapat lang na na kino-konsumo natin,” he added.

ano daw? so as more and more Filipinos cease to have the capacity to afford three square meals a day, we shall imagine it all good because they can live off just one meal, and that is the right amount they must consume? so we do not want to control the price of oil because it is teaching us to consume only what we need? PNoy seems to think that the Filipino has lived excessively and in over consumption, which is a horrid misreading of the situation that the majority in this country is in.

which brings us back to the non-natdem activist that is Rocamora, who takes pride in his position in government (wow!), highlighting it as the success of the “left” as they see it. what do they have to say about these assessments of PNoy’s, about these small but brilliant pieces of insight that give us a sense of where he really and truly stands about the dire situation the country is in? certainly the non-natdem activist has a better response than just throwing out the term RA without explaining what it means. certainly they must have more up their sleeve than just pointing at how the numbers here are a lie. certainly the answer must be about real concrete measures like, oh i don’t know, letting go of that 12% vat on oil? certainly they should know to go beyond the false rhetoric of development via stock exchange numbers that PNoy likes to revel in?

meanwhile it has to be said that if anything, Rocamora’s defense of PNoy revealed that while he is so into discrediting the activists who are out on the streets and gathering signatures and easily getting support for #noynoying beyond the online world, Rocamora and his non-natdem friends are still dependent on the idea that they remain leftist, that they are progressive, that they are the ones making the important changes from within. so you’re non-natdem, non-RA, but you remain relevant even as you do not take a stand on oil price hikes and tuition fee increases? oh right, you have to believe the rhetoric of your president. got it.

Rocamora says in that rappler piece that the national democrats “see reforms as obstacles to the realization of their illusory revolution.” it sure looks like it’s Rocamora who’s living quite happily in the bubble of PNoy’s illusory reformist government.

at least Gilda Cordero-Fernando admits that all she’s written in response to #noynoying is a rah-rah piece.

#noynoying
#noynoying

mula rito ang imahe.

komentaryo

why free Ericson Acosta

Ninoy Aquino and Ericson Acosta might seem light years away from each other, and yet i’d like to think that more than what makes them different, what carries weight here is what makes them the same.

illegal detention, trumped up charges, a military blinded by getting some “big fish” and not getting enough of the red scare, being forced to face your accusers everyday, being removed from and having limited access to the outside world, being treated like some dangerous criminal, in the process making you feel less and less like yourself.

look at the timeline of Ninoy’s detention here and here, and the timeline of Ericson’s detention here.

now the hunger strike.

in April 1975, Ninoy went on a hunger strike, and in a letter addressed to Cory, his mother, his children, his sisters and supporters, explained why. Ninoy’s said:

<…> “when the Military Commission suddenly made a complete turn-about and forced me, against my will, to be present in proceedings which are not only clearly illegal but unjust, I said I shall have no other alternative but to go on a hunger strike in protest against a procedure that is intended to humiliate and dehumanize me, considering that all they wanted was for me to be identified as a common criminal, and not only for myself but on behalf of the many other victims of today’s oppression and injustices.”

on December 3 2011, Ericson began his hunger strike. detained artist since February 13 2011, Ericson was arrested without a warrant by the military in San Jorge Samar, at 10AM. he has been kept in the Calbayog Jail since then, on the false charge of illegal possession of explosive – a hand grenade which was planted on him and which the military says he attempted to take out of his pocket (in broad daylight?!?) during his arrest.

From February 13 to February 16, Ericson was not allowed to contact his family or his lawyers, and in those four days, he was not only illegally detained, he was also moved from military detachment to PNP headquarters to the hospital to the Calbayog Hall of Justice. for four days no one knew what was going on with Ericson.

for the past 10 months he’s been in jail. Ericson says:

<…> “it is utterly baseless to undergo a full-blown trial for this trumped-up charge <…> instead, i should have the right to charge the state elements responsible for violating my human rights.”

his hunger strike is also a demand for the

<…> “pull out of the highly irregular if not illegal presence of a squad of military men near Ericson’s place of detention. A platoon of soldiers from the 87th IB were first deployed in the nearby barrio in July on the pretext of military operations, but it has become apparent that the soldiers are there to “guard” Acosta.”

it goes without saying that Ericson’s hunger strike is also his demand for immediate release.

and lest you think I am dreaming here, what PNoy said last year resonates for Ericson’s case:

“We recognize that their right to due process was denied them. As a government that is committed to the rule of law and the rights of man, this cannot stand. Therefore, I have ordered the DOJ to withdraw the informations filed before the court.”

his then Executive Secretary Paquito “Jojo” Ochoa Jr. also said “questions raised on the legality of their arrest justify their release.”

PNoy was talking about the Morong 43. also illegally detained, also with trumped up charges of illegal possession of firearms and explosives, also denied due process. last year, PNoy ordered all of them released in time for Christmas. he also said:

“Let this be a concrete example of how our administration is working in the broad light of day to build a country where the law protects us equally. The culture of silence, injustice and impunity that once reigned is now a thing of the past.”

and lest this isn’t enough to justify the release of Ericson, the voice of Ninoy might help. he was after all also political detainee, turned gaunt and sick by a hunger strike that was not just a demand for his release, but the release of so many others like him, as it was about shining a light on the system of warrantless arrests and impunity.

“But peace and order without freedom is nothing more than slavery. Discipline without justice is merely another name for oppression. I believe we can have lasting peace and prosperity only if we build a social order based on freedom and justice.” – Ninoy’s letter to the military commission, August 1975, in Ninoy Letters.

“I believe that freedom of the individual is all-important and ranks above everything else.” – Ninoy, “A Christian Democratic Vision” in Testament from a Prison Cell.

i cannot claim to be friends with Ericson, but i can claim to be a fan: in my undergrad years in U.P., his was a voice that was always loud and clear, but also very human and grounded, intelligent and creative. i never thought about his freedom because i presumed he would always have it. when he lost it, i found that his illegal detention meant a palpable silence to me, no matter that he’s been blogging and singing (here and here), no matter that i had lost touch anyway with the work he was doing after U.P.

now on his hunger strike, Ericson’s struggle as cultural worker turned political prisoner shines a light on the fact that all this time, since his detention, what was always on the line was not just his life. it’s also always been our freedoms — as writers and journalists, as cultural worker of any kind.

it seems to me really, that we owe it to freedom to demand for Ericson’s release.

kultura

on Manolo Sicat’s Matayataya

Manolo Sicat's "Bawal Tumayo 1"
Manolo Sicat's "Bawal Tumayo 1"

White is what greets you when you enter the gallery that’s been transformed into a playground by Manolo Sicat’s Matayataya. The first reaction is one of joy: the kind that play allows, no matter how old we get, especially because it is reminiscent of the kids that we were when the streets were safe to play in. But it sinks in soon enough: play here is everything and violent, because the streets have changed, because the streets are now testament to what has become the sad state of an impoverished nation.

To say that this exhibit is just about the violence of poverty wouldn’t do Sicat’s work justice. In fact it isn’t so much poverty as it is inequality, it isn’t so much inequality as it is injustice, it isn’t so much what’s unjust as it is how all these tie together into sadness and helplessness when children – and all that they represent – are objects and subjects.

The cold cast marble sculptures of Matayataya are precisely such: children at play are its necessary subjects, made into mere objects by the contexts within which they live.

click here for the rest of it!

komentaryo

PAL, PALEA, PNoy

in November 2010, i blogged about Lucio Tan getting away with the plan to lay off regular Philippine Airline workers in favor of outsourcing services, with the Department of Labor and Employment siding with him. now, almost a year since, PNoy proves himself an Hacienda Luisita heir, and actually says the PALEA workers who are on strike might be held liable for economic sabotage.

the President is saying that these regular employees who have served PAL — and therefore the public — for years are to be blamed for making the company that’s retrenching them lose money? here for the world to see, the mind of a President who mouths his matuwid na daan rhetoric at the same time that he sacrifices 2,600 workers’ lives and their families’ lives for who exactly?

Lucio Tan, the most notorious crony capitalist.

good job PNoy. good job.

(repost with minor edit from November 2010)

Lucio Tan wins again! 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).

according to DOLE, the rich are to be pitied because business is down, and therefore we must allow them to retrench workers.

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 pesosin 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 they 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 theirimpending 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.

kultura

on class, the indie film divide, and what unity must mean

the breakdown and aftermath of the Rafael Santos debacle is interesting to me mostly for what’s still unsaid.

1. the fact of Santos’ class, and i use that word not just to point to his lack of social skills (for goodness why would he think a joke like that funny?) and bad manners (he was asked about actors he himself worked with for his film, yes?), but also his social class. that humor, if we’d like to call it that, is one that we know exists, that we might have heard before from rowdy boys in some sosy Starbucks, or kids we’ve taught in our time as teachers, and it’s a humor that isn’t surprising in its existence. what is surprising is that Santos did not turn it off for television, that he actually thought this was an interview that would be so comfortable, his humor would be fine. which bring us back to the fact that he might be a rich kid — a konyo kid in our context who feeds his cat catfood and thinks lowly of skyflakes (equals 1 cup of rice kaya and isang pack no’n!) — but apparently rich doesn’t mean classy.

2. which is what that show Cityscape is, more pang-mayaman than anything. Sir Anton Juan is so correct about pointing out how that host is at fault as well, though there’s the mere existence of lifestyle shows for the elite like this one that’s just wrong in third world Philippines. that show, as is David Celdran’s ANC show, is a bubble that allows the ones who are in it to believe that everyone speaks the same language, thinks the same, live the same, i.e., we’re all rich, you’ll get my humor. is this to defend Santos? of course not. it’s to point out that other than this articulation, there’s a fundamental problem in a media system that creates a venue for him to speak this way, and think that it’s ok. it’s telling of a crisis in media, isn’t it, when the rich can be shameless about their lives and lifestyles, as if they were not in impoverished philippines?

3. some critics of Santos are angry because he draws a divide between film and theater. i say it’s a reminder: despite Eugene Domingo, John Lapus moving from theater to film, and despite numerous mainstream actors moving from mainstream and finding more credibility in theater, that divide still exists. and it’s one that’s painfully and obviously about money, i.e., who will make money for TV and movie executives and therefore will get better pay, and not at all about who does the better job at acting or entertaining.

now that divide gets a little more complex when we talk about the indie film industry of which Santos is part. the indie in fact is theater in light of commercial film; it’s where the more artistic, more creative filmmaking happens, where the better actors are found. i always thought the indie employing theater actors meant a team effort of sorts, one that spoke of both industries’ struggle to prove creativity on the most flimsy of budgets, on a dire lack of support. Santos’ articulation pointed to the fact that the indie film industry has it’s own divide to deal with, and it’s one that’s becoming more and more stark as they go about this business of being “independent.” while it’s true that there are countless writers and directors who financially struggle to get a hold of a camera and finish a film, it’s also difficult to ignore this fact: there are also these kids who go to some sosyal film school, are given cameras on a silver platter and think the struggle is just like wow pare, it’s so hard to make the film i want, coz i want to do a tarantino film or like a kubrick? and the philippines is so not prepared for me.

wow pare, ang tindi ng struggle mo.

4. and lastly, Tanghalang Pilipino’s artistic director Nanding Josef wonders:

And it also makes me wonder what the outsiders, the ‘uzis’ (mga usisera), the non-artists and the critics of the artists make out of this free-for-all, uncensored and free-flowing downpour of expletives, name-calling by the artists against another artist, albeit a beginning artist.

here’s what i think, Sir: while i’ve got a brother and sister-in-law who were part of theater in the Philippines before they left for Holland, and while i’d like to think myself a theater critic at times (though i cringe at that label half the time, especially with gibbs cadiz and exie abola around), as outsider to philippine theater, i think this emotional outpouring of anger and disgust at the issues that underlie Santos’ articulations is the perfect reason to start talking about a theater actors’ union.*

of course in this country insisting on a union is a red flag up for the powers-that-be. but seeing the theater industry’s united stand against this articulation (even those who have forgiven Santos admit to his fault here), i think the theater world’s 100 steps ahead of the fight for what every creative industry worker deserves: a spanking-new union.

the writers among us can only be envious.

 

*and i mean a real one, not like the UMPIL for writers, which doesn’t really function to protect writers or standardize how much we might get paid, but seems more like a fraternity of writers. i mean a real artists’ union, much like the Philippine Models Association of the Philippines (yes, they are smarter than us all), that standardizes pay based on seniority and skill of their members, and is responsible for any of its members not performing their jobs well.