Category Archive for: pulitika

komentaryo

para sa partylist!

All this vote requires is common sense, and maybe one Google search. The partylist system is supposed to “enable Filipino citizens belonging to the marginalized and underrepresented sectors, organizations and parties, and who lack well-defined political constituencies <to> contribute to the formulation and enactment of appropriate legislation that will benefit the nation as a whole.”

Operative word marginalized. Operative phrase the nation as a whole.

 

One weekend from election day we should not forget these important facts about the partylist; more importantly we should not think this vote irrelevant. The partylist vote is a national vote after all, one that those in power, i.e., GMA have manipulated to her benefit. The value of the partylist system for GMA and those in power is clearly proven by this: there are 187 organizations listed on your ballots as partylist groups. How many of them are GMA-funded partylists? Take a look at this and this.

Of course even organizations that aren’t in those lists of GMA-planted partylists shouldn’t easily be seen as valid partylist groups. Many of these organizations work on the level of representation by putting the sector in their names, but really, many of them are not organizations at all, i.e., have no members. Google them and you’ll see.

Many others, while with organizations, do not clearly represent the sectors they say they do, i.e., there’s a teachers partylist that’s about protecting private school owners (who are rich therefore not marginalized at all) when the only people they should be protecting from oppression are public school teachers. Obviously, the goal for patylist groups such as this is to protect one’s business interests in Congress, and side with the majority in the process – how’s that for being marginalized?

Even more obvious? Partylist groups that say they represent OFWs, when that is in no way organized as a sector; those that represent cooperatives, when these are organizations within government institutions that do nothing but “help” workers by giving them loans and unilaterally subtracting those loans from monthly salaries, until workers have no other choice but take on another loan; those that are ambiguous about representation but say that they will provide jobs, give free education, allow Filipinos to go abroad and pay later, and even (goodness gracious!) give free cataract treatments.

The partylist system is not about civic duty; this is not to excuse government from the things it should be providing its people.

The partylist system is about representation in lawmaking, its premise is that the real marginalized are not protected by existing laws. Real marginalization is about economic mobility, the ability of a sector to spend, given how much they earn; their ability to improve their lives given their impoverished limitations. The real marginalized are those who suffer every day, given who they are, and the concrete conditions that forget their rights.

And please, those partylist groups that are about the regions? Realize that they are represented to begin with. There is already a Congressman for every city, yes? Then why are people from Bicol or the Warays marginalized sectors still?

The question therefore for anyone who’s voting for a partylist group is: do you know these people you are voting for? did these organizations exist before they joined the partylist election? Most importantly, if you aren’t marginalized, then which organization are you voting for?

I am by no means economically marginalized: I am middle class after all. I was teacher in a private school for five years, but it was my experience in a public university that has changed me fundamentally. As a member of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers, I have met/spoken to/worked with public school teachers; as treasurer of ACT Teachers Partylist this experience in the public school would resonate with the truth of marginalization.

It was here, in the halls of the public school that I lived what I once only knew in theory: little pay, barely enough to live decently, unprotected rights for the most part, oppressed in many ways with nowhere to go, and to do but stay. As someone who had the choice to leave, there was no reason for me to feel I was one of them. But it was here, in these spaces of laughter and friendship in the midst of the sadnesses of a public educations system that does, without a doubt, oppress its own teachers, I came to know compassion more than I ever have. More importantly, I came to know the value of change and revolt, and the power of the oppressed and marginalized to see those chains and break free.

And this is why the vote for partylist is as important as any other. It is here that the real marginalized sectors, as represented by real organizations and groups, and real people, actually do gain representation. It is here that bigger and better changes are made possible. Imagine a Congress where the partylist minority is united in representing economic marginalization – that would protect the majority in this nation more than anything else.

This is why the partylist vote is important to me, not so much as a member of the marginalized, but for the many others who I know are. This is why it’s important to me that I know the function of the partylist and why they want to be in Congress. This is why it’s important that I know these organizations and people. This is why it’s important to me to know that when the people who represent the marginalized enter Congress, they do so as members of the marginalized: as farmer and labor leader, as activist and activist lawyer, as teacher, as activist youth. There is no place here for lawyers and educators, doctors and president’s children, and military officers.

This is the rightful place of people and organizations that have proven themselves, outside Congress, and within it. And here are the ones I know, the ones who have the work they do on record, the ones who, even with their pork barrel cut-off by this government, have been able to serve nation and people.

Bayan Muna Partylist represents a broad organization of the working class and the poor; Anakpawis Partylist represents farmers; Gabriela Women’s Party is a broad alliance of women;  Kabataan Partylist represents the youth in the many issues of and in education, among others; Katribu demands representation for the indigenous peoples. And then there is ACT Teachers Partylist, #39 on your ballots.

Click here for incumbent partylist organizations and representatives in Congress, to read up on what they’ve done.

komentaryo

on rhetoric and presidential platforms

my chick-self writes for Female Network, and up today is my election to presidential platforms!

what is missing here? is the question.

kultura

in defense of (art) criticism!

via thepoc.net’s Metakritiko section.

I don’t know Angelo Suarez, Gelo, personally, but I appreciate his (virtual) presence in the way that I tend to love every other person who has the gall/temerity/balls man/woman/gay to speak his mind even when it’s unpopular. The thing is, there was nothing unpopular about Gelo’s review of Pablo Gallery’s Chabet, Tan, Ilarde exhibit.In fact, knowing the kind of consciousness Gelo brings to art, this was a pretty good review – good, being, he liked the exhibit – like, being, he didn’t dismiss the exhibit – didn’t dismiss, being, he actually wrote about it.

Which in these shores is something we should be thankful for, right? Here, where the conversations on art – any art – are praised when they are praise releases, where the critical bent is, i.e., the good review that speaks of the bad in art, is always deemed unproductive and useless. The goal kasi is to sell art.

This goal is what Gelo hits at with http://thepoc.net/metakritiko/metakritiko-features/4794-conceptualism-fellatio-a-the-admission-of-the-futility-of-resistance-as-a-form-of-resistance.html Conceptualism,fellatio, and the admission of futility of resistance as a form of resistance. On that level, the question for the spectator should become: do I agree with Gelo? My answer, as a spectator, is no. I agree with Antares, from whom the more intelligent comments on the Gelo’s article came (and who should really be writing art reviews, please please?). In light of capital, resistance isn’t necessarily futile, and to insiston futility is to place one’s critique very clearly on the side of capital and its contingent oppressions. Parang, ay walang nang resistance, so ‘wag na lang?

But what has become more obvious in the aftermath of Gelo’s article is that this isn’t even the question that’s being asked, and there is a refusal to even begin a discussion on the crucial things about contemporary Philippine art that Gelo raises.

the rest here!

komentaryo

Anong problema sa walang harapan?

Full of themselves, is what ABS-CBN seems to be, after the presidential and vice-presidential candidates cancelled on their tandem debates for Harapan 2010. In truth, if I were these candidates, I would’ve backed out too, in favor of a miting de avance or campaign sortie in a far-flung province or city. The point is simple: who watches TV, a debate of all things, and who will go out and listen to the music, watch the fireworks, see artistas on a stage?

What this points to, quite simplistically, are markets, is access, is social divisiveness.And the middle class illusion that everyone has equal access to technology.

After all, ABS-CBN’s disappointments is borne mostly of its celebration of its use of new technology that has people actively responding to the debates they have been able to mount so far.

But where I work, teachers who lost their television sets to Ondoy have yet to buy new ones – it is in fact, far down in their list of appliances to buy. Where I work, we also don’t have easy access to the internet. Where I work, a debate is the last thing that will spell the different between voting for Noynoy and voting for Gibo and voting for Villar. Where I work, what spells a difference in presence and promises.

And this is my basis for thinking that ABS-CBN is all hot air here – it cannot, will not, should not speak as if this is the loss of the greater public. There is nothing extraordinary about the debates they have come up with. It does generate interest, yes, and we do watch and make candidates’ mistakes and fab answers our status updates. But that doesn’t mean it does a lot. In fact it fails horribly at asking the right questions, or even talking at length about the more important issue that might actually solve poverty.

Instead, half the time, it’s all punchlines and laughter and sensational statements, the status quos that we live with. Harapan 2010 will not go in depth about globalization or imperialism, America’s presence or foreign ownership of land, agrarian reform or workers’ rights, because that would point a finger at the industry that it is part of, the company it is created within, ABS-CBN as cultural empire, the Lopezes as oligarchy.

If anything, Harapan 2010, while informative, yes, and interesting and fun for the social classes ready to laugh at and praise our candidates, is also about television ratings, and the social and corporate responsibility of a media organization such as ABS-CBN. That in itself is replete with meanings, and cannot be dismissed as simply about being in the service of the Filipino. Utang na loob.

kultura

Reconsidering Identity in the Aquilizan retrospective

a version of this was published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Arts and Books Section, March 15 2010.

I almost balked at the sight of the U.P. Vargas Museum from afar. I was there for the retrospective exhibit of Alfredo Juan and Isabel Aquilizan, but was unprepared for the fanfare of a book launch and a grand re-opening. Once inside the museum though, I realized I would’ve regretted not seeing this retrospective in the context of precisely this moment: when the University of the Philippines administration (with no less than the President and Chancellor present) celebrates the presence of, and a book on, a politician’s contributions to the University. In the midst of the heat (closed windows, bright lights, no air conditioning), and talks of how much the politician donated for the museum’s renovation, the Aquilizans’ works seemed to be in the most perfect space, my spectatorship in the most perfect moment.

Here, in the midst of a celebration obviously spent on, within state education that has come to disenfranchised poor students, the Aquilizans’ retrospective exhibit Stock became more powerful. The opening night of the whole museum, its anti-thesis; the exhibit, a response to the party itself.

Identity and the State U

Because while the Aquilizans’ installations talk about the usual migrant concerns of keeping memory and wanting to remember, finding identity and redefining it, these works also question precisely the materialism(s) of the world, our own found need to accumulate and consume in order to find our identities, and how we limit people to identities they might not want.

This dynamic between the material and the human, the things we hold in our hands and the identities we create, is what makes this exhibit more interesting in the context of the museum. The U.P. Vargas Museum is the University’s pride, and that night it was up for show: look at us, here is the art we have, we are the best there is, we are fine.

But as the Aquilizans’ works prove, we are farthest from being fine. There is nothing stable about the identities we keep, because it can only be forced into constantly changing, redefined by our loyalties and betrayals, and what it is we disregard. It’s everything and violent, everything and sad. (more…)