Pag-alala sa EDSA People Power, Ikatlong Dekada

Ika- 25 ng Pebrero, 1986, tatlong dekada na ang nakararaan nang magtipon-tipon ang maraming Pilipino sa Epifaño de los Santos Avenue (EDSA) upang patalsikin ang noo’y naghaharing diktador, pangulong Ferdinand Marcos na nakilala bilang EDSA People Power Revolution. Sa pangyayaring ito, nangibabaw ang kulay dilaw sa bawat lansangan ng kapuluang nagkakaisa upang wakasan ang diktadoryang naghasik ng karahasan, pangaabuso, at paglalapastangan lalo na sa mga taong lumalaban sa kanyang pamunuan.

Photo by www.inquirer.net

 Ang mga bagay na ito ang ating parating nariring sa bawat telebisyon at radio tuwing sasapit ang anibersaryo ng EDSA People Power. Sa detalyeng ito ang patuloy na tumatatak sa isip ng sambayanang Pilipino lalo na sa mga bagong henerasyon. May mga bagay na hindi nabibigyang pansin tulad ng “ano nga ba ang mga layunin ng pag-aalsa?” Marami ang magsasabi, “para patalsikin sa pwesto si Marcos”. Ngunit, ito nga lang ba ang tunay na hangarin ng rebolusyon o mas may malalim pa itong mga hangarin?

Sa mga nag-aaral ng kasaysayan, kasama sa mga hangarin ng rebolusyon ay mapaalis ang mga “TRAPO” (traditional politicians) sa pwesto, mapaunlad ang ekonomiya ng bansa, maghari muli ang demokrasya, at matigil ang kaguluhan sa bansa. Ang EDSA People Power ay hindi lamang nangyari para patalsikin ang diktador ng bansa, kundi upang baguhin mismo ang bansa.

Hindi natin maikakaila na tunay ngang nabalot ng kaguluhan ang bayan natin nang pamasailalim tayo sa Batas Militar nang siyam na taon sa pamumuno ni dating Pangulong Marcos. Naghatid ito ng takot sa bawat isa, at libo-libong tao ang nakulong, naparusahan at napatay nang walang kongkretong dahilan. Hindi ito maitatanggi, dahil ito ang tunay na nangyari.

Tatlong dekada na ang nakalilipas, balikan natin ang mga pangako ng rebolusyon, ilan nga ba rito ang naisakatuparan? Ikaw na ang bahalang sumagot.

Remoralizing the Goverment

The graft or corruption didn’t exist before. Public officers are expected to get money and enrich their wealth from the taxes of the people and do not give the needs of his followers. It was not illegal. There was no graft in the conventional society that was ruled by customs. We can review our history that there are no public officers that was put into jail because he uses the money of the people for their personal stuffs. But it is always immoral.

In modern times, way back at the start of heating of the fire of nationalism, democracy and other ideology, morality took over legality. Most immoral acts (depends on the culture) was illegalized. That was the time when graft became illegal.

In the Philippines, many issues regarding with the dishonesty of the public official to their fellowmen can be read and hear in the public media. Series of exposé has been published in the news papers and been aired on TV and radio. One of the hit news about this is the cases of our former presidents namely, the late Ferdinand Marcos, Erap Estrada, and Congw. Glora Aroyo. Though Erap case is different, I may say that it also degrades the dignity of us, Filipino as a Nation. Marcos and Aroyo, both are excellent presidents of our country tried to rebuild our nation. They both have brilliant programs that supposedly   lift our state from the ashes of poverty, but it all went wrong. Funds that were lend from the other countries and other international funding organizations were misused and suspiciously lost. Overpricing of materials and ghost projects have been reported and exposed to the people. Though these presidents somehow does not involved in such issues, the mere fact that it happens under their administration, as the head of state, it reflects how they are serving the country.

Due to this issue, the government is very serious fighting this kind of corruption in all public offices. Laws was passed the “REPUBLIC ACT No. 3019 also known as ANTI-GRAFT AND CORRUPT PRACTICES ACT of 1960”  that will punish and imprison all public officials that will commit such action. Two former presidents were put in jail after the court proved that they’ve stolen money from the government’s funds.

According to the report of ABS-CBNnews.com in 2009, The Philippines ranked 139th among 180 countries included in the index, up from its previous 141st ranking in 2008. The nation scored 2.4 in the TI index, compared to 2.3 in 2008, which ranked it equal to Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Baltic state of Belarus.

The current administration is very serious in cleansing the government and uplifting the country’s dignity that is almost 10 feet off the ground due to corruption. People became conscious to the action of their leaders, and the people themselves are the one who do the report whenever they saw or know any anomalies in the government.

It is the time for us to reshape our future. We should change ourselves for the betterment of the succeeding generation.

Understanding Poverty

by B.P. Familara

[A family living under the bridge of CAVITEX]

Poverty is an economic status of being poor. There are many factors why poverty exists. According to C. Wright Mills, an American sociologist, poverty has two main reasons why it exists these are the personal troubles and public issues. Personal troubles are the issues of every individual why they can’t find a job. Some are not qualified to the job they’re applying in, some are over qualified to have that job, but most often it is about the attitude of the person applying a job or their attitude towards work. For example, if the town has population of 200 and 180 of it is employed and only 20 are not. It is an issue that the government cannot do about because there are a lot of opportunities but these 20 unemployed might having a hard time in finding a job. In contrast to this, if 180 are unemployed and only 20 are employed this is what we called Public issue. This is a manifestation that the social structure of a society has been collapsed. There are many work forces but here are less job opportunities combined with some personal troubles.

Poverty in our country is a product of the two realities, the economic underdevelopment and the reality of inequality. The unequal distribution of wealth in our country affects great to the development of our economy. The rich becomes richer while the poor becomes poorer. The amount of assets that our economy produces is not enough to follow the level of sophistication of the technology that is being used by the mainstream. The result of this is that our locally made product cannot compete to the world market due to the durability and price differences, imported good often cheaper than homegrown / locally produced goods, that often resulting to bankruptcy of local businesses.

After world war two, Philippines are next to Japan in terms of economic development but the faith of our country is not that good as Japan.  The question lies on my mind how come we did not develop like Japan? Somehow, it lies on foreign relationship with the US. American put their Military bases that hindered us to explore our full potential. Our preferential agreement in the US market for Philippine sugar, for example, shielded the favored Filipino farmers from urgency of competition and modernization. Comparing the value of Peso to American dollars usually makes us blind to the real situation and to think an illusion of prosperity, prosperity that in reality we can’t even feel. We have not paid attention in the modernization of our agriculture industry and we did not even build more modern infrastructure. Our public education system before was farther good than the private educational institutions. However, we let it to be deteriorated. Nowadays, we choose to educate our children in private schools rather than in the public, thinking that they will be trained well in on that institution.

On the time of the presidency of Marcos, problems during his governance took over his efforts in economic development. He loaned billions of peso for the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan, but the money was misused and the world economy entered into recession that resulted to our government cannot pay it. His modernization project also failed because it is untenable. Despite the fact that late President Marcos did wrong, we should honor him for his efforts to rebuild and develop our country, though it was not successful.

Our bad experiences during Marcos about modernization make us blind for the reality that we need a development. We became paranoid, our democratic rights and freedom. During the presidency of the first lady president, Cory Aquino, series of coups‘d’état hindered our economic development and frightens foreign investors to invest to our country.   This coup makes our economy frost while our population is growing fast. Thus, it results to social imbalance and the collapsed of our social structure.

The dilemma nowadays is that the growing economy cannot actually feel by the poor, but only by the few elites that actually controls it. Yes, after the first decade of the 21th century, and according to the news reports, our economy have grown and we are now 3^rd next to Thailand and China which is the 1^st in Asia’s fast growing economy.

The solution to those problem is to the government should provide and meet the basic needs of our society. By rebuilding social trust, the fight for corruption is one of the best example, and re-establishing the social structure of opportunities. Re-establishing it absolutely will produce more job opportunities, but it is still depending on the cooperation and participation of the people to this move.

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This article is based on the article published by the Philippine Daily Inquirer,on July 15, 2000 with the same title