Checks and Balances

Checks and Balances

They have reasons to be worried, if not alarmed, over the future leadership and governance of this country, which our children and grandchildren will soon inherit. So in a June 22 full-page national newspaper advertisement some concerned Filipinos declared: “We don’t need the proposed charter change.”

Their reasons: “We don’t need a Constitution that would take away our right to vote directly for the President, create a powerful Interim Parliament composed of incumbent politicians that decide whether the 2007 elections will be held or not, create a super-President with additional Prime Minister powers, open the door for those in power to stay on indefinitely, and weaken the Supreme Court as a check against martial law, abuse of power and violation of human rights.”

The signatories to the full-page advertisement include former Comelec chair Christian S. Monsod, businessman Raul T. Concepcion, former Senator Wigberto Tañada, UP Economics Prof. Solita Monsod, former DILG Secretary Rafael Alunan, and scores of others who include prominent church leaders such the Most Rev. Angel N. Lagdameo of the archdiocese of Jaro, Most Rev. Orlando Quevedo of Cotabato archdiocese, Archbishop Oscar Cruz of Lingayen, and many more.

According to the signatories, the current proposed reasons to change the Constitution “take away power from the people and hand it over to those who already have too much of it.” As it has been oft-repeated, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. So the signatories fear that the proposed reasons of the Charter change proponents would only further concentrate absolute power into the hands of those whose glasses are over-spilling with it as their piggy banks are getting fatter.

Monsod et. al. instead proposed that constitutional reforms are best done through a more transparent Constitutional Convention after the 2007 elections, “where any changes will not benefit those in power today.”

They also underlined the need for a “strong social reform program.” This program, they say, requires “a sharper focus and visible action on safety nets for the poor, especially in the areas of education, food security, health and housing; strict implementation of agrarian reform and environmental laws; a serious and sustained fight against graft and corruption; and increased representation in Congress and local governments for marginalized sectors.”

Under the backdrop of a discredited electoral system as a result of the “Hello Garci” fiasco, Monsod et. al. stressed the need for electoral reforms. They remind us that “a trustworthy electoral system is a fundamental building block of a democracy.” They say that the 2007 election, if credible, can serve as an indirect referendum on the term of the present administration, “so we can move on.”

And their battle-cry: “Ibalik natin ang tiwala sa ating mga institusyon, sa ating sarili, at sa ating demokrasya (Let us bring back trust in our institutions, in ourselves, and in our democracy).”

After the Marcoses were ousted in February 1986, many of us had the romantic notion that democracy and good governance would finally reign. But it turned out that it was not as simple as that. At least one institution -- a free press -- has been restored. But even the media institution has been under threat under the administrations that replaced Marcos’ martial law regime. The media is now seeing the worst thus far under Ms. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s administration when journalists are now being killed along with militant activists. Now the Philippines is said to be next to war-torn Iraq, in terms of the most dangerous place in the world to practice journalism.

Along with an independent and credible judiciary and an independent legislature, a free press is one of the important checks and balances of a real democracy. But how can journalists practice their democratic role when practicing their profession and vocation has become dangerous to their health?

If behind the proposed Charter change is “a creeping dictatorship” as some critics pointed, may God bless the Philippines. Under a dictatorship, we, in the press, can only harp on the true, the good and the beautiful but not on the bad and the ugly. Those who had experienced and survived hell under martial law, therefore, should have more reasons to join the chorus of other advocates of real democracy: NEVER AGAIN!

Back Issue (April 2005)

April Showers

Maurice Malanes

It has started drizzling. In some parts it actually rained. Amid the dust of summer, the showers of April signal the coming of the rains in May when we expect our meadows to be green again.

For us in rural farming communities, the showers of April and the rains in May signify hope and rebirth. The regular rains can enable us to prepare again the fields and nem-a (upland swidden) and sow our corn and peanut seeds and other grains and legumes and our betang or camote cuttings.

By August, we can already harvest what we have sown in May. By then, we have food on our table to keep us warm and strong as we wrestle with the storms and typhoons of August.

For us in the farming village where we have to live by the sweat of our brows, such cycle of the changing seasons has taught us early on in life how to prepare for the months ahead. The cycle of the changing seasons has thus tempered our spirits so we can adopt ourselves to changing situations.

And that’s the beauty of the seasons. The seasons, whether they are two or four, remind us that there’s a time for everything – a time to sow and reap, to rejoice and mourn, to die and to be born.

The seasons are the actual metaphors of our lives. That’s why the sages teach us to learn how to weather the storms of our lives. When we are lonely or when we face some trials, we are also taught not to despair because behind the stormy or cloudy skies is a smiling sun. For other people who experience the blues of winter, they always have spring to look forward to.

The seasons have also taught us that life is not 100 percent summer. And yes, life is not 100 percent picnic at Boracay or at Hundred Islands. The ants and bees know this. This is why ants store as much food and bees gather as much nectar during summer so they have something to sustain them during the rainy days.

For our officials, bureaucrats and technocrats, the seasons must be a good guide in governance. The dry season, which starts in December and ends in April, for example, is the best time to repair and build roads and school buildings and to unclog canals and drainage systems.

But government in this country apparently is not sensitive of the seasons in the same way that it is usually insensitive to the needs of citizens, whose taxes sustain the national coffers. Those who allocate budget for public works do so when the rains come. This makes repair works much more complicated and costlier. Contractors are happy for this, but not for us, the tax-paying citizens of this republic.

Although we are (to borrow the phrase of one commentator) a country of wonderful people, we are still run by an awful government. Yet, we like to believe that for starters our government can become as wonderful as the citizens of this Pearl of the Orient if those involved in governance learn at least to read the seasons. (15 April 2005, Cordillera Today)

Birds in the Neighborhood

Birds in the Neighborhood

Kekesyag, kuyotan, samote, solak, indukit, kalimbabanga, leblebdik… These are some of the Kankanaey names of birds already familiar to me when I was still a child growing up in Kibungan, Benguet in northern Philippines. And I’m happy that I still see these birds in the sub-village of Benin in Pinsao Proper Barangay of Baguio City where we moved in two years ago. In fact, some of these birds wake us up even before the break of day.

I also hear an owl (which we call kup in Kibungan) or two hooting at night or at early dawn. A migratory bird we call tala also appears from September to December, signaling the coming of another season. Some 300 meters from where we live where we also tapped our water source from a spring, I once saw an ot-ot or wild pigeon, which is now quite rare, if not under threat of extinction.

These birds continue to remind us of some remaining wildlife species in our neighborhood. And despite the bird-flu virus, I always take delight in listening to them as they cheerfully feast on some worms and caterpillars from the caliandra, alnus, pine, bal-lay, apiitan, dagad-ay and other planted and endemic trees within our environs.

When the fruits of the already existing backyard native guava tree ripen starting October, some big bats would also come at night to share in the harvest. An environmentalist friend says the presence of bats helps indicate some balance in an ecosystem because bats help propagate trees. Wherever they drop their wastes, these flying mammals are helping sow seeds, which grow to become full-fledged trees.

We are fortunate to have some trees in our small community. So as early as six years ago I tried to do my part by helping plant some fast-growing caliandra seedlings on the small lot we acquired there. These caliandra trees now mingle with other trees the families of the lot owner planted earlier. Because caliandra trees help fix nitrogen in the soil, the Benguet coffee seedlings and some fruit trees I interspersed with them are proving to be in good company with these ipil-ipil-like trees.

Also enjoying the friendship of the caliandra and alnus trees are my passion fruit plants, whose ripening fruits are ready for the picking any day now.

If where there’s smoke there’s fire, where there are trees there are birds. That’s obviously why there are no birds along Session Road. If there are, they would suffocate to death from the thick vehicular smoke that now engulfs Session Road and the rest of downtown Baguio.

And have you ever wondered why after a day in your downtown office or after hours of doing your rounds downtown, your head aches and your eyes feel strained and heavy? This always happens to me. But the headache and eye strain disappear once I go home and inhale a lot of fresh air. Obviously, no expert would need to tell you that the headache and eye stress were due to gas emissions and other foul air you absorb downtown.

So home is not a drag, but a pleasure haven and a place to rejuvenate one’s tired and stressed body if one happens to be where there are swaying trees and humming birds. With trees and birds as company at home, one doesn’t have to long for relaxation elsewhere, such as at the noisy big mall. A good book plus hot lemongrass and mint tea from the backyard are enough to help one contemplate and appreciate all the best things that life can offer.

Independence

Independence

A hundred eight years ago, Filipino revolutionaries finally rose up against Spain and won for the country its much long-awaited independence. But that independence was short-lived. The Americans came and after a mock Spanish-American War in Manila Bay, Spain sold the Philippines to the Americans for US$20 million dollars under a treaty negotiated in Paris.

Had the Americans not took over this archipelago, the Philippines could have been the first colonized country in Asia to become an independent republic in 1898. After almost 400 years under the Spanish friars and colonial officials, Filipinos could have begun reclaiming their identity and building an independent nation at the turn of the century. But that was not to be.

The Americans came at a time when Filipinos were still smarting from the hang-over of more than three centuries of Spanish subjugation. Under the Spaniards, we were treated as Indios or even heathens whom the colonizers had to “Christianize” and “civilize.”

But in the guise of Christianizing and civilizing us, the Spaniards actually were after three g’s that abounded in our lands – gold, ginger and garlic.

Rizal and others debunked the Spanish colonizers’ propaganda that we didn’t have a civilization. They asserted that even before the Spaniards came, we already had a civilization of our own and that our ancestors were already trading with our Asian neighbors.

But more than 300 years of Spanish subjugation was enough to condition in a negative way our psyche as a people, thus -- as a spiritual teacher pointed when she talked recently about the pains of colonization -- adversely affecting our ability to operate with self-respect.

Already battered by more than three centuries of Spanish colonization, the Filipino people were too vulnerable to withstand American colonization after that Manila Bay mock battle. As expected, some Filipinos resisted and defied America. But American colonial soldiers made the communities of those who resisted a howling wilderness, killing and maiming those who didn’t bow to Uncle Sam. And those whom America won over were molded into becoming little brown Americans through education.

The Americans brought an educational system that was supposed to train Filipinos to be able to govern themselves under an American-patterned democracy. Such educational system had also colonized our consciousness so much so that we became addicted to anything “Stateside” or American – from Levi’s to Hollywood movies and hamburgers. Such colonial mentality still runs deep and may take many lifetimes to reverse this.

For a brief period in World War II, Japan also occupied our archipelago, which it sought to annex as part of what it called “Asia’s Co-prosperity Sphere.”

After World War II, the Philippines practically was still part of America’s colony through various military bases, some of which became America’s launching pad and refueling stations during its war on Vietnam.

We, as a people, regained our national pride as Filipinos when the Philippine Senate in 1991 finally abrogated the RP-US military bases treaty. Mount Pinatubo in 1991 also erupted and the Americans had rushed to dismantle their bases and leave home.

A few years later, however, the Americans had a way of reclaiming the military bases through what was called the Visiting Forces Agreement, which, critics say, virtually made the whole country a military base. Under the agreement, American military vessels can dock in any sea port in the country. Also from time to time, American soldiers conduct their war games here and some soldiers would go astray to abuse our women.

A century and eight years after 12 June 1898, we still have a long way to go to be really independent and be totally free. But we are optimistic that someday, as the song goes, we shall overcome.

Shaking Hands With Pain

Shaking Hands with Pain

By Maurice Malanes

Throngs of people filled the University of the Philippines-Baguio auditorium late afternoon last June 1. Coming from all walks of life and ages, the people trooped to the UP-Baguio campus to listen to Denise Lawrence or Sister Denise, a traveling spiritual teacher of the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University.

The topic assigned to Sister Denise was “shaking hands with pain, anxiety and fear.” She says pain comes in many forms and each of us experiences any of these pains in one way or another. There’s the physical pain of a toothache or headache or some other diseases or ailment. There’s emotional pain, which comes after we are betrayed, deceived or abandoned.

We also experience financial pain when we are heavily indebted and so it becomes a burden for us trying as much as we can to pay not only the principal but also the interests of a loan. So we try to get three jobs just so we can pay off our loans. But we are not super-beings so in getting three jobs we overstretch ourselves and end up not performing well as we become exhausted.

Although Sister Denise did not cite it, we might as well add the multi-billion foreign debts Third World countries like the Philippines have to pay to the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. We, ordinary citizens, pay taxes and a bulk of our taxes is used to service just the interests of our foreign debts. Already burdened with taxes, we feel bigger pain when we eventually learn that our country’s multi-billion loans ended up in the pockets and secret bank accounts of some top officials.

A deeper pain, says Sister Denise, is philosophical pain. This happens, for example, when we couldn’t get answers as to why bad people rule the world and the good ones are sidetracked. So when bad people rule and prevail over the world, we tend to lose our hope and drop out from engaging with the world. Also as a result, our sense of right and wrong or our ethics gets blurred and we may end up joining the pack of bad people, which is more tragic and painful as we note how the world seems to be losing all the good people.

There are also the pains brought about by colonization, be it political or religious or a mix of both. As a result of colonization, for example, colonized people tend to lose their ability to operate with self-respect. Why? Colonizers, who had projected themselves as superior, had regarded the colonized as less inferior subjects to be subjugated and exploited, if not abused, or “heathens” to be “civilized” and “Christianized.” Suffering from such historical trauma, we Filipinos, for example, until now seem unable to get our acts together to efficiently and effectively govern our blessed country.

And there are the more damaging and more painful effects of war. Wars become damaging to human beings because under a war situation something illegal and abnormal becomes “normal.” So killing, maiming, rape and other forms of indignities become seemingly normal in a situation of war. All these leave deep psychological trauma, particularly for those who become orphans and widows.

To justify wars, both warring factions have to maintain some kind of propaganda that some people deserve to be killed because they are “pigs,” “crocodiles” or some other animal labels. We agree with Sister Denise that wars, be it the old world wars or the current “war against terror,” need some propaganda by both warring parties to justify all the killings. Governments would regard their perceived enemies as not only insurgents, subversives or rebels, but “enemies of democracy and the free world” or worse, “terrorists.” Those on other side of the fence also have their own labels to justify their wars.

But life is sacred. Human life, says Sister Denise, is a gift so not any of us has the right to extinguish it. She teaches that human life is a gift because it is only humans who have a sense of morality and ethics and who have thoughts on God. So to be human, she says, is to deeply regard another person as a spiritual being, and not an object to consume or exploit or some animal to slaughter. She says that each human being is in essence an immortal soul, who is by nature peaceful, loving and blissful.

As we have to deal with all our pains and traumas through some vital processes such as dialogue, we also have to finally realize that we are all spiritual beings or souls who are part and parcel of the Supreme Being, says Sister Denise. It is only through such realization that we begin to value and respect not only our own self-worth but also the self-worth of others.

That many trooped to the UP-Baguio campus to listen to Sister Denise apparently shows that many hunger for spiritual food amid the various levels and forms of pain we all experience in this mundane world.