View from my roof yesterdayIt can be very, very difficult to get anything done when leaving the house involves wading.
July 28, 2008 By Leave a Comment
So, as promised I put up more photos from the SONA counter-rally. But I’m feeling thin on thoughts, or at least coherent ones.
A full-text of Arroyo’s speech can be found here. There’s some debate about whether or not she actually believes the rosy statistics she quotes. I’ll leave that to the psychoanalysts.
I’d love to see an in-depth analysis of which subjects she chooses to speak about in Tagalog, and which in English. She seems to confine the folksiest parts, about her great concern for various types of poor people to Tagalog, while using English to talk about policy.
As far as the protests, it’s hard to know what to say. Clearly, people are angry. But not angry enough to stand together. The rally was actually composed of two parts: an RA section and an RJ section, with a fence and a police line between them.
(For those unfamiliar with the byzantine twists and turns of the history of the Philippine left, I’d reccomend Alecks Pabico’s article “The Great Left Divide” . But to make a long story short, RA ‘s are those who ReAffirm Marxist-Leninist(Stalinist)-Maoist principles as defined by the Communist Party of the Philippines — including protracted people’s war –and RJs are those who ReJected them in favor of a wide variety of political stances ranging from orthodox Leninism, Trotskyism, Social Democracy, etc. This debate split the left in 1992, and to put it mildly, the two factions don’t get along with each other.)
So far as I could tell, there was no conflict between the two groups yesterday, and it was possible to move from one section to another, but there were two competing speakers on two competing stages, talking about the same issues but each with their own constellation of supporters and party flags and banners around them.
It can be very hard to see any way forward.
SONA
July 28, 2008 By Leave a Comment
While President Arroyo gave her annual State of the Nation Address, and estimated 13,000 protesters held a march and counter-rally, denouncing low wages, the risingcost of living, and denouncing Arroyo’s record on human rights and civil liberties.Additional images here, and more photos and thoughts tomorrow.
Economic crisis keeping kids out of school
July 21, 2008 By 2 Comments
The Philippine government just released its report on school attendance for 2006-2007, revealing that 17% of primary-school-aged children — which is to say 2.2 million of them — are not in school.
In 1999-2000, before current President Arroyo, the corresponding number was 3%.
Numbers have plummeted under Arroyo, as has real per-capita spending on education, making the Philippines one of the lowest spenders in the world.
Unfortunately, the numbers are likely to be even worse for the current year, as the economic situation worsens. Public education is not free here — families are responsible for school fees, uniforms and school supplies — and registration season corresponded with the height of the rice crisis, forcing many families to choose between feeding their children or putting them in school.
Here,* school teachers in Carupay, Zamboanga del Norte, explain the situation in their own school, and the difficulties facing even children whose families manage to pay the fees.
President Arroyo, putting her Phd in economics to good use, recently conceded that the rising costs of food and energy may be keeping kids out of school.
Her solution? Asking schools not to require uniforms.
Read this great (as usual) PCIJ piece for links to the report and more information…
*some technical issues in the middle due to software problems. I’ll correct them if I can solve the original issue…
Little Friends & Foes
July 19, 2008 By 1 Comment
This is my bathroom lizard in Mandaluyong. They seem to come standard issue in houses here, but I feel this is a particularly outstanding example of the species. Now that we’ve gotten accustomed to each other, we respectfully greet one another every morning when I go for my tabo-tabo.
On the other hand, I seem to expend an inordinate amount of time and energy trying to keep ants out of my sugar.
CDO
June 18, 2008 By 1 Comment
The “road” to Carupay. More on this later…I’m back in Cagayan de Oro, leaving for Cebu tomorrow evening. It was another eventful trip, but I’m too burnt out to write much more. So consider this the not-dismembered-in-motorbike-crash-or-kidnapped post, and I’ll fill in the details tomorrow.
Hero
June 13, 2008 By 2 Comments
Barangay Captain Bonifacio Cabasag, elected local official for Bgy. Miatan, Zamboanga del Norte.With gold prices skyrocketing, mining companies are eager to expand their operations into previously untapped reserves. One such area is Barangay Miatan. Canadian firm Toronto Ventures Incorporated sent engineers and company officials to survey the area and negotiate an agreement with the locals. The people of Miatan, Subanon tribal people, are eager for economic opportunities, but aware of the human rights abuses and environmental destruction TVI has been responsible elsewhere, the community knew this was not the kind of development they wanted.
Company officials then went to Cabasag, offering him a bribe worth five times his annual salary to push the paperwork. Cabasag refused. “It affects more than just me,” he said.
Working…
June 7, 2008 By Leave a Comment
At the NFA warehouse in Davao City, image courtesy of Jim Tan NuevoThere’s something more than a little ironic about sitting down to write about food prices, conflict and poverty when the cup of coffee I just bought would buy 4 kilos of NFA rice.
(Well, 3 now that they’ve just hiked up the price again)
It’s a contradiction I really have no answer to, other than to remind myself of how happy people are when someone cares enough about their lives to show up with a camera and a recorder.
Canibad
June 6, 2008 By Leave a Comment
-And we interrupt this public service announcement for a bit of shameless hedonism-
I spent last summer in the Philippines, but somehow (workaholism?) never managed to go swimming. Determined to rectify this error, I took a trip with friends to what they consider to be the best beach near Davao City — Canibad on Samal Island.
We were all geared up to take the jeep to the bus to the ferry to the motorbike to the beach — but just as we were leaving, a truck pulled out of the lot across the street. On a whim, we flagged them down, thinking we might catch a ride into the city instead of waiting for the bus. It turned out, though, that they were going exactly where we were, and were happy to give us a lift. (Two of the workers chivalrously gave up their seats in the cab to Chay and I, and everyone else rode on top of sacks of cement in the back.
It was a journey of about 3 hours, the last 2 of which were on a fairly astonishing unpaved, windy and steep road along the Samal coast. But well worth the trip — we had a pristine beach pretty much to ourselves, rented a picnic hut, made a fire, and slept under the stars.
All in all, it was a memorable experience, but what I think the return trip is what will stick with me for the longest. So far, my luck on this trip has been pretty amazing, but it wasn’t good enough to produce a truck ride home, so we had to go the normal route. “Normal” in the Philippines meaning four passengers on one motorbike — three clinging for dear life behind the driver, and one in the torpedo spot right up by the handlebars, cradled like a baby between the driver’s arms.
As we approached one particularly steep, unpaved descent, the driver stopped to make sure we were all still attached. As he let go of the brakes, Chay leaned from behind me and shouted “Third World rollercoaster!” Racing down that hill, through the forest in the bright, bright sunshine, I felt newfound sense of the fragility of my own body, and so, so happy to be alive.