Make it look easy, Indonesia

Philippine Daily Inquirer

Commentary

By Denis Murphy

INDONESIA, the Philippines’ sister republic to the south, has solved one of the great cultural-political dilemmas of modern times: It has shown that Islam and democracy are compatible. Most talk on this matter focuses on the West and the Middle East and is very negative about the chances of the two cultures living in peace with each other. Just recently, for example, the ouster of President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was seen by some writers as “the death of political Islam.” Indonesia has solved the problem and made it look easy. There was none of the riots, battles, or furious demonstrations we have seen elsewhere.

Wardah Hafidz, an Indonesian woman who has led national urban poor movements for years, told us: “It will not be Islam’s fault if it and democracy part ways. It will be the fault of the people’s culture and history.” Wardah views Islam from the point of view of the very poor, from which point of view both poor Muslims in Indonesia and poor Catholics in the Philippines see their God as the source of all mercy and loving care. They don’t see why that Holy God of theirs would be interested in politics.

We should remember that Indonesia is the third largest democratic country in the world, with 200 million people. Some 86 percent of them are Muslim, so it is the largest Muslim country in the world. It is a democratic and Muslim giant, so what happens there has significance for both democracy and Islam.

We were still interested in seeing how Islam was lived out in ordinary life among the people, so we went last May 30 to a political rally of presidential candidate Joko Widodo in Surabaya. Except for the language, it was like any political rally in Manila, Davao or Cebu. The grounds were packed with young and old, mostly poor people, but many well-off people as well, about 12,000-15,000 all together.

Widodo spoke softly, as if he were in a conversation with the crowd; he told jokes that had the people laughing. It took the people a second or two to understand the meaning of his jokes, it seemed to me, and then they laughed as though they saw then how the funny story could make a political point. He talked very briefly and then was whisked through the people, who pushed in to see and touch him.

It was his third stop of the day that began at dawn 1,000 kilometers away in Jakarta. He would fly to Bali for the final stop. When I asked myself what person he called to mind, I thought of Abraham Lincoln—that is, his manner and plain dress spoke of Lincoln. We’ll have to wait to see what he does for his country, should he be elected.

One night we visited a community along the Surabaya River. The government had allowed the families to stay near the river if they would chop three meters off their houses and build a road instead. They did that with a great deal of suffering, but now they have permanent homes along a lovely waterway. Late in the evening the young girls and women danced—this was the modern, naughty, total-effort dancing we see in Manila. Some wore the veil (hibab). I watched an old woman near me in full Muslim dress. Her face wasn’t covered in the way we often see in other Muslim countries. She was beaming like she would burst as she imitated the young women as best she could. Faster went the music, and she looked for someone to bump hips with. Alas, I was the only one near her. She wasn’t ready for that meeting with the secular world.

At a seminar I asked a young Muslim girl wearing the veil what the Koran had to say about the poor and helping the poor. Her name was Habi (Love). She told me: “Muslims are told we should be with the poor people. It is a demand to live in peace and modesty and to love and care for the poor people in need.”

Muslims seem just as much at home in the politics and democratic and secular world of Indonesia as Christians are in Manila.

Indonesians speak softly, even when they are angry, but that doesn’t mean they are all gentle people. There is a movement now in Indonesia urging people not to forget the past, and to remember the estimated one million people—communists, communist sympathizers, people simply interested in justice and a better life, and personal enemies—who were slaughtered by the army of General Suharto in the mid-1960s as he climbed to power.

Sri Wiyanti Eddyono, formerly of the National Commission on Women and a longtime pro bono lawyer for urban poor causes, told me that the people are also asked to remember the plunder of the Suharto years and the human rights atrocities in East Timor and Aceh, and to watch out that the friends and relatives of Suharto don’t rise again to power.

We, too, should not forget. The Philippines has had just as many sorrows and villains as Indonesia.

The people I met are well aware of the limitations of their democracy, just as people here are aware of this country’s weaknesses. They are especially worried about the growing income gap between the rich and the poor, and the strains it puts on democracy, and the growing power of foreign investors and multilateral lending institutions.

Most of all, the people we met wanted their leaders to be close to and listen to the people, and include the opinions of the people in their decision-making.

Leaders of the Philippine government also need to listen more carefully before they decide what to do with the poor. It is frightening in a way to find the government deciding how and where the poor in the areas devastated by “Yolanda” will live, when there has been almost zero consultation with them on housing matters, according to a recent Oxfam survey. Only 7 percent of the people interviewed in the study had been consulted in any way on the question of housing.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates (urbanpoorassociates@gmail.com).

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Draw Good from Evil

Commentary

By Denis Murphy

One good outcome from the pork barrel scandal—maybe the only good outcome—is that in the future no government official will be able to tell poor people: “We don’t have money for what you want.” We now know there is money, and it’s up to the citizens and perhaps especially the poor to seek what is justly due them.

Janet Napoles is accused of having gained P5-6 billion in real estate. In addition, she most likely has money in bonds, trusts, cars, jewels, etc., and she is only one of a few hundred individuals who grew rich in the pork barrel scam. What is the total loot? Is it P100 billion? Or P500 billion? Then there is the Malampaya Fund and other funds we may hear about in time. Certainly there is money enough for hungry, jobless, sickly, homeless people and for young people who want to go to college as their way to escape poverty, or for people who want to start a small business, or buy a small piece of art to brighten a poor home.

Some urban poor people seek a way by which they can continue to get the benefits they once received from the pork barrel, such as help in times of sickness and death, but now without the corruption.

While the poor and others search for such a good solution, there are steps that can be taken immediately to lessen people’s suffering, now that we know there is adequate money. An example of such a step can be the widening of PhilHealth benefits to include all the medical needs of poor and near-poor families, and at a cost the poor can afford. We can make PhilHealth our universal-healthcare program.

Medicines and laboratory tests and other out-of-hospital expenses can be added to the benefits that people receive. Enrolling fees can be reduced, so all families can afford the program. A young man friend of ours died in Baseco because his family didn’t have money for a doctor at the Philippine General Hospital, and he was put instead on the charity waiting list at No. 176. He died before his turn came. The operation by the doctor who would be paid could have been done in a matter of days. The family also lacked money for the medicines and tests that the operation would require.

In the Covenant with the Urban Poor signed by President Aquino on March 6, 2010, there are sections on improving conditions in the slums, including legal electricity and water connections, more adequate drainage, toilets, garbage removal, and good policing.

Can officials chosen by the President negotiate with Meralco, Maynilad and Manila Water to improve the supply of light and water in all slum areas? Such an improvement—namely, legalizing the connections—can save families P1,000 a month on average. Can the government enter into a public-private partnership contract with a construction company or two for adequate drainage and environmental risk reduction measures? There can also be provisions for toilets and waste disposal. Much of this elementary construction work can be done by the people themselves if they had the funds needed.

Perhaps the most significant contribution that society can help provide our urban poor brothers and sisters is good policing. Drugs are the great problem. People have told me that “almost every day someone in our area is shot dead.” The bodies are left untouched on the ground for hours to make sure everyone has learned it isn’t wise to disagree with the drug bosses. The use of drugs constantly grows. For talented young men the drug business is the best paying and most prestigious work, and often the only work, available.

Democracy and human vitality die when drugs are powerful, and we may end up like the great cities in Brazil—hostages to the pushers and their bosses. The wider society must help, but the poor must demand change. It won’t come sailing into Manila Bay at sunset.

What should our attitude be to the politicians who have betrayed their solemn oaths and the people they are supposed to represent?

Hatred is understandable, but it is not enough. We must seek repentance on the part of the guilty, as well as fitting punishment. Luke’s Gospel has an example of these twin needs. As Jesus is walking on the streets of Jericho, he realizes that the despised tax official Zacchaeus is in the branches of the tree above him. Jesus says: “Zacchaeus, come down quickly for today I must stay in your house.” Zacchaeus came down and, realizing he was forgiven, said: “Behold, half of my possessions I have given to the poor and if I have extorted anything from anyone, I shall repay it four times over.” (Luke 19:1-10). Zacchaeus was as corrupt as any of our pork barrel villains, and in addition he was a traitor to his people because he served the Roman occupation forces.

If the guilty ask forgiveness from God and the people and repay what they have stolen, as Zacchaeus did, maybe like the tax collector they can find forgiveness. Otherwise, there is prison.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates (urbanpoorassociates@ymail.com).

Seeking Equality

Commentary
By Denis Murphy

Philippine Daily Inquirer
8:19 pm
Thursday, November 8th, 2012   TO TALK of the poor in the United States is apparently bad politics. During the past presidential campaign, neither President Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney used the word “poor.” The reason seems to be that Americans were taught by former President Ronald Reagan and others that there is a good chance poor people who receive welfare payments, including widows and single mothers, may be swindlers. The suspicion spreads from welfare recipients to cover all poor people. Reagan talked of a so-called “Welfare Queen” who lived in Detroit—if I remember correctly—and had amassed cars, houses and jewelry as a welfare recipient. He never produced the woman.

American politicians talk now of the “middle class.” Obama is described by his own people as “the defender of the middle class.” As a result, I believe, his campaign speeches lacked fire and integrity, because he didn’t talk of the poor and suffering Americans he knows, including a great number of his fellow Afro-American people. It’s hard to feel passionate when you talk of the poor as “those who wish to enter the middle class,” which he did in the first debate. The historical weight of the poor people and their suffering, their central role in Scripture and their struggles to have a better life all vanish.

Romney, for his part, appeared to have lost interest in the economically lower 47 percent of Americans. This is a long way from the Democratic Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson and Republican President Richard M. Nixon, who all backed the “war on poverty” of the 1960s-1970s. The United States is moving away from traditions of fair play and compassion.

Another word no longer heard in American political debates is “inequality.” The Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011 focused the nation’s attention on the great and growing gap between the incomes of the top 1 percent of the working population and the remaining 99 percent. Data on this gap are still coming in: The Los Angeles Times reported recently (Sept. 12) that the present halting recovery in the United States “pushed to a new high the income gap between the country’s richest and poorest citizens.” For a time Obama spoke of this gap and called for fairness, but he soon got off that subject when his political foes pounced on him, accusing him of “class warfare” and being “a socialist.” Observers from other countries may wonder how a democracy like the United States can have a serious election campaign without talking about inequality of income and the inequality of political power to which it invariably leads. On the just concluded US election campaign, Al Jazeera News reported that the top 1 percent of the United States’ richest persons donate more to the presidential campaigns than the 150 million poorest people. What happens to democracy?

All Filipino politicians talk of the poor here, but I don’t believe any major political figure has talked of inequality in income between the richest and poorest and of narrowing the gap, though the rate of inequality of income measured by the Gini Curve is as great here as in the United States. China is now as bad as the United States in this matter. The same question must be asked here: “Can we have serious political discussion in the Philippines if people do not examine income inequality and work for greater equality and fairness?”

Some of my friends have told me that such a discussion will eventually be needed, but for the present it may be wiser to stick with a very simple work plan for the economy, such as President Aquino’s anticorruption strategy, at least until the economy gets its legs under it in a few years. But the trouble with this caution is that the economic pie grows more unequal as it increases in size.

What to do? Perhaps we can begin with one or two dramatic gestures, actions or resolutions that teach the value of moving toward greater equality and actually do some concrete good for the poor.

A visitor from Brazil told us recently that that country’s former president, “Lula” da Silva, once ordered that for every sum of money given for infrastructure, another amount equal to 2 percent of that infrastructure money be given to help the poor. It doesn’t sound like very much—only 2 percent—but in reality 2 percent of the country’s infrastructure funds would be a great deal of money and would do wonderful things for the poor. Such a practice teaches people that the poor need and deserve more than bare survival. It is compassionate giving. It is on top of money already budgeted for the poor. Maybe President Aquino can do something similar here. It would teach the values needed for democracy and narrow the income gap.

Great amounts of money will be spent on flood control infrastructure from now to 2035 under the government’s new flood control project. Can the President order that an amount equivalent to 2 percent of that figure be given to the poor? This 2 percent will be in addition to the money already allotted to them for resettlement. It can be used to improve schools and medical services for all poor people, create public work programs, enhance poor people’s diets, etc. The President can describe it as a small step toward a more just and fair Philippines. A small step for the President, a great step for all poor men, women and children, and for the country.

Can he also order that labor-intensive methods of construction be used? The International Labor Organization claims that the number of people employed will increase by 25 percent if we do so.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates [urbanpoorassociates@ymail.com].

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Imitating Jesse Robredo

Commentary
By: Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer
10:03 pm | Sunday, August 26th, 2012


The praise showered on Jesse Robredo by people from all levels of Philippine society should be a high-volume wake-up call for our political elite. They should be asking, “If I die, will anyone cry for me, as thousands did for Jesse? Will I be sincerely mourned? Will people stand a long time in the rain to get a chance to view my body?” They may very well answer, “Probably not. My family will mourn and a few close friends, but the ordinary people won’t mourn. What have I ever done for them? Why should they mourn?”

We hope the love shown for Jesse in his death will awaken them to the great chance God has given them to serve His people, especially the poor. It’s not only politicians who should examine their lives, of course. We all must do so. Socrates told us, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

May we suggest some matters that our political leaders can look into should they decide to be more like our late interior and local government secretary?

Please look on the urban poor with the more caring eyes of someone like Jesse Robredo. He found friendship there and people he admired.

Please look at the immediate project Jesse was engaged in with the poor. Initially, it concerns in-city, on-site housing for approximately 5,000 poor families on Manila estero, including the Estero de San Miguel, that runs by Malacañang just a stone’s throw away. Other houses are to be built in Quezon City for families living in Doña Imelda and Gulod. This housing is new. The usual relocation move was to ship families to distant places, such as Calauan 100 kilometers away. Such relocation fractures families and limits children’s education.

Jesse was willing to allow new approaches to housing the poor, which are also recommended by housing experts, including Felino “Jun” Palafox and Dean Gloria Teodoro and Albert Zambrano of the Mapua Institute of Technology School of Architecture. Mayors and government housing agencies have opposed the new approaches because they shatter long-standing arrangements.

As I watched 10 young girls from Estero de San Miguel sing in Malacañang in honor of Jesse, I thought, these young children are as naturally gifted as any other children, but they are from poor families and live in slums, and will never realize their potential. They smile shyly now and cry as they sing “Hero.” What they and the children of our poor farmers, fishermen, tribal people and workers need is a massive shift of resources from some projects the country now supports to the welfare of the poor and near-poor, or at least 50 percent of our people.

Why will we spend approximately P30 billion to build an elevated highway connecting NLEx and SLEx, so people can get from a Clark Field-Subic Bay airport to Makati in less time than it takes now? When such an amount of money will go a long way to meet our school construction needs, provide books for all, and reward good teachers?

Why are we giving 40-80 hectares of land in the reclaimed areas off Parañaque and Pasay to casino gambling? Do we fully realize the social and political dangers of inviting into the country a vast increase in casino gambling? “A bad tree cannot give good fruit.” Instead of casinos, can’t we give 30 or so hectares of the land to our poor?

We ask our political leaders and our business and religious leaders to visit the urban poor areas and get to know the poor as real persons, like Jesse Robredo did. It doesn’t mean we will not see the petty thieves, drunks and cruel people who share the poor areas with the good men and women. We will also see that the poor are often their own worst enemies. They vote for unreliable politicians, for example. Find what is valuable among the poor and why Jesus has anchored our salvation to the help we offer the homeless, hungry, sick and thirsty poor (Mt: 25).

Lastly, Jesse believed that a strong national democracy needs a strong, democratic base among the poor. He would not work for a more prosperous nation without working to bring the poor along as co-beneficiaries with the well-off. If we want democracy, we must work for equality.



Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates (urbanpoorassociates@ymail.com).

Finding Andres Bonifacio

Commentary
By: Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer


I was invited recently to a meeting of the Center for Patriotic Initiatives where the topic for discussion was: “Two Years After Arroyo: Prospects and Challenges to the Patriotic Forces.” Among the invited speakers were Francisco Nemenzo, former president of the University of the Philippines; political analyst Ramon Casiple; and former Army Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim, now deputy commissioner of the Bureau of Customs. I was deeply flattered to be invited with such men. I wondered, of course, if a mistake had been made in inviting me.

I couldn’t go in the end because I hurt my hip, but I knew what I would have said. I would have talked of the “meeting” that took place late last year between the urban poor and Andres Bonifacio. That meeting capped, in a real if limited way, the development of urban poor leaders, so that they and others like them are a challenge today to the patriotic forces. The urban poor and Bonifacio met like long lost relatives.

That meeting was arranged by Professor Charleston “Xiao” Chua of Dela Salle University. We met Xiao by chance while he was giving a lecture on the Tejeros Convention in Ternate, Cavite. He brought the past to life, as he talked of Bonifacio’s last days. He took his students to the actual historical sites of the events. And they saw the cells where Bonifacio was kept, and heard stories of his last days from the local people who had heard them from their ancestors. My wife and I, for example, heard the school principal in Maragondon point out the acacia tree where, her parents told her, Bonifacio would often urinate on his way in or out of his cell in the convento there.

We arranged for Xiao to lead a visit of the poor people we work with through the towns of Kawit, Ternate, Tanza, Naic and Maragondon, and finally to the trail that leads up into the mountains where Bonifacio and his brother Procopio were killed by Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo’s men. They sang patriotic songs there in the late afternoon. The poor, most of whom are from Tondo and neighboring areas, were captivated by the life and beliefs of Bonifacio. They identified with him.

They learned that Bonifacio was far more than the warrior with a bolo, as Jose Rizal was much more of a warrior than the peaceful non-violent leader portrayed in our textbooks. They learned Bonifacio had a total plan for the reform of life in the Philippines. They identified with Bonifacio because he, too, was poor and, like many of them, had to work to raise younger brothers and sisters. They admired how he struggled to find a place for himself in society. Bonifacio preached comradeship, brotherhood (and sisterhood), kindness and charity to one another as well as the need to fight for one’s rights. The poor found themselves very comfortable with Bonifacio’s emphasis on care for others and with his vision of the Philippines. They especially enjoyed his understanding of freedom which is kaginhawaan, which seems very similar to the “peace” spoken of in John’s Gospel (Jn. 20:19-23).

The poor we work with had undergone two long learning seasons in their lives before they “met” Bonifacio. The first season was community organization. It was spent struggling with government and the powerful for land, housing, basic services, better education, job opportunities and respect. Not so different from the Bonifacio’s patriotic struggle. The second “season” was their political work during the 2010 election where they chose their candidate at meetings of 300 leaders, and then acted as regular party workers, canvassing voters, setting up offices, keeping in contact, witnessing the counting, and finally celebrating victory and bemoaning defeat. They outgrew the political fragmentation of the poor that had allowed venal politicians to grab their votes in exchange for little food, little money and airy promises.

In the years 2005-2008 they thought of having their own political party which they called Poor People’s Party. Its vision:

•A pro-poor agenda: a party working on the basic issues of all poor in the cities and in provinces; on the issues of industrial laborers, farm workers, fisherfolk, peasants and small farmers, informal sectors, youth, the aged, tribal people, women, differently disabled persons and the like;

• National in scope: a party fielding candidates in barangay and local government elections, and in the years to come in provincial and national elections;

• Dedicated to the people’s cause and to the equality of all: a party whose leaders are knowledgeable about their given tasks and duties; hot-headed but strong-willed; and neither corrupt nor corruptible;

• Strongly anchored on the social teachings of the Catholic, Protestant and Muslim faiths.
Even before the poor met Bonifacio they shared, it seems, his manner of thinking about reform.
In the two periods, the poor learned how to analyze their situation to find what was truly good for them and what was the common good; to make strategy and tactics; and finally to have the courage to act in a mass-based, democratic and nonviolent manner, including in electoral politics. Add the inspiration of Bonifacio and you have a people ready for reform.

The urban poor are the challenge today to the patriotic forces. The poor desire reform more than any other sectors of the population because they have so little of power and wealth now. Many have the experience and capability to work for reform.

I would have ended my remarks at that meeting by quoting the words of Jesus: “The harvest is great, but the laborers are few. Pray the Lord of the harvest to send more workers into His fields.” (Lk. 10:02)

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates.

Choosing someone for canonization

Commentary By: Denis Murphy Philippine Daily Inquirer 9:03 pm | Tuesday, September 20th, 2011 Most often we don’t know why the Church chooses one holy person for canonization and not another. We don’t know why Pope John Paul II was beatified and not Pope John XXIII whom all the world loved or the wise and humble Paul VI. Most people would probably say anyone of the three could have been chosen. Choices are made for strategic and political (Church politics) reasons, in addition to heroic personal sanctity. There are many people today living truly saintly lives, but only a handful from each generation are set on the road to sainthood. To be canonized a person must have personal sanctity and fit in with the Church’s strategies and priorities for evangelization. The person must be seen as relevant to the problems of the people of the day. To appreciate how this process works let us attempt to choose someone for canonization. But first, it should be clear we are not talking about a person’s face-to-face relationship with God. This relationship at its highest is described in Deuteronomy as being God’s “intimate friend.” We are talking, instead, about the person’s public work in our society. We are talking of a lay person, because for the Church this is the age of the laity. This current policy is due not only to the dwindling numbers of priests, but to the demands of the age that were apparent even before the great outflow of priests in the 1960s-1980s. Our candidate will be a man, not a woman. I apologize to our women, but they are still problematic for many Churchmen. The man chosen will symbolize the laity’s mission to transform the world. He will show in his life how lay people can, in the eyes of the Church, transform the world’s politics, economics, science, practice of justice, educational systems and the other institutions that govern us. The person is not under the authority of the Church, but he recognizes the need for the help of the historical wisdom of the Church to enrich and purify the institutions of the world. He is open to the Gospel, especially to its concerns for the poor, women and the downtrodden. He will not be seen as someone worried about internal Church matters, but rather one who is totally concerned with the transformation of society. Where in Philippine society is such a man? If pushed to respond many might point to Nandy Pacheco. Remember we are not choosing here the man we think is best suited for sainthood, but rather the one we think the Church might choose as an example of the lay people it seeks for its work in the world. The Church might select Nandy because of his work on the Gunless Society and Ang Kapatiran Political Party. The Social Teaching of the Church is the foundation of Ang Kapatiran’s platform. The party was publicly supported by some bishops, though Nandy was disappointed that more bishops didn’t do so. The party didn’t do well in the last presidential election, but Nandy is not giving up. The Church doesn’t necessarily look for winners in society. It has in fact a fondness for losers. Ang Kapatiran’s relatively poor showing in the election may reflect the Church’s loss of esteem among ordinary people in recent years due to its perceived over-closeness to former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the sex scandals around the world and the Church’s absence from the main justice struggles. It hasn’t been seen lately as a crusading force in society. Individual bishops and dioceses have been so seen, but not most. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword: those lay people who have success in their reform role in the world because of the esteem the ordinary people have for the Church may suffer if that support weakens. Lay people will have to learn to live and work with a Church that is increasingly cautious, and less in tune with the younger generation. The lay people may be seen in the role of grown children looking after their elderly parents. They will need patience and understanding in that role. Nandy has not stopped because of setbacks. Neither has his Ang Kapatiran Party. He has, however, shown an inclination to put his efforts into a radical conversion of the human heart, since that is required before people can accept the reforms that are demanded in politics and other arenas of secular life. Nandy is now organizing a movement that, he hopes, will change the hearts of Filipinos and enable them to accept the needed changes in the country’s socio-economic and political structures. This movement urges people to accept Jesus’ peace. This is the peace Jesus entrusted to his Apostles on the evening of his Resurrection. “Peace be with you,” Jesus said twice to them (John 20:19-23). These words were the polite greeting Jewish people offered one another in older days, but his use of the phrase carried much more than a simple greeting. In it Jesus conveyed to the Apostles all the blessings of His Kingdom—all the wisdom, humor, courage, perseverance and simple kindness they would need in spreading His message throughout the world. This peace is ours, Nandy points out, if we accept it wholeheartedly. We should “accept” this peace of Jesus rather than “seek it,” since Jesus has already offered it to us in the Gospel. Knowing Nandy, I think he might prefer a big victory for his party at the polls to canonization. Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl.net.

Past and Present Suffering

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 22:19:00 05/11/2011

PHNOM PENH—Despite its tragic past, Phnom Penh remains a lovely city with wide, tree-lined streets, non-invasive traffic, pastel-colored homes, and the small birds that fill the city with their chatter and song in the early mornings. Very much a part of this peaceful setting are the elderly monks walking along under the trees, barefoot and holding their umbrellas against the sun. The traffic moves at 20 kilometers per hour and there are no horns. I asked a Filipina living there, why the traffic went so slowly and she said it’s because of all the motorbikes: the car drivers’ fear they will injure the bikers if they go faster. In return, it seems, for this kindness the passenger tricycles run almost silently and the young women move along gracefully on their motor bikes. All such beauty goes unnoticed in Edsa’s chaos.

It might seem as if this city, which suffered terribly during the Pol Pot regime, had vowed to have a deep compassion for all its people, including the bikers and the poor. If we are compassionate in small things, we may learn to be compassionate in large matters, the people of Phnom Penh might have thought.

Many seem to have learned that lesson, but not all. The last of 4,000 poor families are now being forcibly ejected by the government and Chinese and local business interests from their homes around Boeungkak Lake. This lake, once a favorite recreation area, is filled now with dirt and sand. There will soon be luxury homes there. Right now it looks like the desolate areas near the ruined reactors of Japan.

Recently we met five women from the lake who will be evicted. They have 19 children among them and are indistinguishable from the women of Metro Manila who are also threatened with eviction—along the R-10 Road, the esteros, Manggahan Floodway, Lupang Arenda and other sites. The Cambodian women have the same fears as the Filipino women about their children’s schooling and family jobs. They don’t know for sure what will happen. It is not a pleasant sight to see real fear for their families in these mature hardworking women’s faces. Eviction brings back too easily the fears of the Pol Pot era.

Those were terrible times in Phnom Penh. I may have met the parents of these women in 1980 when I was able to visit Phnom Penh after the Vietnamese army in 1979 drove Pol Pot out of power. When I was there with Fr. Jorge Anzorena and Francisco “Bimbo” Fernandez the people were returning from the rural areas, “the killing fields” of Cambodia. They had been driven there by Pol Pot, and had suffered terribly. Many were traumatized by their experience. We were told not to talk to people about development, even about cooperatives, since such words sounded like words Pol Pot had used. It seemed the people were half afraid that the hated dictator might just be sitting just around the corner listening to their conversations.

Manila has had its own share of suffering. Some 100,000 Filipinos died in the last battle for Intramuros. A small shrine dedicated to the memory of these people stands within easy walking distance of the Manila Cathedral. Compassion for the poor is very often absent; the government still evicts families in an illegal and often violent manner.

Compassion is an Asian virtue. It is cultivated in a special way by Buddhism, but is also at the heart of Christianity.

People who have suffered greatly like the people of Hiroshima, Warsaw, Rwanda, Intramuros or Cambodia should be respected and allowed to get on with their lives in peace. They have suffered enough. To continue to treat them poorly is a form of profanity, for God has taken its place among them in their suffering.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His email address is upa@pldtdsl. net.

A Pinoy ‘New Deal’

Inquirer.net

Inquirer Opinion / Columns

Commentary : A Pinoy ‘New Deal’

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: October 18, 2009

MANILA, Philippines-In the days after Ted Kennedy's death, when people discussed his role in American political history, the name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt often arose. At first it was just talk, comparing him and Kennedy, but then by some strange providence of the Lord, the man himself came back from the shadows of history. He was seen in Washington, D.C. being pushed about in his wheelchair. The former US president, father of the New Deal program that saved America’s poor in the Great Depression of the 1930s and polio victim, was back from the grave for a brief while. He seemed to enjoy every minute of his return.

He met with President Barack Obama in the White House and with Ted Kennedy’s family. Kennedy was often called “The last of the New Deal Democrats,” that is, those Democrats who worked in season and out of season almost exclusively for the poor.

Then Roosevelt surprised everyone by asking to meet with the candidates for the Philippine presidency. I was in Washington, so I was asked to help gather the candidates. We met in the Philippine Embassy in Washington. There were eight candidates, seven men and a woman. We sat in a semi-circle around his wheelchair.

I told the candidates the little I knew of the former president and his New Deal: When he entered the White House in 1933, some 30 percent of American workers were unemployed; thousands of small farms were foreclosed monthly; unions were beaten down and ineffective; and Wall Street reeled out of control. Roosevelt turned this situation upside down. He started Social Security for the old and handicapped, strengthened labor unions, saved the small farms, created jobs, controlled the banks and financiers, and effectively restored the American people’s faith in their country.

What I didn’t tell the candidates because I didn’t know how the old president would react was that critics say he brought class struggle between the rich and the poor into American politics. He said he was simply restoring justice.

“Yes,” said Roosevelt, when I finished, “and anyone of you can do the same for the Philippines and even more. I know something about the Philippines. I signed the law that created the Commonwealth. I oversaw MacArthur’s return. It wasn’t all his doing, was it? But you know all that history better than I do, so let’s talk instead of what may be more relevant, namely, our program of government in the 1930s that came to be called the ‘New Deal,’ and its usefulness in today’s Philippines. What was it, or better, what is it, since ideas are timeless? The New Deal comes down to this: we gather state power for the benefit of all citizens, but especially for the poor and handicapped. I think the Philippines needs something very much like it.”

I could see he was enjoying himself. “I have a test,” he told them, “that will help me judge who among you is most likely to introduce a New Deal-type program in your country. I’m looking for someone who is clever, passionate for the poor and lucky. I’m dead, but I can still help that person and I will. Here is the test.”

He told us there was going to be a great flood in Manila in a month or so. Hundreds of thousands would be affected. The poor living along the waterways would be blamed for the flooding and many would be banished. The rich—government officials, developers and loggers—who really did the damage would not be touched. There would be widespread hunger. Then he asked, “What will you do as a candidate when this flood occurs?”

The candidates took a few minutes to think and then one after another they told him what they would do. Roosevelt listened and at the end said, “I’m disappointed. I don’t see anything like a New Deal political analysis in your thinking. For example, who’s to blame for the floods? The poor or the rich and powerful? Don’t let them blame the poor. Blame the rich and let the poor know you are on their side in the controversy, and will be on their side as president.”

The candidates were taken aback by his criticism. “Well, what would you do?” one of them asked.

He answered, “Do you agree nothing will change unless the Philippines gets a government that acknowledges its existence to the 60-70 percent of the voters who are poor and near poor, and makes them its special and favored constituency?”

The candidates nodded in agreement. Roosevelt was happy now that he had his audience agreeing. He put a cigarette in his long black cigarette holder and lit it. Strange, though, we couldn’t smell the smoke. He went on: “In the case of the floods, I would go to the affected people and ask them what they want me and my partymates to do for them in the flood crisis. When they tell us what they want, I’d go and do it, at least, I’d try. I’d fight government efforts to evict the squatters. I’d be in the courts and in the front lines when the police came to evict them. I’d picket with the poor outside the grain bodegas if there were no food.”

He said, “Some will accuse you of electioneering, but the poor won’t and their allegiance is all you need. You must, however, be sincere. The poor will spot faking.

“I’d make sure the poor people are aware that I know what their problems are and that I really care what happens to them. In the meantime before the election, I’d spend my money to bring in earth-moving equipment to clean up the city streets and to remove the mud from the homes. I’d buy new clothes for the children and the women. The men, too, of course, but women and children first. I’d work alongside the men in the mud. I’d treat the poor women as the saints they are. We are in a democracy in the Philippines and in a democracy the majority rules, but it must be aware of its power and take advantage of that power. In democracies reform comes through the ballots of the poor.”

The candidates were writing everything down feverishly.

Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His e-mail address is upa@pldtdsl.net.

How to win an election

Commentary : How to win an election

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: February 16, 2009

AT a forum last week of the National Institute for Policy Studies, an American visitor who worked in Barack Obama’s presidential campaign shared insights about the campaign. He said the spirit of the whole campaign was based on community organizing (CO). He reminded people that Obama was a great admirer of the late Saul Alinsky, the father of modern urban organizing, and that Obama himself had served for three years after college as a community organizer in a small organization that traced its roots to Alinsky.

The visitor, Jo Hansen, moved on to other topics, but some of us who work in community organizing decided to look into the matter. How did CO elect a president? Can the CO approach help elect a president here?

In Iowa, the first of the primaries, and arguably the most important one for a relatively unknown candidate, Obama and his people set up an entirely new campaign structure. They ignored the existing Democratic Party structure (maybe they felt it already leaned toward Hillary Clinton or John Edwards) and built their own organization from the neighborhood level up, the bottom-up approach. This is what COs are supposed to do when they enter a community where the leadership structure is not pro poor.

Obama’s team recruited the best of the people who came to their campaign office to volunteer. They were from all types of neighborhoods, rich, middle-income and poor, but they all knew everything about their own neighborhoods and they were full of energy. None of them was connected to the regular Democratic Party structure. The Obama team gave the volunteers room to act as they thought best; they appointed as supervisors those neighborhood volunteers who worked the hardest and showed the most ingenuity. The whole structure from bottom to top was informal and personal. In the end the volunteers outworked the veterans of the other candidates.

Obama got far more money from ordinary Americans than any other candidate, because he made special efforts to ask them to help. In the end he had money in small amounts from 2.5 million people. Each of these donors became in some ways a campaign worker as donors always do: they want to make sure their money isn’t wasted. Imagine 2.5 million volunteer campaigners. CO has always worked best when it gets the money for its activities from the people.

Hansen discussed the sources of Obama’s campaign platform. He said the candidate felt it was the essence of democracy to find out what the people wanted and then make it part of his platform. There is nothing wrong in basing one’s actions on what polls tell a candidate the people want. As Obama went along, he found the demand for change was the overriding wish of the people, so that became the motif: “Change. Yes we can.” CO regularly gets its issues from the people. The alternative to such an approach is to come to the people with a platform entirely worked out in advance by a party or the powerful or some technocrats.

Finally Obama paid poor people who took a day off from work to help him. He had more poor people working for him than anyone else.

Can these emphases of Obama and community organizing help a candidate win here in 2010? The essential thing, according to Hansen, is that the candidate must be able to make the big majority of people, who in the Philippines are poor or what can be called near-poor, believe the candidate cares what happens to them and shares their values. To share their values and care for the poor and near-poor, the “D” and “E” categories of the pollsters, the candidate must get to know them as well as Obama did in his three years in Chicago’s slums. He or she must visit the poor, learn their issues, talk about those issues and champion those issues or demands.

The candidate who travels this path will be outside the existing party structures, and will have to put together from the bottom up his or her own campaign structure as Obama did in Iowa. The candidate, like Obama, should pick the best people outside the existing political structures, people from all income levels but mostly from the poor and near-poor. The candidate should give them freedom and exploit their ingenuity, let them be themselves, give them room, and let them be creative.

He or she would do well to seek the money needed from the poor and near-poor and from well-off people who believe in reform as Obama did. In this regard Hansen downplayed the value of TV and other costly campaigning techniques. The biggest influence on a voter in the United States is a person’s peers, he said, not TV or the press. In the Philippines it’s family and church (or mosque and temple), according to an Ateneo de Manila Institute of Philippine Culture study of influences on voters in the 2001 election. This means, it seems, that the candidate must early on convince core groups of the poor and near-poor and reformers, and the Church and other religious leaders, that he or she really shares their values and is deeply concerned about their welfare. The campaign will only succeed if the candidate truly does share those values and concerns. If the candidate can do this, the message will spread. Witness the success of Corazon Aquino in 1986.

CO and the form of campaigning Obama championed are good examples of democracy in action. It could work here.


Denis Murphy works with the Urban Poor Associates. His e-mail address is upa@pldtdsl.net.

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