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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Democracy and Respect

Commentary

By Denis Murphy

Philippine Daily Inquirer

We carry our democracy, as we do our faith, in fragile earthen vessels, to use St. Paul’s words. Although we know from experience that democracy can be lost in the country, we are still careless in how we act as democratic citizens. We forget that democratic government, in which free men and women hand over part of their freedom to one of their peers to lead them in a search for the common good, is one of the supremely great achievements of human history. It can be lost, however, like grace and innocence.

Respect and humility are essential parts of the good citizenship needed in this aggressive age, both on the side of the ordinary citizen and on the side of the elected officials. Even if we disagree with what our presidents decide—even if they sink us in debt or drag us into war—they remain the embodiment of the entire people’s aspirations and are still deserving of respect. Our presidents are not Moses, but some of the thunder, smoke and lightning that surrounded Moses on Mount Sinai still surround our presidents, even in their weakest moments.

A secret service agent in Washington or in Manila may have lost all respect for the president as a man, but the agent is still willing to “take a bullet” for him because of his respect for the office and the entire people.

We should criticize, but without hostility. Isn’t that the core of the nonviolent teaching of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King? Nothing of lasting good comes from hatred, insult, or ridicule.

Presidents, in turn, should respect ordinary citizens. An example of how respect can be shown by a president is seen in the decision of US President Barack Obama to punish Syria for its use of poison gas. He was, and maybe still is, determined to launch the missiles, even if 80 percent of the American people and the great majority of men and women everywhere in the world, from Pope Francis down to the poorest scavenger, oppose such a strike.

The American president has in that country’s law a legal right to make such decisions. If it were a technical matter of pipelines or mining practices, or concerns over the best use of interest rates, a president may justifiably think the ordinary people do not know enough about the matter to question his decision. The Syrian affair, however, is a matter of war, and people in the United States and around the world know all about war. President Obama, I believe, should listen to the people and respect their judgment in such a matter.

Is there an issue about which President Aquino may feel compelled to change his mind and do what the great majority of his people want him to do? Though I am not an economist, it seems clear the President has been very hesitant to interfere in the workings of the marketplace. He has let business people continue on the road they were on, albeit with a concern to limit corruption and to increase the country’s competitiveness. As a result, we have an economic surge that is jobless and its benefits are skewed toward the well-off members of society.

A case can be made that by an overwhelming majority, the Filipino people would want the President to intervene in business activity to secure more jobs for the unemployed and to narrow the income gap between rich and poor, if they had a chance to vote on the matter. They would surely want him to try to do both.

As Presidents Obama and Aquino get deeper into their administrations, they should ask more insistently than ever if there is something very important that all the people want them to work on. It may be the key to the historical success of their administrations.

President Aquino, in his “Covenant with the urban poor” (March 6, 2010), promised to examine the possibility of public works programs where workers would receive both food and cash for their labor: “We will create large-scale public works programs that can generate a substantial number of jobs for poor men and women. At the onset of our term, we will emphasize labor-intensive public works programs that can generate significant numbers of jobs for our poor people and give them access to at least the minimum amounts of money, food and dignity needed for their daily survival and wellbeing. Recognizing that the primary and most important resource of our country is its people, we will emphasize the creation of jobs that empower the work force, jobs that build capacity and create opportunities for the poor and marginalized.”

There is much manual work to be done throughout the country. On TV we see hundreds of men digging out a village lost in a mudslide in Zambales. Why can’t we dig safe places for the families threatened by mud flows before the damage happens? We are still not doing a good job of replanting forests; farm roads need construction and sea walls need to be built around our low-lying cities, such as Malabon. Millions of poor families need decent housing.

One of the great dangers we face is the generation of young men growing up in our slum areas with no work and no skills. In 18th-century England, these young men were taken into the navy. In the Bronx of my youth, the young men who didn’t like school or office work joined the Marines. Maybe public works programs are our solution. We have the problems, and we have the young men to do the work. Mr. President?

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

A little girl’s signature

I remember an old dispute between two very good friends—Ed Gerlock, former Maryknoll priest who has worked with farmers and the aged poor all his life, and Columban Fr. Mickey Martin, a genuine hero of the sugar farmers of Negros Oriental and former Irish football star. It was over a little street child signing her name for the first time.


Ed helped run an informal school and shelter for street children, which was housed in the Malate Church compound. Mickey was the parish priest. One little girl who came to the shelter couldn’t, or wouldn’t, write her name. She had the experts stumped: She was the only child who didn’t want to write. Then something happened, to which my friends had completely distinct reactions.

The little girl had written her name, but she had chosen to use a rusty nail in writing it on the fender of a brand-new car owned by one of the parish’s benefactors that was parked in the church compound. Ed was delighted: The girl had come in out of the darkness. Mickey was horrified: Who was to blame, and what would he tell the woman owner?

As the dispute developed, I could imagine what the two men might have thought of each other. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Mickey secretly thought that Ed was delighted that the little girl was not only writing, but was also striking a blow for social justice in picking out a new car for her first signature. Ed may have thought that Mickey was, deep down, more of a capitalist than the bred-in-the-bone friend of the poor he had been all those years with the sugar workers.

The two men are friends again. Little girls are still searched for rusty nails, of course.

In that old debate and the present people-government debates, both sides have arguable points. For example, the government has the right to evict poor families under certain conditions for the common good, but it must observe the rules imposed by the Philippines’ Constitution and laws and the United Nations Covenants on Human Rights it has signed. We should add here that Christianity and Islam have championed these rights since long before there was a Philippine government or a UN.

The government should also abide by the clear promises President Aquino has made to the poor, such as in-city, near-city resettlement. This position of the President acknowledges that the distant relocation sites the government once established—where no jobs were available—were a clear wrong that needed correction. No side has all the strong points, however. Anyway, in a democracy we don’t have to win by a knockout; a close decision is enough. Democracies compromise.

As I write this, a meeting is going on downstairs in our office of urban poor people. It is noisy, but music to the ears of people who desire more people’s participation in national affairs. The people are discussing the government announcement that it will evict some 16,000 poor families before May 15, either because their lives are endangered (families living in stilt houses on the waters of our Metro Manila esteros and rivers) or because the government wants them out for other reasons (for example, so it can build revetments or dredge the waters).

The debate at this moment may be about these 15,800 families. We hesitate to say “only 15,000,” since it is already a big figure, but the families concerned will grow in number very rapidly when we take into account the entire Flood Control Plan in which 209,000 families will be resettled—over a million men, women and children. Let us talk, therefore, about the 209,000 families. The Department of Public Works and Highways divides them into 154,728 families on the Pasig River-Metro Manila area and 54,800 families around Laguna Lake.

The sad truth is that deep down, the urban poor organizations don’t believe that government agencies care much about their welfare. They see the care and resources the government has put into the engineering plans of the flood control program, but do not see how it is preparing in an equally careful way for the resettlement of the 209,000 families. The government has little, if any, land set aside for their resettlement. It lacks accurate figures on how many poor families need to be relocated. Indeed, it may lack accurate figures on the total number of urban poor families in all of Metro Manila. The government says they number about 540,000, but the Asian Development Bank in 2004 said there were five million urban poor individuals in Metro Manila, or one million families.

What do poor people want of the government in this matter of the 209,000 families? They want the government to tell them in some detail what families will be resettled, and where. The government knows exactly where it will put the grand dam that will be the linchpin of the flood control work and the catchment basins. The poor also want the government to commit publicly to limiting resettlement to on-site, in-city, or near-city sites. “Near-city” means near enough so a wage earner employed in Metro Manila can commute to and from his or her home and job at affordable cost. Failure to limit resettlement along these lines flies in the face of the President’s commitment to the poor. They ask the government to make known at the beginning of each year where exactly it will resettle the families to be moved that year.

Finally, the poor want the government to treat them with respect. It is as simple as that: Bankers and lawyers are not forced onto trucks by police and shipped off to distant relocation, often in the very trucks that carry off the city garbage.

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

Cruelty to the poor and democracy

Inquirer Opinion / Columns

Commentary : Cruelty to the poor and democracy

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: November 29, 2009

CRUELTY TO THE POOR BY GOVERNMENT people or the agents of the powerful are always surprising, since it seems so unnecessary. The urban poor with whom I’ve worked for many years are among the most patient, tolerant and realistic people God ever made. There’s no need for violence of any sort. The people will cooperate in any government plan that is based on consultations and common sense.

Instead, there is an endless tale of violence big and small done to them, which in the end undermines the people’s sense of their dignity and democracy itself, just as long rains loosen the soil on the hillside and eventually bring down the whole hill or mountain.

Cruelty manages to turn first-class citizens into resentful people, willing to scheme and do whatever may be needed to get what they want for themselves. Think of how the people of Estero dela Reina will react to government in the future after their experience with an eviction team of the Metro Manila Development Authority on Nov. 11. The people were told they had to get out of their homes of 20 or more years and relocate to the Norzagaray resettlement area, 40 kilometers or more away. They didn’t want to go, but they had little choice: whether they agreed to go or not their homes would be torn down.

The eviction turned out badly. People including women were injured in violent scuffles with the MMDA. Nothing is uglier than seeing women and even pregnant women and the demolition team fighting over pieces of lumber and G.I. roofing. Finally 10 families left Binondo in an MMDA truck at about 4 p.m. with a cross-section of poor people, the elderly, a few men, women, small children and babies. They arrived at the resettlement area at 8 p.m. because of the heavy traffic. The barangay captain there told them they couldn’t enter because they didn’t have the proper papers. They came back to Binondo at 11 p.m. to sleep on the sidewalk.

An almost similar episode took place a few days earlier. Families from Santolan, Pasig were brought to the Calauan resettlement area, 100 km from Manila. When they got there, they found there were no homes for them. They returned to Santolan, though now they were homeless. The callousness of the officials involved is breathtaking. No one apologizes. Not every poor person has to experience cruelty personally. Word of it travels fast in poor communities.

Sometimes matters turn truly violent. On Oct. 10 in North Fairview, Quezon City, Myrna Porcare, 52, was shot down with a shotgun at a distance of two or three meters by the security guards of the landowner. Her offense was to try to remove a fence put up illegally by the guards. Police watched the incident develop, but didn’t intervene. Myrna’s son was also killed. The killers are now out on bail.

It seems clear in this incident that these guards are not for security at all. No one was threatening them or the landowner, and the police were there to protect the demolition crew. The guards were not needed. Can the rich buy what can be called “special forces,” or “guns for hire,” who can be sent into an area to do whatever the owner wants?

There are even more harsh incidents against the poor in the rural areas, around mining sites, in factories and plantations, and once in a while something like the Maguindanao massacre. People treated unfairly over time lose any sense that they are citizens of a democracy where their rights as human beings under God should be guaranteed and their human freedoms defended. To be a citizen should bring rights and security, and, hence, pride. Even St. Paul was proud to say he was a Roman citizen (Acts 16:37).

Paradoxically, it should be added that Filipino government officials are among the most accessible officials in the world. Hundreds of poor people meet the President every month, troop the halls of the House and Senate, visiting the officials one after the other, or talk to their mayors and Cabinet officers. That is democracy at its best.

Of all the varieties of violence the saddest is that between the demolition teams and the urban poor men and women. The demolition people are urban poor themselves, so it is one poor man trying to keep his family going against another poor man or woman trying to do exactly the same. The powerful have set poor against poor. Nothing destroys more quickly any sense of brotherhood and sisterhood among the poor. It is sinister for that reason.

In the last analysis these cruel ways come down from the top officials and the elite, as do most values in society, so it’s up to the powerful to stop the practice.

On Nov. 18 in front of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources people had a chance to witness how citizens can deal with abuses of authority. The people of Mindoro were there to protest a Norwegian mining company’s activity on the island. There were the governors and bishops of the two provinces, the clergy, mayors, academicians, Fr. Robert Reyes, NGOs, Mangyans and other ordinary people. They were telling the environment secretary they couldn’t accept the permission he gave to the mining company to begin work. They said he had made a big mistake. How in a democracy can a single national official overrule a decision of all the people of an island, who are the most likely to know their situation and what is best for them? The people of Mindoro show the effectiveness of people at different levels of society joining together in search of good law, the proper use of authority—and democracy.

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

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http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20091129-239240/Cruelty-to-the-poor-and-democracy

Roots of democracy

Commentary : Roots of democracy

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: October 11, 2008

Not long after the $700-billion bailout of banking institutions was announced, we walked down lower Broadway to Wall Street, the “ground zero” of the recent financial disaster. It was a bright sunny afternoon, but Wall Street was deep in shadows.

Wall Street is so narrow (perhaps only 12 meters from the buildings on one side to the buildings across) and the buildings are so tall that the sun shines on it only at high noon.

We sat on the steps of the old Federal Reserve building where George Washington delivered his first inaugural address and waited for something to happen that might explain the collapse, or at least show how the people involved would react.

The street was quiet because traffic was not allowed, except for the sleek, soundless limousines of the very rich. Hundreds of people milled around, mostly tourists and also dozens of policemen eyeing everyone, including people on the steps with apparently nothing to do. Nothing happened. No crowds protested Wall Street’s ruinous behavior. None of the powerful came out to apologize, or tried to atone for the financial crisis by harming themselves, as bankers did in the Great Depression. The tourists, as always, posed for pictures. One of their favorite shots was the flag-bedecked New York Stock Exchange. Another was the larger than life statue of Washington beside us. An Asian TV reporter stood on the pedestal of the statue as he made his report and seemed to interview the old president.

There was an aura of gloom, however — as if the street was aware the good times were over. A few days later, an article would appear in the New York Times under the headline: “Wall Street, R.I.P.”

The collapse of the finance world is hurting every citizen in various degrees — because people are losing their houses and ordinary workers’ pensions are tied up in the devalued stocks. But there were no rallies or protests anywhere, no crowds of investors calling for justice. There was no organized people’s reaction reported anywhere in the country.

People reacted individually, emailing their representatives in Congress, responding to TV polls and man-in-the street interviews, but they did nothing together; there was no social protest. Nowhere was it clear that ordinary people had gathered together, discussed the problem and decided what they as a group would do in response to the Wall Street failure.

The financial collapse seems to be not a concern of angry mobs wanting their money back from banks. People are still behaving as individuals, not as an organized group. The concern is for ordinary people’s thoughtful actions agreed on in their own associations after discussion.

The same pattern appears in the presidential election. Most American voters make up their minds by themselves based on what they learn from their families and the media. There are few associations that bring people of a certain class or work group — or people who share the same interests — to discuss who of the candidates can best do the things they want done. The labor unions and the ethnic Catholic parishes and other ethnic groupings often did this in the past, but the unions are now weak and for the most part the ethnic parishes and groups have largely disappeared. What emerges in group discussions is that people are more inclined to vote based on their own intuition or “gut feeling” rather than on rational self-interest.

In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville published his “Democracy in America,” which remains one of the very best analyses of American democracy and maybe of all democracies. He found that the role of voluntary associations (cooperatives, political clubs, special interest groups, occupation groups, ideological groups) was crucial in American democracy. He wrote: “Americans of all ages, all stations of life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations …. In democratic countries, knowledge of how to combine [these associations] is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all the others.”

He said that if the vitality of these associations dried up, democracy as Americans knew it would falter. The associations are the foundation of national movements. They are the cradle of responsible and effective action and politics. Between elections, the associations keep the pressure on government to fulfill its promises.

Philippine democracy can produce people power movements and thousands of NGOs and other types of associations. The first challenge is to increase their number and to encourage the associations to widen their agendas to include national and political problems. The second challenge is, as De Tocqueville said, to unite or combine them into a powerful reality for the common good.

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

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