Manila Archbishop leads Mass for the urban poor in Baseco

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Manila Archbishop leads Mass for the urban poor in Baseco

19 October 2008. Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales went to the Port Area this morning and lead a Mass in Baseco to pray and show that the Church is one with the urban poor community’s struggle for a better life.

Hundreds of Manila’s urban poor settlers attended the Mass held in the Baseco covered court. The poor wanted Cardinal Rosales to come and say the Mass and the Manila Archbishop welcomed the rare opportunity.

Rosales’ visit delighted the Baseco community. “Sana ay maging socialized housing ang Baseco at di na baguhin pa. Naging maayos na ang buhay namin. Kami ay natutuwa dahil nandito si Cardinal at siya ay sumusuporta sa aming kahilingan. Sana ay pakinggan ito ni Presidente Gloria Macapagal Arroyo,” said Jeorgie Tenolete, president of Kabalikat sa Pagpapaunlad ng Baseco, a people’s organization.

Baseco residents have the problem of land tenure insecurity: they fear they can be removed from their homes at any time and for insufficient reasons. The 10,000 families in Baseco fear they will be evicted due to the government’s reclamation project and sent 50-80 kilometers away to remote and jobless areas.

The land was proclaimed for them by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2002. They believe powerful and well-connected businessmen want the strategic area for commercial purposes.

The government cites a 2004 soil analysis that predicts the soil in Baseco will liquefy if there is a strong earthquake nearby. The study concludes that no homes are safe and all the homes must be removed. This is because the reclamation done in Baseco by the government used garbage instead of good soil and rocks, the analysis states.

A cloud of secrecy covers the government’s real plans, according to Urban Poor Associates (UPA), a housing rights NGO. “The residents should be told what the plan is, and if there is no plan then government should put that in writing and continue instead to upgrade the area as the proclamation states,” the UPA said in a press statement.

UPA invited the Philippine Reclamation Authority (PRA) to attend the Mass in Baseco. However, PRA officials could not attend the Mass due to “some unavoidable circumstances.”

In a letter sent to UPA, PRA General Manager and CEO Andrea Domingo informed that the PRA is presently complying with the directive of President Arroyo to reclaim 10 hectares at the bayfront of the Baseco area. “Upon completion of the reclamation works, PRA will turn over to the agency that will undertake its development as site for socialized housing. Beyond this PRA will no longer have any participation in the project,” the letter read.

“We’re asking the President to issue the implementing rules and regulation (IRR) that will lay down the processes and steps leading to the families’ ownership of the land and to convene the Project Inter-Agency Committee,” said Ted Añana, UPA deputy coordinator. -30-

MEDIA ADVISORY: CARDINAL ROSALES IN BASECO

Attention: News Editor, News Desk, Reporters and Photojournalists

MEDIA ADVISORY

CARDINAL ROSALES IN BASECO

We wish to invite you at a Holy Mass with Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales in the Baseco urban poor area on Sunday, October 19 at 9:00 AM. The Mass will be held in the covered court in Baseco, near the Baranggay Hall.

The poor face the problems of most Manila families – high prices, poor services, etc. – but in addition they have the problem of land tenure insecurity: they fear they can be removed from their homes at any time and for insufficient reasons. The 10,000 families in Baseco fear they will be evicted due to the government’s reclamation project and sent 50-80 kilometers away to remote and jobless areas.

Your support is needed if there are to be solutions to these problems. Please come and pray with the Cardinal and the poor and show that we are all one with their struggle for a better life.

We are also inviting poor people from Parola, Navotas and other parts of Tondo.

Date: October 19, 2008 (Sunday)

Time: 9:00 AM

Venue: Covered Court, Baseco Compound, Port Area, Manila

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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.

Copyright 2008 Philippine Daily Inquirer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Governments must end forced evictions and address global housing crisis at the root of global financial crisis

On the occasion of the World Habitat Day, 6 October 2008, the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) calls upon governments to end forced evictions and other housing rights violations. COHRE further urges governments and other relevant agencies to direct the necessary resources towards addressing the acute housing crises in both rural and urban areas. COHRE is convinced that the unmet demand for adequate housing provided the primary target for the predatory lending practices that have led to the current spate of worldwide bank failures and the ensuing global financial crisis. The realization of housing rights for the world's poor majority must not now be sacrificed in the name of international economic "recovery" efforts.

World leaders can no longer continue to ignore widespread violations of the fundamental human right to adequate housing. Millions of people continue to be forcibly evicted from their homes and lands. In Beijing, 1.5 million people have been displaced to create space for Olympic venues, for city ‘beautification’ projects in advance of the Olympics, as well as in the context of other urban development projects. This massive displacement of persons and communities is ongoing today. In Abuja, Nigeria, the Federal Capital Development Authority selectively used the City’s Master Plan to forcibly evict more than 800,000 during the period 2003 to 2007. Over three years after the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, in the United States, thousands of families are still being denied the right to return to their homes. In Cambodia, over 50,000 people were forcibly evicted during 2006-2007 for agro-industrial and development projects. Indeed, even Luanda, Angola, which hosts this year’s World Habitat Day celebrations, has similarly undertaken large-scale forced evictions, involving many thousands of persons, in the recent period.

Ongoing housing rights abuses have also taken other forms. In Burma, cyclone Nargis survivors have reportedly been forcibly returned to their villages by the Burmese government, despite the absence of adequate rehabilitation. In Sri Lanka, the government has threatened to forcibly close transitional shelters in Colombo, in advance of any durable solution for persons displaced by the 2004 tsunami. Indigenous communities such as the Brazilian Quilombos and the Bedouin in Israel have been arbitrarily deprived of their land, despite the adoption by the UN General Assembly in September 2007 of the Declaration on Indigenous Peoples, which sets out extensive commitments to maintain the integrity of land tenure for such groups. The Roma in Europe face extensive racial segregation in housing, enforced through forced eviction practices, matters comprehensively banned by international law. The recent period has seen dramatic intensification of such practices by the Italian and French governments in particular.

While countless people continue to be driven into homelessness, governments are abdicating their responsibility to ensure access to affordable housing and public services. In some cases, governments are even scaling down commitments made previously to meet the growing demand for affordable housing. For example, in the post-communist world, social housing systems have been dismantled in a number of countries, with few or no protections introduced to protect persons forced by these acts into extreme poverty. The widespread neglect of rural infrastructure including water, sanitation and housing coupled with increased land alienation has led to growing rural-urban migration. In addition, the fast pace of urbanisation in many developing countries has far exceeded local government capacity or willingness to provide basic amenities to city residents, including adequate housing, water, electricity and sanitation. Such urbanisation has resulted in the creation of vast slums where residents live in sub-standard housing conditions, without access to even the most basic services.

While inadequate living conditions and forced evictions affect all residents, women and girls all too often bear a disproportionately greater burden. Violence, vulnerability to abuse and exploitation, inadequate provision of services, housing insecurity, and lack of privacy are common experiences with profoundly gendered dimensions.

There are, however, inspirational alternative approaches. In one leading example, Naga City, in the Philippines, has enacted landmark legislation mandating city government agencies to establish a partnership with community organisations to work towards security of tenure and improved living conditions for its residents. Naga City has also adopted a range of adjunct policies with a view to finding long-term solutions to problems of lack of security of tenure faced by the urban poor as well as to promote slum upgrading.

A major housing rights victory was recently won when the City of Johannesburg implemented the voluntary relocation of 450 residents of two inner city slum buildings to two newly refurbished buildings. This successful relocation was possible due to an order by the Constitutional Court of South Africa that directed the City government to engage in meaningful consultation with affected persons.

COHRE urges governments to take cognisance of this and similar progressive approaches to securing the right to adequate housing for all. COHRE further urges all governments to take immediate steps, as specified by international law, to address the spiralling global housing crisis. In particular, COHRE urges that governments worldwide:

- End, without delay, the practice of forced eviction
- Respect, protect and fulfil the right to adequate housing including the right to water and sanitation for all
- Promote development processes that minimise displacement
- Devise and implement plans to address homelessness and inadequate housing in consultation with affected persons and communities, and their representatives
- Take steps to mitigate the impacts of inadequate housing on marginalised groups, including women, racial and ethnic minorities, and children, and
- Celebrate the work of housing rights defenders, and work toward their inclusion in policy frameworks to resolve outstanding housing rights issues

A changing of the guard?

Commentary : A changing of the guard?

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: September 26, 2008

In a small rented room in the Baseco Compound in Manila’s Tondo district that serves as the office of the people’s organization Kabalikat, some 20 leaders, mostly women, waited for the arrival of two young princes of Philippine politics, Senators Manuel Roxas II and Benigno Aquino III. Manila Mayor Fred Lim and former secretary of education Florencio Abad were also expected. The room is used for a tutoring class, so the people were squeezed into the children’s small chairs.

There is a countrywide consensus for a more democratic, egalitarian and participative government, but what would it look like in the concrete? People want a changing of the guard, an end to the “trapo” [traditional politico] system, but how would the new politicians act? People in that small room that morning saw some signs of what this new politics might be like.

Lim came first. He stayed on the street outside the room, gathered crowds of people, children especially, and gave them P20 bills until the bags of money he brought with him were empty. He talked to Roxas when the latter arrived, and then went away.

Roxas went around Baseco for an hour or so, an area of 56 hectares at the mouth of the Pasig River. It is home to about 10,000 families. One woman he met told him she paid P6 for a 20-liter container of water, which translates to about P300 for a cubic meter. Ordinary users of supply from Manila Water Co. pay only P10 a cubic meter. The poor pay more in every conceivable way.

Finally, the two senators and Abad came into the meeting room and spent the next two hours talking with the people. They listened as the people explained the problems they faced with light, water, drainage, incomes and schools, and how at present they feared they might be removed from Baseco, even though the land was proclaimed for them by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2002. They believe powerful and well-connected businessmen want the strategic area for commercial purposes.

The government cites a 2004 soil analysis that predicts the soil in Baseco will liquefy if there is a strong earthquake nearby. The study concludes that no homes are safe and all the homes must be removed. This is because the reclamation done in Baseco by the government used garbage instead of good soil and rocks, the analysis states. Other engineers say it is still possible to build safely one-story or two-story houses, provided ordinary building precautions in such a hazardous area are taken.

A cloud of secrecy covers the government’s real plans. Understandably, the people fear they will be evicted and sent 50 or 80 kilometers away, far from their work and the children’s schools, and that they will be replaced by offices, harbor facilities or houses of the rich.

The people told the senators they believed the proclamation gave them ownership rights, and on that basis they, with the help of Gawad Kalinga and Habitat for Humanity, built 2,000 neat, one-story houses. Another 1,000 families built in a government sites and services program. The remaining families have built as the poor have always built: shacks of secondhand materials wherever there was space. The people believe these steps strengthened the ownership rights, and they feel they cannot be evicted arbitrarily.

They told the senators that they should be told what the plan is, and if there is no plan then government should put that in writing and continue instead to upgrade the area as the proclamation states. The senators promised to help them find out what they could about the government plan.

As the morning went on, there were signs of a changing of the guard, from the old-style politician, or trapo, to a newer, more democratic style.

Lim may not be the best example of the trapo, though he very often refuses to meet with groups of poor people. He does help in his own way. In a more democratic style the senators visited the poor, they listened patiently and they offered to do what the people wanted them to do.

The senators took part in a dialogue with the people that was informal, friendly, one in which each side treated the other with respect. Perhaps that’s the essence of new governance: respect, willingness to enter into dialogue to form solutions, and cooperative action. One swallow doesn’t make a summer, however. Everyone hopes the senators will maintain their opening to the poor.

There were signs within three days after the meeting that the senators had begun to do what they promised.

The experience of Mayor Jesse Robredo in Naga City and Mayor Tomas Osmeña in Cebu City shows that the urban poor will vote in overwhelming numbers for the candidates who have helped them between elections. The poor are a more reliable constituency for a politician than the business and special interest groups they usually serve.

It would be wonderful if politicians took the poor seriously and won their votes, not by handouts, but by performance, by solving the very serious problems the poor face.

Is there hope of a changing of the guard?

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

Copyright 2008 Philippine Daily Inquirer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Mindanao right on our doorstep

Commentary : Mindanao right on our doorstep

By Denis Murphy
Philippine Daily Inquirer

Posted date: September 06, 2008

MANILA, Philippines—Mindanao, with its Muslim-Christian troubles, is far away and beyond the experience of most of us. There is, however, a Muslim-Christian struggle on our doorstep. And this we should be able to understand and recommend solutions to.

Some 376 Muslim families who are clustered tightly around their mosque have been resisting government efforts to evict them and their mosque from the reclaimed land in Manila Bay near Baclaran Church. The government wants them and the mosque out; the people want to stay alongside their mosque.

Evictions are a common problem between government and urban poor people these days, but this particular eviction is complicated by Muslim belief. The president of the people’s organization, Abdelmanan Tanandato, says Islamic law forbids the destruction of houses of worship, including Christian churches. The Muslims on the reclaimed land believe they cannot allow the destruction of their mosque. They must defend it. Their imams have told them they can’t leave the mosque. The government believes it must clear the land, which is very valuable and destined for commerce, luxury housing and casino use.

Years ago in Lahore, Pakistan, I saw proof of what Abdelmanan told me. I visited a huge urban poor area that had been demolished by the government. It was literally leveled; not a stone left upon a stone. One small building, however, a Catholic chapel, stood untouched in the middle of the field.

Abdelmanan says that when the Marawi uprising took place on Oct. 21, 1972, a month after the declaration of martial law, angry Muslims were determined to destroy the properties of Christians, but they didn’t touch the churches in Marawi, Catholic or Protestant.

The Muslims now living on the reclaimed land left Lanao del Sur when the Muslim-Christian war broke out in 1972. Some first went to Iligan which, shortly thereafter, had its own troubles, and so in the end many of them wound up in Manila. They have been on the reclaimed land since 1992; the mosque was built in 1994. They are employed like other urban poor people, many are vendors. “If you have only P500 as capital, you can buy and sell something there in Baclaran,” Abdelmanan says, “even hairclips.”

There was a violent demolition on the reclaimed land in 1999. Houses were destroyed and people were hurt. As a result the families moved closer to the mosque. In June this year, the demolition team came again, but hundreds of Muslim men faced them, spread out across the barren land prepared to fight with wooden clubs to protect their homes and mosque. The demolition team left. The government has offered large amounts of money, but the Muslims did not move.

At that time both Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino and Bishop Broderick Pabillo spoke to the government on behalf of the people, and the tense situation has calmed down somewhat. There is no change in basic positions, however.

What is the solution in Baclaran? Before investigating, people on both sides should be aware that they look at Moro-Christian problems through a lens of centuries-old bias and suspicion, which make any peaceful solution difficult to arrive at. In addition, the Muslims in Baclaran suffer from society’s general prejudice toward urban poor people.

If the government proceeds with the demolition and eviction, the people will resist—violently most likely. Scores will be injured. Some may be killed. The government will then eventually have to destroy the mosque, a sight that has a good chance of appearing in every newspaper in the world. Will the violence end there? Will there be revenge attacks on Christian churches, for example? The Muslim people believe it is God’s will that they defend the mosque. People must obey government’s laws, St. Paul tells us in Romans, but his precept presumes the laws do not contradict the laws of God as we know them.

If the government allows the mosque to stay, it will remain amid the office buildings, luxury housing and casino facilities that will be built. Why not? The Catholic Church has a church on the reclaimed land. The two religious houses can remind the rich and powerful, including the gamblers, that there is more to life than money and pleasure. They will stand guard reminding the rich to enjoy while they can, for all things are fleeting.

Does this case shed any light on the problems of Mindanao? Probably not much if it does at all, though it does highlight the possibility that alternative ways of thinking can provide good solutions. Insanity can be defined, it is said, by repeating the same actions year after year and expecting different results. We have evicted tens of thousands of poor families. The National Housing Authority says there have been 130,000 poor families evicted from Metro Manila since 1984. The question can be asked, is the city any better off as a result?

The same solutions have been tried for years and years in Mindanao with the same unsatisfactory results. Are there alternate actions, alternate solutions?


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

Copyright 2008 Philippine Daily Inquirer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.