Today is about P-Noy & Kris Aquino

Today, June 30, 2010, marks the beginning of the next six years of P-Noy, the most powerful man in the Philippines, politically. As the son of a former president, his ascendancy to the highest post is much like a royal ascribed status. But, he won on a largely symbolic journey to a new road towards our dreams as a nation. What are our dreams as a nation? I tell our successor generation that we cannot study society without looking back at the past. Our past and present are filled with so much injustice and poverty. The past is important so that we do not repeat our mistakes, especially in Mindanao. We cannot study the past without a theory of society and where we wish to journey as a nation. So, today is a rebirth, a renaissance filled with much hope that the next six years will be positively different. It is so heartwarming that many in the policy team of P-Noy comes from our ranks in civil society. Butch Abad, LP campaign manager, who is poised to take the Department of Budget and Management portfolio was my co-director at BATAS, one of the first alternative law groups (ALG) in the Philippines working for the poor and the disadvantaged groups. His wife Dina Abad worked with us in Mindanao twenty years ago on a capacity building projects for NGOs when I was chair of the CIDA Phil Canadian Joint Committee ( PCJC) project in Mindanao. Later, Dina became a member of Congress. Ging Deles, who will be the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process is a founding member of our feminist movement PILIPINA or Pinay. Dinky Soliman, another sister in the PILIPINA women’s movement started her activism as a student at the University of the Philippines. Dinky’s first assignments as a social development manager was in Mindanao and that is why her knowledge of Mindanao issues is excellent. Before Hyatt 10 and just after she finished a degree in Harvard, she headed CODE-NGO, the largest NGO network in the country. Another friend who studied night school at U.P Law because he had to work during the day to earn his tuition and who was being considered to head the Department of Labor & Employment is Joel Cadiz, former Integrated Bar of the Philippines ( IBP ) president. When he was IBP president, he was one of my consultants when I wrote a book on the Shari’a courts. The latest report, though, says another fellow got the DOLE portfolio. So, I grew up working with these kindred spirits who are oozing with so much passion and spunk for our country and so in this sense, I feel so much a part of the center of power towards achieving our goals as a nation. What is the narrative of our poverty? The roots go back to the colonial times and continue to this day because the social structures that reinforce social inequality are still so very well entrenched in our system. The last election was largely funded by the oligarchy. P-Noy comes from that class and that is why he is well advised to betray that class if he is serious about what ails our nation. What of Kris Aquino, the presidential sister who is in pain at about the same time that her brother is ascending to power? Kris went on national television to say that her marriage is over. Is her timing to go public about her private troubles ideal? Firstly, marriage is a social institution and therefore is a social concern. Secondly, the time to work on the relationships between women and men is anytime and all the time. One of the objections to the old ways of working in social movements was when leaders said that we should be working for national liberation first and women’s liberation later. No, we work on both national liberation and women’s liberation all at once. So, it is kind of symbolic and an iconic message to all women that the presidential sister understands very well that yes, annulment is a solution to a marriage that is not working. Annulment as a remedy for troubled marriages is allowed in both the Catholic church and Muslim umma and, as well, in our secular legal system. My wish is for this remedy to be made accessible to all social classes.