Poverty Reduction: BARMM, NAPC, 4Ps

One of the reasons many of us in civil society say that we feel responsible for the problem of poverty in the country is that we have been engaging our government in writing into a law the policy for poverty reduction. The reason why the NGO movement regard the Social Reform and Poverty Alleviation Act ( R.A. 8425) which created the National Anti- Poverty Commission (NAPC) as one of its gains is because, as NGOs, we participated in writing the narrative of this social reform agenda during the Ramos Administration.

We know that NAPC continues to engage fourteen (14) basic sectors in particular and the big civil society collective in general. This engagement is towards uniting the fourteen basic sectors in development sites and geographic areas. NAPC has been into policies which “correlates poverty programs with programs for promoting economic growth (and) dividing the country into three economic zones: 1) rural and peri-urban areas….(2) areas further away from urban growth centers but with good resource endowments and ; (3) areas with neither good resource nor logistical connections to urban areas.”

The one thing that must be understood up front is that this engagement is towards influencing policy as the NAPC is not a line agency implementing particular programs. The engagement of basic sectors is through partnership with government agencies because after all it is not the duty of NGOs to implement government programs. So, for example, the NAPC women sectoral council of the basic sector works in partnership with the Philippine Commission on Women, the urban poor sector works with the Phil Commission on the Urban Poor (PCUP).

What is the poverty picture of the Philippines? According to NAPC and the 2011 census: “more than one fourth are poor and ; we have been the only country in Asia where the absolute number of poor have increased ( over the years) from 1990 to 2005.”

Two key components of the NAPC anti poverty strategy which have always been challenges since time immemorial are the strategy for asset reform and employment.

Asset reform is about agrarian reform and the issue of ancestral domain.

Critics of the conditional cash transfer program (4Ps) say that providing employment is more crucial to poverty reduction. Of course, 4Ps or the Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Program which has been successful in other parts of the world such as in Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia and Africa is designed to address inter generational poverty by making sure that children have nutrition and are able go to school and the mothers’ health are taken care of. So, even if the 4Ps may not provide jobs now, at least, there is food on the table and the children are able to finish basic education and hopefully find jobs later thus breaking the cycle of poverty. This is what social protection is all about. This way also, we are able to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals ( SDGs) as agreed by a community of nations.

Some members of the basic sectors want to participate in the identification of beneficiaries of this Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Program. My sense is that such participation should only be in the area of policy or in setting the criteria for the process of selection of beneficiaries. Civil society or the basic sectors are advocacy partners but are not implementing partners of government programs.

In the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), where majority of the country’s poor provinces are found, poverty reduction program is a crucial track to the peace process by addressing the roots of the armed conflict. Already, the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) has identified three (3) policy priorities:

a) transitional justice;

b) agrarian economy; &

c) electoral system

This will be a crucial track in the new Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) because aside from the issue of identity politics and feudal wars, one of the main reasons for the struggle with peace in most areas is poverty and hunger. In 2005, the Human Development Network in cooperation with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), etc said “that deprivation and injustice rather than hardship alone, lie at the heart of armed conflict which can be empirically validated and demonstrated (and that) “measures of deprivation do predict the occurrence of armed encounters. Relative deprivation becomes more acute with minoritization.”

Poverty Reduction

One of the reasons, many of us in the NGO sector say that we feel responsible for the problem of poverty in the country is that we have been engaging our government in writing into a law the policy for poverty reduction. And the reason why the NGO movement regard the Social Reform and Poverty Alleviation Act ( R.A. 8425) which created the National Anti- Poverty Commission (NAPC) as one of its gains is because, as NGOs, we participated in writing the narrative of this social reform agenda during the Ramos Administration. 


 So, where is NAPC now in this challenge towards poverty reduction? At the least, NAPC continues to engage fourteen (14) basic sectors in particular  and  the big civil society collective in general. This engagement is towards uniting the fourteen basic sectors in development sites and geographic areas. NAPC now “correlates poverty programs with programs for promoting economic growth (and) dividing the country into three economic zones: 1) rural and  peri-urban areas….(2) areas further away from urban growth centers but with good resource endowments and ; (3) areas with neither good resource nor logistical connections to urban areas.” 

 The one thing that must be understood up front is that this engagement is towards influencing policy as the NAPC is not a line agency implementing particular programs. The engagement of basic sectors is through partnership with government agencies because after all it is not the duty of NGOs to implement government programs. So, for example, the NAPC women sectoral council of the basic sector works in partnership with the Philippine Commission on Women, the urban poor sector works with the Phil Commission on the Urban Poor (PCUP). 

 What is the poverty picture of the Philippines? According to NAPC and the 2011 census: “more than one fourth are poor and ; we have been the only country in Asia where the absolute number of poor have increased ( over the years) from 1990 to 2005.” So, one of the major goals under the P-Noy administration is to reduce poverty by half. This P-Noy administration recognizes that increase in gross national product (Gross domestic product is now 5.9 %) will not result to poverty reduction and so written in the goal is the important role of budgets or the allocation of “bigger budgets for social services and  identifying 609 towns from the poorest regions and provinces.” 

 Two key components of the NAPC anti poverty strategy which have always been challenges since time immemorial are the strategy for asset reform and  employment. Asset reform is about agrarian reform and  the issue of ancestral domain. In turn, critics of the conditional cash transfer program ( 4Ps) say that providing employment is more crucial to poverty reduction. Of course, 4Ps or the Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Program which has been successful in other parts of the world such as in Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia and Africa is designed to address inter generational poverty by making sure that children have nutrition and  are able go to school and the  mothers’ health are taken care of. So, even if the 4Ps may not provide jobs now, at least, there is food on the table and  the children are able to finish basic education  and hopefully find jobs later thus breaking the cycle of poverty. This is what social protection is all about. This way also, we are able to achieve the millennium development goals as agreed by a community of nations. 


 Some members of the basic sectors want to participate in the identification of beneficiaries of this Pantawid Pamilya Pilipino Program. My sense is that such participation should only be in the area of policy or  in setting the criteria for the process of selection of  beneficiaries.  Civil society or the basic sectors are advocacy partners but are not implementing partners of government programs. 

 In Mindanao, where majority of the country’s poor provinces are found, the poverty reduction program is also a “complementary track to the Peace Process by addressing the roots of the armed conflict.” This is a correct track because aside from politics and feudal wars, the main reason for the struggle with peace in most areas is poverty and  hunger. In 2005, the Human Development Network in cooperation with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), etc said “that deprivation and injustice rather than hardship alone, lie at the heart of armed conflict which can be empirically validated and demonstrated (and that) “measures of deprivation do predict the occurrence of armed encounters. Relative deprivation becomes more acute with minoritization.”

Davao City

I love Davao City.

Let me count the ways

 Davao City is a city where both mountains and sea are a few minutes away. It is one of few areas in the Philippines where we have forests and biodiversity in our Mount Apo. Because we still have old growth forests, this is ecologically significant in this era of climate change. Davao City is home to rare species and endangered species of plants and birds such as the monkey eating eagle. Most of all, we have people from organizations like Kapwa Upliftment Foundation under the leadership of Ms Alma de la Paz who are working to conserve these forests and for the protection and restoration of biodiversity. Their work is with indigenous peoples, migrants, the government of Davao City, the Department of Environment & Natural Resources (DENR), and civil society organizations such as the Foundation for the Phil Environment, Phil Eagle Foundation, among others. 

Davao City takes care of its poor, who also toil with blood, sweat and tears from sunrise to sunset in making Davao City beautiful and livable. The city is taking care of its poor, among others, through a new Shelter Plan and the creation of the Local Housing Board. I am pleased that we are able to connect to the Local Housing Board through fellows in civil society in our own project to help the informal settlers living in danger zones in Isla Verde, a public park that is also the site of strong storm surges due to monsoons that come every year. According to the Department of Environment & Natural Resources & its Mines & Geo-Sciences Bureau ( DENR- MGB), the Isla Verde sandbar is a young soil formation which is a result of a combination of silt or sediment deposits which was carried by water from our mountains during flood and by the action of the strong water waves. As a young soil formation it is not safe for a permanent human settlement. There is also a legal indication that the whole area is part of parks and playground Davao City has opened relocation sites for those affected by the June 29, 2011 flood and for other informal settlers who are living in danger zones. These relocation sites are in Los Amigos, Catalunan Grande, Panacan, etc. Davao City has already organized its Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council (DRRMC) and we are looking forward to the passage of the DRRMC ordinance so that funds will be allocated for vulnerability assessments & community based disaster risk reduction trainings. 

The kind of peace that we enjoy in Davao City did not come in a flash. It has evolved from a time when Davao City was described as some killing fields in the early eighties. So, our kind of peace is a reaction of that era. Anyway, according to official figures the crime rate in Davao City in 2012  is 0.8 in every 10,000 persons per month. Davao City is emergency ready. Our Central 911 is programmed to respond to all kinds of emergency : medical, fire, police assistance for both natural and man made calamities. Of course, the issue of extra judicial killings ( EJK) is still an unsolved phenomenon and deserves our utmost concern. 

Davao City is multicultural. Multiculturalism is and should be a big project in Davao City and it is a way to promote peace in Mindanao and in the entire country. We are continually proud of the Davao City Reproductive Health Clinic ordinance, the first in the country. And, so it really baffled us why our Congress took too long to legislate the national reproductive health measure. The national reproductive health bill was languishing in Congress for the longest time & it was a relief when it finally became a law.  

Davao City promotes project by and for women using the principles of fair trade. One example is the Women’s Market by Oxfam & the Mindanao Commission on Women during the 2012 Founding Anniversary of Davao offering food and wellness products produced by women from all over Mindanao where “ you can buy fresh fruits and vegetables; rootcrops such as camote; fresh seafood like crabs, squid and seaweed; luyang dilaw (turmeric); organic rice; fruit jams; tablea; banana chips; rice and corn coffee and gumamela tea; lemongrass and ginger granules and coconut sugar; dried boneless bangus and cooked dilis; vinegar; passion fruit juice; malunggay polvoron and suman; embutido and bottled bangus pate; homemade peanut butter; chili sauce; and many more.”


 Finally, Davao City’s anti-discrimination legislation for the benefit of marginalized sectors which also includes a reference to sexual orientation, gender identity & expression (SOGIE) has come out as one of  the first ordinances  of its kind in the country. 

Photos credit : Henrylito Tacio

Our City Government of Davao Award

We felt so inspired and moved by the gesture of Mayor Sara Z. Duterte of the City government of Davao. My organization, PILIPINA Legal Resources Center and we were “chosen to be recognized …. in celebration of the 75th Anniversary of the City government of Davao as one of the organizations and individuals who have made significant contributions to the economic growth and development of the City through the years.”

The specific citation for us was that we helped draft the Davao City Women Development Code and joined in its monitoring and watch after it became a law, among many others.

Davao City is 75 years old and so in an iconic gesture, the City government of Davao decided to award 75 organizations and individuals, for the first time, apart from the other legendary Datu Bago Award.

Five of the Davao City awardees from the civil society sector are members of PHILSSA, our national network of NGOs working for the urban poor. Davao City takes care of its poor and so it is fitting that the City awards those who toil for the urban poor. The five PHILSSA members are PLRC, Salorsed, BFI, Kardams, & DC Upnet.
Seventy five (75) organizations and individuals may sound outstanding and elite few given that Davao City has a population of 1.5 million citizens, still I felt there are many of us from the various sectors who care for Davao City.

I felt inspired and I hope that these “diamond few” will also inspire the mass of citizens who are so electronically wired to the rest of the world but who are just going on with their lives oblivious to the many problems of our times and climes here in our own Davao City.

When one works in the social development world, it is so easy to feel that development work is our monopoly, even as the women and men in the economic and business and profit sector which bring revenues and jobs to Davao City are just as outstanding. Equally outstanding also are the women and men from the academe, from the cooperatives, from the health sectors, and the rest who contribute to the economic growth and development of Davao City.

I think one of the reasons for this “development work is my monopoly attitude” is because so much of our work in the social sector is so pro bono and non profit. One works as much but the returns are in terms of psychic rewards rather than more money and more wealth. And so, the challenge for us now is how to prepare & persuade a successor generation that there is life in this calling or that it pays to work in the social development world because one’s legacy is as palpable as social infrastructures built. These are social institutions built. And institutions are material practices and better ways of doing things that are compelling and lasting because they have become public policy.

From here on, the way to go is to promote corporate social responsibility and campaign for the concept that we are all just custodians of the wealth and resources of this world for the benefit of all.

Another way to go is to promote changes through policy and law. If mining is bad for the environment, then we should have a law that makes it illegal just as smoking is illegal in public places.

We need funds so that our city and country can fund all its programs and projects and so our city government should pay attention to tax evasion by people from the center of wealth & power to send a strong message and to correctly establish the ideal relationship between the government and the citizen taxpayer. As the saying goes, death and taxes are the only two things certain in life. In history, we remember our heroes and activist forefathers and mothers who campaigned against “taxation without representation.”

Still, it is inefficient to collect taxes from the poor. It is inefficient as the cost of collection is high because the taxable units are small. The poor are our fisherfolks as well as our farmers in the highlands of Davao City whose incomes are seasonal and our urban poor whose incomes are unstable. Yet, these poor contribute to making Davao City beautiful and livable.

Finally, I wish to thank the trustees and officers of PILIPINA Legal Resources Center:
Irene M. Santiago, Dr Iris Melliza, Atty Emelina Quintillan, former Congresswoman Patricia M. Sarenas, Former Commissioner Luzminda B. Salcedo, Atty Alice Morada, Ruth Montojo
and PLRC fellows: Cecile, Jacqueline Pelayo, Atty Raissa Jajurie, Atty Mae Pacinabao, Lyca Sarenas, Espie Nonesa, Eme Antigua, Amy S. Villaluz, Danny Sevilla, Atty Adoracion Avisado, Atty Mila Macaraig, Linda Montanez, the late Connie Sardinia, Ben Bugayong, Ella Arpafo, Mary Lou "Belo" Caharian, Kaye Antonio, Ludette Badelles, Kim Loraine B Castillo, Jessica Jose, Ian Clark Parcon, Theresa Eliab, Dick Balderrama, Jojo Dawa, Junard Phoenix Amba, funders, hundreds of paralegals, and hundreds of women and men partners and volunteers.

Congratulations and more power to the 2012 “diamond 75” awardees of Davao City! 

Forests, Farms, Fruits, & Flowers Forests, Farms, Fruits, & Flowers

I spent the eve of the Chinese New Year in the beautiful Garden by the Bay near our home here in Davao City and my thoughts were all about forests & farms & fruits. I was alarmed that the high tide of the new lunar moon covered to the brim the jetty for boats to a nearby beach across the Davao Gulf. Certainly, it is not due to the mythical water dragon of the lunar New Year but for sure it is another evidence of climate change. 

I am grappling about forests because my next advocacy is about reforestation. Anything that relates to policy, laws & development & disadvantaged communities are within my area of interests. Also during the week, I met with women informal settlers from the downtown coastal area of Davao City; they were women who have made homes in a sandbar in Isla Verde which grew out of siltation and mud from the denuded mountains of Davao City. I was so touched by their tale during Southwest monsoons ( Habagat). They said their belongings are always packed for quick evacuations in the event of strong storm surge. So, their dream is to be relocated to a safe place to be able to sleep soundly.

Oceans & mountains are so intimately related. In the case of resort islands with beaches, much of the garden is under the sea in its coral reef. The siltation and mud which flows during floods through its riverways to the sea will destroy the marine coral reefs and various marine fishes. Various communities will have to be taught the concept of Agro Forestry for their own sustainability and to preserve the tourism industry of the island cities. Also, since forests constitute a very small percentage of total land use in many of our islands, our water systems will not be sustainable.   

Can our farmers still have income if their farms are planted to forests? I recall now a line or so from P-NOY’s 2011 State of the Nation Address (SONA). The two words for environment were about trees and floods. A stipend program was proposed for the safeguarding of trees while farmers are waiting for the harvest of coffee and cacao and will be offered to informal settlers. For now, most farmers are very poor and they use few purchased inputs and adopt cultivation techniques which maximize current incomes. The agricultural practices of planting corn, vegetables, & other cash crops tend to be neglectful or destructive of the environment in particular and of soil cover in particular. There is convincing evidence, verifiable by ocular inspection that the long term implications are potentially very serious. They include both the direct loss of productive potential and thus the impoverishment of the already poor farmers who are dependent for their livelihood on farming in slopes.

I have seen one environment conservation technology worth replicating on a large scale in Mindanao : A Sloping Agricultural Land Technology ( SALT) to prevent soil erosion and siltation of marine corals, flooding, and gullying in water worn ravine. SALT has been a project of the Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center, whose former director, Harold Ray Watson was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award (“Asia’s Nobel “ ) for peace & international understanding and promoting this farm forestry project here and abroad. 

Slopeland areas, officially classified as those of a slope between 18% and 40% contain a third of all farmers in Mindanao. These slopeland areas are also exempt from agrarian reform.

This agro forest technology as practiced in a few pilot areas in Mindanao ( i.e. Bansalan, Davao del Sur, ) includes combinations of land shaping, terracing, contour ploughing, mulching or use of crop residues ; management of cropping patterns to increase soil cover; changes in tillage practices (especially reductions in tillage frequency); and especially introduction of forest species which reduce tillage requirements and help stabilize soil. The forest cover will preserve the water resources found in many parts of Mindanao. 

I recently passed by Bukidnon & Malaybalay on my way to Cagayan de Oro & I find again that many parts of Bukidnon are rockies and so trees will not grow on them. But, also, many parts of Malaybalay just before Cagayan de Oro are planted with cash crops such as pineapple and grains. Should we not also convert these to agro forests? Also alarming is that Marawi City, source of hydro- electric power supplying energy for Mindanao is already in need of serious reforestation. We found out that the landscape artist who developed Baguio City, a hill station, is the same landscape artist who designed another hill station that is Marawi City, during the colonial period. Both cities are now denuded, with Baguio much worst as a mall mania threatens the cutting of precious pine trees.

A decade and a half ago, I literally planted with my own hands almost a hundred trees and now it is a beautiful orchard & a forest: my legacy to the next generation.   

photo credits :
a) MSU Marawi City by Kim Loraine Castillo
b) Hagimit Waterfall and Forest by Leah Marie Moral

Sheriff & Mayor Sara

My friends & I who have been working with the poor for decades now are, of course, on the side of Sara, our city mayor, who expressed her anger & indignation in a violent punching incident with a court sheriff executing a writ of demolition.

Barrio Soliman, ( now called Kapitan Tomas), site of the recent Davao City demolition was one of the first development sites of our own women’s center (PILIPINA Legal Resources Center) in 1984: those who came before us did community organizing & community based legal literacy there. So, it pains when spirits are demolished.

That is why a mayor using personal or official power to look at the plight of the poor is a renaissance of sorts & a powerful force to reckon with. Our social institutions are weak and not able to address so much poverty & social inequality.

The video which was aired relentlessly on television & painted a thousand words and comments in social media focused on the punching and so I said on Facebook: “The punching video missed the most important context : informal settlers stoning the demolition team to death. The sheriff ignored the oral command of the mayor to wait for a few hours. Why can't a sheriff wait? The mayor is chief executive of the city and in command. There is such a thing as reasonable force in defense of rights of "strangers," & citizens. More positive force Mayor Sara! 

The bigger picture that crystallized before our eyes: is due process.
The urban poor issues that we have worked for over two decades suddenly became the talk of the entire wired nation.
Our national campaign for a paradigm shift from ““right to housing “ to “right to the city” is potentially now a “brand.” It is a campaign that each of us has a stake in the survival & future of our city.
The city is for us and for our future generation.
As of last census, Davao City has a population of 1.28 million or 241, 509 households & growing at 2.8 per cent.

The Davao City housing backlog is 40,000 and 30% of all households belong to the informal housing sector according to the Shelter Development Framework Plan of the city. According to the Davao City Planning & Development Office, there are about one hundred fifty two (152) squatter colonies & very visible as an urban blight at a glance when airborne and from Davao gulf. We are the largest city in the world but just in area because only 35% of the total population occupy the 4% of the total land area of the city. Davao city’s vulnerable sectors are women, children, the elderly, the tribals and persons with disability.

But let me go back to defending Mayor Sara. Her action is defensible when put in social context. For this, I will defer to one of the founders of our center, lawyer Emelina Quintillan who said, & I quote

“Her act could be justified as impelled by passion & obfuscation.
 In defense of Mayor Sara Duterte, I found this ruling on an administrative case against a sheriff of the Metropolitan Court in Pasig. In Malmis v. Bungabong, the Court explained the proper conduct that sheriffs must exercise when performing their functions, “ viz:

"While it is true that sheriffs must comply with their mandated ministerial duty to serve court writs, execute all processes and carry into effect all court orders promptly and expeditiously, it needs to be pointed out that this ministerial duty is not without limitation.

In the performance of their duties, they are deemed to know what is inherently right and inherently wrong and are bound to discharge such duties with prudence, caution and attention which careful men usually exercise in the management of their affairs.

As agents of the law, sheriffs are called upon to discharge their functions with due care and utmost diligence because, in serving the court’s processes and implementing its order, they cannot afford to err without affecting the integrity of their office and the efficient administration of justice.”

Demolitions must be done in the most humane way possible, in the presence of a representative of a city government as required by law. That the city mayor was there to cushion the violent demolition is a good thing. Too bad, a sheriff could not wait for a couple of hours for the mayor who wanted to be there with her constituents whose homes were to be demolished.

A Message For All Students

If I were to frame all I want to say in an unforgiving page just before the relentless press time, what will I say to all students out there? Suddenly, my life and my world flashed before my eyes, so to speak. Much of what I feel is embedded in my life through work with disadvantaged communities & these embodied experiences inspire my university work.  

The first thing that stands out is the great divisions of all kinds: between the rich and poor, between the educated and uneducated, between genders or women and men, between the religious hierarchy and the church over a reproductive health measure, between the majority cultural group and the minority group, between politicians who are supposed to be public servants and their constituencies, etc, etc. Understanding our world or community and contributing our bit towards making this world a better place should be one task and promise of education.

Making this world a better place is not the monopoly of one discipline but the one discipline I know that makes us understand ourselves and the world are the social sciences. All the advances in science and technology have not made this world a better place. The vast mass of humanity is just going through all the motions and is not too bothered about the problems of the world. The university itself is a microcosm of the big society. Education, per se, reinforces the social class divisions in our society. So, how do we teach citizenship and love of country or community?       
                    
From the social sciences, we are exhorted that our history classes should have a theory of society and that our theory of society must have a sense of history. Looking back in my basic education I do not remember that a discussion of why there is so much social inequality was ever emphasized. Thus, the conclusion that I can make now is that indeed our education has reinforced the status quo much like the theory of equilibrium that society maintains itself through social inequality.  

So, in going to the classroom later, the task I have in mind is to inspire my students (who are so trapped in the age of information technology without purpose) that they have a big role to play in improving our society in their lifetime. The challenge is to convince them that there is a connection between their personal life and the texture and context of the kind of society that we are in by providing them with the glaring evidence of so much social inequality.  

I remember one student who seemed so blasé about the kind of poverty that we are in. I asked her if she has access to the books in my required reading list or if she can afford to buy the recommended textbook. Only then did she realize that she is in want.

That they do not have to look far to see this social inequality: across in malls we find sales ladies standing eight hours for just a couple of hundred of pesos or so, a few blocks from the university are thousands of urban poor making homes in coastal areas designated as parks and who are at the mercy of strong monsoon waves and storm surges that visit us with clockwork regularity, watch your car boys across the street who should be in school and one of these boys snatched my daughter’s cell phone when she was not looking, farmers who could use more income to keep body & soul together, etc, etc. Our incomes should be enough for all so that we can make both ends meet and enjoy a little bit of fine culture such as music and theater and books galore.  

I am glad that I work for a university whose mission is to be a person for others. I am glad that my university has social involvement coordinating programs for communities which can also mentor a successor generation of leaders whose social awareness and skills will make them work for the social and economic well being of our communities. This and the excitement of meeting new students warm my heart and fill me with much hope for the future.

Random Reflections on Holy Holidays

My holy week started with preparations to send off Kaye, mi unica hija for work in Manila.
Now, I am coping with what is called the empty nest syndrome or the feeling that parents experience when a child leaves home to study or work.
The feelings are both sadness and joy not unlike the sadness and joy of the holy season.
The sadness is akin to that of a post partum depression or when a long drawn out project is over.
The joy is the empathy for the excitement of a child turned adult who is trying on “life’s uniforms” and infinite possibilities away from our smothering and overprotection.

My apprehension is probably due to the fact that the Manila that I knew is not the same anymore. Manila has deteriorated so much over the years.
The floods come every year like clockwork; the face of the flood is etched in our minds as the ONDOY flood. My other fear is that much of Manila sits on an earthquake belt. So, I “ Eat, Pray and Love.” Seriously, I told my daughter to eat healthy and have faith. We both believe in the credo that faith is a lot like love and hope.

During the holy week, we hope to have respite from all the bombardment through television of all that is bad in Philippine politics.
After all the House and Senate hearings on corruption in aid of legislation, our government leaders must reflect now on the goals of our government spending.
Subsidies are crucial for our agrarian sector. Public spending on our human resources through education is an important investment.

As to revenue generation through taxes, that our government is paying attention to tax evasion by people from the center of wealth & power is an iconic gesture that should send a strong message to correctly establish the ideal relationship between the government and the citizen taxpayer.
As the saying goes, death and taxes are the only two things certain in life.

In history, we remember our heroes and activist forefathers and mothers who campaigned against “taxation without representation.”
Still, it is inefficient to collect taxes from the poor.
It is inefficient as the cost of collection is high because the taxable units are small.
The poor are our farmers and fisherfolks in the agrarian sector whose incomes are seasonal or our urban poor whose incomes are unstable.

Then, while my daughter and I were looking at the range of work options in Manila, I discover that the friends I went to school with or worked with are now the rulers and leaders of the land as cabinet members or the leaders in President Noy's team (PNoy), congresswomen and men, solicitor general, Justices, Comelec Directors, Deans of universities, or heads of social, economic and political institutions of our country.
So, I feel the faith again.
We, together with these leaders that we know so very well are directly responsible for the social, economic and political prognosis of the Philippine Republic.
For me, this feels like a renaissance and the renewal of Easter that I am looking forward to.

Fruits of the Farm

I have been chilling out ( if I may use the jargon of the young) in an agro-forest on the nearby island garden city of Samal on weekends lately and the experience has left me both challenged and inspired. The durian trees that I planted a decade ago are now fruit bearing. Interspersed with avocado, lanzones and perennial trees such as Narra and Molave, the farm is a forest and an orchard overlooking Davao Gulf and the sunrise.


I have also reserved a part of the land exclusively for vegetables as this part of the island is now popularly becoming to be the vegetable capital of the island. Long ago, I found out that traditional or small farming per se is not lucrative here. For example, a kilo of camote costs P25 pesos and it takes this root crop about three months to harvest. Our farm hands planted sweet peas and the seller in the market earns more compared to our farmers who waited for three months for this vegetable to mature. We once planted mongoes in a hectare of land and after harvest, it occurred to me that it would have been more profitable if our enterprise was wholesale buying and selling mongoes in the market instead of planting. The lesson for me is that a farmer must engage in some kind of agribusiness if she wants to move up from subsistence farming to lucrative farming. I also found out in my travels in other parts of the world, that the reason why farmers are able to survive and are much better off or even rich there is because first world countries give farmers financial subsidy. So, for our millennium development goals to succeed in the next five years in the rural sector, our government needs to be serious about our agriculture and fisheries modernization program.

The face of the farmer is still traditionally that of a man, even if in actual practice, women are involved in planting, cultivating, harvesting, etc. The current programs of our government are trying to correct this. But, even if the women are now part of farm work, the men are still not helping with domestic housework. I am sure that this is also one of the reasons why many of our women have preferred that their housework get paid and highly in foreign lands. Our rural women are repudiating our culture of poverty in the rural areas and as well are escaping the non-egalitarian gender relations at home, while earning income abroad for the family. Meantime, the husbands are introduced to domestic work while their wives are economic refugees abroad.

A part of Samal City is devoted to rice farming but irrigation is unheard of in these parts. Mostly, farmers do not know that forests are related to water. We need to promote that a farm must have a forest in order to be sustainable. In one of the waterfalls, a developer cut some of the indigenous naturally occurring rain forest trees and replaced them with ornamental palm trees. Palm trees do not hold water and of course, the entrepreneur simply was not advised well.

If your parents have given you a piece of farm land by way of inheritance, will your spouse also own the fruits of the farm? The pre-nuptial agreement, if there is one, will govern. So, in the pre-nuptial agreement, you may stipulate that it be your exclusive property or community property or conjugally owned. If conjugally owned, yes, your spouse is co-owner of the fruits of the farm; but only the fruits are co-owned, the land is exclusive property of the inheriting spouse. Likewise, if there is no pre-nuptial agreement and you were married before the 1988 Family Code took effect, yes your spouse is co-owner of the fruits of the farm and this is under the regime of the conjugal partnership of gains. If you got married when the Family Code took effect already ( August 3, 1988) and there is no pre-nuptial agreement, the fruits of the farm are your exclusive property because the fruits and income are among those excluded from the community property of the spouses.

2010 : My Personal Notes

The biggest event of the year is, of course, the changing of guards in the political palace that is Malacanang and the ascension to power of P- Noy, the scion of Cory and Ninoy on the wings of the political platform to address corruption and changes in our social, economic and political landscape.

One year passed and the victims of the Maguindanao massacre are still wailing and wanting for justice. There is still no let up in our national pain, grief and anger over this election related crime where journalists were among the 58 innocent women and men who died doing a civic duty to country.

Climate change was so palpable in the floods that hit our Philippines and Pakistan and many other countries. Thousands of travelers were stranded in London, Frankfurt, Schipol and other airports in Europe as hundreds of flights were cancelled in mid winter due to snow and this makes 2010 Christmas memorable but not comfortable.

The release by WikiLeaks of classified, confidential cables of the U.S. State Department stunned the diplomatic and international community. There is no knowing now as to the impact and result of this release of diplomatic documents but, for sure, there will be a redefinition of the legal landscape of confidentiality and communication technology in the conduct of foreign affairs towards security and world peace.

The whole wired world was aghast at the tragic hostage drama that happened in our premier park involving Chinese tourists and Rolando Mendoza, a decorated policeman turned hostage taker. We landed in the New York Times; ordinary citizens here and Filipinos abroad were tweeting and connecting through social media how inept we were. After the fact, our lessons learned pertains to prevention and management of crisis, who is coordinating and in charge, the importance of negotiation skills, the human resources skills of our women and men in uniform and the effectiveness of our justice system.

After fifteen years in prison, Hubert Webb, et. al were acquitted due to failure of prosecution to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Webb et all were the perpetrators. As to opinion on this Visconde massacre, the country is divided. Belatedly, the social media were used in this case for public awareness to counter the “ danger of a single story.” But, the pillars of our justice system are on trial here by the court of public opinion. We hear there is a move to re-open the case. Time left is six months before the prescriptive period of 20 years set in.

The whole nation was glued to the big show of Congressman Manny Pacquio in the world boxing ring. Charice Pempengco under the initial boost by Oprah became one of the stars of Glee, an American television show.

Our economic refugees abroad continue to send dollars to families here and thus children are able to have university education. The four (4) billion conditional cash transfer to the poorest families sounds promising given that it will be presided over by our dear Dinky Soliman, a colleague in PILIPINA, the Filipino national feminist movement. We have faith in the peace process as we have faith in our Ging Deles, another PILIPINA founder, and Dean Marvic in much the same way that we have faith in the negotiators on the MILF side.

So, happy holidays to all. Let me repost my signature Christmas wish : My wish is to be able to feel Christmas through the eyes and heart of the child in me and to believe in the magic of Christmas : faith in a Santa Claus from the heavens, giving gifts of love and all the works. Faith is a lot like love and hope and invoking that warms my heart !

A Pause On My Birthday

I kind of pause a bit every year around this time in November because I turn one year older and because it is the thanksgiving season. So, let me share at random my current stream of consciousness. On a personal note, I have my share of angst in life and always there are reminders around me. The dreams that turned out to be elusive, personal problems and the problems of the world that in my social development work feels like I carry the weight on my shoulders.

So, I have developed a method of reciting a mantra to tell myself that I cannot have everything and that our collective work is hopefully always to make things better. And, yes, across the years, I find that things are different and so much better now. One example is that technology makes life handy and fun. The one technology that reminded me that I am one year older is Facebook. This is a wonderful medium and indeed we are now a global village.

I went to a meeting in Manila last week and it was a meeting of a development law group ( Alternative Law Groups) that I have not been to for a while now. I was much pleased to realize that our group has consciously developed a successor generation: the best and the brightest lawyers and development practitioners who are choosing to work for the poor and the oppressed instead of for the rich and powerful. But, I am also wary that the recent economic crisis is affecting the various development funding windows in a precarious way. I hope that this will not make social development work unattractive to the younger generation as a career track.

Ideally, it is about the challenge of tapping the centers of wealth and power towards social responsibility and the promotion of social justice. The rule of thumb here is the biblical saying “ Ask and it shall be given.”

We were discussing the national situation at this juncture in time and the twin issues that are plaguing us : corruption and poverty. The variation of the themes in a nutshell as shared by Representative Walden Bello to our group are on poverty reduction through conditional cash transfer (CCT), the likelihood that the reproductive health bill will be passed as a law, that there should be a reversal of trade liberalization which is the cause of our current economic crisis, the absence of a real opposition in the House of Congress because the 30 representatives in the lower house are headed by Rep Gloria Arroyo, our eight ( 8) million Filipino economic refugees spread around the world, and the Balay vs Samar political factions in the P-Noy cabinet which are personality driven and which are in a kind of tug of war in terms of programs and policies in government. ( read : Balay is the Roxas- Araneta home in Cubao & so it is the Liberal Party & more ; & the Samar group is the group which held office during the campaign period in Samar Avenue in Quezon City and is the other set of power holders in the P-Noy team)

To set the anti-corruption agenda in motion, the newly created structure is the Truth Commission. I am filled with hope that this will work out because some of the personalities that are here are our friends who came from the social development circle. The other structure is, of course, the track of impeaching our Ombudsman and the Akbayan Party List is very much into this track.

The latest on poverty reduction is the billions worth of conditional cash transfer which has recently been practiced in other jurisdictions like in Mexico, Brazil and Bangladesh. It is such a resounding success in Brazil. Anyway, this methodology is about giving cash to the poorest provided they send their children to school and that they visit health clinics and this project is being presided over by our Department of Social Welfare & Development (DSWD). Our legislators are examining the capacity of the DSWD as a bureaucracy to deliver this huge four (4) billion pesos worth CCT program. This CCT transfer program is related to achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG). My personal take is that, perhaps, the impact of CCT will take time. There was a sense in our development law group that asset reforms like agrarian reform, modernization of agriculture, taxation, moratorium on debt repayment should also be pursued more vigorously towards real reduction of so much social inequality.

I now realize that my life is so very much intertwined with my work that I find very meaningful in the larger scheme of things in this world. And that is a good reason to celebrate my birthday.

Sept 21 : Martial Law & Memory Truth Telling

How does one tell the story of a decade and a half of martial law to the young generation today?
 The proclamation of martial law happened on Sept 21, 1972. 
When it happened, the general population did not know how to react to the proclamation.

 The analysis of sociologist Randy David was that: 
(a) the ordinary person did not have civil and political consciousness and that
(b) there was widespread poverty and everyone was willing to give a chance to an unknown kind of authoritarianism that had legal justification in the 1935 constitution ( paraphrasing mine).

That brand of authoritarianism just fell into place and into the hearts and minds of Filipinos so used to patronage politics – until the promised abundance of the so-called New Society that was supposed to be rid of corruption did not happen at all. 

Up to now, I am still amazed at how the Filipino took too long to oust a dictator who ruled for over two decades.
Or for that matter, how our judiciary, at that time, said that it cannot rule against a presidential prerogative as it was a domain that involves a political question or one that belongs to the realm of the sovereign people, as the 1973 Constitution had been ratified by citizen's assemblies. 

This was weaponizing the law & gave that era a semblance of constitutional authoritarianism.

We said: What is so - called "legal" is not always just.

When martial law was proclaimed, I was in an out of town school and my mother who happened to be separated for four years from her parents during the second world war suddenly ordered me to fly home.
I obeyed because parents know best.
There were no classes for two weeks or so.
It was such an uncertain juncture in time.
As a burgeoning social activist, I was part of a group which was into study sessions analyzing the problems of society.
A few years later, I decided to pursue studies about society and development like it was my personal reaction to the historical events happening and unfolding before my eyes.

What palpable changes do we see now in our institutions?
One change is the way we have reformulated the martial law provisions in our 1987 Constitution which now provides for both Congress and our Supreme Court to look into and inquire into the validity or factual basis of any martial law proclamation using their checks and balance functions. In this sense, we have been politically educated. We have institutionalized people power in our charter provisions such as recall, initiative and referendum.

But, we are still a very poor country. Our country is run by the oligarchy: by no more than 300 families that hold more than 70 percent of the national wealth.
Yet, our people are constantly always hopeful and resilient.
When one is in the rock bottom, one feels one has nothing to lose.

This time, we are placing our hopes in a political vision that is constantly evolving.
We have learned a lot of lessons from almost two decades of martial law which was legally justified in a colonial 1935 constitution.
We have since then changed that colonial martial law provision in our 1987 charter so that our children will never again experience that dark era in our history as a young nation.  

The University: Promoting Equality Through The Classroom

Going Back To The University

After decades, I have gone back to the university to teach which is a kind of renaissance for me. Friends in the academe have warned me that there is a different crop of students now. Of course, what the academicians mean is that many students today do not regard themselves as serious scholars plotting to change society and the world. Then, I saw some young student activists exercising their freedom of speech on television and their core message was about the tuition hike and the processes that should be part it.

I am teaching the social sciences (Political Science & Sociology) and I am filled with much hope that I can contribute to the mentoring of the successor generation. Some of these students will be future leaders. On the first day of class, I was trying to introduce a quality of mind that allows a student to understand one’s personal circumstance in the context of society and various institutions or what C. Wright Mills calls as the interplay between history, society and biography. It is revealing that advancements in science and technology have not solved much of the problems of humanity. Much of our problems are called social and the solutions involve changing social structures. For example, scholars are asking why is it that even as the Philippines is the most "western" country in Asia, it is also one of the poorest? China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia are performing well economically. What is it in our culture that hinders economic growth? I told my students that to say that the Filipino is lazy is a misrepresentation of social reality. But, the answer to the study of why we are still poor is a very long overdue report. Perhaps, the more incisive question is why is it that majority of our people do not have access to the wealth of our country?

Or why is it that across time, women have become subordinate to men? Ah but looking at the classroom now, I am much pleased that there are more women. But, then again, one can also accurately say that a private elite university is one of the social institutions that are accessible to one strata or class of society. The poor have been pre-excluded by virtue of their belonging to a particular class. And for the poor, the economic system has failed not just female students but male students too, and who have been excluded from school due to poverty. Which is why, one of the ideal functions of a good government is to subsidize the education of its people.

I was once asked what it was in my well rounded education that socialized me to enter the world of social development. During the activism of the 70’s when we were debating whether we wanted to be doctors, we asked ourselves, “ so when we treat a patient for malnutrition, what will happen to him or her when s/he goes back to his or her poverty?” So we said,” Let us address the poverty first by contributing our bit.” At that time and even now, the disciplines that are inspiring us and allowing us to look forward to good social change are the social sciences.


Promoting Equality Through The Classroom

I am about to go to the classroom to teach and I have to churn out words for my Wednesday column. There is so much to say and I always start up with a framework for saying things. Today, my frame of mind is about poverty and all sorts of inequality in society.

I am thinking of my two types of students in the classroom : type one is the group mesmerized and fascinated by what I am saying and investing themselves in interaction. The trick for this is the skill to evoke their interest and drawing examples relevant to their worldview and experiences; and type two is what I call the deviant few who are displaying what we call the “shut out” syndrome. Teachers in the elementary grades have a term for this: physically present but mentally absent. It is a challenge always to bring these students back to the classroom.

My topic for later is social stratification and the task is to explain how society is divided according to rank or hierarchy using various indicators that they will understand. My challenge for this is how to promote an egalitarian society given that my students are blinded by their middle or high class socio - economic status and thus have either no empathy for the poor or have aversion for being poor. Then, I remind them that the mission of the university where they are enrolled in is not only for excellence but also to serve others.

The Muslim world will observe Ramadan soon and by practice I have sort of always observed this season for years. We call it Duyog Ramadan. Particularly, in this season for this year, my colleagues will be traveling to Muslim communities about a project in the Shari’a courts and in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao but observing the holiness of the season. Some of my Muslim women friends will be doing paper work during the night and going slow during the day. I share to my class what a Muslim friend once said that the Ramadan season is, among others, a time for solidarity with the poor who have to undergo forced fasting all year round due to poverty.


Then I go about the myriad things about how wealth should be shared by all and how we should just be custodians of the earth’s resources for the next generation; and that the climate changes that we are experiencing are the consequences of the way we have treated the environment.

I will say, for instance, that in gender stratification, women have for centuries been subordinate to men and that there are rich feminists who are advocating for gender equality because they have owned the suffering of their mothers and all women before them. I guess if we are able to promote this kind if social consciousness, somehow this new generation will not allow discrimination because it is wrong. I always tell my students that all of the existing inequalities are socially constructed and amenable to social change but that change will have to involve change in institutions and structures. Institutions and structures are big words but a faster way to really change and promote new behavior is through laws and standards. I guess given that so much inequality is so well entrenched, we will have to think of more creative ways to promote an egalitarian society to a student population whose goal is to graduate from school and join society whose processes generate more inequality. This is a mission of a lifetime. And the classroom is a good place to start.

Election Epilogue

“Hope,…. is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed….. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

– Vaclav Havel

On election day of 2010, I woke up to people running in the streets. Dazed from sleep, I feared the worst like it was an emergency such as a fire or a vehicular accident. But no, the story we got was that a candidate himself was distributing money openly to a crowd of voters catching their breath to fall in line. The distance towards witnesses making affidavits for these transgressions is very, very far. Well, I thought this is less heinous ( but violatively heinous, nonetheless) from an experience as a child when an uncle lay lifeless on the street murdered by our political opponent. It was a long and drawn out murder case and lasted almost a decade in our courts. In hindsight, after years of introspective healing, this is the reason why it is taking me half a century to enter local politics.

The texture of the local races has been the same since time immemorial that one hopes and dreams to change it at some point in time. It is so deceptively simple and defies many a formula for change. Perhaps, the constituents prefer constancy and stability and the status quo as opposed to something new. All things equal, poor people would prefer something familiar. People will vote for someone they have access to when they are sick or when they cannot pay school fees or when they cannot pay water and electric bills. All public officials are deemed source of largesse and no politician has a right to enter politics without the funding wherewithal of one’s own or from some rich patron/s who are sure to extract or take behest favors during the politician’s term of office. Still, election is a methodology of democracy and as for politics, Randy David  says,  "politics is a mechanism for forging consensus." 

Each morning during the campaign period, I always wake up with people already lining up to see me to solicit funds to defray prescriptions for medicines, or because it fiesta time in their village or someone wants to ask money for transport or even to pay for water bills. Most often, I tell them that under election laws, I am allowed to spend only three pesos ( P3) per voter. Later, I delegated this explaining portion to a campaign aide. Mostly, as we have to be in the campaign track at the crack of dawn, I was simply not available to many voters visiting me because I was going to their homes. The poverty in the rural areas is unspeakable and during the campaign I was filled with hopes that good governance will make a difference in their onerous and difficult condition. It is a hurdle to understand that poor people want the instant calories now to survive- even for just a day or two during this election fiesta - and cannot wait for poverty reduction programs that will take time to come their way. The logic is that governance is the business of government anyway and promises of good governance are not edible now. Mostly, people believe that whoever is in the reins of government will abuse power. That we have all the laws and institutions to combat corruption cannot transcend this belief. And so, it behooves upon us to promote the mantra that “hope is the triumph over experience.”

Political dynasties are still here with us because scions of politicians born and bred in a political clan are socialized into the ways of good and bad politics and have more chances of survival. Not many an ordinary mortal can survive the ways of politics. Perfect examples of these mortals who cannot survive politics are those who cannot give up their intellectual freedom from the center of wealth and power.

In my campaign spiel, I intimated to voters that I am already living a very comfortable life, I have received my inheritance, done with school tuition duties as my daughter has finished college, visited the world and that I am ready to serve. I guess my listeners are kind to me as they can see that I am still some reluctant public servant wannabe who is not ready to give up my precious personal space and privacy. I am surviving the lessons of the  May 10, 2010 elections.  Something makes sense and I have carried this feeling in moving on. 

Campaigning for a President of the Philippines

Today’s election campaign is targeting to bring national candidates to as many major cities and towns. I have been involved in presidential campaigns in many ways : as a child during the 1965 Macapagal & Roxas campaign when my grandfather was a campaign manager, when I joined the 1998 Roco & Santiago national campaign as a close in aide and now as a team member in the Noy & Mar campaign. Over the weekend, Presidentiable Noynoy graced a local rally in the island city of Samal. The gym was so full to the brim notwithstanding that the notice was just a day earlier.

I have had chances of face to face encounters with Noynoy early on in the decade during Abanse ! Pinay meetings and his overnight transformation as a national leader is unmistakable. Noynoy is now oozing with a charism that feels like divinely ordained. It is a feeling that I associate with Presidents like Obama and Cory much like a feeling of déjà vu.

As the campaign for local candidates has not started, all speeches before the arrival of Noynoy in a Samal City gym was about his presidential platform. In my own pitch for Noynoy, I introduced his educational platform of transforming secondary education as a stepping stone to a possible livelihood option after graduation and I was much pleased when he actually talked about it as the centerpiece of his rally speech.

We have also been bringing the presidential campaign to barangay hall meetings and barangay fiestas. I am finding out that the national campaign is a chance to review our soul and character as a nation : how despite our industry as a people, we are so impoverished in so many ways. In this sense, it should not be difficult to campaign for a president who is running on the platform of WHY we are poor. In sociology, we say, we know who are poor, where they live and what they do but we seldom address the issue of why we are poor. Therefore, the issue of why we are poor needs to be communicated well. In this electronic age, we have become visual creatures. The connection of corruption to poverty must be visually communicated. Of course, having the wherewithal and funds for communication is another matter. But, we are much pleased that the Liberal Party will accept donations only on the condition that there are no strings attached to the campaign donations. Donations will be accepted only on the condition that the future sitting president will not be beholden to campaign contributors.

It has been written by a literary pundit that we should not pin all our hopes in this 2010 election that is mostly funded by the so called upper class strata of society and that real meaningful change if we go by historical evolution will take, at least, two decades. But then again, if we are in rock bottom, the only way is to go up. And which is why, a palpable ambiance for change is in the air and this election will hopefully crystallize this. So, if as they say change happens every two decades or so, 2010 will be a year for good change and evolution through the ballot, two and a half decades later after the 1986 people’s power under the baton of our beloved President Cory Aquino.

Revving Up For The Campaign Trail

The national campaign has started and the streets have welcomed the event with campaign posters galore. The printers have been sending quotations to candidates to outbid the others and thanks to modern technology, printers have been able to accept orders through e-mail. Starting Feb 9 and up to May 8, national candidates and their campaigners may now encourage their supporters and volunteers to use media and informal communication systems and may now use explicitly “vote for,” and encourage the use, distribution, exchange of campaign paraphernalia or encourage all shows of support for candidate through all legal acts.

Since the Christmas break, I have visited many rural villages and the issue of poverty stares one in the eye. Candidates’ platforms are now being sharpened. It will be very handy if a candidate has the skills to analyze the issues and problems in one’s constituency and to interface such analyses with a proposed program of governance. One function of the state is to spur development through physical and social infrastructures like roads, irrigation, farmers’ subsidy and extension services, training & educational systems, etc. The cost of the governance bureaucracy takes up a lion’s share in the budget and so these are the items in the budget that need to be revisited and rationalized as to the fit between skills and function.

My sense is that candidates’ messages that address poverty will ring true with voters. Pundits are saying that voters will respond to messages that convey very clearly that it is possible for anyone to climb up the social mobility ladder. Therefore, core messages of candidates that outline how to climb up the social mobility ladder by improving our lives will be relevant. Experts are also saying that trustworthiness of a candidate will be relevant to the extent that a candidate will know what to do with such trustworthiness. In other words, the perception that one will do well with governance is important. This is to say, that invoking one’s pedigree is not everything. Invoking a long line of politicians in one’s pedigree can even be construed as promoting the very concept of dynasty that we are fighting against.

In Davao City and Davao provinces, organized groups will have solid votes. Many of these cause oriented groups have presented their proposed development agenda to candidates. These groups and their constituents will monitor compliance during the term of the elected official and they will judge a candidate through the ballot again in the next election. Which is why, it is very important for candidates to explain, for instance, that the function of the legislator is to make ordinance, appropriate budget, and preside over or perform oversight functions. As it is now, constituents go to their elected officials to ask for help for everything : from birth, baptismal, weddings to death events.

I imagine that candidates’ privacy will be invaded to the hilt. So, for the sanity of the candidate, it will be healthy to have an inviolate sacred space (whether virtual space or real space ) where one can retreat and replenish vital energy which is crucial for one to be able to survive towards the finish line.

But, as voters lets help in promoting vote buying free zones.