Lessons in London’s Looting

After the fairy tale wedding of a few moonlights ago, the world watched in shock & disbelief as anonymous looters rapaciously ravaged UK stores stealing shoes, clothes & electronic devices.

I have walked through these high streets looted in Croydon & Clapham in south London & I also felt the outrage at this senseless brutality & mayhem. I used to window shop in these stores and eat in some of the restaurants lining the streets now turned to ashes.

The rioting looters wearing ski masks & bonnets burned buildings & attacked defenseless working class neighborhoods, too. The looters did not belong to any one pigmentation & color or racial background: they were just kids which were either middle class & wealthy. There was no statement of ownership or signature to the riot; there was no unifying ideology except that these looters were self driven and acted as a mob.

The rioters were called a mob because they were not organized & their participation was instantaneous. But, a mob is also part of the larger society and it is an indictment that something is deeply wrong in Great Britain now.

For now, the causes of this mayhem can be attributed to a conflation of many things. But, the framing of things or theories to explain all these is addressed to the big society not just the governance apparatus. In short, the solutions are indicated for all social institutions.

For instance, is it the primary role of government or is it the role of family to make sure that our children are able to distinguish between right & wrong? Surely, the discipline of children & the re-establishing of a new system of values are clearly the role of both the educational system & family.

London residents waited uneasy & were quick to blame the London police whose tactics proved inadequate as the riots were initially treated as a public disorder issue rather than as an issue of criminality. It is said that it was not about the number of the police responding to the riot but it was about the way the police were deployed.

Police tactics are different for crimes against public order such as rebellion & illegal assemblies because these crimes must be conflated with civil & political rights or the right to petition government for redress of grievances. Also, the riots with looting were sparked allegedly by an incident of police brutality that resulted in the killing of a young boy in the north of the United Kingdom. Still, everyone was in consensus that no police brutality can ever justify the breakdown of order that shortly followed.

The parliamentarians from all political parties immediately huddled in the wake of the riots & resolved to start somewhere in addressing order & the breakdown of discipline. The magistrates are now swamped with hearing the cases of the more than a thousand youth arrested. The oft repeated query by the judges was, “Where are your parents?” Prime Minister David Cameroon is now urged to look at his social policy & scale up his “inner city” small project from the periphery and make it a national central project for working class neighborhoods & defenseless minorities.

The Prime Minister is also proposing for a national citizen service. In turn, the Labour Party was heard as saying that these instant and simple judgments will lead to wrong solutions. So, there is a call for a deep inquiry into this social problem manifesting as riots & looting & breakdown of discipline & the corresponding restoration of responsibility by various social institutions so that this mayhem may not happen again – especially that the eyes of the world will be focused to London again for the Olympics in 2012.

2nd State of the Nation Address 2011

That the speech was in a language close to the hearts of the majority means that PNoy, the President of the Philippines & public servant wanted to communicate to every Filipino.

 And talking about language, yes every Filipino, who has had primary school and owns a television understands our Filipino language.

 So, let me recount the words in the speech that I will hold the President accountable for in the next year and beyond.

 The speech will be remembered for posterity for the vivid branding of the abuse of authority mindset as exemplified by the indiscriminate use of the siren or wangwang.
 Henceforth, corruption and the abuse of those in power and authority will now be called the wangwang mentality.

 The report about the drinking of the billion peso worth of coffee is the ultimate in abuse of entitlement in government and government owned & controlled corporations.

 I noted highlights in the State of the Nation Address that should matter and here is my rundown:

 Food security is couched in the goal of producing and buying rice here.

 The single digit unemployment rate of 8% last year is now down to 7.2% this year.
A million and close to half jobs were created this year.

 The word for environment was about trees and floods.
A stipend program for the safeguarding of trees while farmers are waiting for the harvest of coffee and cacao will be offered to informal settlers.
So, is this an offer for the urban poor to relocate to farms?

 As to revenue generation through taxes, that this government will be paying attention to tax evasion by doctors, lawyers and businessmen is an iconic gesture that should send a strong message to correctly establish the ideal relationship between the government and the citizen taxpayer.

 Mindanao was represented as an issue about ending the practice of command votes for political patrons. The sample proposed solution is synchronization of elections by letting the candidates in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) run during the regular elections with the rest of the country. And for this P-Noy thanked Congress that the law for the synchronization of ARMM with national elections was passed.

 The program of government for the incoming year is spelled out in the budget that P-Noy will send to Congress a day after the SONA.
 Since the SONA is for the opening of Congress session this year, our President thanked Congress “ for passing laws regarding the ff: 
GOCC Governance, ARMM Synchronization, Lifeline Electricity Rates Extension, Joint Congressional Power Commission Extension, Children and Infants’ Mandatory Immunization, and Women Night Workers.”

 The rundown of the Legislative agenda are the following:
 “ We aim to give due compensation to the victims of Martial Law;
 to grant our house help the salaries and benefits that they deserve;
and to improve the system that awards pensions to our retired soldiers.
"We likewise support the expansion of the scope of scholarships granted by DOST to outstanding yet underprivileged students; the advancement of universal quality healthcare; the responsible management of the environment; and the formation of facilities that will ensure the safety of our citizens during times of great need and calamity….
"Our agenda also includes the development of BuCor, NBI, NEA, and PTV 4, so that, instead of lagging behind the times, they will better fulfill their mandate of public service.”

 Some "bosses" (read as: citizens) said that foremost of what they missed was vision & direction.
What about this?
 Pres. Noy said:
 “ We are steering our government in a clear direction.
A country where opportunity is available; where those in need are helped; where everyone’s sacrifices are rewarded; and where those who do wrong are held accountable.”

 I count as vision the agenda to end the culture of corruption.
That the culture of corruption will start to end in this P-Noy presidency is a both a program and a vision.
 My favorite is that Pres Noy is asking as us to be a grateful nation and to cultivate a gesture of thankfulness to everyone that does us a good deed.

The Philippines Now A Year After The P-Noy Aquino Presidency

An analysis of the Philippine situation now should be at once social, economic and political.
Let me start with the economy as it is the infrastructure of society according to still relevant classic sociologists.

 Aquinomics, according to economist Cielito Habito can be summarized into two & I quote,
“economics of business confidence and economics of fiscal responsibility.”

 As explained by C. Habito, the Philippines posted a growth in private domestic investment from zero in 2002-2007 to 37% now, with a corresponding drop in foreign direct investments and local government spending. The growth from investments is from the private sector and across all sectors, urban and rural, including the farming sector. The explanation for the drop in foreign investments is the U.S. flat economy and the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

These two economies are our biggest foreign investors. Still, the increase in domestic private investment is a positive one.
The “economics of fiscal responsibility,”  is our budget surplus or underspending in government construction, which, at first glance, would mean a low absorbent capacity of this administration.
But, actually, the financial planning for the 2011 budget was made by the Arroyo administration, as the P-Noy crafted budget begins in 2012 yet.

 Last year registered the creation of about half a million jobs from the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) Industry which also registered a U.S $9 billion Philippine income from the services sector. According to Ms. Marife Zamora, Philippine country manager of Convergys, there is still a lack of qualified human resources in this field who are good in English, computer savvy and logical thinkers.
 Still, about eleven (11) million Filipinos are still unemployed.

 On the political front, during the year, we have been a recipient of advisories against travel to the Philippines by foreign countries.
The Manila Hostage Crisis became a symbol of sorts of the incompetence of our chain of command to handle a crime situation involving foreigners as victims.

That the tourism sector is into a “re-branding” of the Philippines is of positive note.

 Politics is mainly the stuff of our three branches of government.
According to P-Noy himself, the chief achievement of his administration, so far, is his policy of good governance and the restoration of public trust.
But, perhaps the snail pace pursuit of this “Ang Daang Matuwid,” may have been responsible for P-Noy’s drop in his net satisfaction rating by the SWS polling operation from a high of +64 in November 2010 to a low of +46 in June 3-6, 2011.

 Various committees in Congress are into investigations galore in aid of legislation : to name a few, the fertilizer scam, AFP scam, and lately the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes scam involving the clergy.

 The pillars of our justice system have not been able to resolve both old and new heinous crimes : Ninoy Aquino murder, Visconde massacre, Dacer-Corbito, Maguindanao massacre, etc.

 Last, but certainly, not least is the social services sector.

For women, the lingering delay in the passage of the Reproductive health bill is the ultimate test of the impotence of the lawmaking & policy making branches of our government. This is also a commentary on the failure of the P-Noy administration to muster political support for this piece of legislation from various political parties in Congress.

 That we are the last nation - state in this post modern world that does not have divorce for the majority speaks a million words of indictment of how feudal our leaders in position of power and authority are.

 As someone, who personally heard direct testimonies of about a hundred empowered parent leaders of the Pantawid sa Pamilya Pilipino Program or the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program,
I am adopting the view that this centerpiece program of the PNoy Administration is an investment in human resources to arrest poverty of the poorest of the poor of the current generation so that these children now in school will take care of the next generation.

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.

The Philippine Proposed Divorce Law

Half of the entire Filipino population is already ready for divorce while a big part of the remaining half is just undecided. Our advocacy for divorce is related to our fight against violence against women. It is also in keeping with the women’s movement toward the promotion for bodily rights, autonomy and empowerment of the oppressed gender. It is not against men. It is against oppressors.

My sense is that a knee-jerk objection to divorce is just based on fear for the word divorce whose connotation is associated with the “ end of romance.” But it is not so. It is about what to do when the romance and the marriage contract have failed irrevocably. So, before we object, let us be informed first. The current proposed law is authored by our own feminist mentor, professor, then Davao City local legislator, now Party list Representative Luz Ilagan & Rep. Emerenciana de Jesus of the Gabriela Women’s Party.

The Gabriela Women’s Party proposed grounds for divorce are very straightforward and serve to improve on the current grounds for legal separation and more:

a) When the petitioner has been separated in fact for at least five years and reconciliation is
highly improbable;
b) When the spouses have already been granted a court decree of legal separation for at least
two (2) years & reconciliation is highly improbable;
c) When any of the grounds of legal separation has caused irreconcilable differences;
d) When one or both of the spouses are psychologically incapacitated to comply with the
essential marital obligations &
e) When the spouses suffer from irreconcilable differences that have caused the irreparable breakdown of the marriage.

Notice the words used are superlatives : irreconcilable, irreparable, marriage breakdown and highly improbable reconciliation. In turn, divorce as a remedy is an option.
In keeping with the women’s movement’s advocacy against violence, the bill proposes that the existing six (6) months cooling off period after filing of the petition for divorce shall not be applied where the action for legal separation or divorce involves acts of violence under the Anti- Violence Against Women & Their Children Act ( R.A. 9262)

Under current law on legal separation, a decree of relative divorce or legal separation does not sever marital ties; one is still married and thus a separated spouse is criminally liable if a spouse takes on an extra marital relationship. But, under the proposed divorce law, the effect or a decree of divorce cuts marital ties and thus remarriage is allowed; support is given to the innocent spouse who is not yet gainfully employed but only up to one year and custody is decided by the court for minor children in keeping with the “best interests of the child.”

Shouldn’t a remedy available to all nations of the world be available to us also? We have no right to celebrate national freedom and independence day if we continue to legally cage and imprison some of our women and men in broken and failed marital unions.

This remedy is not for couples who are in marital bliss. We should be confident that all around us we witness romance almost all of the time and couples living happily together. We should just bear in mind that marriage contracts are human made and that we are only improving the terms and conditions of the contract and thus by so doing we are improving the institution of marriage through law and policy. Our God in heaven will not surely be against improvement and our pursuit of human happiness and rights.

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.

Reproductive Health : When Does Life Begin?

During the grand debate on Reproductive Health Bill at GMA News TVs Grand Debate aired last Sunday, one of the themes that came out was the issue of “When Life Begins.” Because the question is very philosophical, many of us used the reductio ad absurdum argumentation and said that
“ Life begins at 40!” Seriously, the discussions on the Reproductive Health bill is getting to be very emotional and some of the main players are men and celibate priests who have no embodied sexual experiences, much less who have never been pregnant.

We love Fr Joaquin G. Bernas, a Jesuit and brilliant constitutionalist when he said & I quote “ I am happy that the CBCP has disowned the self destructive views of some clerics…. I am dismayed by preachers telling parishioners that support for the RH Bill ipso facto is a serious sin or merits excommunication ! I find this to be irresponsible.” Still, the official stand of Fr Bernas is that “ sacred life begins at fertilization and not at implantation.” This remark is associated with our faith and religion. And clearly, our constitution is secular and not a theocracy.

We have encountered this debate very early on when we were promoting emergency contraception as one of our programs. So, we are kind of settled on our view to the question “ When Does Life Begin?” For this, I wish to quote Emelina Quintillan, an international development lawyer and Coordinator of the Asia Pacific Network on Emergency Contraception (APNEC). Emel, as we fondly call her said,

“ What's this thinking of some lawmakers about finding an answer to "when life begins" in connection with the reproductive health bill? Don’t they know that a single cell has life, a sperm has life, an egg has life, a strand of hair has life? A sperm and an egg don't have to meet for life to begin. There is already life even before there is a fertilized egg! The question on "when life begins" can only be answered philosophically. It is a question that will only spark debates and arguments from different perspectives. Not even the different religions can agree on when life begins. The question of when human life begins has been pondered, discussed, and debated in a multitude of cultural contexts. The "answer" has been changing throughout history. Any answer about when human life begins is deeply integrated with the beliefs, values and social constructs of the community or individual that draws the conclusion. The anti-choice or anti-contraceptive group will always say that human life begins when the egg and the sperm meet and consider the taking of contraceptives as killing a human being. However, the fertilized egg or zygote is not yet a human being and there is no guarantee that it will become a human being. Scientific studies have shown that around half of the fertilized eggs naturally don't implant in the uterine lining, never develop into fetuses, and will never become human. Thus, it seems as if the anti-choice group are simply conveniently using the "life begins upon the meeting of the egg and sperm" contention to support their anti-contraceptive argument. The question on "when life begins" is irrelevant to the RH bill. If concern of some lawmakers is about abortion and abortifacients, maybe the more relevant question to ask is "when does pregnancy begin." There can be no abortion without pregnancy. Contraceptives prevent pregnancy.”

Finally, I found this provision ( Article 40-41) in our Civil Code : “ Birth determines personality; but the conceived child shall be considered born for all purposes that are favorable to it, provided it be born later with the condition ….(that) the foetus is considered born if it is alive at the time it is completely delivered from the mother’s womb. …if the foetus had an intra-uterine life of less than seven months, it is NOT deemed born if it dies within twenty- four hours after its complete delivery from the maternal womb.”