Despite Estrada’s arrest,
despite his unmasking as a fake pro-poor president, and despite the fact that
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo now sits as the country’s new chief executive, Nanay
Senyang and some 60,000 urban-poor families living at the National
Government Center in Quezon City still do not feel safe.
When a mob stormed the gates of Malacañang
Palace in the break of dawn of May 1 while the whole working class was about to
observe the 132nd anniversary of Labor Day, some poor settlers in
Metro Manila stayed put in their shanties and waited for announcements from the
Catholic Church.
After hearing Cardinal Sin’s call to
reclaim the Epifanio delos Santos Avenue (Edsa) Shrine from supporters of ousted
president Joseph Estrada, who had been arrested on plunder charges, Arsenia
Valenzuela was one of those who did not hesitate to go and attend the Holy Mass
in the sanctified grounds of the historic site of People Power.
Nanay (mother) Senyang to neighbors
and friends, Arsenia is a community leader in the National Government Center
(NGC) in Quezon City, the country’s largest concentration of urban poor
families. She was among the nameless crowds who collectively made the popular
Edsa uprisings that toppled two disgraced presidents - the dictator Ferdinand
Marcos in 1986 and Estrada in January this year.
Nanay Senyang was, however, nowhere
to be seen during late April’s mob hysteria in Edsa that led to the May Day
siege. She believes that politically aware and organized citizens have no space
there. For her, “though many among the poor can easily be persuaded by whoever
promises help, the organized poor who still fights demolitions and graft and
corruption in the government will never bargain their dignity and principles
from the corrupt and powerful.”
Years have passed since Marcos was toppled
and still Nanay Senyang entertains no illusions about government
promises, preferring instead to sweat it out as a fulltime organizer of the
Samahan ng mga Mahihirap para sa Makatao at Makatarungang Paninirahan
(Sama-Sama, or Association of the Poor for a Humane and Just Housing), a
people’s organization in the NGC. She once gave up a more promising job as an
assistant secretary to a Swiss businessman who managed hotels in the country;
she started as a chambermaid in one of his hotels in the late 1970s.
She has all the reason to sound pessimistic.
Despite Estrada’s arrest, despite his unmasking as a fake pro-poor president,
and despite the fact that Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo now sits as the country’s
new chief executive, Nanay Senyang and some 60,000 families living in NGC
still do not feel safe from demolitions.
Professor Sarah Raymundo, a sociologist from
the University of the Philippines Department of Sociology, College of Social
Sciences and Philosophy in Diliman, agrees with Nanay Senyang. If
government fails to provide the poor’s basic needs such as land for adequate
housing, job security and just wages, it would be difficult for society to
obtain peace and order. Violence perpetuates when the poor’s legitimate
demands are not addressed, she says.
Raymundo explains that the May 1 siege of
Malacanang was just an expression of a real scenario where people, acting
allegedly as the hakot (rented) crowd of Estrada, are the desperate
hungry and homeless amid government’s inability to respond to their legitimate
demands. They would adhere to whoever approaches them and immediately promises
money, food and other short-term relief.
“It is reflective of the kind of system
the country has where the culture of patronage
is evident among the poor,” she says. “Due to unmet needs, many among the
poor seem to forget that, although Estrada is a wealthy ‘patron’ whom they
can beg for money and food, he is actually a theft who stole the nation’s
wealth. The poor expects the imperative rather than the accountability.”
While Estrada was detained in a police camp
in Sta. Rosa, Laguna some 40 kilometers south of Manila, he still maintained his
political and economic machinery to send food and assistance during the recent
Edsa mob rule, the sociology professor points out.
Because they feel that Estrada helped them,
the poor remembers his “good deed.” The “utang na loob” (debt of
gratitude) attitude eventually misrepresents their concrete demands for the
government. “No matter how small the assistance doled out by the patron, the
poor considers it as a huge debt of gratitude,” Raymundo says.
To make matters
worse, this segment of the poor – mostly the so-called lumpen proletariat -
barely sees the difference between the entertainment industry’s projection of
Estrada as the actor who plays the poor man’s messiah in films and, in the
real world, the former public
official who is accused of plunder, Raymundo explains.
The days of outrage in Edsa can be
considered as an act with psychological conditioning done by the pro-Estrada
supporters, according to Raymundo.
While telling the crowd to storm Mendiola
and inducing them to commit senseless violence, the pro-Estrada leaders
brainwashed the people to believe that society continues to oppress them and
that salvation is only possible in Estrada’s hands, she says. Gone berserk by
their statements, the restive crowd did march to Malacañang in Mendiola and
commit mayhem.
As to the Edsa phenomenon, Raymundo
clarifies that there are distinctions underlying the three assemblies. The first
Edsa of 1986 overthrew a dictator. The second ousted a corrupt ruler and
advanced the democratic interests of the people. The recent uprising is
otherwise, a “material force” wherein pro-Estrada opposition leaders took
advantage of the misguided poor. Abandoned by the opposition figures, many in
the crowd simply ended up in jail.
Urban Poverty
The ramifications of
urban poverty behind the Edsa and Mendiola events can be better understood
through the research study entitled “Urban Poverty from the Perspectives of
the Urban Poor in the Philippines” prepared by a team headed by Dr. Mary
Racelis, executive director of the Institute of Philippine Culture at the Ateneo
de Manila University .
Citing Asian
Development Bank (ADB) figures, 35 percent of the Philippines’ total urban
population in 1999 are slum dwellers.
Rural to urban
migration remains a significant factor for the high urbanization rate coupled
with a high national growth rate, concentration of economic development in a few
locations, and landownership among a few, the IPC study said.
Since 1995, 26 of the
65 cities in the country are classified as 100-percent urban while Metro Manila
remains the country’s dominant socio-economic center since its transformation
from predominantly agricultural to that of an increasingly service- and
commercial-based economy before 1970, it further said.
The study noted that
while the impact of the economic crisis was not as severe as in most East Asian
economies, the Philippines’ poverty level is much higher than that of
Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand.
The IPC study said
that during the recent financial crisis, the Philippines had a huge inventory of
poverty, high unemployment levels and serious social problems. In April 1999 for
example, unemployment reached 11.8 percent or the equivalent of 3.95 million
jobless workers. Underemployment went up to 22.7 percent, which is essentially
similar to the same number of those considered as employed who are, in fact,
underemployed.
Today, the major
source of vulnerability of the urban poor is the labor market, given the
above-mentioned economic and social deterioration following the period of
structural adjustment in the early ‘90s and the financial crisis in the latter
part of the decade, the study said.
High urbanization
trends did not create the corresponding high per capita income and a significant
shift of employment from low to high productivity areas. Job creation has not
matched population growth in the cities, it added.
Notably, the urban
poor was left no choice but to create their own sources of income by catering to
the service needs of the middle- and low-wage earners of the city, including
that of their fellow urban poor through the informal labor market, the study
said.
Urban blight through
the expansion of the slums in Metro Manila (with the metropolis expansion in
other areas) prevails due to the competing pressure between various types of
land use in the city. These land use types are guided not by a rational land-use
plan but by the force of a dysfunctional land market. Low- and middle-income
housing became a major problem in Metro Manila as land values increased
phenomenally, the study said.
IPC’s study can be
felt in real life by people like Nanay Senyang, who are in a far worse
situation considering the threats of demolition coming their way. For as long as
she lives, for as long as government reneges on its promises of housing and
other poverty-alleviation programs, Nanay Senyang and the others at
Sama-sama vow to resist any attempt to destroy their houses.
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