Para kay Alex *

Pinasulat kita
ng magasing pambata
pasimplehin mo lang 'kako
nang malaman nila
ang ating rebolusyon,
gawin mong dahan-dahan
hakbang-hakbang,
baytang-baytang
nang matutunan nilang marating
ang kasaysayan.
Subalit pinili mong
maging makata,
at iguhit ang dusa at pasakit,
isabog ang kulay ng poot at paghihimagsik,
sumungkit ng mga pangarap
at gawing buhay
ang ating pakikibaka.
Lampas man ito
sa pang-unawa ng mga paslit,
nag-iwan ka ng bagong henerasyon
ng mga makata para sa bayan
na patuloy na malikhaing
maglalarawan
ng ating mga hangarin.
Di ka man nagsulatpara sa mga bata
nag-iwan ka ng inspirayon,
at heto ako ngayon,
parang bata uli, gusto kong tumula.

* Alexander Martin Remollino worked for a while with IBON Foundation. He was assigned to write journals for social studies for grade school and high school students - Sibika, Hekasi, Philippine Currents, Asian Currents, World Currents, Ekonomiks. He did not pass the evaluation. Alex did not have the pedagogy and writing style for children - he was an angry young man. "Alex, you have to tone down for the kids," his editor would admonish him. "Ma'am gusto kong tumula," he would say. Alex thus left IBON after six months - a mutual decision that up to this day IBON does not regret. Alex's writing had developed so rapidly that only two years after he left IBON, when the institution launched the book "At Home in the World with Jose Ma. Sison" by Ninotchka Rosca, Alex was one of the reputable writers who gave their critical reviews. 

Two Aquinos (Shake off that euphoria!)

I'm sure many of us woke up on the first day of July this year, feeling relieved, like finally we were breathing fresh air after a long while, that at last, the Arroyo presidency is over.

I was imagining yesterday that if I had a kid, or if we had pupils, who got into high school in 2001, they are of working age already (I wouldn't say they are working already because there are no jobs to be found) by this time that Arroyo has finally stepped down. (That is a long time to build a culture.)

I remember myself entering elementary school in 1973, and was a fresh college graduate, young and unemployed, when I got to know another president.

Then I started thinking of parallelisms between the situation I faced as a youth then and the situation that the youth find themselves in today. Parehong Aquino ang una naming nakilalang ibang presidente. Both Aquinos are taking over long-running, corrupt, economically and politically repressive regimes. And simply because the name is attached to an image, both become icons of democracy and combined popular support and spontaneous appeal, multi-colored traditional politicians and civil society groups, with emphasis on the latter, openly supported by big business elites and endorsed by the US, with the US penchant for icons and plain semblances of democracy.

When Cory Aquino took over, the Philippines was one of the most heavily indebted countries in the world and was under the most stringent structural adjustment programs dictated by its creditors, the IMF and the World Bank. I graduated from UP and landed a job as a clerk in the warehouse of an air-conditioning company, which used to be under the government-owned corporation, Asia Industries, and was privatized by Cory Aquino a year later. Unemployment was so high that I never got the career that my mother had hoped for me. The country was in abject poverty, so well-known that I remember when tourists came to the country, part of their itinerary would be to visit Payatas to see to believe that indeed there was that extreme level of poverty. Like her son, Cory Aquino took over at a time that the crisis-ridden world economy was having its worst which manifested in a global debt crisis.

The youth of today face the same predicament, although at a worse, unprecedented and more advanced level: deep economic crisis, highest unemployment rate in history, widening and deepening poverty, and a global economic crisis that is worse than the 1930s Great Depression.

The Cory Aquino administration turned out be not as progressive as many had hoped. Its centerpiece program, the CARP, is a failure and drags on to this day. Its principle of “honor all debts” has been entrenched as a law that automatically appropriates budget for debt servicing whatever happens to the economy. Cory Aquino trail-blazed the country's full trade and investment liberalization by removing tariffs on more than 3,000 imported items and passing the Foreign Investment Act of 1991, which opened up key economic sectors to foreign investments. She started the privatization program by selling the government corporations that were more crucial in the country's industrialization. She devolved the government (Local Government Code) in the principle of deregulation. Cory Aquino introduced the regressive VAT to the Philippine taxation system and broke down the wage between basic and COLA and called it rationalization and killed the concept of 'living wage'.

Cory Aquino had spent just a year in office when the Mendiola Massacre of peasants happened in 1987. Noynoy Aquino had just three days when the violent dispersal of peasants and advocates happened in Mendiola on July 3. I remember the activist Lean Alejandro also being assassinated in 1987. President Noynoy Aquino has barely spent a month in office and three activists have already been killed in the last 15 days – one Bayan Muna representative, a 78-year-old peasant leader, and a young teacher.

Will things be a repeat of history. No, that is a wrong concept. History does not repeat itself, because if history does repeat itself then the country's economic and political crisis would not be in this more advanced stage. Then why are we having another Aquino? There are just things that endure and continue to re-assert themselves, like the recurring crises of global capitalism, foreign plunder, inequitable economy, and of course, ruling social classes.

The people's euphoria at this point, especially of the youth who just voted for the first time, is understandable. We are just getting over a regime that brazenly represented foreign and elite interests as well as its own preservation agenda. The euphoria, however, is not coming from the realization that democracy is working in the country because that is not so. The euphoria is simply coming from the smooth transition of power that happened, though just from one elite faction to another.

Go home! Shake off that false euphoria, that is the challenge to all of us this afternoon. Refuse to be just entertained, especially by the entertainment industry. Go beyond icons and symbols, the country's problems are real and far more fundamental than how they are being trivialized by icon-makers. Always seek and talk about the truth, and that has always been the running theme of the IBON Birdtalk.

(Closing remarks delivered during the Midyear 2010 IBON Birdtalk with high schools students and teachers as audience. The IBON Birdtalk is a biannual briefing forum on the economic and political situation of the country.)

Gloria's Gone

The Arroyo presidency is over at last, and if only for that, the Filipino people should be relieved and hopeful on the promised changes of the newly elected Aquino presidency. But one of the legacies that President Arroyo leaves behind is an economy in shambles, which she fails to conceal for the last time in her burnished accomplishment reports and farewell speech. The Philippine economy is at an advanced stage of its long-standing crisis, and it requires comprehensive, radical solutions.

This will be the most severe test to the leadership of President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III and to the simplicity of his approach to poverty. “Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap” was his campaign slogan, which rode on anti-Arroyo sentiments and may have launched the unaccomplished senator son of 'democracy icons' to the presidency. But as a tool of analysis on the roots of poverty and as framework therefore to achieve real changes in the lives of the Filipinos, it is painfully inadequate.

The guiding principle of the new Aquino administration is ‘good governance’, in contrast with its predecessor that has long erased public accountability and service from its language. But overly focusing on ‘good governance’ has the tendency to shift the blame for the country’s economic problems to corruption alone and away from the globalization policies that have deepened the Philippine crisis and benefited only a narrow elite. It eventually allows the Aquino administration to continue and even intensify the implementation of these undemocratic policies. It would also be self-defeating at the minimum if, after all, President Aquino fails to prosecute high officials accused of large-scale corruption, including Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

The people’s euphoria at this point is understandable. The country is reeling from a decade of worsening crisis and poverty and getting over a regime that brazenly represented foreign and elite interests as well its own preservation agenda. The euphoria, however, is not based on the idea that democracy is working, since the country has a long way to go in that regard. It is simply coming from the smooth transition of power that has happened, even if only from one elite faction to another. The challenge therefore for the new presidency is to sustain this euphoria through concrete actions on more profound issues of the people.

List down all problems, President Aquino proposed even before his inauguration as the 15^th President. The country’s problems are far more fundamental than how they were trivialized during the elections. One of the defining marks of a genuine leader for change is to recognize this fundamentality and commit to resolve it, and President Aquino is most expected to do this.