Poverty, inequality and social reform

MANILA, Philippines – Our gathering today is called a Summit on Poverty, Inequality and Social Reform. This is not the first time that we have met for such a purpose. One might therefore ask, why another summit?

The idea for this Summit was triggered by two events. First, in case you forgot, this year is the 25th anniversary of People Power. And second, the elections of 2010 which many people thought would not even happen but which resulted in the greatest majority of an opposition vote (48%) in recent history. The message of the elections was change and another Aquino was at the helm of government, with the political capital to make the big decisions for the big changes wanted by the people. What better time than now for self-examination.

People Power enabled us to regain our freedom and to restore democracy. It did not only happen at a highway called EDSA, it happened in every nook and corner of this great country. It was a spontaneous moment of solidarity, like no other, because it was driven by a nobility of purpose that made us proud to be Filipino.

Today, those of us who were part of that moment have an accountability to those who came after us. And if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that we did not do well by our country and by the poor. To the poor, EDSA was more than the changing of the guard, it was the dawning of a new day.

That new day remains a promise. Then it was liberation from the heavy hand of martial rule. The task today is no less heroic than at EDSA  it is liberation from the yoke of poverty that would make democracy more meaningful to the poor. It is not only guns that kill. Poverty kills. It is slow death from hunger, from diseases that we thought no longer existed, from the loneliness of a life with an empty future. It is also the dying of dignity.

Twenty-five years after EDSA, where are we on that promise?

The latest government family income and expenditures survey (2009) shows: the incidence of poverty may have gone down from 35.15% in 1988 to 26.49% in 2009, but the numbers of the poor have increased from 21.3 to 23.9 million. By “poor” we mean per capita income of less than P46/day. And of these 23.9 million, 9.4 million are “food poor” who live on P32/day, not even enough to meet the minimum 2000 calories/day.

Reducing hunger has been dismal, based on the surveys of Social Weather Stations up to October 2011. From 1998-2010, the average percentage of hungry families was 13.7. Hunger rose steadily in 2005-2010 (as high as 23.7 in December 2008 and 24 in December 2009). The latest SWS reports shows hunger at 20.5% in March 2011, down to 15.1% in July 2011 and up again to 21.5% in October 2011.

The inequality of income has not changed since EDSA. The top 1% of the families (185,000) have an income equal to the income of the bottom 30% of the families (5,500,000). And since studies show that there is very little of a middle class to speak of, this means that most of the 99% are also poor. The Summit Report has some significant insights on the different poor groups that need attention because they are below the radar screen of the anti-poverty programs.

The Philippine Development Plan 2011-2016, says that our economy only grew an average of 3% a year for the past 30 years and our real per capita income has grown only 20% over that period. In contrast, our neighbors’ per capita incomes have grown 400% (Malaysia), 500% (Thailand), 1100% (China), in the process eradicating absolute poverty.

Twenty-five years after EDSA, poverty and gross inequalities in wealth and political power continue to confront us. History has not been very kind to our poor.

We are a nation of two worlds.

The world of the few  with gated communities, with access to superior education, first world health care, private parks and leisure areas, and the money to control our politics and policies;

and the world of the many  with urban hovels and rural huts, inferior public schools, playgrounds that double as public streets and highways, poorly-equipped and poorly-manned public health centers and marginal access to public office.

We continue to be a country of contradictions:

• we are an agrarian economy but import rice and other agricultural products;

• we have abundant fishery resources but our municipal fishermen have dwindling fish harvests;

• our coconut industry has earned billions but our coconut farmers are among the poorest of the poor;

• the indigenous peoples used to own all the land but are now land-poor;

• we have first world amenities in urban areas but no places to house the poor;

• our workers are among the best in the world but don’t have security of tenure in their own country;

• we have huge mineral resources but poverty incidence is highest (48.7%) in the mining sector;

• our country is one of the top biodiversity and endemicity areas of the world, but our mountains are denuded of forests;

• we have some of the best social justice and empowerment laws but corrupted judicial rulings victimize the poor.

Moreover, our society is still feudalistic, dominated by a leadership class that manages to rotate among themselves the levers of power through changes in administration.

The 1% of the families make the laws, dispense justice, implement programs and control media. There are good people among them who go to church regularly, participate in community projects and donate to charities. They sincerely think that using their power and influence to advance their self-interest is part of the dynamics of a democracy, in the same way that hard work and innovation are rewarded in a competitive market.

Sadly, they miss the point. There is nothing wrong with having wealth and power and special connections, but there is something very wrong about using them to deny or delay justice to the 99%. That is precisely the root of our problem. And we know this must change.

It does not really matter if there are many places in government where decisions are, in fact, being made by reform-minded officials on what is good for the people and not for special interests. However, the fact of a widespread perception that the real power is not with the people is enough for them to distrust the government and make it even harder to govern. We encounter that phenomenon every day in our lives. People engaging in corruption because everybody else does it. People violating simple traffic rules because no one is obeying them anyway. And we know this must change.

It means that on election day, the people are empowered by a voting system that accurately counts their votes. But that before election day in the choice of candidates and after election day on how those elected officials make decisions, the real power is somewhere else. And we know this must change or democracy itself is imperiled because the poor, who are committed to the ways of democracy, can only take so much.

The campaign against corruption is a correct beginning. The full implementation of asset reform is long overdue and must be pursued. The direct targeting of the very poor through such programs as the conditional cash transfer will deliver quick positive results even as we know that it cannot be a long-term solution in a situation of mass poverty where the very poor, the poor and the near poor live side by side and any differentiation is easily interpreted as arbitrary and, hence, unjust. Plugging the leakages that reduce the resources for anti-poverty programs is a step in the right direction like abolishing redundant tax perks to business (P90b/year), collecting evaded taxes from professionals (P160b/year), updating the base for collecting ‘sin taxes’ (P25b/year) and making sure that subsidy programs for the poor are not availed of by the rich (NFA, Pag-Ibig, etc.)

These are all very worthy initiatives and deserve our total support. But as Thoreau suggests, we can hack away at the branches of a tree of evil but it will keep on growing until we strike at its roots. Every development plan is an agenda for change expressed in different ways – development with a human face, growth with equity and the latest iteration, inclusive growth. But, so far, none of the plans have produced the desired results. Is this because no administration has managed the political will to implement these plans or because these plans do not strike at the roots but only at the branches?

We proposed this Summit to seek the answers to these questions from those who are supposed to be the center of our development. And we asked the participants if the Philippine Development Plan 2011-2016 as explained by the agencies, the President’s Social Compact and his two SONAs effectively address their deepest concerns and aspirations and if the Aquino administration can indeed provide the transformational leadership the country badly needs. The Summit will enable the leaders of the basic sectors to have a heart-to-heart talk with their President on these matters, on their specific appeals and on how they can work with him to achieve real change.

The process of the Summit consisted of the following:

First of all, listening to the poor. The poor are not asking for equality, but only for more equity, and for justice. That is, after all, a moral duty of those who make the decisions and establish the priorities of our society. In the words of Pope Benedict the XXVI2 – charity goes beyond justice because to love is to give… but… “I cannot ‘give’ what is mine to the other, without first giving him what pertains to him in justice.”

The poor have expressed their concerns and aspirations in such venues as the (1) the National Rural Congress II of CBCP in 2007 and (2) the National Consultations on Climate Change in 2010 but very few listened. The poor engaged in street protests as in Mendiola in 1986 and in other parts of the country over the years, where lives were even lost, and they have gone on fasting vigils at government offices, but very few have listened and the meaningful changes they seek have not happened.

Well, the leaders of the poor are here again today. They have worked hard and are well prepared to dialogue. Please listen to them because they have much to say about the future they want for their children.

Secondly, if the poor say that the programs are not reaching them, or are not changing their lives for the better, are we prepared to discard certain long-held paradyms that, we are told by the UNRISD in its 2010 study on “Combating Poverty and Inequality”, have been proven to be wrong or inadequate to the task. Such as the notion that it is possible to address poverty without addressing inequality and that it is enough to provide “equality of opportunity” or a “fair process” without being too concerned about “outcomes”. What new paradigms should replace these?

Thirdly, for those who are not poor, listen to our hearts. Are we doing enough and are we willing to accept the challenges of change?

(1) the challenge to support and speak out on specific cases simply because justice demands it and they represent issues of transcendental consequences to social reform. Such were the cases of Hacienda Luisita, the Arroyo Bacan hacienda and the Teves estates, all involving people in high paces where farmers fought lonely battles. The leaders of the basic sectors have many more stories to tell in the lands of the titans of business, like the Yulos and Ayalas in Canlubang, the Angs in Calatagan, Fortich in Bukidnon, the Florendos in Davao, the Drysdales in Davao del Norte and many others and I hope that, this time, you will take the time to listen.

(2) The challenge for the business community to give massively of its resources to fund government programs, including a tax on excess profits if necessary because massive expenditures are needed for social programs. The channeling by some 270 corporations of about P8 billion to the Philippine Business for Social Progress is tokenism if given over 40 years (P200m/year), when it takes about P100 billion year to put some 5.5 million families over the poverty threshold. With some exceptions, Corporate Social Responsibility projects in the Philippines have achieved very little by way of real change.

(3) the challenge to the government to disallow projects that, in the words of Paul Krugman, socialize costs and privatize benefits, such as mining, a special concern of the poor – in Surigao, Albay, the CAR, Palawan, Samar, Caraga, Zamboangas, and many places where communities of extreme poverty co-exist with the fat cats of industry amidst environmental degradation and devastated farmlands.

(4) the challenge to the church, business and civil society and to political leaders to commit their social power and political capital to promote the agenda of the poor, even when it is against their own interests, or those of their benefactors and campaign contributors.

(5) And finally the challenge of a vision of a society finally rid of feudalism.

These are difficult demands to ask of those who have the wealth and the power  to voluntarily reduce themselves for the common good. But that is what is needed to destroy the roots that feed the branches that kill rather than sustain life. The stakes are high, we are not only engaged in a war against poverty, we are also engaged in a war to save our democracy.3

As my good friend, the late Haydee Yorac would say, let justice be done though the heavens fall.

And until the two worlds around us become one, until we do away with the contradictions in our society, and in the words of Michael Sandel in his inspired book on Justice, “until there is a larger purpose to what we do, when citizens finally bring the habits of the heart to public life and find a way to cultivate civic virtue,” we cannot speak of solidarity and of ourselves as one nation.

As we contemplate our role in this giant undertaking called nation-building, allow me to leave you with two thoughts:

(1) From Him who gave up his life that we may also enjoy the bounty of his creation: “Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do it to me.”

(2) Secondly, to paraphrase Albert Camus when he received his Nobel Peace Prize – “we must place ourselves at the service, not of those who make history, but of those who suffer it.”

Thank you and God bless you.

1 Keynote Address at the Summit on Poverty, Inequality and Social Reform in the DA Soils Auditorium, Q.C. on Dec. 1, 2011, following seven Regional Poverty Assessment and Development Visioning (RPADV) Conferences in October/November. The Co-Convenors were the Climate Change Congress of the Phlippines, CBCP-NASSA, the National Anti-Poverty Commission and the Departments of Agrarian Reform, Agriculture, Education, Environment and Natural Resources, Interior and Local Government and Social Welfare and Development, –Christian S. Monsod (The Philippine Star)