Baiting the poor

ON DISTANT SHORE
By Val G. Abelgas

The latest survey by the Social Weather Station showed that about 52 percent or 11.4 million Filipino families rate themselves as poor, the worst in eight years in terms of self-rated poverty. It matched the self-rated poverty percentage during the Arroyo administration in 2006.

“We note the results of the survey. And we continue with our efforts to break the cycle of poverty through interventions such as the conditional cash transfer,” a presidential spokesman said. “We hope to provide the climate where people can get out of poverty.”

While it is a standard reaction, at least this was an improvement to President Aquino’s reaction to a poverty report by a government agency, the National Census and Statistics Board (NCSB), which said that in July 2012, the Philippine poverty rate was 27.9 percent, which was unchanged from the 2006 and 2009 data during the Arroyo administration. This rate, unlike the SWS self-rated poverty report, was based on the poverty threshold at the time, which was a household income of P7,821 a month for a family of five.

Confronted with the government report, President Aquino, as usual, was in state of denial, and raised doubts on the finding, saying that the agency made a mistake in a 2009 population survey. “I have my doubts. Did they not make a wrong report on the population?” Aquino said, referring to an error by the National Statistics Office in which the wrong population data was used for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in 2009.

The NCSB stood by its report, adding that it was not the NCSB, but the NSO that made the mistake the President was alluding to. Socio-Economic Planning Secretary Arsenio Balisacan, who released the report, paid the price for the embarrassing report when he was removed from the roster of government officials joining Aquino in the ASEAN summit in Brunei that year.

That was not the first time Balisacan raised the alarm on poverty. Earlier, Balisacan had told congressmen that despite the robust economic expansion the previous year, the rising inequality between the rich and the poor remains a problem. Balisacan was reacting to a report made by the Social Watch Philippines and the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement, in coordination with the United Nations, which stated that the country’s poverty situation was worse than in 2000 when it started the Millennium Development Goals that the UN designed to eliminate poverty.

Obviously, Aquino’s premier poverty alleviation program, the Conditional Cash Transfer, has not improved the lives of the majority of the people and that the economic gains made under his administration have not been felt by the masses. But the Aquino administration continues to stand by the CCT, which, according to a recent report by the Commission on Audit, is fraught with irregularities.

But is Aquino and other Philippine politicians worried by the recent poverty report? Not at all, according to economist Romeo G. David, a former administrator of the National Food Authority.

“It is to the advantage of corrupt politicians to keep the status quo. All they need to do to stay in power is religiously stay with the winning formula… make promises, provide sugarcoated hope for a better life, ferment a rich-poor divide, and provide a semblance of benevolence to the desperate in our society,” David said in a recent article.

It is still 15 months before the national elections in May 2016, but we can already see politicians posturing and making promises to the poor.

For decades, Filipino politicians have courted the poor in their campaigns, and with good reason, the poor having the most number of votes and being the most gullible among the nation’s voting groups. Most of those who associated themselves with the poor or who claimed to champion their cause have won election to important posts in both the House and the Senate and the presidency.

It is ironic that while the poor have been responsible for the election of nearly all of these politicians, their economic situation has worsened through the years. In fact, their numbers have grown through the years that they have elected alleged “champions of the poor” who promised to uplift them from poverty.

Aquino, although a scion of the wealthy Cojuangco clan, himself rose to the presidency on the campaign slogan, “Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap,” that promised to curb both corruption and poverty. With all the corruption scandals that have emerged since his assumption of the presidency in 2010 and the persistent high poverty rate, it is obvious that the slogan was just a mere political promise, made to bait the poor and not as an agenda to uplift the poor.

Most, if not all presidents from the time of President Ramon Magsaysay, were elected on the strength of being “champions of the masses.”

Magsaysay was elected president in 1953 by the masses on the strength of his being a former mechanic who rose to become one of the most popular government officials of his time. He defeated the scandal-ridden reelectionist President Elpidio Quirino and went on to become one of the most popular Philippine presidents ever. He was well loved by the masses because he championed their rights and opened the gates of Malacanang to them. But much of his attention was diverted to fighting the communists and following the dictates of the United States.

The poor image was also used successfully by then Rep. Diosdado Macapagal of the first district of Pampanga when he ran for vice president under the Liberal Party in 1957. Using the line “the poor boy from Lubao,” Macapagal easily defeated Jose Laurel Jr. although the Liberals’ standard bearer, former Speaker Jose Yulo, lost to President Carlos P. Garcia of the Nacionalista Party.

Macapagal could not be faulted for using the monicker “the poor boy from Lubao” for he was indeed born to a poor family and, in fact, had to stop his law studies at the Philippine Law School to star in zarzuelas with boyhood friend and later brother-in-law Rogelio de la Rosa and raised enough money to continue his law studies at the University of Santo Tomas, eventually graduating as summa cum laude and topping the 1936 bar examinations.

And to his credit, Macapagal championed the cause of the poor as a congressman, authoring such pro-poor legislation as Land Reform Law, Rural Health Law, Minimum Wage Law, and the Barrio Industrialization Law, among others. He was unable to pursue many of his programs as president because of strong opposition from the Nacionalista-controlled Congress.

Although they were truly from the poor and really championed the poor man’s cause, Magsaysay and Macapagal inadvertently set the tone for other politicians to use the poor for political gain.

Actor Joseph Estrada was the most successful of these politicians, having won by landslide all the electoral contests he joined on the strength of his appeal as the “champion of the masses.” Although he was inarguably a scion of a wealthy clan, the toughness and simple ways he showed in his roles as protector of the oppressed in scores of films gained not just acceptance from the masses, but their unprecedented adulation as well.

He became so popular that the poor accepted even his weaknesses as their own weaknesses, and his vulnerability and his failures as their own. When he was ousted in a second People Power Revolt that turned out later to be a conspiratorial plot hatched by then Vice President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and some generals, his followers launched their own EDSA revolt and marched to Malacanang in what this writer called “a poor man’s rebellion.”

And yet, Estrada did not lift a finger to uplift the poor from poverty. Instead, he tolerated jueteng that robbed money from the poor. Instead, he displayed a callous disregard for the poor by building mansions for his mistresses while the people he claim to champion lived in abject poverty. Instead, he allowed corrupt cronies and colleagues to rob the people blind.

When Arroyo took over, she promised to combat poverty and corruption. After all, she had topped the senatorial elections and won the vice presidency by landslides on the strength of her support from the masses. But her economic programs were only meant to promote the interests of the wealthy businessmen, and she placed even heavier burdens on the shoulders of the poor with her onerous taxation policies. Instead of protecting the rights of the poor people she had promised to uplift, she allowed the wealthy and the powerful to abuse them and trample on their rights. As a result, the poor became poorer and the not-so-poor became poor, too.

In his article, David said what the country needs “to emancipate us all from poverty is PRINCIPLED POLITICS.”
David added: “None of our political parties stands for any principles, except to conveniently adopt whatever principle it takes to get elected to stay in power. The absence of principles explains why it is so common in Philippine politics to have political butterflies that move from party to party, as the wind blows. Our politicians are not weighed down by principles or by any political party.”

“If we want a better Philippines, a Philippines with a strong middle class to fuel our economy with their disposable income, we should all be more vocal and demanding of our politicians,” David concluded.

Amen. But will the poor ever learn not to take the bait of these politicians?

(valabelgas@aol.com)