DEAR PRINCE GEORGE,

DEAR PRINCE GEORGE, 

What great luck you have. and what a lucky day in July  for you to have been born to the royal family of Britain. I am sure your grandma in heaven is smiling endlessly to the new hope that you exude as you step into this world. But you see, I see a different view of your coming. I don't expect you to be following the footsteps of the royalties, who just do all those figurative acts to show that they are to be more respected than the ordinary folks. People will be addressing you "Your Royal Highness." You will travel first class all the time. You will have a retinue of guards while sleeping, waking up, eating, walking, jogging, swimming, travelling, watching movies, etcetera etcetera. 

However, By the time you are grown up, say twenty-five years from now which is 2039, I hope you would have read already the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and that should you become king right away, then let it be that you announce that you will live a commoner's life, be with the British people from the down ranks; that you will make the Buckingham Palace a museum for the people to see the great regard they have made to the royalties of the past and that by then it was time for the British people to shine themselves, no longer feeling awed and ahh-ed by the sights of princesses, queens, princes and kings, but of themselves as real human beings entitled to all the respect and regard of everyone, whether from the upper or lower levels.

I do think that Britain has had a relatively peaceful life, save for the incidents in Ireland, and that is because of the presence of your queen who has led the country through many ups and downs in the national politics. But then isn't it time that the people themselves take over and truly present themselves as the drivers of the nation to its greatness. What is greatness but that ability to make every country worthwhile living for everyone -- uplifting the poor, helping the marginalized, and making sure that everyone enjoy their lifetimes in this world, IMMENSELY! Don't you think! (Folks, this keyboard doesn't have a question mark. Pasensiya na.)

So, Prince George Welcome to this imperfect World!

Written on July 26, 2013

SONA and the MRT

It's funny how th State of the Nation Address or the SONA of PNoy could elicit various opinions, ranging from high praises to didactic downgrading of what he had said.

Actually, PNoy was walking like a technocrat when he delivered his speech, focusing on the infrastructural projects, the incomes from the various agencies, the need to raise this and that, and so much more. He did not talk about the lives of the Filipino people. And that is very sad. He said nothing about how the various sectors have benefitted from his governance. Instead, he had those little episodes about the police who helped a car driver, the recipients of the Conditional Cash Transfer, and the policewoman who caught a holdupper. But he did not say, "I allowed the DOLE to raise the salaries of the workers; to give them free health services;" etc.

One thing that I would like to focus on is the transportation at the MRT. I think PNoy used the anti-people perspective when he said that the real cost of transpo at the MRT is 60 pesos and that the government subsidizes so much as we only pay something like 15 pesos.

I think that is not how an official of the land should speak. Instead, he should have said, I know that the people are having a hard time exercising their freedom of mobility. "So I will make sure that they are able to exercise that to the utmost by making the earnings of the customs pay for their fares."

Is that not the case of a leader-- you look for ways and means to ease the burden of living on the prople. Actually, I was mulling over the earnings of the MRT. For an hour, the MRT is earning a million pesos -- transporting people from SM North EDSA to Taft and back. Multiply that by 8 hours, so that would be 8 hours -- and the MRT operates beyond 8 hours. So in a month that would P240 million pesos. So in ayear it is earning something like P1.9 B.

I think that the problem of maintenance occurs only because there are very few coaches. If the MRT would buy more, then maintenance would not be difficult because there won't be so much need to deal with overloading that destroys the coaches.

Now why can we not manufacture those coaches ourselves. Along the PNR railroad tracks, I see lots of urban poor, creating their makeshift coasters that use the tracks for transporting their passengers from Pandacan to Vito Cruz. Yes, their makeshift "trains" are so reliable that many patronize them. And should there be a real train passing by, all they do is unload all of the passengers and then lift their makeshift vehicle to the side. They return it once the train has passed.

I am sure, we can readily manufacture those trains, maybe even try to make them look like jeepneys.  Instead of buying from Czechoslovakia, we must harness our own resources, the ingenuity of our people and create our own.

Hay naku, that would be the day when we can say, we have arrived.

ASSESSING FILIPINO WOMEN'S STATUS UNDER PINOY

HOW HAVE WOMEN FARED UNDER PINOY'S ADMINISTRATION?
 by Wilhelmina S. Orozco 

 

What can we say about our economic, social, cultural and political statuses?

Have we become progressive? Have we uplifted our status so that we can look the world in the eye and say, Hey we have arrived?

The status of women should be half of Pinoy's state-of-the-nation or SONA address. Without women, the whole population of the Philippines would not exist. Without women, there would not be any caretakers of the home, the gardens, the babies and children who parade without end in our streets. This morning, I saw Angelica, an elementary student who studied arts and singing briefly  in our home. She had a missing front tooth. And I asked her have you gone to a dentist? She replied, my mother has not brought me there. No she did not say my father, but my mother. This means that a child even up to 8 or ten is still regularly cared for by her mother. 




Where are women truly visible in the economic field? Where else but in the markets, where they sell fish, vegetables, fruits and "kagi-kagi," just to be able to add income to the family. A dear market vendor recently lost her husband due to illness. Now she tends her stall at San Juan with sad eyes but which she tries to hid with always a smile, her upper teeth missing. She told me one time that she works there 24-7, meaning to say, no days off and seven days a week, 24 hours a day. I could imagine her sleeping in one of the corners. Yet she endures the stench of the place which seems to not have had any washing at all for ages. 

Really, as an aside, I wonder, why the departments of health and trade, as well as the local government units have not imposed a daily cleanliness of the markets whereas, they are the source of crops used for food by the people. In Quiapo, it is terrible. The market is darkly-lit, the pathways slippery, and the smell, my God, I don't know where they came from. 

And so women working in the markets have to endure these situations just so that they could have a grander feeling of being part of the earning family, of being part of the bigger society where "progress" is supposed to be working. 

So where else do we find the women? At 11 pm, and at 4:30 p.m. or thereabouts, we see them fetching their children from school. They carry the bags all the way home because they are so heavy that it is highly impossible for the children to carry them by themselves. I wonder why the schools do not have lockers so that the children will just have to bring home those they need to review? I think it is sadistic if the school required all the books and notebooks to be carried home and then brought back again the following morning. 

Or maybe, if the school is rich enough, it can lend i-pads to each student so that schooling would be a paperless endeavor. 

Back to women's status in life: if women were to be called earning prosperously at all, I think we should credit the private companies that have employed them. I am sure that with Filipino women's ingenuity in handling managerial tasks, they could have earned the respect and humane treatment they deserve from their bosses, who I surmise would be in their 40's and 50's and would have gone through so many literature about the equality of women and men not only in the home but also the workplace. 

Dearth in the arts
How about in the arts? Well, I am sad that Cecile Guidote-Alvarez lost her award as national artist, together with Pitoy Moreno and Carlo Caparas. I think that her means of acquiring the award was questionable but not her being an expert in theatre. In fact she founded the Philippine Educational Theatre Association or PETA but unfortunately abandoned it during martial law when she had to flee the country because of the politically repressive regime.

Meanwhile, Fides Cuyugan, soprano got an award from a private body, together with two others. One will not, without diminishing her qualifications, that the three were attached to institutions which truly supported their artistic endeavors and thus helped them a lot in earning the award. But how about those who remain the in the fringes but still manage to produce works instead of having to beg from institutions that have their own stable of artists to support? I listened to a dancer express his woes -- that ballet is no longer supported by the National Commission on Culture and the Arts, "in perpetuity." Why so? No explanation perhaps only because is is western art. So? There are many experimental modern dances with ballet steps containing very highly significant themes that delve on human existence. Are we going to curtail the development of such arts?

I am so glad that Lisa Macuja is able to do her own thing, completely, and she has her own theatre company and...and theatre building to present her shows, without censorship. Lisa has been able to exist as a ballet dancer all these years simply because she has been highly supported by her husband, Mr. Elizalde, a lover of the arts. 


Another successful theatre person is Prof. Alegria Ferrer who has been able to turn around the earnings of the Abelardo  Hall from nil zero to more than thousands per performance. She has been able to professionalize theatre management so that even the workers who work overtime there during performances, get paid their OT pay. I remember when I held our drama-musicale, in the latter part of the eighties, Ang Kuwento ni Aling Edna, Perlita at Sara which tackled the life of the mother forced to push her daughters to prostitution, one a Mabini salon sexy dancer and the other a Japayuki. I composed the music for it, and had it arranged professionally by a dear friend through the intercession of Tita Lucrecia Kasilag, the National Artist.  During the presentation, there were no workers who could help us because they had to be paid separately from their regular salaries. And UP at that time did not have funds to do so. So we had to hire a private company to do it for us.

Regarding women's participation in the arts, there is not much of research going on. But what I would like to know is how many women receive grants from the grant-making institutions in the country. For myself, I just lost an opportunity to earn from writing this year. One of the more lucrative outlets is Ani Journal where for fiction one could receive as much as P3,000 plus. But the Cultural Center of the Philippines bosses decided to postpone printing to February 2014. Cruel is it not when the topic is about "Our Bodies."

Well it seems the female population in our country does not mind exposing their thighs in the streets. And so what do we have now, but a doubling of teenage pregnancies. Why can't the authorities have a total approach to curbing the population by starting from the way women dress up? Why can't Pinoy ask the women to please wear modest clothes, not those that make you look like you just came out of your beds?

The department of education as well as the commission on higher education don't lift a finger at all to make the female young be more protective of their physical attributes instead of just simply allowing them to be paraded in the streets. Doesn't MetroManila now look like one beach resort? Even this restaurant where I take my sometimes midnight dinner recently had an OJT whose skirt was five inches high from the knee and the place suddenly looked cheap. I just had to ask her to please lower her hemline because it did not blend well with the surrounding.

Female icons
So who are the female icons that the girl youths can look up to? A TV actress, the sexiest according to a magazine? The beauty contest winners who have to parade their bodies before winning any award at all? Sad to say, but we seem to lack icons simply because those who excel are hardly talked about, hardly written about. But in the religious sector, I would credit Ruth of the Center for Community Transformation or CCT led by Ruth Callanta and who is now battling cancer. She is currently undergoing chemotherapy and please let us pray for her early recovery. The CCT has many communities that she, aided by the board,  had helped economically and spiritually. "Microfinance is a range of financial services that CCT offers to poor and low-income clients, particularly micro-entrepreneurs as platform for sharing the Gospel. These financial services include business loans, savings, and housing loans...The first loan released to all clients is 4,000 PHP (USD94). Succeeding loans are increased by 2,000 PHP (USD47) with each new cycle. No collateral is required for the loans which are paid for in cycles of four to six months. Clients with good repayment records and potential for success are offered medium business loans starting at  51,000 PHP (1,999 USD) and a maximum of 750,000 PHP (17,646 USD)." as reported in their website." Many communities have availed of these and you should read their annual report, poor people whose lives have turned around, not through panhandling but through sheer industriousness. To show the magnitude of the help, "there are CCT microfinance offices in 23 provinces, 49 cities, and 42 towns of the Philippines."

Ruth has managed to use her Midas-hands to help a lot of people indeed. 
   
Another  female icon I think is Mel Tiangco whose base, the Kapuso Foundation runs daily news of individuals and communities that they have helped over the 24-oras News Program. Is it any wonder that women seem to shine best under helping institutions? It looks very natural for women to be nurturing of others. But we must guard against absorbing the negativities of the surroundings that we revolve in. Sometimes we could catch those and get sick ourselves. What we have to do is sweep them away everyday after we have met with the folks. 

This I learned from the Jewish women in California who were running the Women Helping Women. The head told me that every night they would meet together, pray and ask for help to remove whatever negative elements have entered their bodies and to give them fresh and stronger bodies to deal with the next day's challenges. 

Yes, we must work and get involved in the political and social processes of our country with that idea that later on we could be creating the right images that the youth must follow, one that is committed and has strong love of country. 

So what are the areas that women can excel in? I still think the Filipino women are natural artists. Our minds and emotions, are attuned to things artistic, from music to painting to crafts. The government must find a way to make the arts and music lucrative professions for women in this country. It can encourage more support from private groups so that women will continually have projects and work.  The NCCA must be commanded to open the grants, 50% to women artists. Also its annual report should be made known through the website. 

Pinoy should not worry about not having a ladylove or a First Lady if his term goes down in history as the best one that truly cared for the women of the Philippines. That is the more significant part of his administration that should not be dismissed or ignored. Unfortunately, two problems besetting homemakers now -- expensive light and water -- have become heavy burdens to carry and no end is in sight to release us from them. How will Pinoy address these two problems in his SONA?

Let us wish him a better completion of his term with iconic achievements that will make every Filipino girl child and woman -- including the elderly -- happy.


 

OUR RIGHT TO OUR BODIES

Despite the entry of the Philippines to the new millenium, questions still arise on whether women could control our bodies or not. Other people seem to not run out of reasons for having a say on our bodies -- "no you can't use contraceptives; "no you can't use artificial means when having sex;" "no...no...no...." 

With the piles of "no's that we receive it seems as if we are an evil lot. But who is evil actually? What is evil?

When a mother who can hardly feed three children decides to use contraceptives, is she at fault for wanting freedom from caring for additional children?

When a mother has great difficulty preparing her three children to school, her husband pitching in to bring them to school, are they at fault should they decide to have had enough of pregnancies? 

When local governments have great difficulty balancing budgets so that more would be allotted for education, instead of for maternal child and health care, could they be faulted at all for supporting the passage of the Reproductive Health law?

Our priorities seem to be askew. Most of the leaders in the country do not put themselves in the shoes of parents, especially of women and so are just mouthing this and that platitude. Why can't they go and visit Tondo, the former site of Smokey Mountain, now re-labeled "Paradise Heights" to hide the ugly truth of its past, just to see how many children there are playing in the streets? Just to know that teenaged girls are already selling their bodies in order to be able to eat. 

Now, even the State University has researched that there has been a 50% increase in teen pregnancies owing to the unbridled use of internet that showcases sex stories and/or photos. What will become of these girls once their babies arrive? Will they still be able to continue their education? If not, how will they fend for themselves and their babies?

Pragmatism is needed when dealing with overcrowding, with uncontrolled population expansion. Political leaders need to be practical and say "enough of new people coming into the country." 

I tried talking to an ordinary fellow about instructions on how to get to a place. I had to tell him several times where I wanted to go. Then I thought to myself, if he was not kidding, he could be one of those drop-outs whose knowledge got truncated by poverty. And so his brain did not develop well.This is a clear case of underdevelopment.

And should we have many people who can hardly understand simple instructions, then we can be sure that tyrants will arise, those who have money and power. They will be lording it over in a country full of "yes" people.

If that happens, we can now say that our education was a failure; all that so-called progress is mirage because it fails to touch the lives of the greater number of the populace.

Perhaps we need to find new educators, new leader-visionaries who would see well into the future on how we can move the country forward not in terms of curtailing women's right to our bodies, definitely.