Jinggoy’s Nightmare, The Nation’s Awakening

Before Jinggoy Estrada opened a new door in his life, literally his detention cell at the refurbished custodial center of Camp Crame, he encountered an emotional storm. He was going to leave his family, sleep in bed alone for an indefinite number of days that can go into months and years, shirk an enviable life of luxury and power, and go through the thorny road of trial for the capital crime of plunder. Those gave him nightmares.

On June 23, came the moment of truth: no big talk was going to hold back detention anymore. The indicted named Sexy was going through the unsexiest pose of them all: fingerprinting and mug shot at the police camp. No amount of showbiz drama and body language choreography could make up for the disaster that waited to damn his movie-fashioned political career.

In the day of his surrender to the Philippine National Police, as he came into the glare of media at his house in the Corinthian Gardens, the senator’s eyes swelled. He held back tears, but could not. His jaws quivered as he answered questions. Yes, he was still defiant. He was going to yield to the authorities with head unbowed, he said, because he had done nothing wrong. But he struck a distant mien from that brave stance, once, on the podium of the Upper Chamber for a privilege speech denying having anything to do with the Priority Development Assistance Fund scam. He had immensely softened.

It was a nightmare indeed, but one that would be his nation’s awakening. Was it ever possible for personalities like him and Senator Bong Revilla to be so humbled? Was it ever foreseeable in the near future for powerful political figures like them to go down from their lofty perch and go through the police criminal procedure? Was it ever imaginable to see top government officials and movie idols of their level lose clout and be forced to take the finger print and mug shot, and later shamefully locked up?

That used to happen only to folks in the lower rungs of society. But they happened to Bong and Jinggoy, capped by their iconic images melting in the public esteem. And the people, who have been used to viewing the law as a spider web where only the small get caught but the big ones pull through, were starting to view power – specifically where it resides, differently.

There were things that were hard to believe in the country, not the least the high and mighty going to prison. But Bong and Jinggoy are where they are now, probably because they did not thought such could happen. They must have always believed as the people did in the past that no crime can be attached to them, that they were beyond the arm of the law, and out of reach of punishment for violating it. Indeed, there was an era when these were so. But the recent nightmares of the two riveting figures in Philippine politics today signify such may no longer be the case.

The incarceration of the two top vote-garnering senators begs the question: Could it have happened if the people have not awakened? Could it have passed if public consciousness remains as it was? What have recently unfolded in mass media about their fate were once untenable. But they happened, because the people would no longer settle for less. It had become impossible for the Department of Justice to merely sweep aside the news of the P10 billion heist of the people’s PDAF money, not conduct an investigation, and avoid filing the merited charges.

It has become impossible already to halt without any logical conclusion the course of getting into the truth of the Janet Lim Napoles racket, the connivance of senators and congressmen, and the modus operandi of corruption in the halls of power. The overarching interest of the people not only on the truth, but in seeing things done compelled it to go all the way, eradicate the source of the evil, and do justice to the aggrieved. The awakened citizenry would no longer permit anything short of them.

This was the new reality that slammed the effort of Jinggoy and Bong to wriggle out of their mess.  Politicians and celebrities were losing power, because the people have begun to regain it. Once, their word was bible truth. Now, most of it are either dismissed or taken with tongue in check. The people know better to trust the politicians or take them by their word.

Part of the nascent empowerment is the amount of information accessible by citizens, coming to them no longer through the traditional mass media, but alternative media at their fingertips, the cell phone in the age of social networking. Ordinarily gullible segments of society have caught up with the phenomenal advancement in the modes of information delivery available.

If Bong and Jinggoy can only find it in their brains to stop their self-delusion, they will find out that it is hard to override anymore the tide of awakening that has met with scepticism their denials and obfuscations of criminal liability on the PDAF scam. The citizenry is getting truths long hidden from it from sources other than that of traditional authority. Simply put, it is getting them on its own, with big help from the ceaseless upgrading of information and communication technology.

The people are getting information in amounts unheard of before. With these, they weigh, they think, they analyze. They form their own conclusion. Most of the time what comes out of the mouth of politicians are no longer given any weight. They are heard not to be believed, but to believe the opposite. Because of what the people know of the corruption that assail their daily lives, they won’t go for other outcomes than that the public thieves in the guise of public service are meted the brand of justice that they deserve, or at the very least subjected to the course of justice to ferret out the truth. And when the thieves simply say, “We did not steal,” all the more that they invite lynching.

Up to now, senator Jinggoy insists that he is just being persecuted for being in the opposition. Hence, his predicament is allegedly all about 2016, the administration’s plot to eliminate the imagined formidable challenge he and his peers in the opposite camp will mount in the presidential race. He either has come around to believing the deception or is clueless of the fact that the people do not believe that angle. Even his camp takes caution at giving credence to the political persecution theory, or personalities like Vice President Jejomar Binay and other stalwarts of the United Nationalist Alliance would have already rallied behind him. What got him and Bong Revilla was not politics of the powers-that-be, but power already in the hands of the people. That power is information.

Hopefully, the new door that Jinggoy has opened would lead him to change for the better. The nation is awakening. His fate would have been unthinkable yesterday. But today it’s become the compelling thought. 

Ang Krimen Sa Mga Matataas Es Mor Pan En Da Pilipens

The Napoles Gang hits the august chamber.

Kahit sa paggawa ng krimen, iba pa rin talaga dito sa ating bansa. 

Nagdudumilat na ang mga ebidensya, deny to death pa rin at saksakan ng drama ang may sala. Kung makapagtalumpati ang mga naaakusahang mandarambong na nasa itaas at makapangyarihan, animo'y api. Preskon dito preskon doon, pana-panahong painterbyu sa media na iisa ang sinasabi, "Pulitika lang ito!" Totoo nga mga kagalang-galang, pinupulitika niyo lang ang isang napakabigat na pagkakasala sa sambayanang Pilipino. 

Ni hindi man lang kayo makapagbigay ng matinong sagot ika nga direct to the point. Puro pakyut, paawa epek, na para bang: "Ah ang masa, mga fan lang namin yan, sunod-sunuran at paniwala lang ang mga yan kung ano'ng aming sasabihin." Ang pang-iinsultong ito ay bulag o nagbubulag-bulagan sa karumaldumal na krimeng ginawa laban sa masang pinagkakautangan (inaamin din naman nila) ng tagumpay kung nasaan man sila ngayon. Ninakawan na ng katakot-takot na halagagang sana'y ikabubuhay ng maayos ng kanilang mga pamilya, pinapatungan pa sa ulo ng mga kasinungalingan, at ginagawang tanga. Yan ang kasamahang palad ng mamamayang nagluklok sa kanila sa rurok ng kaluwalhatian.

At pati ang Diyos sa itaas idinadamay. Aba, ayon sa nakasulat sa T-shirt ng isang akusado, "God is on my side." Ang panginoon ay nasa panig ng inaakusahang magnanakaw? Papano yong ninakawan? Hanep, di manlang seguro nanginig! Palibhasa, tagos sa buto ang pagiging pulitiko at pagkakagaling sa showbiz, dinadaan nalang ang pagkakasala sa samabayanang Pilipino sa mga palabas at padrama para makalimutan. At may hypnotic sound effect pa. 

Pero ganoo't ganun man, nasa kulungan na yong orihinal na kompositor ng musical scoring sa drama sa senado, patunay nga seguro na hindi pumapanig si Lord sa pandarambong at panloloko sa kanyang mga minahal na anak. Kaya lang Lord, napakaliwanag pa rin ng di pagkaparehas ng hustisya sa bansa. Para sa mga mayayaman at matataas na pagkatao, tunay na may espesyal na trato kumpara sa nakararami.

May isang tatay na hindi matiis na wala manlang sumayad na pagkain sa tiyan ng kaniyang mga nagugutom na miyembro ng pamilya, sa kaarawan pa man din ng isang anak. Siya'y nagnakaw ng isang bandol ng instant noodles sa palengke. Huli kaw, dampot agad ng mga masugid na alagad ng batas, pantsak sa kulungan, wala nang imbe-imbestiga. Sa mahigit na dalawang taon, at sa awa ng diyos na kapanig daw ni Senador, nandoon pa rin yong mamang hinugot at biglang nawala sa kanyang pamilya. Walang maipyansa, walang abogadong gustong mag-aksaya ng panahon para tapunan ng kahit katiting na pansin man lang ang kaso.

Pero ang mga damuho na nangulimbat ng daan-daang milyon sa kabang-yaman ng mamamayan, kailangan muna ng napakahabang panahong pag-iimbestiga, paglilikom ng trak-trak na ebidensya, at pinakamasusing pag-aaral, animo'y gumagawa ng doctoral thesis sa isang kurso. Sa wakas, naisampa na ang kaso, kailangan pa uli ng halos isang taong pagrerepaso. Sa wakas uli, naiangat na sa korte, hindi pa rin basta-basta magagawan ng aresto, kasi rerepasuhin pa muli kung totoo ngang may "probable cause." Samantala, sangkaterbang mosyon naman sa korte hanggang sa pinkamataas na hudikatura ang iwinawasiwas ng mga abogado ng mga akusado mapigilan lang ang ultimong kahihinantnan, pagkakulong ng walang pyansa. Naks!

Maghambing kayo. Ano ang pagkakaiba ng isang bandol ng instant noodles at sampung bilyong pisong ninakaw sa mamamayan? Ang una ay di dapat pamarisan. Pero ang huli ay pinagkakaubosan pa ng pera sa pangangandidato mula sa pagkakapitan ng isang barangay hanggang sa pagkasenador ng buong kapulohan magaya lamang. Ika nga: Ten billion is ten billion! Sabi pa ni Jinggoy, "Everybody is corrupt." Pero iilan lang ang mangangarap maging isang small-time magnanakaw ng noodles sa palengke.

Pero kung kabigatan na rin lang ng krimen ang pinag-uusapan, maliwanag naman yata sa sikat ng araw. Ang isang bandol ng noodles ay wala pa segurong P200, sisiw sa mata ng madla. At ninakaw ito sa isang pribadong negosyante, isang maliit na pagkakasala laban sa isang mamamayan dahil sa sobrang kagipitan. Ang P10 bilyon ay lahat-lahat. Ito'y makabubuhay ng libo-libong katulad ng pobreng nakulong. At ito'y ninakaw sa 90 milyong Piilipino. Dahil sa pagnanakaw nito, ang ilan ay natulak na rin na magnakaw sa kadahilanang sila'y winalan ng pagkain sa kanilang hapag ng mga hinayupak na kurakot sa gobyerno. 

Di ba maisip ng mga tiwaling pulitiko at opisyal, sampo ng kanilang mga sibilyang kasabwat sa pangraraket, na ang pangungulimbat ng halimbawa P10 bilyon o higit pa sa kabang yaman ng mamamayan ay katumbas na rin ng tinatawag na crime against humanity? Pero gayun pa man, di hamak na ang layo sa buhay ng karaniwang mamamayan ng buhay na nag-aantay sa mga mandarambong sa bayan, loob at labas ng kulongan.

At heto ang panghimagas sa unang hain pa lang ng putahe ng hustisya. Habang isinasagawa ang paikot-ikot na daan ng pagbibigay katarungan sa bayan, nandoon ang pagsasabay rito ng mga privilege speech ng mga naakusahan, pagsasalita sa media, at kuno'y mga pasabog ng isyu, na iisa ang layunin: ilihis ang diskusyon sa totoong isyu ng kanilang krimen. Magtiis na lang sa walang solusyong pagkakapiit sa bilangguan kayong mga wala ng kung ano-anong mayroon ang mga akusadong ito. Maski isang di binayarang siopao lang ang nasiba ninyo sa tindi ng gutom.

Sa bandang dulo, kagaya ng pagkahaba-habang prosesyon ng Nazareno na sa simbahan pa rin ng Quiapo ang tuloy, kung matuwid ang hustisya sa likod ng mga harang nito, nanduo't nag-aantay ang kulongan. Pero ibahin nyo silang mga nasa itaas at kilala. Tingnan mo nalang ang magagarang kuwarto na inihanda ng gobyerno sa custodial center ng Crame. Di hamak na hinde naman kayang upahan ang mga silid na kagaya nito ng isang karaniwang sahurang manggagawa sa ating bansa. 

Isang natatanging lugar pa rin ang naghihintay sa kanilang mga nasanay sa naglalakihang mansyon at maluluhong pamumuhay, na tinustosan ng pera ng taumbayan. Ikumpara mo sa mga nagsisiksikang boarders ni Big Brother sa Kampo Karingal at Manila City Jail, change them. Ibig sabihin: IBAHIN MO SILA!

What Do We Care About Troubled Iraq?

The state of Iraq is falling apart, if it has not yet. This is the grim scenario that the world is witnessing today. In an unexpected turn of events, jihadis in the style of Al Qaeda and Sunni militants raising the banner of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) have overrun a vast portion of the country.

The ISIS juggernaut has captured major population centers one of which is the second largest city Mosul, grabbed strategic industrial and military facilities, and moved with lightning speed within striking distance of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. The cataclysmic events that saw also the big city of Tikrit, hometown of former President Saddam Hussein fell into the militants, accompanied by the meltdown of the Iraqi armed forces, happened only in June.

Why is it important for us thousands of miles away to keep an eye on these developments? We have our own problems, what do we care? We should for two reasons.

First, there are Filipinos working there. The safety of our very own nationals in the hapless though oil-rich land is an overriding concern. Seeing to it that overseas Filipino workers get out of there in one piece is second nature to our human instinct at self-preservation.

On the other hand, there is also the economic interest. The dollar remittances our OFWs send help keep us afloat. They contribute to our national survival and, if you please, to the yearly growth of our Gross Domestic Product. The instability in the large oil producing country will disrupt the inflow of a vital commodity to our shores, dollar currency.

If the situation gets worse, there will be a big problem. The precariousness of the condition of our overseas workers in the midst of war engenders national anxiety, besides the government having had to address the edginess of their families. This automatically sends everyone into a crisis mode.

Meanwhile, a vital lifeline from export labor will be cut off. The severance of that lifeline aggravates the fact that the repatriation of our overseas workers, as the Iraq government itself scrambles in disorder for the safest exit, is going to be a logistical nightmare.

Of course it is beside another telling effect: added numbers of balik-bayans to our unemployed labor force. Hundreds if not thousands of jobless will pour back to the country needing work that pays as much as they get in Iraq. That is quite a huge headache. And this is still just about Iraq.

Analysts predict the likelihood of the conflict spreading all over the region. The conflagration can spill beyond Iraq's borders and gobble up countries in the Middle East where the bulk of our workers abroad are stationed. The widening of the Iraq conflict to the whole of the region poses a hell of a problem for our export-labor-dependent economy.

Second, the cataclysm in Iraq is not far from what happened to us more than a century ago. It brings some historical flashbacks worth taking stock of. Those were when we lost a nation just as we were about to win a revolution against colonialism.

Nation building is for the native inhabitants of a country themselves to do.  But purporting to teach how to govern ourselves, American imperialism at the turn of the 20th century took that away from us riding on our struggle to oust colonial rule. The Americans did not mind that our revolutionaries were already churning out a state by and for Filipinos, and we would be the first in our parts to declare independence from foreign domination. They took the chance of the weakening of a rival world power, Spain, to wedge in.

Since then, the country would not only lose nationhood and independence, but get stuck in prolonged underdevelopment.

The coming of the US forces offered self-proclaimed native leaders among the ilustrado (nascent landlord-bourgeoisie) class the opportunity to help themselves to the bounties that the new turn of events could offer. They have never really trusted the masses, and thought the struggle to liberate the country from superior aliens was nothing but an exercise in futility. They lost no time in betraying the anti-colonial revolution and capitulating to the new colonialist, the vaunted great North American nation.

Under the auspices of another foreign power, allied Filipino opportunists and traitors took over national leadership. But they did so as lackeys of the new colonial masters. They would repeatedly impose on the people the tragicomic irony of sacrificing national interest to an aggressor up to foisting on Filipinos its subjugating way of nation building deceptively for them.

Like in Iraq, under invasion by the US about a decade ago, the way was the way of war. It meant the Krag-wielding Yankees in the new American age storming a country that has just won freedom from foreign rule. It meant then US President William Mckinley's quaint dream about the "assimilation" of overseas territories to promote democracy, if by force of arms. The democratic dream ended up, as the emerging Filipino nation did, in the exploitation of one country by another country, the subjection of the latter by the former.

The same act of aggression was what would surface in Iraq more than a century later, three decades away from unleashing its genocidal bent on the Vietnamese people in the late 60s and the first half of the 70s. For this reason, Iraq's current existential bind does and must concern us. Like our being in constant war with ourselves, such traces back to the country's destabilization and molestation by an alien power.

What happened to Iraq, when George Bush ordered the American armed forces to bomb and shoot down the defenseless country, happened to us around 1900 when the Yankee contingents swarmed in on the Philippine isles and started shooting at Filipinos, expressly to pacify them. Whatever euphemism is used to deodorize the putrid act of war, it is nothing but naked foreign intervention. 

Victory would be snatched by imperialism professing to teach self-government, just as our freedom fighters were winning a revolution for self-determination, Because of the intrusion, the continuation of the Filipino nation that had been united by revolutionary struggle was aborted. The paradox was that the violence was presented as something that had to be done to introduce the new democratic country to nationhood and democracy. Over the years, such propaganda has not changed, in Iraq 2003-2011 as was in our land when the forces of foreign aggression crushed our people's aspiration for independence.

Once more, the self-professed champion of democracy and nation-building took it upon itself to occupy the defiant nation of Saddam Hussein and remove its existing government. The United States emblazoned into the posters of the aggression the rhetoric about wanting the Arab state to get rid of a dictator and have the citizenry savor western freedom.

The initial reasons for the war was Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction and his links to Al Qaeda. These turned out to be pure deception. The pretexts and the democratic rhetoric could not for long hide the fact that the adventure was truly to inject American enterprise into the Muslim heartland, and cash in on its coveted oil wealth.

But after the US's Coalition of the Willing barged in and executed Saddam, his bombed-out country entered an era of social fragmentation and endless antagonisms. The war mission would be rephrased over time, from getting rid of fictional WMDs and Al Qaeda to nation building. Ironically, the US succeeded in smashing what was holding the country together against the challenge of radical Islamism, Baath Party rule.

After a previous unholy alliance to bring war to the US's arch enemy Iran, alliance partner Saddam would himself be targeted for standing in the way of America's Middle East ambitions. But in his removal, the victim would be the whole of Iraq. So much for American-style nation building and exporting of democracy.

Saddam's elimination opened the floodgates to what the US and its allies had feared, the flow of jihadi groups and militant fundamentalist sects aiming to gain foothold on a piece of territory where they can finally hoist the dreamed-of Islamic state. Was the reverse karma? What else? Eleven years since the US invasion, the country would be bristling with lethal weapons in the hands of deadly Islamic radicals and its American-sponsored institutions attacked at will by them.

To sum up, the US got what it manifestly aimed to prevent. It unleashed an endless war that rived Iraq along sectarian and ethnic divides and weakened its defenses against Muslim extremism. The US aggression, instead of bringing security, destabilized the nation. Destabilization paved the way for the influx of Al-Qaeda-type militants poised to rule the country.

This is a lot to think about as President Barrack Obama positions the recent US pivot to Asia. While the US economy and military establishment still reel from the fallout of the war in Iraq, America would begin refreshed military, political and economic overtures to our region. The experience in Iraq could only send shivers at what the much ballyhooed pivot bodes. Are we in for another destabilizing intervention?

America is intensely training its sights on the emerging markets of the east. Not the least is the Philippines which has become a fast rising economy, mainly because it has began to wiggle out of the constricting imperialist impositions of the past and explore new economic relationships particularly among neighbors. Let there be no mistaking it, the enticingly fresh attention is for America and its exclusive interests alone.

Do we need a reinvigorated and larger US presence once again? We need that like the Krag that once decimated our forefathers.

The renewed turbulence in Iraq urges us to review history, specifically at the time when the powers of the northern hemisphere were reshuffling the division of the world into each one's sphere of interest, a time when foreign intervention postponed our independence and subjected us to a new type of colonialism. Did we progress because of foreign intervention, or despite it? Weren't our chance of a new Filipino century just embroiled in subservience to alien dictates, protracted insurgencies, self-defeating social conflicts, and a state busying most of the time with suppressing its citizens rather than making the country progressive?

The Filipinos did not sacrifice so many lives in the fight against Spain. But they would pay a cost of 600,000 lives in the resistance to US imperialism, as with Vietnam more than half a century later. As if that experience was not enough, the nation would lose more in the internecine uprisings against the tyranny of the new ruler, when the Japanese declared war on the US and besieged the country for being part of the American lake, and in the latter nationalist struggle of the awakened middle-class, the intelligentsia, the workers, and peasantry.

Wherever it goes, the US brings the curse of war, the slavery of nations, and the stench of death. This was so before. This is still so now. And tragically other peoples, not the least the Iraqis and we, pay the biggest price.

The New Conflict

Shall we be afraid of a monster that is China?

China's behavior has gotten uglier. Its recent collision with Vietnam over the construction of an oil rig in the Paracels, and its arbitrary building of an airstrip in the Philippine Spratlys, infuriate. The anti-Chinese rage in Vietnam this month is a consequence of this behavior. At the very least, the actions against the interests of our country and Vietnam are provocative and abet rising tension in the region. 

For the first time, the two countries are experiencing muscling and aggression with tinges of violence, like being hosed with water cannons and rammed by Chinese ships. The strong-arm display in the South China Sea paints a different China today. Contrary to the post-national-liberation communist leadership in the 1950s that shunned pretensions to geopolitical hegemony in the region, the leadership that the ASEAN members confront in China today is one that is heady with superpower complex. It no longer minds disrespecting and hurting neighbors in the ambition to expand borders to theirs.

In fact, the China that we see now has gone not only to bully but belittle countries opting to defend territorial sovereignty from its incursion. More infuriatingly, its unfree press has gone to calling these countries rats, and urging Beijing to make them "pay a price they cannot afford." Does China believe now it can afford the economic, political and  military price of ramming spurious claims on waters that do not belong to it? Does it think it can just get on with disrespecting or trouncing others' sovereignty? Does it feel so unbeatable now to just do what it wants to do?

The Chinese foreign ministry lately raised the temper of the grab-territories rhetoric by saying the government in Beijing has "undisputed sovereignty" over those contested waters. The new legal tact is of course as deceiving as the so-called historical basis to the fictitious nine-dash line. China has no undisputed sovereignty to the exclusive economic zones and continental shelves of the Philippines, Vietnam and Japan. Its specious claim over them is not only being disputed but resisted. The Philippine government, for itself, has filed an unprecedented case against the claim at the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS). There are tons of evidence and unassailable legal arguments to back this.

The recent violent demonstrations by the Vietnamese citizens condemning China's oil drill in the Paracels debunk the phrase "undisputed sovereignty" as nothing but a hoax. The burning of foreign symbols signal more than disputedness. It is an assertion pregnant with the readiness to put lives on the line. Indeed, if the conflict between China and the countries of Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines turns into an armed confrontation Beijing's powerful clique of top bureaucrats, military generals and business billionaires may be hard put to convince their citizens how a group of tide-washed rocks and coral outcrops along foreign shores several hundreds of miles away had become a cause to go to war.

Yes, China today is no longer the sleeping giant that the western powers in the 19th and early 20th century partitioned into enclaves of foreign authority and wealth. It is no longer the fledgling nation post-1949, buffeted by agricultural famines, one economic debacle after another, and a state of inertia. It has risen to become an industrial and financial behemoth, that now stands to rival the largest economy in the world, the United States. Its powerful economic tentacles grip the globe from Africa, the Middle East, Europe, South Asia and even America which has more than five trillion dollars of indebtedness to it. Even in our country, it has interests in strategic utilities, and has a business presence almost everywhere all over the archipelago.

Translated to hegemonic ambitions, all these take on a monstrous apparition shadowing small countries like the Philippines and Vietnam. But is the threat of China grabbing territorial waters something to strike fear and trembling among those threatened? It had gotten to have so much stake in our economy, for example, from investments in vital industries to the flooding of cheap consumer goods in the market that withdrawing all of them can have the effect of removing pillars to a house. Will we fall if China becomes an enemy instead of an economic partner? Won't we survive without it? There is also the military might to reckon with. China's industrial and financial rise has pulled along the rapid modernization of the People's Liberation Army to standards that pose to level off with the US and western powers in the next decade. Its superpower status may be said to be a forgone conclusion a few years from now. Is it then the equivalent of the cinematic Godzilla for countries in the region to cower from at the thought of being trampled upon?

The answers to all are nay. At the back of its aggressive posturings is a China that cannot afford to make enemies with the world. It depends as much on its economic interests in our country for instance as we do on them. We can afford to bite the bullet and not have them anyway, as we have been used to - that is not having any of those mainland Chinese investments, in the past. But China's runaway growth and state of bigness today may not do well losing them. Countries like us are the wall that China like Humpty Dumpty sits on. Once the wall moves and offsets its balance, the overly fat character is bound to have a great fall, and no top bureaucrats in the Chinese Communist Party, military generals and billionaire businessmen can ever put it together again. This is to say that China has greater stake on not disturbing the status quo than shuffling the current world order.

But why the kind of aggressiveness that it has never displayed before? Recent sorties into its neighbors' seas show a country frantic to lay hands on resources that do not belong to it. The bullying and abrasive talk do not exhibit strength. They exhibit a weakness more profound than anybody could see. China did not do this even in the direst of times in the past. Why is it now brazenly doing things that soil its status in the international community, even as they court the ire of neighbors? Beneath is fear. China's display of offensive actuation in relation to them is one of a mythical god facing the specter of mortality. It is one already far from the China of old that did not need so much to live, much so grab other people's possession.

After the red army ousted the forces of Chiang kai shek from the mainland in 1949, China at once faced tough challenges to its existence as a communist-led state. The United Nations led by America shut it out. The so-called Free World of countries aligned with the west isolated it. US-orchestrated military alliances looked for every opportunity to wipe it from the face of the earth. But it was a China that stood strong, proud, defiant and united. It was a China that inspired peoples throughout the world to struggle against oppressive ruling classes and their foreign sponsors. It gave imperialism, the new era of western colonialism, a prick in the ass. It was a friend and dependable ally of the small and oppressed. Its historic people's war against imperialism, over the first half of the 20th century was held as a guiding light by similar revolutionary struggles in other societies. Seen as threat, the western powers led by the United States exerted all might to crush it. They could only lash at it, not break it.

But such a China, inspiration and ally of people's liberation  movements in the third world, is no more. In its stead has slithered a new China of self-enriching Communist Party bureaucrats, military generals acting like feudal lords, and empiric business proprietors who would enter the world's tiny circle of one percent superrich. It is a country that is seeing the gap between the vast masses of the people and the obscenely wealthy top layer of society growing wider and wider. It is a China that is steering farther away from the promise of socialist equality under the pro-people ideological leadership of its revolutionary years. Power and possession of wealth at the apex of state and society is already monopolistic. Meanwhile, its base of more than one billion population fray on the sharp edge of poverty, powerlessness and alienation.

Thirty years since the advent of the Deng Xiiaoping economic formula, the merry party is winding over. The capitalist road is sliding towards the fate others have come to, such as the' Great Depression in America in the 1930s. As wealth becomes more and more concentrated in a few and all businesses monopolized by bank-industry fusions of the financial oligarchy, the same acute ills of the moribund western capitalist societies set in: money that is becoming nothing but worthless paper, floods of goods not being bought anymore by the marginalized masses simply because their minuscule purchasing power cannot afford them, and a runaway growth with no limit to the voracious need for energy. Society is awash with goods. But teeming millions of people remain dirt poor. Never before has so much wealth been created. But trillions of dollars in the hands of a few stand to lose value with the prospect of having nothing to spend on anymore. Unprecedented hugeness in the capacity for production poses to stand idle, because the big company owners face the prospect of not getting any further profit with factories continuing to run. And so, retrenchments and shutdowns become the order of the day. More massive numbers become unemployed, and the idle labor force bloats further to explosive proportion.

China is contracting the above deadly capitalist depression-syndrome of the west. The flexing and trashing of political-military muscle in the Paracels and the West Philippine Sea is part of this. It manifests the pallor of fright at the specter of end times. China is no longer the strong nation that needed least, but other societies needed. It must have greater markets in other climes to dump goods. It must have bottomless wells of energy supply to fuel ever expanding productive capacity. It must have all the monetary reserves it can extract from financing bankrupt businesses and governments to continue to be relevant. In short, it is a new China that is direly in need of continual infusions of resources into its economic bloodstream in order to survive. It is a China nearing the trip to the intensive care unit that America and Europe have gone to since 2008.

The great Chairman Mao Zedong has admonished not to fear the imperialists for all their awesome military might and display of political-economic prowess. He said, "dare to struggle and dare to win," for the oppressors of the world are nothing but paper tigers. Out there in a tiny spot of the West Philippine Sea called the Ayungin Shoal, a squad of Philippine marines living on hard conditions of existence aboard a dilapidated navy ship that has been grounded for years, does so for the country. Dare to struggle and dare to win, for the fearsome monster that is China today is nothing but a paper tiger.

As confrontations in the Spratlys become more frequent and escalate in intensity, it helps to be reminded that what we are facing is not a country, but an elite power clique at the helm of the society that China has now become. It is not the Chinese people that we face, but opposite them, a vulnerable creature expected to toss in the gigantic ebbs and flows of the turbulent political and economic waters their capitalist route is coming to. The Philippines is on the right track to opt to resolve its dispute with China by a rules-based approach of international arbitration and multilateral diplomatic alliance building. But when the water cannons are replaced with live ammunition, we should not be seen as only up to words.

Let us also be prepared for the ultimate conflict. Can a small country like us stand up to an emerging superpower like China? I think the right question is, shall we or shall we not? That is, dare to struggle and dare to win. Take it from their fathers themselves.

A time to cut the speeches

From campus activism to a stint at peasant organizing and brief warfare in the hills (which we called then CS), to the feet-punishing marches in the streets of Metro Manila especially after the assassination of former Senator Benigno Aquino at the MIA tarmac in 1983, my journey wound up at the 12-lane highway that separated the two major apparatuses of military violence and instruments of political repression by the Ferdinand Marcos regime, Camp Aguinaldo and Camp Crame.

That was February 23, circa 1986. With a handful of kasama (comrades) from the transport sector, which I joined in organizing lately, I strove to satisfy curiosity by meeting the crowd at EDSA.

We saw the burgeoning affair there as just a military putsch by adventurist junior officers of the Armed Forces. When the preempted coup was starting to boomerang on the plotters, they would be saved from the deadly wrath of their former boss by a religious call from Cardinal Sin, and offered warm bodies for shield by numbers from the burgisya or middle class which would be romanticized to find also names from the wealthy elite coming to link arms. It was not trying to overthrow the dictator, much more change the prevailing social order. It was just trying to save the asses of the military mutineers from being incinerated by the howitzers of General Fabian Ver, and referee the emerging fight so that blood will not flow.

But as it did, the Edsa mass-up delivered a death blow to the savage reign of Marcos, paralyzed his capacity to repress (his soldiers could not have it in their conscience to shoot at the crowds and kill thousands), and sent his monolithic military machine unraveling. The guns of the major commands instead of firing fizzled, and the officers and rank-and-file personnel left their battle positions. The historical twist was totally unexpected and unplanned. Even the gathering of millions in an instant demonstration of resolve to defy the strongman was spontaneous. It was unimaginable.

Brought in as usual paraphernalia at first blush, our red banners and streamers were met with unwelcoming stares. So we got there stripped of any political-ideological allusion. We lost our hard-core thoughts and hard-line revolutionary theory in the crowd. For once, we were just citizens of the country, and part of that magical amalgam called the Filipino people out in their full moral force to topple with a mix of courageous involvement, prayers, flowers and festivity a very dangerous dictator. We shed off our being political forces with deep red color, and joined in as moral forces. But it felt good to be just a Filipino.

That was my brief engagement at EDSA. After spending hours at the highway where history was being made on February 23, 1986 we separated to rally our own ranks. We quickly mimeographed bundles of leaflets, and by morning of February 24 we were already distributing them along Aurora Avenue, Magsaysay Blvd., Espana, Quezon Avenue and other major thoroughfares, calling for Welgang Bayan (People's Strike).

I could sense what Lenin called "profound revolutionary crisis": the people no longer able to still live under the same political order. Where before, they won't even touch such same material that we leave on jeepneys, now out of the windows of running jeepneys their hands would reach out for it. In a brief moment, the Weba leaflets were gone, lopped up by an enthused Metro Manila citizenry. Drivers would intentionally stop to say: "Bakit hinde na ngayon?" (Why not now?) A strike was one that they would at the very least frown at, at the most vehemently resist. Now. they even did go on holiday, barricaded Aurora, and parked their jeepneys in the afternoon, two days ahead of the called Welgang Bayan.

In the evening of the 24th, in an observation post at Aurora Avenue in San Juan, I saw an armored personnel carrier being chased by a car down to Malacanang. Besides the laughable incident, the road was quiet. Our group slept at Cubao that night for a long day on the 25th. The whole of the next day, we massed up at an assembly point in Cubao and V. Mapa, gathered a few buses courtesy of trade union members, and by afternoon we proceeded to Espana. At the intersection of Gov. Forbes, we set up barricade with a cirle of commandeered buses and did some sorties to JP Laurel Street to reconnoiter.

When dark fell, we marched to the Mendiola Bridge with a 700-man tightly-knit contingent and hundreds more of folks tailing behind. We wound down Morayta, Lepanto, back of San Sebastian College and run smack into the phalanges of barbed wires coiling at the foot of the bridge. We folded banners and streamers and got ready for brawl. Others began cutting the wires. On balconies or windows of surrounding buildings, people were shouting: "Pasok! Pasok!" (Enter! Enter!) The crowds behind us, down the length of Recto were waving and heaving. We didn't mind losing our lives anymore. This was it!

I couldn't remember exactly what time it was, on the bright moonlit night of February 25, when we observed and heard helicopters hovering above the trees. During those days, we always remember to carry transistor radios in rallies. From one of them, carried by a comrade beside me, a station airing news feed guerilla-style shortly announced that Marcos, a sick man, has left Malacanang. I smiled, my thought was at once: too late for the gays who also joined the march shouting: "Pakurot ha! Pakurot!" (Let us pinch, referring to the moment we are able to reach Marcos.)

By that time, we had cut the barbed wires, giving way to a wide gaping breach. Before that, some of us had already slipped inside and planted our streamers across the bridge. When the breach materialized, the crowd could no longer be prevented from rushing in.

As the floodgates were finally thrown open, a deluge of thousands of people rolled all the way to the gates and up the gates of the presidential compound, to the Malacanang Palace. We shouted to stop the onrush, because there could yet be Marcos loyalist snipers around. But the flood could no longer be stemmed. The onrushing folks threw our caution to the wind.

Before midnight, the seat of power where the dictator had reigned for 20 years, was taken over by the common people. The ramparts of the brutal and rapacious regime fell into shreds. The strongman has fled. We retreated to our place at Espana, and got some needed breath. The tense atmosphere would be suddenly broken by dancing and singing in the streets as truckloads of civilian merrymakers swooped in.

I and a few straggling comrades managed to walk to a place at V. Mapa by past 1:00 AM already on the 26th, were we cramped ourselves in a room to try to get some sleep. But in an hour of trying to lapse into forgetfulness, what happened could not just let us sleep. I decided to stand up and go.

I walked at four in the morning to go back to my house at the nearby locality of San Juan for the first time in five days, after I left with a banner and two cans of sardines as food pack for some hectic political action. In the cold and dark of the wee hours of the morning, the still hard-to-believe reality was dawning. Yes, indeed, the dictator is gone, and I am once again a free man!

Still in the grip of Yolanda

The Red Cross distributes relief in Bgy. Hinulogan, Dagami, Leyte.

 It is made to sound like a magical period of time. But no miracle happened to the suffering victims of Yolanda 100 days after the calamity struck. They are still in the grip of disaster.

I recently visited some of the ravaged areas in Tanauan, Dagami, Burauen and Julita in Leyte. The people I talked to are one in saying that the situation in their barangays may not get better. It could get worse.

Local officials and ordinary citizens share the same observation. If relief by the government and other humanitarian organizations stop, hunger and terrible hardship will hit them. As a consequence, criminality will rise and chaos will be the order of the day.

“There is no problem with food as of now. We are supplied,” Ceasar Arguilles of Barangay San Miguel, Tanauan says. “But almost all of us have no livelihood anymore, if relief ends there will be big trouble,” he adds.

Immediately after the supertyphoon struck, various agencies swooped into their localities. Since then, they have constantly doled out food rations, hygiene kits, pails and construction materials.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) has led in the effort. But other foreign and private aid organizations have also been helping. They are Oxfam, the Samaritan Purse, Red Cross, World Vision, Plan International and the Catholic Relief Service.

A Buddhist organization, the Tzu Chi Foundation, gave cash from P8,000 to P15,000 per recipient.

But still, 99 percent of the survivors have no means of earning to tide up each family in the near future. Agriculture is down. After Typhoon Pablo hit Mindanao, Leyte and Samar became the country’s biggest producer of copra with two thirds of their agricultural lands planted to coconuts. However, the trees have been decimated by Yolanda.

Folks waiting for relief  on  trees felled by Yolanda.

I came to Bgy. Hinulogan, Dagami in time to see the distribution of food and other relief items by the Red Cross. I took photos and asked around as almost the whole village queued alongside the vans. 

“We will survive while this goes on,” Francisco Crebillo, a resident, says. “But they are only up to March, the officials told us. Once the giving stops, our barangay will plunge into darkness.”

The whole village was flattened, with 90 percent of homes totally damaged. As early as two weeks after Yolanda devastated it, the residents began salvaging materials from their ruined houses and erecting makeshift shelters. But indeed, there seems to be no end to the need for outside help. Dependency on aid is the other tragedy that the local folks are now stuck on.

Most of the houses in Bgy. Balorinay, Burauen have been demolished by the supertyphoon. The folks are living under flimsy canopies from the canvasses or tarpaulins donated by the DSWD and other aid groups. Exposed to the extremes of weather, seemingly in a furnace during hot days, and in a freezer during cold nights, they have still to hear of any government move to help them out of these conditions.

Homes down to ground zero in Balorinay, Burauen, Leyte.

The main source of livelihood of the village was tuba and vinegar making from the coconut flower’s sap. This is gone, and will not be back for at least seven years.

The locals at Bgy. Cuyae, Julita were lucky to be reached by relief with an additional feature, cash for work. They have recently gone through a week-long cash-for-work assistance by the United Nations. But the one thing that happened under the local government unit of their municipality has not paid yet. They joke of it being instead credit-for-work.

Less than 10 percent of the houses here remained standing after Yolanda. The rest were all brought down into heaps of rubble and debris. The local folks struggled to get shelters up with tarpaulin and canvass from the aid agencies. But they could not get food production and income generation back, because their lands are still littered with fallen trees and could not be plowed.

The same dire situation goes on in most of the areas devastated by the supertyphoon in November, last year. The whole prescriptive period for them to recover and pick up the pieces seems to be getting long. But the act can be now or never.

More than three months since, lives, homes, economies and communities are yet far from the condition of really building back after the devastation wrought by Yolanda. Aside from getting desperate, folks are in a situation that can rapidly deteriorate to a point of no return. 

A social and economic collapse may be far off in the minds of government responders at the top. But to the folks on ground zero, the likelihood of this scenario has loomed even much larger than in the first weeks after the disaster.

In December, the government talked of a price tag for Recovery Assistance on Yolanda to the tune of PhP360.9 billion, out of which 50.79% or P183.3 billion was for the reconstruction of homes alone. I estimate that the 1,500 barangays in Leyte - granting that all of them have been razed to the ground, may need only around P4 billion to get more durable shelters up in due time.

First off, where are the talked about billions? The promise of assistance is urgently needed on ground zero to materialize. It must begin to roll now, before it becomes too late. Aanhin pa ang damo kung patay na ang kabayo? (What is the grass for if the horse is already dead?)

Help In Real Time

      A smile on the survivors’ faces

How many of the Yolanda disaster victims pinned under the debris or fragments of home could still have been saved by rescue? No one knows. Had help gotten there on time, we would have known.

Up to now, many survivors cannot categorically say if one of those thousands of body bags transported to mass graves at Barangay Basper and Suhi contained a missed family member. The time for positive identification based on intact physical appearance has been lost.

On many instances, the underlying factor why the Yolanda tragedy became more tragic was not being able to deal with the critical situation in real time.

Stores may not have been looted if panicky residents were not sent into frenzy by the thought that they may have survived the wind’s fury and the water’s surge, but not hunger. It was the moment right after the calamity when the need for relief was critical and it did not come.

Time is of the essence. True then in the immediate aftermath of the supertyphoon, true still in the rehabilitation effort of the areas torn by it, time would have made the difference.

Two and a half months after Yolanda, help in recovery and rebuilding must already be up and running or it may be too late again.

The scourge of Yolanda continues. Its victims still reel under the agony and hardships brought by it. The unending queues on stores in the city’s center, pharmacies, banks, wet markets, make one wonders: Is this yet what it is to live in the 21^st century, to be so downed and made helpless by a calamity?

On a long file at the BPI automated teller machine, someone remarked, “Waray pa gud katatapos it at sakripisyo kan Yolanda.” (Our sacrifice from Yolanda has not ended.)

Sacrifice is one aspect, fear is another.

The threat of foodless days nags. Warmer and unlit homes and nothing to do because there is no electricity fuel uncertainty. Realizing with alarm that this could go on for months and years makes one go bonkers. The scenario of having no food and electricity is panicky.

Hostile weather aggravates the already harsh cold and heat. Still in a state of trauma from the Yolanda rampage, folks instantly become jittery over news of another low-pressure-area with the potential to evolve into a monster, like the ferocious visitor on November 8.

Agony, uncertainty, trauma and nervousness mix up into a volatile state of affairs.

Along the Eastern Visayas Region’s Pacific Coast and Leyte Gulf area, are numerous villages flattened by Yolanda. Many of them are now sprawls of tent and makeshift-shelter communities, propped by aid. There, most folks have been reduced to reliance on lifelines from outside.

They urgently need to rise from the ruin and rubble as much as they needed to survive Yolanda.

The maligned bunkhouses are only tiny island specks in this vast sea of dehumanized refugee humanity. If folks can be too hot on those controversial structures, this one is really much too hot.

Those suffering may no longer take the time, as in the days following Yolanda, to paint on pavements the words, PLEASE HELP US. Their plight has been made known throughout the world. They have undergone how it is to beg and join the long queue under rain and sun for five kilos of rice, canned sardines and noodles.

To survive on donations, to rise on somebody else’s helping hand, to be plucked out of one’s proud being by the posturing of aid as if this was all that mattered in the situation, are no small concessions to given assistance.

Government and the international community have announced billions of dollars for recovery and rebuilding. The earmarking by the administration of P360.9 billion for Recovery Assistance on Yolanda (RAY) has gotten into headline and primetime news.

But folks in the flattened communities are not jumping with joy. Why?

No victim of Yolanda has said help is not needed. But the help that is needed is the real thing, not the news. It is what goes to improve the situation on the ground, not what hogs the headlines.

Until now, nothing of that has come, or shows to be coming.

The people cannot even finish counting in their lifetimes the huge assistance promised. But humbly small or boastfully big, they really don’t mind. They just ask: When and How?

Any definite answer to that would already put a smile on the survivors' faces.

Help Us Give Support (HUGS)

The Homeless And Needy Disaster Survivors (HANDS) Rehab Initiative

The Institute for Local Innovation and Approach in Development Inc. (ILIAD) is launching an initiative to help in the socio-economic recovery and rebuilding of communities devastated by Supertyphoon Yolanda. This is named Aksyon Bulig sa Operasyon Tindog Kabisayaan (ABOT Ka). It covers places in Leyte and Eastern Samar that were worst hit by the calamity.

ABOT Ka engages in the mobilization of support by agencies, organizations, groups and individuals participating or wanting to participate in rehab aid effort for the Yolanda affected areas. Support is directed at particular villages or households with which cooperation has already been initiated or of which critical needs have been identified and assessed.

The initiative specifically will help folks in the category of Homeless and Needy Disaster Survivors (HANDS).  It is intended not only to provide such assistance as food relief and core building materials, but to catalyze and enable efforts by the suffering victims themselves to pick up from the loss, damage and disruption of livelihoods brought about by Yolanda.

Assistance consists of three major actions, namely:

One,  Fast Assessment and Statistics Tracking for Rehab Aid Coverage (FASTRAC). This is the rapid gathering of data and appraisal, quick construction of target beneficiary database, their summary in report or newsfeed format, and their speedy communication to prospective benefactors and the public at large to seek immediate support or guide assistance. Through FASTRAC, ABOT Ka serves as spotter on ground zero to point aid to the proper target. It also serves to constantly monitor situation and bring to the attention of concerned agencies breaking issues and problems.

Two, Immediate Shelter and Livelihood Assistance (ISLA). This is the delivery of solicited financial and other forms of assistance to match the building of starting shelters by identified beneficiary HANDS. The effort at basic shelter provision is designed to generate, alongside, livelihoods for workforces in the community as well as women.

Three, Community Level Action Support Partnership (CLASP). This is the engagement of cooperation with local government units at the barangay level, or civic organizations at the grassroots, in participatory planning and joint implementation of courses of action to spur off rehabilitation through an integrated socio-economic development approach. CLASP aims to bring to the table new physical framework designs in pursuit of a development that is environmentally safe, ecologically sound, and disaster resilient, besides being socially just, economically feasible and holistically human uplifting.

For the above thrusts, ILIAD is seeking assistance from various sectors and sources. It may be directly implemented by the donors themselves, with ILIAD facilitating cooperation with target beneficiary households/communities. Or it may be executed with the collaboration of ILIAD, which will provide the network of volunteers on the ground for liaison and organizing tasks, and staff for technical support. In a detailed proposal for this purpose, ILIAD will delineate the optimal strategy, and concrete methods and processes wherein the aid will be most effectively delivered, and will generate desired results towards the recovery and rebuilding of communities.

ABOT Ka initially is covering the following areas:

1)      Barangays Ormocay, Camanse and Wilson in the coastal town of Mayorga

2)      The agricultural town of Burauen, Leyte (specific localities still in the process of selection)

3)      Barangays Hinulogan, Maliwaliw, Calipayan, Rizal, San Benito and Caluctogan in the interior agricultural town of Dagami

4)      Barangays San Miguel, Magay and Sta. Cruz in the heavily devastated coastal town of Tanauan

5)      Town of Hernani along  the Pacific Coast in Eastern Samar (specific localities still in the process of selection)

6)      Town of Giporlos along the Pacific Coast in Eastern Samar (specific localities still in the process of selection)

Preliminary reports by ILIAD volunteers on ground zero count the dwellings flattened or totally damaged by the supertyphoon at 50 to 80 percent of households in the said areas. The food situation is critical, for if relief is cut at this stage, hunger will break out. Livelihoods and productive activity are generally at a standstill. And local folks besides being traumatized by the catastrophe on November 8, undergo a stressful day-to-day existence accompanied by confusion, fear and anxiety over an uncertain future.

Shelter for the homeless is either in tents or hastily propped makeshift structures of salvaged lumber and doled-out canvass or tarp. Under these the folks suffer extremes of cold during nights and days of intermittent rain, and heat beating on the canopies during sunny weather. Heavy downpours send them into panic as waters begin to rise rapidly on rivers and come close to their fragile dwellings.

Meanwhile, 80 to 90 percent of the pre-Yolanda business has been ravaged and not yet come back.
Agriculture with the massive damage wrought to the coconut industry is on the verge of stagnation, and may not rise back to where it was before, in the next seven years. Social disintegration and economic collapse are likely to combine in a second generation tragedy after the Nov. 8 disaster.

The Institute for Local Innovation and Approach in Development views with deep concern the intense hardships and dangers that the Yolanda survivors continue to go through. All these urge everyone, the government, civil society, the business sector, and other aid donors to act now and very quickly. The dire situation does not afford losing a day. The rehab must start rolling in no time at all.

For our suffering brothers and sisters, and for the country which needs Eastern Visayas to rise and fulfil its economic and social role in our overall development, Help Us Give Support!

please visit: www.philiad.com.ph
email: iliadphil@yahoo.com or clasp@philiad.com.ph

The ordeal and the danger are far from over

The world hailed the resilience of the survivors of supertyphoon Yolanda. But there may be little appreciation of the fact that until now they are still fighting a battle for survival.

The Yolanda ordeal is far from over. Indeed, the danger of a sequel disaster part-two to the November 8 rampage lurks: a social and economic meltdown.

A collapse of order and collective life from the strain of continued human suffering may happen, once rebuilding stumbles and securing anew a decent shelter with simple comforts and ambiance of home end up in prolonged frustration. The disaster victims have to get settled to lead productive lives.

That is why the construction of the controversial bunkhouses should have been carefully thought of, or better still thoroughly discussed with the folks who were supposed to live in them. Their say on the make and circumstance of the temporary dwellings should have been given primary importance.

Right now, most of the survivors of Yolanda are in a state of suspended animation. The homeless and needy idly await assistance in such hard-hit areas, for example, as Barangays San Miguel, Magay, Calogcog and Sta. Cruz in Tanauan where so many deaths occurred and clusters of tents have replaced the old dwellings, or Bgys. Ormocay, Wilson and Camanse in Mayorga farther down south where homes have been demolished and folks are exposed to the harsh beating of alternating rain and sun. The wait and inaction are becoming torturous as no help seems forthcoming. It is a state fraught with perils.

If paralysis and the slide into harsher conditions of existence are not arrested, the situation can deteriorate to a point where neither peace nor harmony prevails anymore, where communities break down in chaos or flight, and engagement in livelihood of any kind no longer washes.

Something like the spree of looting right after Yolanda’s fury can explode. The restive quiet now could be the proverbial lull before the storm.

A complementary threat is the retrogression of local economies. Two months after Yolanda, 80 to 90 percent of pre-disaster businesses especially in the regional commercial hub of Tacloban have not come back. Business slowdown or ultimate shutdown with establishment owners either facing bankruptcy, finding it impossible to resume, or deciding to leave, can slip towards stagnation.

If not rescued, agriculture also can lapse into stagnation having absorbed great damage particularly in coconut production – Eastern Visayas’ top provider of cash and economic driver.

As business activity has dwindled, workforces presently have nowhere to find jobs or employment. This affects market, for folks cannot buy goods or services with no income, or with minimal cash circulating around. The consequence is that production all the more constricts.

A point may be reached where any production is no longer viable.

Currently, basic commodities continue to be in short supply, while their prices skyrocket. The prices of sugar, egg, meat, fish, cooking oil, soap, kerosene, and anti-mosquito coil, for instance, have gone up twice or thrice their pre-Yolanda level.

The condition of stagnation being coupled with soaring inflation creates the disastrous phenomenon called stagflation. It is a sure-fire formula for a cataclysmic social upheaval.

With the perception or illusion that things are normalizing, the scenario may be hard to believe much less think of. But it was so with dire warnings of a category four typhoon that the people brushed aside, conditioned by old mindsets. They thought it was yet something they can cope, just like in the past.

As experience went, Yolanda happened to be no longer what dire weather disturbances used to be. No one was ready for the impact when the strongest wind on record to hit land made landfall bringing ashore seven-meter high waves. The extreme calamity foisted extreme social consequences.

The usual is not the normal anymore. The world is now in what former US Vice President Al Gore calls the “period of consequences,” the payback time for man’s environmental sins. The normal in weather patterns has changed: much heavier rainfalls, more violent typhoons breeding in warmer oceans, higher chances of landslides and flash floods occurring over regions that did not encounter them before.

Yolanda was something that did not fit into regular reality. The people did not get it that they live already in a much altered environment, in a world haunted by climate change with freakier moods of nature.

What goes with the environment goes with society. Communities absorb graver effects – greater deaths, huger loss of property, and more massive demolition of infrastructure, fouling of weathers brings. They also have to contend with unprecedented disruption of social and economic life.

The fallout from the devastation of Yolanda, as far as the latter is concerned, can endure for years, or can finally spell the sudden demise of a way of living.

Hours or even days before the supertyphoon struck, official weather forecast did not lack in trying to impress the severity of what was coming, which scientific experts described in one layman’s word, “delubyo” (deluge).

Malacanang interrupted programs on radio and television for the president to go on air on the evening of November 7 with the appeal to take the apocalyptic scenario seriously.

But scepticism coupled by misplaced confidence overrode warnings. Residents did not take the repeated prodding to move out of hazard zones. The price was very dear. Deaths climbed to thousands, mixing up with the mind boggling destruction of everything along the disaster’s path.

The steep price of not taking measures to deflect extreme outcomes has taught no longer to leave to chance their possibility. This should be so with the prospect of a second generation tragedy resulting from festering problems bred by Yolanda.