A Tale of Two Opposite People

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

BIMBO CABIDOG

Mano Pepe, a tenant-farmer, reckoned that he may have been tilling his rice field since 1963. In 2010, my last conversation with him, he was already 68 years old. Instead of retiring for a dearly needed long rest, with a lump sum and pension to spend like government employees, he must yet go on tilling the soil.

Perennially hounded by economic uncertainty and failure to meet even the minimum requirement for his family to subsist, Mano Pepe has to continue farming via tenancy. He struggles to make ends meet with an income actually not enough just to pay debts. He borrows more from those he does not owe yet.

A young trader in town is the most recent one to lend him five thousand pesos to be repaid with 25 sacks (around 40 kilos per sack) of palay upon harvest. The loan, which is de produkto – payable by proceeds during harvest, fetches an interest that pauperizes. But Mano Pepe had no choice or he would not be able to get the capital for planting.

The trader-loan shark strangulated the old man and yet did not want him to succumb to illness or retire from sheer incapacity to undertake anymore the physically exacting toil in the fields. But how could he remain healthy and physically fit for work when he could not get replenishment for the energies he spent, being hard up and further squeezed by the businessman?

The plow has been rusting beside the hearth for some years, because Mano Pepe no longer plows. The farm work is being done by a hand tractor that farmers hire accompanied by two operators. The change in cultural practice has added capital expense in soil preparation where there was none before. Because of the financial burdens that choked him with debts, the sexagenarian must yet lash himself to toil for many more years until his aging body finally bows to attrition. But besides his farm, he must also work for wage in other fields to sustain his family.

In the last two harvests, he wasn’t able to turn over share to the landowner, for there almost wasn’t a sack of palay left anymore. Loan collectors guarded the grains while still being threshed and thereafter scooped for each one what Mano Pepe owed including high interest. He was not even able to reserve part of the produce for the irrigation fees which have been accumulating for many years and were already hard to settle. When the irrigation collectors tallied the whole amount due, it was nearly equivalent to the market value of the land.  

One day, the landowner called Mano Pepe to his house and told him that he can no longer till the rice field. Receiving not even a single centavo in gratuity or termination fee to tide him over the succeeding months, he was forced to give up tenancy. The sudden turn of event forced him into badly needed retirement, but for Mano Pepe it was worse than death.

The landlord who also subjected him to usury as one to whom he would run for credit in times of dire need has had second thought and hesitated to make the harsh decision of expelling him, for how could Mano Pepe still pay if he no longer has any harvest to bank on, or worse if he dies?

But the aging son of the sweat had other thoughts already to yet make a plea. He felt betrayed. As much as he could, he paid his obligations. He always was not the one to abuse or wrong anybody. What has he done to be meted such a cruel fate? For the first time in 47 years of bondage, in his advanced age, he felt like wanting to rebel.

After a long and hard-fought economic war, the old man faced defeat. It was the worst time of his life. It taught him that strong hand, sturdy physique, untiring muscles, skill and wit were not enough to win. He didn’t even know what exactly happened. Why did he lose?

He did his share of no mean labor, extended generosity to relatives and friends, loved and kept his family, paid his dues, and abided by the rules. Why the unkindest cut? Why the fatal hit from nowhere like the vicious swing of a club by an enemy he didn’t know?

Almost five decades ago, he learned to farm. He was excited to be the next one to wear the cloak of peasantry handed down by his ancestors from generation to generation. He was a breed of the strong, who braced with a wiry frame against the lash of wind and rain and sun to produce the food the people need. He had lost count of the seasons he had been bonded to the fields.

For such faithfulness, he did not expect to be rewarded with hunger and uncertainty. He felt fate has conned him at the gambling table.

About the same time he took full responsibility of the farm, Luding (not the person’s real name) began his business of palay trading with a capital of P3,000, already a fortune then. One strategy by which he hooked customers was lending to farmers. Virtually advancing payment of future produce through loan, he not only bested other businessmen in getting share of sold palay during the harvest season. He chalked higher profits from the interests on loans. Over the years, he reaped windfalls of financial gain.

In less than half the time Mano Pepe has been tilling the soil, Luding was already able to construct a 2,000-cavan capacity warehouse and acquire a rice mill. Wealth began to show in his social status. His residence metamorphosed into one of the most expensive and luxurious house in town. His children went to college in Manila.

As Luding’s means further grew, he pursued a political career. Not long after, he rose to the highest office in the municipality by winning its mayoralty race with a big electoral chest, not only for campaign sorties, but most importantly for vote buying in which he dominated rivals.

Is the future for farming just so starkly different than for agribusiness? Philippine agriculture has blessed big business with super-profits and made cunning business proprietors rich overnight. But over the years, it has benighted farmers with the curse of poverty and perpetual debt. Even as they bend and sweat in backbreaking toil, release from hardship was just so elusive.

Who could have warned them that the sack they were putting their grains on has no bottom? But such was the fate the tillers would repeatedly bump into with the farming system they have been doing over the number of years Mano Pepe has been toiling in his field.

Despite the hard labor and investment of so much time of their lives, peasants like Mano Pepe ended up holding the last sack in the queue of people extracting each one’s gain, and it has nothing more to put in.

In my dogged investigation, I have traced their damned suffering to that pivotal event during Mano Pepe’s initiation to tillage about forty years ago. This was when government technicians and functionaries deceptively and forcefully shifted the old ways and practices of farmers to the production systems introduced by the so-called Green Revolution that require high external inputs and are capital intensive.

The latter uprooted the old heirloom varieties that the farmers genetically conserved. It aggressively replaced them with breeds that scientists and purported experts genetically engineered in laboratories. But because the newly introduced breeds were stranger and not adapted to the agro-ecosystem onsite, they necessitated a whole package of technology to import the conditions that cultured them with vaunted high yields. This entailed a lot of capital to pay for costly seeds, fertilizer, pesticide, machinery, and labor, besides the harder toil and heavy pressure being exerted on farmers.

The GR paradigm made businessmen that suck from the farmers, like Luding, immorally richer and richer. At the opposite pole, it made farmers who would be condemned forever to extreme hardships, like Mano Pepe, outrageously poorer and poorer.

A Life So Firmly Rooted

HUMANITY

BIMBO CABIDOG

In a time that is sure not to come back anymore, I have observed and actually experienced a life so firmly rooted and simple that folks did not think of anything else better.

Before the burst of dawn, as sure as the sun rises, the cocks crowed. They were our alarm clock waking up everybody at the exact time to get ready for the day’s tasks. As the folks rose from bed, they were assured by the fowls’ noise that everything is okay.

But the elders were already up earlier to sip brewed coffee or salabat (ginger tea). They talked about the course ahead: work in the farm and trip to the town proper if needed.

Rice was not milled but pounded on a pestle of massive hard wood. It was cooked in the clay pot then brought to the table sweet smelling and steaming hot right from the fireplace.

Most mornings never failed to accompany the boiled rice with tsokolate (thick chocolate brew) and dried fish grilled in the glowing embers of coconut shell charcoals. The salty fish’s mouthwatering scent wafted from the kitchen to the dining hall and made us hungry.

Breakfast had all the members of the household gathered together in communion to receive God’s grace before each one went to work.

During inclement weather when somber dark clouds hovered over the village, the sun still illuminated the place to prove that it doesn’t stop from shining. Its fingers of pale light crept into every nook and lifted the veil of the night.

All hands continued to busy with work even if the strong winds and pouring rain kept everyone from venturing into the fields. We braced the house with poles, put weights on the thatched roof, and kept items around the house safe if typhoon lashes.

Life was truly okay. Relations among humans and between humans and the rest of the natural biophysical realm were stable. Neighbors shared food and salt. Members of the community knew each other by name and were there when help was needed.

Hunger wasn’t a concept of ill, social or otherwise. It was just what fellowmen experienced when food was not yet ready. Worry over missing a meal generally did not occur.

If a family has to buy rice, you couldn’t believe it, the staple’s price was eighty centavos per ganta (two and a half kilos). But usually, folks mixed it with corn grits, not only to save, but to make the stomach sturdier for toil.

Vegetables were obtained free or bought at a token pittance. They were stewed in coconut milk and spiced with lemon grass, at no expense at all. Later, I found out in my researches that the dish is not only highly nutritious, but also medicinal.

Expectations were almost always met that waiting for result sometimes bored. Seasons happened as predicted, and the farmers could tell by reading signs in the sky if it will rain or not, then they decided whether to proceed or postpone with the drying of produce.

Rice planting was in January called “karayapan” and June to July called “bondok” among Waray-Warays. During the said seasons, continuous rains fed the land, and the farmers were able to plow the fields which softened. Without yet the irrigation systems that crisscross the granaries now, there was enough water to saturate the paddies and nurture the crops.

During the harvest season, the sun would be up for days without fail to let the grains ripen. Along with the sunny weather, the green fields turn to golden brown manifesting that the crop is ready to reap. And they are cut, as dry as the farm workers that shear them.

Folks started the harvest with a fest, where the fields lit up during the night. They gathered around a makeshift fireplace to sizzle on a large kettle unripened grains that are later pounded to a tasty milky fluff called pinipig.

In the town, the non-farming residents on the other hand had little needs and contented with what there is. They did not crave for the things their descendants could not live without at present. There was no electricity yet. Appliances were rare or non-existent in households.

A relative of my mother who was an appliance agent in the city, 32 kilometers away, sold us a transistor radio powered by four A-sized batteries. When the gadget that was as big as a shoeshine box arrived, we were all very excited. It was a piece of treasure.

No finger ever got to flick a switch to an electrical light bulb, much more touch a cellphone keypad. But we led happy lives, and I can still vividly remember, even happier than people now do.

The escribyentes or clerks at the municipal hall were the nearest to the present well-off middle class. They received a salary of only P50 a month. But then again, P10 already went a very long way. My father told that my grandfather would make do with it for three months.

A piece of pan de sal (the Pinoy morning bread) cost one centavo, or one hundred pieces for one peso. The price of a twelve-ounce soft drink was ten centavos. With fifty centavos, I can already fill up on a sumptuous snack of pancit guisado with bread and drinks.

You won’t hear citizens grumble about the price of gasoline. Most of them walked to barrios seven to more than ten kilometers away. Two passenger vehicles plied an interior route. Pasaheros (passengers) wait for hours in the terminal before the auto leave.

The trip to the interior barrio wound up and down a bumpy mountain road studded with protruding boulders and potholes, also for hours. The return trip was on the next day.

Because life – easy or hard, was fully accepted with earnest thanks to the Maker for the blessings that came, tensions and harassing pressures were minimal.

Contentment is not an achievement. It is a choice in the here and now. One reason why we remember the past as the good old days is that the people chose contentment. They were okay with what they got.

They bore life’s burdens and sacrifices without adding to them the sorry weight of resistance and remorse. They gave the devil of daunting hard work also a warm reception. If you have that stuff, how can you regret living?

Now, folks live in a much troubled world.  Those who have all the means to live in comfort and enjoy convenience to the fullest still keep complaining. Despite the technologies to do better, things are worsening. And never have humans been so endangered.

The more people want to control, the more situations become unmanageable and out of hand. Storms and rainfalls are becoming extremely tragic and catastrophic. Communities encounter disasters with devastating effects never hitherto imagined. Man’s only habitat and source of life support, planet Earth, no longer gives without fail.

How Can They Go Hungry?

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS

BIMBO CABIDOG

Is hunger real? It is hard to believe in a country that is extensively rural, where most of the people produce food through farming and fishing. Theoretically, Filipinos cannot go hungry. Ideally, they should not. But sadly, they do go hungry involuntarily.

The number of Filipinos who suffer from hunger is quite big. Social surveys report that 16.9 percent of households in the county or approximately 3.5 million of them miss food on the table many times a year. More than this is what social workers or social service providers who immerse in communities tell.

Hunger is a gut-wrenching reality to one-third of the population in majority of barangays all over the archipelago. Ironically, and this is even harder to believe, farmers who are the country’s prime food producers experience it themselves.

Among rice farmers, the so-called inverted pot (meaning there’s nothing to cook anymore) happens just a couple of months after harvest. Unfortunately, not only are the grains gone with nothing left, they also have no more money in the pocket. Even if food stores are around (which of course are not to be seen in rural areas), they still cannot go there to eat.

What happened? While the palay is still being threshed, a queue of people with empty sacks already formed to catch the grains as it comes out of the huller. Those were the ones the farmer owed money de produkto – that is to be paid with produce including interests. He uses the loans for capital during planting, and the family’s sustenance during off season. In some cases however, borrowed money inadvertently goes to drinking sessions or bets at the cockpit.

The bulk of the harvest ends up in the hands of the bigger loan sharks and traders who buy the farmers’ commodity at predatory prices. Palay is converted to cash and cash is channeled to usurers with little left to buy needs that last only for a few days.

When the reapers, threshers, on-farm laborers, debt collectors and mere kibitzers leave after the threshing and division of the harvest, the fields return to quiet including literally the farmer who becomes silent for a while as he reverts to penury.

The poor guy may be lucky to retain one or two cavans of palay to dry and mill in reserve for the family’s ration over the next three to six weeks. But that is all. Toil has rewarded him with the forfeiture of its fruits. It is his fate every planting cycle, twice a year.

Going through the same reality every harvest season seems senseless. There’s no rhyme or reason in continuing to pursue a losing venture. But they don’t have any choice. At least, they are still connected to the lenders and can survive by borrowing with their crop as guarantee.

Visiting observers tell that in countries like Japan, the farmers are pampered with subsidies to have enough reason not to leave the countryside and seek greener pastures in the industrial urban centers. Rice, for example, is bought by the government at padded prices, that is: twice the cost of production. But in the Philippines, predatory regimes of production and markets set by traders, financers, usurious lenders, and government functionaries batten on the farmers.

It is of common knowledge that during harvest season, traders make the buying price of the farmers’ produce very low. But during the lean months, when they are unfortunately forced to buy milled rice, the price of the product is already exorbitantly high. 

The market is not the farmers’ only woe. Their system of production virtually drives them to the killing of intense exploitation. So-called experts of the government posing as technicians first wrestled them into adopting cultural practices under the label of scientific farming or modern technology. The paradigm consequently trapped them in a production setup that applies genetically engineered varieties, maximum tillage, hired labor, massive infusion of fertilizer, and pesticides. All of them spelled intensive infusion of capital.

The paradigm shift had two deleterious effects. One is the complete abandonment of the ecologically benign and economically viable farming of old that used the farmers’ genetically conserved pest-resistant and environmentally adaptive varieties, did less soil preparation, availed of labor-exchange collectives, recycled soil nutrients, increased the fields’ biological resource base instead of deplete them, and most of all required minimal capital – in short, freed farmers from the stranglehold of finance and markets.

When the farmers abandoned the old indigenous varieties, it changed their mode of production for good. Replacement by the new certified varieties wiped out the old ones. Eventually, the farmers no longer have anything to conserve and replant. They became reliant on the supply of varieties genetically engineered and certified by purported scientific experts, and reproduced by government-accredited seed producers. The new arrangement allied with business profit making.

The development led to the other deleterious effect: it held the farmers captive of the predatory regimes of finance and markets by big business. The new dwarf varieties in contrast to the traditional tall ones necessitated replicating in rice fields the same laboratory conditions that not only produced ideal yields, but grew the crop itself. Among such conditions were thorough pulverization and cleaning of the soil (weeds could not be allowed to sprout for their growth supersedes the dwarf varieties), application of large amounts of inorganic fertilizer, and spraying of pesticides, besides all-round nurturing throughout each cropping cycle.

The practice ushered the mechanization of soil preparation and post-harvest chores, and the maximum hiring of farm-labor power cancelling out the traditional collective labor-exchange. The genetically engineered varieties served as the Trojan horse that laid bare the hitherto business-profit-insulated farms to the strangulation of external finance and markets.

The enactment of the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act of 1997 intended to achieve food security in the country through a progressive agricultural sector. It mandated the allotment of P20 billion per year to improving farm productivity and upping farmer performance.

But the law’s implementation was not taken seriously. Huge funds instead flowed to corruption, such as the fertilizer scam in 2004, which involved Agriculture Undersecretary Jocelyn Bolante in the funneling of at least P700 million pesos to the electoral bids of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her party mates in the guise of giving fertilizers and agricultural kits to farmers.

Hunger, according to a study by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), is not due to short supply of food. It happens in times when food produced is abundant. The problem, FAO reported, is caused by the lack of access to food.

The case of the inverted pot of the farmer typifies it. He has more than enough produce not only for his family to eat but to even generate cash through sale of crop surplus. Yet, they still went hungry because he no longer has access to his harvest.

The cause – lack of access to food, shows hunger to be a product and manifestation of an unjust social order. On such note, addressing the problem of masses of people not having food in their table assumes political dimension. This also points out that the ultimate solution to the curse is by nature revolutionary, that is: social restructuring or the overhaul of political-economic relationships. 

Fight Or Flight, Filipinos In The Diaspora

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS

BIMBO CABIDOG

When the late Manuel L. Quezon said “I’d rather have a country run like hell by Filipinos than a country run like heaven by Americans,” he may not have fully imagined the misery his future countrymen would be going through under a rule of their own.

Seven decades after supposedly gaining independence from the United States, most Filipinos would rather get out than remain in their native land. They would rather hack it abroad, dodging bullets and suicide bombers in Jihad-torn places than try to make a living here.

Overseas Filipino workers are from time to time reported to be brutalized by foreign enslavers. They are occasionally subjected to unjust conditions and encounter violence in alien work environments. And there is usually no chance at redress. Nevertheless, they still want to go abroad instead of just seek betterment at home.

In 2003-2005, when air bombardment by the US was pulverizing the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, and the Israeli Defense Forces later was also doing the same to the Lebanese capital of Beirut, tens of thousands of trapped foreign nationals scrambled for the nearest exit from these places. But Filipinos anguished at being prevented to enter and take jobs inside the war zones.

Were they so desperate not to mind the extreme dangers? Were things just inexplicably bad in their place of origin? In interviews by the media, they answered yes to both.

Parents, sons and daughters are separated for long years from their families, and distance makes them languish under the weight of distressful thoughts and emotions. But the cold lonely ordeal of earning in a land of strangers is still preferable than braving a life of failing to meet the bare minimum requirements of existence in their motherland.  

About two million Pinoys reportedly reside in the United States. Forty times more would choose to live there if they only have the chance. Hundreds of their compatriots back home queue at the American embassy everyday to get a US visa no matter how grueling and debasing.

It also doesn’t matter if the USA was once an oppressor and hundreds of thousands of Filipinos died in the succeeding Philippine-American war when the new colonizer under the guise of teaching the natives self-rule snatched victory from their revolution. The exodus of Pinoys to the land of the Great White Way does not care to remember anymore the untold sacrifices their fathers have gone through resisting American imperialist aggression and fighting for the right to determine their nation’s course.

Over the last quarter of the past century, the Pinoy global diaspora picked up. It became the premier choice to make a living of families and individuals in the country. They saw it as the only way to improve social status by quantum leaps, and to establish firm economic footing. Going abroad denoted independence with a chic conflicted sense of nationality.

Were they on the right track? Filipinos coming to the point of even dying for a living in war-ravaged climes no longer ask or entertain such question. They would rather commit suicide abroad than go through the torture of hearing loved ones wail and gnash in MLQ’s inferno. Curiously, the government has come to call them patriots or modern heroes. So, to beat misfortune in their country by fighting it in other countries has become a noble thing to do.

A grateful citizenry hailed the Great Malayan Dr. Jose Rizal as a national hero, a distinction rightly deserved for his noble and exemplary deeds that led to the birth of a nation. In the end, he offered the ultimate sacrifice of his life, not for himself or his family, but for his countrymen. His being a hero is hence unquestionable.

Rizal was also a global Pinoy. But besides tripping overseas, is there something in common between his life and purpose and those the government romanticizes now as modern heroes? There seems to be nothing more, deserving of the hero label.

On selfless dedication to country, his was as clear as day. He chose to stay here to meet his death even if he had the option to escape a violent outcome by leaving the country. On the part of his forebears in the present diaspora, the same courage and dedication fly. They beat the opposite path: escape the daunting fate in their country by going away.

Rizal’s stints here and abroad were not about merely giving himself and his family a better life. They were about giving the country a better deal. Although his initial impulses were only for reforms under the Spanish colonial order, his works contributed in no small way to nascent nation building. His modern (actually post-modern) counterparts, seeking but their own betterment through disparate pursuits may have contributed to nation unraveling.

But not only that, there’s a whale of difference in perspective between his and his countrymen’s in the diaspora. For the latter, the better life is to be gotten by leaving the Eden that Rizal poetically described “Pearl of the Orient Seas,” and hustling it out in faraway climes. The greener pastures are not here but in the deserts of the Middle East and Africa. To gain a bit of fortune so that a family can shed the perennial condition of ill-being is to try one’s luck where the soil is barren and flowing not with milk and honey but with slick black poison.

Why did they get to think so? Why the diaspora? This has nothing to do with their country, but with how it is being misrepresented and run like real hell.

At present, roughly 60 million of MLQ’s intended independence beneficiaries rate themselves poor. And assessing themselves so is not making light about it. They suffer beyond statistics. They agonize in specific, concrete and multidimensional ill-being. Adding to that is hopelessness and the constant feel of not having the power to reverse their situation.

Yet, it’s not even because of their not working or being able to work for their own good. It’s because they cannot work without being exploited, squeezed, and bled dry by the ones who rule them – the big business proprietors, the compradors, the financers, the employers, landlords, bureaucrats, political dynasties and pseudo leaders. They live under regimes of not only social and economic inequality, but class inequity.

Low unlivable incomes are a product of that inequity. Widespread unemployment also is. The mental conditioning about their helplessness boosts it. And the pervasive thinking that poverty is a fact of life, a fate they can’t do anything about but bear, is part of the conditioning. It fosters dependency: the penchant to look outside or up for redemption.

Thus, seeking job abroad is single-mindedly peddled by the government as the way out of hell. And the canard is in turn single-mindedly lopped up hook-line-and-sinker by the people. But years of experience have shown that hitching folks on the exodus bandwagon to work for other countries has never licked the problem. Underdevelopment prevails, breeding mass poverty and massive numbers of idle labor force with no industry to absorb.

Socio-economic strangulation is matched by marginalization of thought. The diaspora is shown as a heroic sacrifice for family and country. But it is actually a flight from one’s motherland to hubs of dollar-earning labor for other peoples’ prosperity and social advancement. It kowtows to the delusional thinking that foreign wealth is the answer to the tragedy of stunted growth, instead of the nation’s lush fields, resource-rich mountains, and teeming seas.

The thought is a victim of the diminution of labor and innate capacities of the people, a big lie perpetuated by their exploiters to hide the real importance of the citizenry’s brawn and brain as deciding factors in national development.

Finally, the diaspora mentality looks away from the real solution of uniting and putting all hands into the task of building a progressive society on self-reliant means, first employing intrinsic forces and resources, and harnessing the power of dynamic communities.

By the way, the country’s divine providence as mentioned in the preamble of its constitution is not meager or pittance. It has always been the object of lust by colonial/imperialist invaders.

The challenge of development is not to merely seek self-redemption by each Filipino’s hard stint overseas. The challenge is to unite as a nation and collectively buckle down to the task of producing its myriad needs, with Filipino labor no longer deployed in foreign shores but in its own farms, workshops and factories creating tremendous wealth for everyone.

This is the challenge of developing Filipino enterprise, using and managing the labor power of the people supported by the land’s vast natural resources, instead of subjecting both to wanton exploitation here and abroad by foreign masters.

The shift from banking on the global diaspora for survival, to pursuing its own reconstruction and development to augur a better life for the masses, indeed is the way forward for the country. The correctness of the path is astoundingly obvious. But no one can be blinder than those who refuse to see.

The Big Swindle Called Change

On May 16, 2016 millions of Filipinos fell for presidential runner Rody Duterte believing him to be a man of the masses. After all, he had a photo of him seemingly dozing under a humble mosquito net. Duterte offered himself for fresh change raising the campaign slogan: “Change is coming!”

But the image he cultivated in the public’s mind and the rallying cry of change were just a propaganda ploy to sell his bid for the highest office. He said, “gawa ka lang ng kaunting drama para manalo.” (You just have to make little drama to win.)

Duterte admitted that he had hundreds of poor constituents murdered by the Davao Death Squad. He even corrected the alleged figure of seven hundred individuals killed to 1,700.

The Commission on Audit flagged him for taking liberties with billions of pesos in the public treasury while still mayor of Davao City. The huge chunks of the budget were supposedly for intelligence and salaries of city hall workers which turned out to be ghost employees. He blithely admitted having stolen.

His voters ignored the red flags. They chose to blind themselves with the belief that he was poor even when Senator Antonio Trillanes exposed his deposits with the Bank of Philippine Islands amounting to 200 hundred million pesos.

More than one and a half year later, he practically acknowledged having billions of pesos in banks by suspending and filing charges against Deputy Ombudsman Melchor Arthur Carandang for allegedly leaking documents pertaining to his deposits.

Right after the May 2016 elections, while Duterte was still waiting to assume office as the next president of the republic, Davao was a crowded scene of groups and personalities swooping in to cast lots with the victor.

Comers snapped up bookings to all the posh hotels in town, where they shuttled to hobnob with the new president. Getting in by air, billeting in high-end hotels, and lounging in fine dining joints, they were obviously not the poor kind who banked on his popular appeal and the promise of something different.

Party turncoats flocked en masse to seek accommodation in the new power arrangement. Moneyed backers in the just concluded election angled for a slice of the pie. Business operators turned up to smell big-ticket projects. Meanwhile, political sponsors and supporters brokered appointments to positions in the bureaucracy.

The clear sign that the promised change to ordinary folks was not going to happen was the kind of people flocking to the roost and dining with Duterte. The mesmerized rabble during the election sorties were nowhere to be seen in the converging political currents. The opportunistic elite yet again eying spoils and entitlement edged them.

The discredited has-beens of previous rule with criminal dockets and records of corruption slipped back. Out from detention, former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo regained influence. She once again loomed large on the political stage.

Arroyo and her henchmen immediately busied venting vengeance on members of the previous administration which caused her to wear a neck brace and ride the wheelchair while facing charges of plunder and electoral manipulation during the 2007 elections. 

She nursed six years of grudge in detention at the Veterans Memorial Hospital. Now all of them who caused this must pay.

First to go behind bars was Senator Leila De Lima who fell victim to Duterte’s notorious tokhang (knock and request). She was indicted for a framed-up drug case buttressed by an array of false witnesses from the Bilibid prison.

It wasn’t incidental that besides hounding Duterte for human rights violations during his incumbency as mayor of Davao, former Justice Secretary De Lima also built and filed the corruption cases that clamped Arroyo in detention with no bail.

Held indefinitely at the national police custodial center for confused and problematic charges that prosecutors could not seem to pin down and keep amending, De Lima is suffering worse than Arroyo.

Now, the vengeful pack is gunning for former president Benigno Aquino III. The attack dogs of Arroyo and Duterte have started to dredge gutter slush to do PNoy in: among others, the SAF 44 fiasco in Mamasapano and the controversy-laden dengue vaccine purchase.

The comeback of the Marcos family is another. Imelda Marcos still faced charges of corruption and plunder in the aftermath of a 14-year conjugal kleptocracy that she and her husband dictator Ferdinand Marcos foisted on the country. She had gained notoriety in the international news media for ostentatious spending sprees that left behind royal jewelry and 3,000 pairs of shoes during her family’s hurried exit from Malacanang. Her profligate lifestyle got the label Imeldific.

After 28 years of contenting themselves with displaying to the public the cadaver of the dictator or its wax replica inside a refrigerated glass casket, Imelda and her children were finally able to bury the overthrown infamous strongman at the Libingan ng mga Bayani (Cemetery of Heroes), courtesy of Duterte.

The late dictator has a fan in Digong who blurted out admiring his authoritarian stint and owing gratitude to Madame Imelda and the other heirs to the fabled Marcos loot, Bongbong and Imee. He pledged to pay political (and presumably campaign kitty) debts to the brood.

Upon assumption to power Duterte easily whipped up a supermajority of canine collaborators in Congress: the usual herd of traditional politicians merely after self-serving share in power and economic spoils. With them, he easily grabbed huge chunks from the 2017 national appropriations exponentially increasing, for one, allocation to his office from less than P3 billion during the previous administration to P20 billion.

He snipped the contingency fund for calamities and disaster risk reduction: the former in half, the latter almost entirely. He also pared the budget for agriculture and welfare. But his congressional allies got back the outlawed pork barrel in bigger amount of P80 million per solon. Close ones would be favored with gargantuan allotments for unspecified projects, while members of the opposition got zero for their districts.

Senator Panfilo Lacson exposed them, like the P50-billion payment for future road-right-of-ways with no particular takers. Discretionary funds hid in other items most notorious as always the intelligence tab.

With the comeback of the defunct ruling cliques, literally with a vengeance, Duterte showed to be no different from the kind of politico that 16 million Filipinos thought they had driven away by voting him into office. 

The people have been had by the same dyed-in-the-wool trapo who shows more interest in venting vengeance, paying political debts, and dividing spoils among partners in crime, and dispensing patronage than in uniting the country towards a radical break with the past.

Midnight Poetry

INNER COMPASS

BIMBO CABIDOG

Humans associate midnight with the time when the dark forces reign, the situation is very bad, chances are down, and life is on the verge of flickering out. They hold it as a moment of suffering, when hope is lost, and pain is overwhelming.

The continuity of life outlasts it. Even though they fear such midnight, humans have the capacity to defeat the nightmares. The capacity is built-in. It gets into action once the danger of absolute negation looms.

When breath is about to snap, the soul miraculously detaches, pulls up, and awakens. The heaviness that straddles on top choking the body floats away as a dream.

When strength is sagging and energy ebbing to its lowest, a blast of rejuvenating wind blows in. When darkness becomes too pitched and smothering, light bores tiny holes at first that quickly gape as shafts of brightness punch through the inky veil. Negation no matter how extreme is always overpowered by the spreading dawn.

Because midnight passes, the one in it literally and figuratively is as sure as the sun to rise to another day. In the freshness of the morning, the old gloom loosens and clears. Fear and despair dissipate. Life is reenergized and renewed, and hails with a glorious sheen radiating from an inner core.

While midnight comes and goes, everyone with no exception must pass through the corridor. Yes, one dreads what he/she might encounter there in the dark unknown pregnant with killer phantoms of imagination. But for all the obliterating experience, no real day comes unless through it.

You may cringe and loathe about passing the channel, but going through it is not a mere choice. It is the flipside of all reality, the other half of your living essence – yes, the mysterious half.

You may be led to believe midnight as the daunting realities of the world you live in. Nay, it is the reality that dispels other realities including those. It is the only reality, the formless void that seems to take even your breath away.

Despite the negating blankness though, the midnight has a mystic attraction. It pulls like the suck of gravity, but incites resistance. It draws like a fervent desire to swim, yet repeals with a loathing to go into the water. It evokes daring to face fear, yet compels to get away from the uncertain.

Countless times of passage in one’s lifetime should have made the phenomenon all too familiar. But every encounter of it is still a mystery. As midnight expels other realities, there is in the yawning nothingness more than meets the eye. There is in the realm beings that to see is to close the eyes. There is in the void poetry that weaves rhythms.

With society’s advance, nature is always the greatest casualty. Generational upgrades in technology and contemporary lifestyles are expunging midnight as it used to be from human experience. They have ushered the untiring night life, and cities that don’t sleep.

Folks bring the cares and ceaseless drudgery of everyday deep into the midnight. The narrowing channel has come to less and less renew life with the vibrant auras that emanate from the core of being.

Today, the artificial world has recreated midnight and made it into an electrical day. From the invented time, zombies of folks who have long gone dead in the frenzied chasing of the elusive good life arise. Here, you no longer lay down to rest in the quiet of a parallel universe. You lay tinkering with your brains to fix sticky problems wakeful under the mechanical hum of the 24/7 buzzer.

As the bustle of day intrudes into the night, there is no more space for poetry to break the monotony of its grind. In the sacrosanct chamber of deeper consciousness, the contrasts that make life a wondrous opus recede. The dreamy interludes that keep it perfectly in tune leave. The original rhymes and rhythms from the dawn of creation discombobulate. The ceaseless discord, dissonance and sordidness of a hurried and harried existence completely take over.

Finally, it is no longer the dark spirits that seemingly lurk in the midnight that create men’s worst nightmares. What creates them is the break-neck race and maddening pursuit driven by lust for material possessions, power and money, in the broad light of day. 

Short Memory, History According To Yoyoy

HISTORY

BIMBO CABIDOG

Filipinos have short memory, a newspaper columnist if I remember right (see?) once wrote. Teachers note that majority of their students are poor in history.

Even old ones who already lived in that period forget that there was such a thing as the Marcos dictatorship. Some could remember instead Dovie Beams and Ferdinand Marcos (the dictator later) singing the Ilocano Pamulenawen on his way to her arms?

But Ferdie curtailing freedom, jailing or killing those who exercise their right, and plundering the country, what are you talking about?

Anyway, if not for Boholano songwriter and historian Yoyoy Villame, the generation of the 70s may no longer have been able to hark back to a bit of history taught in the elementary grades, that is: “on March 16, 1521when Philippines was discovered by Magellan.”

Of course the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan did not discover the archipelago. Others before him did, the Chinese Limahong, the group of Datu Puti, and the dwarfish men who wandered here through the ice bridges during the glacial age.

But Magellan must be credited for miscalculating his bearings in the high seas and hitting the wrong place. The long stormy Pacific crossing was a real dead boner.

Villame, who broke the chart in the early 70s for his account of the saga, related: “They were sailing day and night across the big ocean until they saw small Limasawa Island.” The island in Leyte was not the intended destination. Mollucas.

The Spanish fleet, or what remained of it, first hit Homonhon of Samar before Limasawa. But it was when “Magellan landed in Cebu City,” according to the Boholano historian, that things lit up, because Rajah Humabon and his court who met them “were very happy.”

As further narrated, “all people were baptized under the church of Christ and that’s the beginning of our Catholic life.”

This was not the case when “Magellan visited in Mactan to Christianize them everyone.” This time the people did not “meet him very welcome on the shores.”

The white man was spurned by the Muslim chief. “Magellan got so mad, ordered his men to come at land.” Anger did the arrogant European in, and the rest as always was history.

“Then the battle began at dawn, bolos and spears versus guns and canons,” Yoyoy graphically recounted. But the Spanish fleet commander was hit on his knee. “He stumbled down and cried and cried.”

At this point, strict parental guidance is advised on what Villame further told about the fate of the proud Caucasian. Let’s avoid that already.

Was Magellan really killed in battle, or was he just bitten when he alighted from his boat by a grouper called Lapu-Lapu, common in the waters off Cebu and a favorite by the natives? Was he fatally injured by the fish bite then died of infection later?  

What a cruel mistake for the fleet captain to accidentally be diverted to the Las Islas de Ladrones of the buko-eating people. For the blunder, Filipinos had to pay a steep price: four hundred years of colonial subjugation, 350 in monastery and 50 in Hollywood.

Yet, thanks nevertheless, for if the navigator did not goof, the Visayans and even the Tagalogs would not have had a top hit in the early seventies. The true discovery was not PI by Magellan, but Yoyoy Villame by the music industry. His single, Magellan, sold record high.

By the way, the story did not end with the unfortunate expedition that returned to its home country with only one ship out of five, and less the leader. The first appearance of the Western on our oriental shores would be followed by another wave about 50 years later.

This time, they saw to it that no incident, like the one that killed Magellan and almost decimated the Spanish fleet will happen again. They were better prepared in arms, superior fighting tactics and negotiating skills. They intended to dig in, get a foothold in the east, and rule forever.

Because of their victory, it would be their story that got to be told, by Villame nonetheless. One is of their discovering the Philippine islands, even if people were already inhabiting here who had their own social and economic life, and practiced a system of self-rule before conquest.

Four hundred years later, Filipinos would still wear the western colonial shades and look at the past as if the time before the white men came did not exist. The short memory would continue to cost them their national identity and independence.

Be A Victor Not A Victim

Inner Compass

BIMBO CABIDOG

Have you had the feeling of being born loser? Do you always have that buffeting thought of never winning in any of life’s battles? Reverse the spell. Be a winner. How? Here are a dozen tips.

1.       Accept bad fortune. Don’t spend a life denying or futilely refusing it. When hard times set in, bravely come to terms with reality. Screaming that it can’t be happening won’t help.

2.       Navigate the turbulent straits, as you sail the calm seas: with calm in mind and willingness in heart. Don’t keep yourself to the easy route avoiding the hard one. Life goes from one crisis to another. Nobody said it’s going to be a joyride all the way. There’s no such thing as success with no hitches.

3.       Solve the problem. Because you grin and bear it, don’t say you aren’t going to do anything about it anymore. Nay, accepting misfortune and accepting it as an irreversible fact of life are two different attitudes towards the problem, though they seem alike.

4.       Never give the win. Sometimes evil and adversity are too overwhelming that we no longer see redemption. We think that the only recourse is to resign ourselves to them. Wrong option, it is the supreme design that they always don’t triumph. Don’t make an exemption by letting them.

5.       Hang on. Be still there when fortune reverses. So, there appears to be no way to beat it, no matter how you believe in Michael Jackson. Hang your hands up? Nope, let the bad situation hang itself. Nothing is permanent. No condition is forever. Don’t be missing when good luck arrives.

There were times when I and my family spent a whole day eating boiled bananas bummed on salt. Misery would be made worse by desperation and the painful thought of my folks going through it. But once accepted, we took a relaxing breath. Two days after, we were eating fried chicken.

6.       Plod on. Indeed, you accepted. But that is one thing. The other is forebear, don’t surrender. Yes, a crushing blow can’t be anything but a crushing blow. So you fell. Down on the floor, you can no longer fall. You can only rise. Get up!

7.       Dispel the fatalistic tendency to stay down, for you believe that’s your fate. Nope, to be down forever is neither your lot nor that of anyone. To be on one’s feet again after stumbling is.

Real life is not a boxing match. No referee is going to count you out for a knockout punch, because you didn’t beat the time. Collect yourself a while. Then stand up and slug.

8.       Don’t put it upon you. Don’t wallow in remorse for being a guilty bastard. Next to fatalism is blaming yourself for the fall: it’s the stupid sinful me. Oh yeah? Why add torment? All of us have it one time or another. It happens all the time. You can’t be the perfect exemption.

9.       Bank on faith, not on reason. Don’t be misled by a false sense of security, because you are pretty sure to be on the right track. It’s not true that wise judgment could shield you from bad luck. Certainty from taking all things into consideration is always vulnerable to being shamed by the least expected. Draw confidence from someone who knows more than you could ever know with all the doctorate degrees the world offers.

10.   Yield to no apprehension. Too much caution stifles action, and no action means no desired result. Danger is normal. The waters are still, because the wind is quiet. But when the harsh southwest monsoon blows, you get tossed again by the familiar turbulence that you’ve always known.

11.   Let not defeatist thought defeat you. Convincing yourself that you’re not going to win is no way to win. Even if setbacks keep coming, the mind doesn’t say you’ll lose. It only says you can lose. The fight is yours. Overcome!

12.   Finally, bear the brunt, but beat the odds. Carry the heavy load, but bring it to the finish line. Get hold of fate no matter how daunting and shape it to your desired prize.

Your failings are not other people’s fault. Don’t be helpless, or worse, be unable to do anything but cry over it. Be the victor, not the victim. The new day is not a promise, but the law of nature. Meet the rising of the sun with your own rise.

ITAGUYOD ANG KABUHAYANG PAGNENEGOSYO

Pahayag ng Adhikaing Panglipunan

ng Institute for Local Innovation and Approach in Development (ILIAD)

Ang kahirapan ay napakatagal nang kalagayan ng nakararaming mamamayan. Ito ay salin-salin-lahi nang dinaranas ng mga Pilipino. 

Nilinaw ng isang ulat ng World Bank na ang kahirapan ay ang pagkakait sa isang indibidwal o pamilya ng ginhawa sa buhay. Ito ay nangyayari dahil ang kita nito ay di nakakatugon kahit sa pinakaminos nang mga pangangailangan. Ito ang kinasasadlakan ng malawak na masang Pilipino ngayon.

Ang kagyat na sanhi ng kahirapan ay napakababang kita o kawalan ng kita. Ito’y isinasaad ng pangkalahatang sakit ng di-kamaunlad o nababansot na pag-unlad ng bansa. 

Ang isang palantandaan ng di-kamaunlad ay ang kakulangan sa mga batayang industriya, kagaya ng bakal, enerhiya, komunikasyon at transportsyon. Bunsod nito, dinaranas ng bansa ang permanenteng krisis ng disempleyo sa patuloy na paglobo ng mga reserbang lakas paggawa na di makapasok sa industriya dahil sa kawalan nito. Sila ay nakalutang sa dagat ng karalitaan.

Matingkad na ebidensya ng malaganap na disempleyo ang milyon-milyong mamamayang naghahanap ng trabaho pero walang mapasukan. Ang mahigit sampung milyong mga manggagawang nagtratrabaho sa labas ay marka din ng malaganap na disempleyo sa bansa.  

Isinasabatas ng gobyerno ang mababang antas ng sahod sa paggawa sa pangkalahatan. Pero bukod sa batas na bakal ukol sa menos-sahod, pinapanatiling mababa ang sahod ng mga walang trabaho, dahil sa mahigpit na kompetisyon sa paggawa. 

Sa kabilang dako naman, dahil sa kaliitan ng industriya, nakatuon lang halos sa kalakalan o bentahan ang pang-ekonomyang pagkilos ng bansa. Kaya mababa ang kantidad ng kabuohang produktong nagagawa nito. Sa ganitong kalagayan, malayong makamit ang kasaganaang magdudulot sana ng ginhawa sa bawat pamilya.

Nilalarawan ng kahirapan ang di-pagkakapantay-pantay ng mga estado ng buhay pangtao sa lipunan, dala ng mapaniil na sistema sa produksyon at kalakaran ng pamilihan. Tampok sa ganitong pangyayari ang pagsasamantala sa nakararami ng iilang nag-aari at kumukontrola sa malalaking negosyo, institusyong pangpinansya, at lupain. 

Mga halimbawa ng nasabing pagsasamantala ang mataas na presyo ng bilihin, malaking buwis na pinapasan ng mga maliliit na konsumedor, usura o mapanakal na pautang, at di-makabuhay na sahod.

Sa ilalim ng nangingibabaw na reyalidad, may pag-asa ba ang mga naghihirap na makatunghay ng magandang buhay? 

Kung pagbabasehan ang mga inihahaing solusyon ng gobyerno na pawang pakitang-tao, malabo. Maliwanag sa mga ito ang kamay ng mga mayayamang humahawak ng kapangyarihang pang-ekonomya at pampulitika na tinaguriang mga naghaharing uri. 

Kaya sa pamamahala sa yaman ng bansa, nangingibaw ang kanilang mga taliwas na interes, tulad ng pagpapanatiling mababa sa sahod at pagtutuon ng malaking gastosin sa gobyerno sa mga proyektong pang-imprastruktura, kay sa pagtatatag ng mga kabuhayan ng mamamayan na kung totuosin ay maliit ang kinakailangan.

Ang kadalasang hakbang para aksyonan ang kahirapan ng palit-palitang administrasyon ay ang pagsusulong ng inisyatibang job generation o paglikha ng trabaho. Pero problemado pa rin ang naturingang solusyon sa dalawang punto.

Una, hindi basta’t nagtatayo ng pabrika o negosyo ang mga mayayamang may kapital para lang magkaroon ng trabaho ang mahihirap. Isinasaad ito ng mga puwersa at batas pangpamilihan kung saan ang bottom line (buod na konsiderasyon) ay kita o ganansya ng mamumuhunan. 

Magbalik tanaw tayo sa isang alituntunin ng kapitalismo: kung ikaw ay anakpawis mabubuhay ka lang kapag ika’y magtratrabaho, pero makakapagtrabaho ka lang kapag ito’y makapagbibigay ng tubo sa kukuha ng iyong lakas paggawa. 

Ang pinag-uusapan ng mga kapitalista sa pagtatayo ng isang kumpaniya na makapagbibigay ng mga trabaho ay hindi tubong-bangketa lang, kungdi limpak-limpak na ganansya. Kaya kung ang iniisip ay ang pagsulpot ng trabaho sa karamihan ng mga lugar sa bansa, ito ay pangangarap ng gising. 

Pangalawang punto, oo nga’t masuwerte ang iba dahil nagkaroon din ng trabaho. Pero hindi ba’t ito’y nakapailalim pa rin sa rehimeng pagsasamantala kung saan ang maliit na kinikita ayon sa batas na bakal ng pasahod ay di magkasya sa pagtugon kahit sa pinakamenos nang mga pangangailangan para mabuhay ang isang pamilya? 

Kung sumasahod ka rin lang sa guhit o mababa pa sa guhit ng kahirapan, hindi mo naiahon ang yong sarili at ang yong pamilya mula sa hikahos na pamumuhay sa pagkakaroon ng trabaho. 

Dahil gipit maging sa pagkain, dagdag na dusa sa mga mahihirap ang nakamamatay araw-araw na pagbabanat ng buto na walang pantay na enerhiyang kapalit sa enerhiyang nagagasta sa paggawa.

Kaya kahit paulit-ulit na sinasabi ang pamantayang inclusive growth o pagsasama sa mga maliliit sa biyaya ng kaunlaran, ang kahirapan ay patagal lang ng patagal.

Tulong-Sariling Pagkukusa Bilang Solusyon

Sa kabila ng lahat, di nabubura ang katotohanang ang masa pa rin ang tagapaglikha ng kasaysayan. Kailangan tuparin nila ang katangiang ito sa paglikha ng isang kasaysayang nagsasaad ng kanilang paglaya sa dusa. Kailangang sila na ang magpasya at gumawa ng solusyon. 

Sa kamay din naman ng mamamayan nakasalalay ang kalutasan ng problema. Ito’y ang paggamit ng kanilang makapangyarihang lakas-paggawa sa tulong-sariling pagkukusa.

Ano ang solusyong ito? Mula sa basic labor (batayang paggagawa) tumutungo sila sa karugtong na paggawa ng pagtatag sa sariling ikabubuhay. Mula sa laging paghahanap at pag-aantay ng trabahong kitang-sahod, pumupunta sila sa pagtatatag ng kabuhayan kung saan sila na mismo ang nag-iempleyo sa sarili at kumikita ng sarili. 

Ang tawag sa itaas ay entrepreneurship o pagnenegosyo, at bilang paag-aangkop sa estado panglipunan at pang-ekonomya ng kalakhang masang Pilipino: KABUHAYANG PAGNENEGOSYO.

Sa Kabuhayang Pagnenegosyo, ang inisyatiba sa paglutas ng problema ng kahirapan ay nasa mga mahihirap na. Kaysa maghintay sa trabaho na nakadepende sa pagpapasya ng mga mayayamang negosyante kung mayroon o wala, sila ang nagpapasya at kumikilos para mamuhunan sa sariling ikabubuhay. Sila ang nagnenegosyo. 

Ang pagbabago mula sa paghahanap ng trabaho tungo sa pagnenegosyo ay ayon na rin sa konsepto ng tulong-sariling pagkukusa kung saan ang manggagawa, imbes na mag-antay na makapagtrabaho sa iba, ay nagsasarili sa paggawa ng produkto at pagdadala nito sa pamilihan. Siya ay nagtatayo, nangangasiwa at nag-aari ng kaniyang empresa. 

Malaki ang binabago ng tunguhing ito sa kondisyon at kalagayang pang-ekonomiya ng lipunan. Una, ang mga lumilikha ng yaman sa pamamagitan ng paggawa ang siya na ring nakakahawak ng nilikhang yaman. Dahil wala na sila sa sistemang sahod-paggawa sa ilalim ng mga may-aring nagbabayad sa kanilang sahod, nagpapatakbo, at kumukontrol sa negosyong pinagtratrabahuan, ang produktong nililikha ng mga manggagawa at ang yamang bumubukal rito ay hindi na nalilipat sa kamay ng mga kapitalista. 

Pangalawa, nang hindi nagpapaputok ng isang baril sa rebolusyon, nakakalaya sila sa rehimeng pangproduksyon na batbat ng pagsasamantala. Naililigtas nila ang sarili sa mapaniil na sistemang sahod-kita, o paggawa kapalit ng sahod, dahil sa di na pagpasok rito. Ang nasabing sistema mismo ang pinag-uugatan ng kahirapan ng masa. 

Pangatlo, ang yamang kanilang nalilikha sa paggawa ay hindi na rin nagagamit laban sa kanila sa karagdagan at mas matindi pang pagsasamantala ng ng mga umaangin at nagkakamal nito. Dahil ito’y nasa kanila nang mga kamay, ito ay nagagamit sa pagpapalago at pagpapalakas ng kabuhayan, pagpapalaki ng lokal na ekonomya, at pagsusulong ng ibayong kaunlaran.

Bilang tagapaglikha ng  kasaysayan, ang masa na rin ang makapagpapalaya sa kanila  sa kahirapan. Sa matagumpay na pagsusulong ng Kabuhayang Pagnenegosyo madadala nila ang kasaysayan ng kalutasang ito sa tatlong baitang na layunin:

• Matatag na kabuhayan at ginhawa para sa pamilya
• Pagtubo at pagsagana ng ekonomyang lokal, o ekonomyang nakabase sa komunidad
• Lubos-lubusan at naipagpapatuloy na kaunlaran para sa lahat

Kabuhayang Negosyo ang sagot sa kahirapan, at susi sa maunlad na pamumuhay. Itaguyod ito!

Institute for Local Innovation and Approach in Development, People’s Partner 

Kaagapay sa Hanapbuhay Kasangga sa Kaunlaran