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by Arnold De Villa
May 2, 2011
In 1991, according to the World Bank, 40% of Philippine Households live in poverty. While the government uses economic growth to convince global creditors to lend more financial shackles to the Philippine Government, there seems to be an ultra-high level of tolerance against the lack or total absence of accountability. Recently, Asian Development Bank reported that as much as 4.12 million Filipinos will slide into poverty because of the rising cost of food and gas.
Meanwhile, the Central Bank of the Philippines indicated that Filipino workers abroad have already sent $1.5 billion dollars in the month of February for their families to consume. Designer fashion for the women and luxury cars for the men are just some of the perks that folks back home traded in with their beloved workers who probably toil more than 10 to 12 hours a day. Many recipients of their generosity are oftentimes seen wandering around SM City, Robinson, or other shopping hubs, funneling back a hard earned dollar into the waiting hands of a very few wealthy oligarchs.
So when we hear the tales of those who come back from the land of their roots, it is apparent that they would share about the good life the green buck could buy. Yet for some, there seems to be a tinge of nostalgic sorrow, a certain affliction brought back by being witnesses to the disparity of wealth imbalance and the violence that real poverty has wrought upon the majority of our countrymen. To relieve their pain, they chat, they discuss, and they meander around the Social networks, providing mutual disagreements and common woes to the depressing culture of Philippine poverty.
The blame game begins. Is their poverty in the Philippines because of corruption or is there corruption because the people in the Philippines are poor? Will economic factors truly delete the evils of embedded poverty or will it feed more into the concentrated bourses of the very wealthy few? Is it greed that caused the lopsided allocation of wealth and resources in the Philippines or is it the indolence of a majority whose hopes of finding a gainful employment or a trip abroad have fizzled with scam artists?
Poverty rolls over. The educated are aware of it but can do nothing. A corrupt system stops them from doing so. The ones who emerge from poverty through hard work and study sometimes cry foul against those whose laziness and parasitic dependence have utilized poverty as an excuse for not doing anything.
Poverty, according to Mahatma Gandhi, is the worst form of violence. Since violence is destruction and poverty is deprivation, then it follows that destruction results in deprivation. Hence, poverty is a form of violence. It stirs violence and it ends in violence. With poverty, the most basic elements of human dignity are oftentimes punctured into a bag of cruel shame executed by those whose concept of shame has been thwarted by a selfish and self-centered image.
Around the vicious cycle of cause and effect, the chicken and egg, the only way to cut the endless debate is when common nuances are considered as a consensual platform to discuss and to contemplate on. Can we then propose that Philippine poverty is mainly because there is a lack of will and determination to act as a nation and thwart the advancements of a common foe? When everyone is determined to grow past the levels of basic survival, there would be a tendency to take care of one’s self before anyone else. When there is an encompassing sense of national identity, the claims of Philippine poverty would be a mockery against this identity, thereby stimulating its collective members to work against this claim.
The principles of poverty in the Philippines are established upon various coatings of paradoxical realities. The top 3 wealthiest individuals in the Philippines, for instance, are not even racial Filipinos. They are genetically Spanish and genetically Chinese. If their families arrived in the Philippines from their own respective birthplaces, we can assume that they arrived almost or totally empty handed. Thus, how did it happen that a large chunk of Philippine wealth and resources is controlled by three individuals whose need to identify themselves as racial Filipinos does not demand any urgency? The rich get richer, but the Filipinos do not.
Poverty is an absence. It cannot be accumulated but it can be disseminated through unintentional and systematic deprivation. Charitable palliatives of raising funds for the needy in the Philippines have positive though temporary effects. If the real poor do not receive the benefits of wealth allocation through government policies or subsidies, the right to survive will not emerge from its individualistic overtones. For convenience, there could be regional or even ideological alliances (e.g. political parties) that shall maintain the status quo either through self-promotion or through self-discovery; but the cohesive effort to eradicate deprivation will merely fizzle and be labeled as a socialistic political activism if the right policies to eliminate poverty are not installed.
In a climate wherein personality supersedes advocacy and popularity is preferred to ideology, the poor will be a neglected majority, wallowing in the survival mode of working for their needs, while other individuals will do everything to survive according to their own individual guidelines.
Poverty in the Philippine could be diminished or totally eradicated through a revision of the right Filipino values, amending those that need adjustments while maximizing those that posit a positive trait. The corruption of certain government officials is irrelevant to the values that we uphold. Yet, they are an impediment to the smooth distribution of resources or to the execution of financial allocation.
Poverty in the Philippines is evil. The poor in the Philippines are not. Although it is a common assumption to fuse the different phases of poverty into a single entity, it is also a common practice that some people look down upon beggars with a hidden disdain. This is misconception number one. If we do not focus on thinking as a people, the absence of deprivation (personal) could lead us to the other forms that we need.
With regards to the great obstacles of poverty, corruption could be curtailed through the ballot box. All we need is to eliminate those who do not support the idea. Terminate any government officials whose corruption has come to pass. Banish them into their own towns where they can be who they can be, whatever that may be.