Where the rich get richer and the poor ‘get nowhere’?

It’s an old theme, but it stung nonetheless. Last Thursday, a very critical article appeared in the Financial Times of London, whose clout cannot be underestimated since it is circulated worldwide – and read by political leaders aside from the usual businessmen and investors.

The piece, the third in a series on "The Asian Crisis: Five Years On," was headlined (page 5): "Land where the rich get richer and the poor get nowhere."

Where else? Why, the Philippines, of course. The writer, Roel Landingin, asserted that "although the Philippines was hit less badly than other countries by the initial (Asian financial) crisis, it is suffering more than many other economies today. In particular, the country’s efforts to tackle mass poverty have been seriously set back by the aftershocks of 1997."

The FT quoted a government income and expenditure survey which said "the number of Filipinos earning less than $276 a year – the minimum needed to meet basic living needs in the Philippines – rose from 27 million in 1997 to 31 million three years after the financial crisis – or to 39.4 percent of the population."

The setback, the newspaper observed, was all the more bitter because the Philippines had begun to make notable progress in alleviating poverty before the crisis. "Between 1991 and 1997, the proportion of the population living below the poverty line fell from 45.3 percent to 36.8 percent."

The factors behind what the FT called "this remarkable achievement" were, among others, "rapid economic growth in the mid-1990s, rising foreign investments, relative political calm, and a healthy fiscal position lifted by hefty revenues from the successful privatization of state assets."

"Unfortunately, none of these factors apply today," it was concluded, "leaving President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s plans to wipe out poverty in a decade looking like an impossible dream."

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Among the reasons adduced was the comment by a University of the Philippines economics professor, Arsenio Balicasan, that "the issue here is... wealth is more concentrated in the Philippines than anywhere else in Asia", while an Asian Development Bank study noted that greater income inequality between 1995 and 1997 "negated the favorable impact of economic growth on the poor".

Balicasan further poked fun at President GMA’s declaration in her State of the Nation Address last July 22 in which she had cited, as an example of the government’s "pro-poor programme", the government’s rolling stores. Few poor people, the professor pointed out, can buy from those retail units mounted on small trucks that ply the streets of Manila selling subsidized rice, sugar, meat and canned food. "Almost 40 percent of the rolling stores’ stock and 96 percent of the cheap medicines imported by the government are sold in Manila, where only five percent of the nation’s poor reside."

The FT noted that "populist politics has effectively waylaid Mrs. Macapagal-Arroyo’s programme. It all began after loyalist followers of ousted President Joseph Estrada stormed the presidential palace on May Day 2001 . . . After the riots, Mrs. Macapagal-Arroyo began visiting Manila’s shanty towns and recast herself as everybody’s ‘elder sister Glo’ rather than the chief executive that she is. She then started giving away land titles, donations, and medicines to slum dwellers. She dressed down, delivered speeches in Filipino and hired a movie star-turned-politician as her goodwill ambassador."

All these gestures, the article asserted, have been "little comfort to people like Sarah Decena, 32, a housewife whose husband earns less than $2 a day installing tints, flashy lights, and other accessories on rich people’s cars."

" ‘We really have less income, that’s the main problem, especially since our son started going to school this year,’ she says. ‘Prices of rice, fish and vegetables are more or less the same, but we just don’t earn enough money’."

"As for the rolling stores, ‘it’s always passing us by so we have no chance to buy. Maybe it’s on the way to some other place,’ she says."

Thus the article ends.

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I think GMA should pay heed to what outside observers, like the Financial Times, underscore. For one thing, the futility of much of the political gimmickry she has been employing is clear to see.

Of course, the rich are getting richer – as they are in every country. And, naturally, the poor are getting babies. Let’s face it: We will have more and more poor people in the years to come – particularly when, thanks to the non-stop kowtowing to Church preaching that population control is "sinful", our national birth rate will never go down from its astronomical 2.7 percent. Years ago, the United Nations declared that no country whose birth rate is above two percent can ever hope to progress.

Speaking of gimmickry, the President only a few days ago asserted that she had ordered the Department of Agrarian Reform to literally confiscate many thousands of hectares more land from land-owners to distribute to poor peasants, and tenant farmers. I can retort to this with a clear conscience, since I don’t own any agricultural land anymore. Many years ago, every hectare inherited we gave away to our former tenants – free. (Alas, to my knowledge, almost none of them own that property today – they were unable to operate the farms successfully and ‘sold out’ to creditors and buyers.) Sure, we all know that "land reform" or "agrarian reform" has a nice ring to it, whether it is related to "social justice" or designed to compete with the old Communist battle-cry of "soil to the tiller" and "land for the landless". But when all is said and done, breaking up the so-called land estates (as they’re called in Latin America and Cuba, latifundias, but somehow referred to as haciendas here) doesn’t make sense when it comes to food production.

What can untrained and unlettered peasants do with five to ten hectares of land? How will they plow? Where will they get the certified seeds, fertilizer, and the capital to underwrite planting, care, and harvest? In the end, they’ll lose the farm – to usurers, creditors, or buyers with offers of a quick peso. There’s no substitute for mechanized farming, the use of scientific methods, and organized marketing. Land reform, alas, is what makes our "food production" campaign a joke.

To express such a view, it’s evident, constitutes sheer heresy in the ridiculous "give-away" society in which we live, where the conventional "wisdom" is to help the poor by throwing gifts, such as "land titles", gifts like food packages, and money at them. We don’t teach the poor how to make a living – or how to live – in this frivolous manner. This is why a President like GMA must have vision, not surrender to the short-sightedness of thinking only in terms of the next election – in 2004.

Believe me, we’ve been poor in our family. We lost everything during the war, except for the pieces of farmland mentioned above, which we're operating agriculturally below par since they were too far away for personal supervision. In my school days, I was a cigarette vendor, a portero, a messenger on a bicycle, a clerk and finally the university Rector’s secretary. We worked our farms, too, but for brief periods – since we were students – harvesting, for instance, rice by hand.

This is a country, though, which remains – for all our griping and sour-graping – a land of opportunity. Given leadership and hope, our people have the genius and talent to perform near-miracles. And what we have going for us is patience and faith.

Just consider the random anecdote narrated by the Financial Times about Sarah Decena, the simple housewife whose husband earned only $2 per day. She was neither bitter nor angry. She patiently said that they just didn’t earn enough. She wryly remarked that the "rolling store" didn’t stop for her since it was probably going somewhere else. This is the same fortitude which spurs eight million Filipino workers – our OFWs – to go abroad to diligently labor in the diaspora, living with loneliness and oftentimes even contempt, in order to send money home. To die in Israel on a public bus, for example, blown up by a suicide bomber.

From our own family experience, I recall seeing – in her unguarded moments – my widowed mother, my own blessed mama, saddled at the age of 33 after my father’s death with single-handedly raising a brood of nine children – in tears. But she always had a Rosary in her hand, and courage in her heart.

Our family is not unique. Ours was a story multiplied millions of times in this land. It continues to unfold in millions of homes. This is why I know we shall overcome.

Indonesia’s late President Sukarno (Megawati’s father), whom we all called Bung Karno during the years we covered his rise and fall, had a favorite phrase which he repeated – well, in the end, ad nauseam — in all his speeches. He would boom out the exhortation that "for a fighting nation, there is no journey’s end." It was a phrase almost incomprehensible in the apparent lack of logic, but we understood what he meant – and, somehow, despite its constant repetition, it moved us. I can never hear the strains of Indonesia Raya on Merdeka Day, without being reminded of Bung Karno’s extravagant turn of phrase, his strutting like a peacock, and the grandeur of his dreams.

We, too, are a fighting nation. And our confusions and disappointments will be vanquished at journey’s end.

I’ve said it before, so I’ll inflict the thought on you again. We aren’t winning the "fight against poverty" because we’re waging it on the wrong battlefield. You don’t fight poverty. We can only banish it by educating our people. What we have to win is the fight against ignorance. Then, and only then, will we know the truth – and, as the Bible promised, the truth shall set us free.