Bohol Will Rise

Image courtesy of Bangon Bohol.

I was not in Bohol when the 7.2 earthquake hit the island in the morning of 15 October 2013.  Like most working weeks, and like several Boholanos unable to find job within the province, I was at the RCBC building along Ayala Avenue, preparing for a meeting with my contract manager at AusAID.  Like the Boholanos back home, that morning was the same as all other mornings – people woke up, took breakfast, did some household chores, read the papers, tended to farm animals, took a bath, went to church, reported for work. Then the ground shook.  That brief moment, that fearsome few seconds that has devastated centuries-old churches, destroyed many homes, traumatized children, damaged livelihood and business investments, and made useless several public infrastructure, can only be described by those who were there. While I was able to go home and experience the aftershocks days later, my own feeling of insecurity and fear is nothing compared to those who were there that very moment, those who ran for their lives, and those who watched as the world around them started to crumble.

Minutes and hours later, radio and TV were replete with reportage on the effects of the earthquake.  The quake did not only jolt Bohol but also the neighbouring island province of Cebu.  I watched as how reporters filmed destroyed churches, buildings, structures and interviewed local people.  Reports on isolated towns, number of deaths, and appeal for help came next.  The face and form of the tragedy is everywhere, the sense of desperation apparent in people’s faces.  Social media was flooded with status updates and tweets on the tragedy.  I was dumbfounded.  I was in a state of denial.  As I was far from home, I convinced myself that my family are okay, that the Boholanos are fine, that this event will just come to pass and people will recover.

They say that a crisis or tragedy can reveal the best and the worst in us.  I have seen many of my friends, despite fear of their safety and that of their family, rose to become bearers of hope.  People put up websites, coordinated relief operations, monitored events and did information dissemination. Others, even those living in other countries held charity events to raise funds.  Business groups joined in the relief operation, even airlines take in relief goods for free and courier companies accept money remittances to Bohol free of charge. Government and church groups, student associations, people and groups previously unaffiliated became bound by the same cause, to help Bohol and the Boholanos rise from the devastation. The Boholano ceased to be a victim and quickly became a survivor for others. 

Heart-warming stories of everyday heroism flooded news and social media – athletes ferrying people across a wide river, netizens posting information of those not yet reached by relief goods, companies distributing water and tents, professionals offering post-trauma counselling and therapy. Even victims, still needing help, refused relief goods so that others who had not received theirs can also benefit. They even managed to post thank you signs for the help they received.  While negative stories also circulated around – like how relief goods distribution became politicized or how victims hoarded goods, and people disagreed about how to best move forward, these never eclipsed the stories of how the Boholano started to hope and become a source of hope for others.

Two weeks had passed and in between aftershocks, planning sessions among those still willing to help were held.  One group is coordinating a medical mission. Another group plans a post-earthquake happy day for kids.  A classmate in college was talking about buying hollow-blocks making machines and extending credit to start-ups so the latter can have alternative livelihood after the quake and become sources of cheaper materials for construction. Inspection visits to churches were done so that restoration can be planned and started soon. The province was abuzz with efforts to build again what was lost; a new dawn is in the horizon.

Sadly, I failed to be part of all these.  

My guilt of not sharing that dreadful moment with my wife and kids and not being able to fly right after because of a workshop I was tasked to facilitate (that cannot be put off as hotels and flight tickets have already been booked), grounded me to home. To my wife and kids, this was my best apology – and my presence was needed by my family whose house has just been damaged, and badly in need of a temporary shelter.  I also cannot leave my son who turns pale every aftershock, as he was taking a bath when the earthquake shook the house, making him scamper for safety outside, naked and wet.   While my family’s experience is of no measure to the hundreds of others who lost a house or kin, I just thought that my place at that time, though how selfish it would sound, was to be with the people who relied on me for strength. 

So this piece is dedicated heartily, to the many souls I know from near or far – Gibo, Doris, Fr. Harold, Hedz, Nep, Liza, Reg, Fr. Roland, Nino, Fr. Warly, Maricel, Patpat, Cynthia, Charlie, Andy, Engr. Willy, Cheryl, Lut, Mitzi, Mae Anne, Sis. Joy, Edik, Julie Ann, Kit, Linda, Tia Flong, John, Sir Nes, Franco, Bagi, Melissa, Mae, and many more, who have risen above the tragedy to become sources of comfort in this time of need.  Your example shines; you remind us that in a situation of insecurity, we can offer others a sense of safety; that while hungry, we can still feed a multitude; that while in a state of devastation, we can still offer a hand to rebuild.

Bohol will rise. Because you, them, all of us, will work together to make Bohol well again.

Power and Danger of Discretion: PDAF in the Local Context

Image courtesy of Inquirer.
 http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/files/2013/07/cartoon_Jul19.jpg.

“One noticeable feature of modern legal systems is the extent to which power is conferred upon government officials and agencies to be exercised at their discretion, according to policy considerations, rather than according to precise legal standards.”  (Galligan, 1990)

The past month, after the Priority Development Assistance Fund scandal surfaced in Philippine political debate, considerable media space has been allotted to discuss the value, or conversely and more strongly, the evil of the PDAF.  A congressional inquiry is currently being conducted, purportedly in aid of legislation that oftentimes seemed like some person’s show.  A whistleblower seemed to enjoy the media attention with a kind of sinister smile, sounding like saying “come on; do not act as if you do not know this.” A senator accused of plunder chastised himself by saying nothing else is good in this government and that should be enough evidence to not point fingers at them. The PDAF events, occurring at different locations – in court, in the legislative chambers, in the streets, in the minds of people – seem like a Shakespearian comedy, that watching, or living within the plot of misfortune, one cannot help but burst into a dry laugh.

Several of our top academics and intellectuals lend very insightful comments to this spectacle. A scholar I came to know at one point in one of my out-of-country conference trips, and one of those I consider very politically astute but pragmatically optimist at the same time, Ronald Mendoza, argued that PDAF kills our democracy.  He said that “Pork fuels our democracy’s vicious cycle—of poor people who depend on it for help, and politicians who ingratiate themselves to less informed voters and strengthen their stranglehold on power by disbursing it with little accountability.”  Randy David, on the other hand, said that “pork is never good in a political system dominated by insatiable swines”.  Solita Monsod analysing the statements of P-noy’s statements argued that  “ P-Noy actually starts by affirming that “there is nothing intrinsically wrong with this policy,” and that enabling our representatives to identify projects for their communities that otherwise were not affordable was a “worthy goal.”

In the background of these arguments is a word that is highly objectionable, not only in politics, but in business as well - DISCRETION.  Giving one person with a large responsibility too much discretion is giving him so much power.  In the literature on internal control, it is argued that you have to segregate duties in the use and administration of funds. When I was teaching auditing at Holy Name University, I used the mnemonic word CARE, to emphasize how CARE of business funds should be exercised, and this applies more importantly to public funds as well. In an ideal scenario, no one person or entity should be given the power to be the Custodian of resources, to Authorise its use, to Record the transactions involving its utilisation, and to Execute the utilisation of resources all at the same time (though later on, they removed Execution in the standards, I still argue for its inclusion as part of the four incompatible functions).  In the case of PDAF, a merger of around two incompatible functions became deadly – legislators Authorise the budget, and later has the authority to how to Execute it. When not scrutinize, and when hidden behind names of bogus projects and self-commissioned non-government organizations, he can spend public funds on himself.

The PDAF case is not only about a violation of internal control policies (or an override of it). It is also a classic case of what Galligan highlighted as a government where leaders exercise power at their discretion.  It is also a case of breach of legislative powers on executive functions, though how nicely its political language is framed to avoid this description.  One cannot argue that PDAF is consequentially good, because it is inherently wrong.

So while activists are barking at national legislators to give up their pork, I was pre-occupied with the question whether the same kind of discretion is given to local legislators.

In the last couple of months, I reviewed, as part of my research work, the municipal and provincial budgets of around 20 local government units across the country.  There are a few budget account titles that caught my attention and these were normally labelled with fancy names like the ones I enumerate below:

• Assistance to barangays
• Assistance to non-government organizations
• Assistance to municipalities
• Assistance to cooperatives
• Donations

I looked at the process of how these were used. Apparently, this general-sounding budget figure is ‘allocated’ to provincial or municipal legislators, who request the amount in the same way that senators and congressmen do.  It is like your PDAF, in its more down-scaled version, and in the context of the local, but nevertheless advances the same clientelistic political effect of the national pork, and can also be a subject of abuse.

So I would like to call local activists to look at the local budgets.  Look for terms (a) to (e) above. Ask government officials how this is disbursed.  If you are concerned of issues in the national level, you should also be asking questions on issues closer to home.

Strength in Numbers

26 August 2013.  Netizens called for a million march against the Priority Development Assistance Fund in Manila.  Commentaries on the Manila march said that the crowd gathered there was short of the million it promised. Elsewhere in the country, similar activities were also held.  Video footages of the activities happening elsewhere, in Cebu, Davao, Iloilo, and other major cities and even in Australia and in the US were shown.  Maybe I missed it, but I did not see Bohol there.

I was in the Bohol march, together with my family. Friends and acquaintances from different organizations, ideologies, profession were there - Marianito Luspo of HNU-CCAD, Jean Darunday of BONACONSO, Alvin Acuzar of BUSWACC, Emmie Roslinda of PROCESS, Engr. James Uy of HNU College of Engineering, artists like Ric Ramasola and Sandra dela Serna, women activists as Regina Estorba Macalandag and Doris Dinorog were among those gathered around 10 pm that day. Quite the usual suspects, I should say.

 Venue was plaza Rizal and we were there at the kiosk, several others scattered surrounding it.  If all of us went inside the kiosk, the place will not be full.  My best estimate was, only half of the place would be filled.  You can guess now why it’s not worth a video coverage in a major network’s primetime news.  We do not have that strength in numbers.

Both the Bohol march and the Manila gathering, suffers the same fate – underrepresentation.  If the population of Metro Manila is close to 12 million (NSO, 2010 estimates), then the crowd gathered there was only 3% .  And if the population of Bohol province is 1.2 million (NSO, 2010 estimates) then those of us who were there represented only 0.003% of the provincial population. This is beside the fact that those who were there did not represent the broad categories or classes of people in both the Metro Manila and the Boholano society. What makes the Bohol case interesting and uninteresting at the same time is that the people gathered that day were so few that it could not represent a serious threat to power.  Calls for accountability, for transparency, could easily fall on deaf ears.

I will not attempt to answer the question why a lot of people were not there in Plaza Rizal, as each of us has our own motivation in the kind of choices we make in life.  I will not also attempt to answer why the Catholic Church was not there, priests and nuns that you could see in the Manila gathering, because in the first place, I did not have high expectations that they would turn up at all.  I also do not want to speculate why you do not have local political leaders there, mayors and councillors for example, or why I miss the student movements and their numbers.  But what I would like to focus instead, is why I will probably become one of those who were not there that day, why I might not turn up in future rallies, why I will just let the people in government get away with what they are doing.

Firstly, a culture of impunity looms large. In a society where even courts are swayed by corporate interests (see Vitug’s Shadow of Doubt) and where government can rationalize everything it does, including giving an aircon cell to a fugitive (see the Napoles post-arrest interviews) , to express dissent becomes useless.  If reason always sides with the money-rich, and the power-clad people of Philippine society, why do you expect that a rally in the street can do anything?

Secondly, government has co-opted the term civil-society, and has even made it its own.  I am not saying that all civil society groups are nothing, but I have seen that those who were able to penetrate government are those with the blessings of the power holders, or those that later on became subservient to it.   Government, as the PDAF case suggests, even used non-government organizations as the safe excuse for their corrupt practices (see Sen. Estrada’s comments on the utilization of his PDAF).

Thirdly, when you see that rallies do not translate to better lives of the poor even when it resulted to change in leaders (not necessarily a change in government), frustration can easily breed and take root.  It’s worse than not being heard. It’s a feeling of being fooled, because you thought you were heard but the message the powerful got was not the ones you fought for. 

There is strength in numbers, yes. But how will we ensure that the citizen participates?  And if he or she does, how do we ensure that he or she does not lose belief in its power?

In a context as the Philippines, where collective action may not necessarily bring better results, the route to individualism may be easier and more rewarding.  In game theory fashion, we can say, that given the above context, participation is a kind of prisoner’s dilemma (see Poundstone 1992). If we know that the end of all our struggles is not predictable and a gain is not in sight, then cooperating or betraying the other is not important. We just go on and live each day oblivious of everything that happens around us.  As what my father would say, “die today, die tomorrow, the same die.”

Noam Chomsky in his 1993 classic “The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many” wrote that “It’s only if we all do something in a different way that we’ll all benefit a lot more.” Collective action can only bring fruit if “lots of people begin to do it, and do it seriously".  But then again, he said that our society is very much structured to drive all of us to choose the individualistic alternative.

It is to the benefit of the powerful of this country to see that we get tired of going to rallies, that our efforts do not bear fruit.  It will push us all the more to focus on our own families, our own individualistic future, because the costs of creating a better world are so severe. Attending meetings, attending rallies, will not bring food to the table, will not repair our houses, will not pay our bills, because after all the things we give up, we do not see any tangible result.  The promise of change remains a promise for eternity.

Blessed are those who have the strength to carry on. God bless this country. Mabuhi ang Pilipino!

  

I am an Election Watcher

Image courtesy of www.ifes.org

For the longest time now, I am an election watcher. No, not that one who volunteers to ensure that there is free, clean, and honest elections in the country.  I am an election watcher – and I watch elections come and go from the sidelines.

My friends say that I am a sour contradiction and a bad example for the young.  As one of the believers that change is necessary in this world so that people can have better lives, I should also be one of those who believe that elections are opportunities of turning the tables upside down.  As one of those who believe that governance is important in achieving political, economic, and social gains, I should at least be interested in ensuring that people elect the kind of leaders that we need.  And as one of those who think that almost all things are political, I should have been engaged in a political exercise characteristic of modern-day democracies.  But here I am, watching elections come and go, but not really participating in it – maybe because I no longer believe that elections can turn tables upside down, or that leaders matter, or that elections are concrete manifestations of democracy.

My failure to vote and participate meaningfully in elections was first circumstancial before it became a conscious rational choice.  Back in 1996 when the time came for me to qualify as a voter, I was in Manila with hardly a cent to spare to go home to register.  Then for the many times that registration was done, I was somewhere else working, studying, or doing something else, that to be at the place where I could qualify for registration was virtually impossible.  But something happened along the way, I did a study on local elections that made me realize that elections, at least in our country, and in the local context, need not necessarily embody the ideals of democracy.

Manin, Przeworski and Stokes (1999) wrote that “The claim connecting democracy and representation is that under democracy, governments are representative because they are elected: if elections are freely contested, if participation is widespread, and if citizens enjoy political liberties, then governments will act in the best interest of the people”.  The elements they mention here, however, is absent in our current local political system – elections are the contests of the privileged, participation while widespread is conditioned by votes sold, and our political liberties are constrained by our own helplessness.  The recent elections, and the ones before them, are just mere reiterations of the same situation, sometimes even getting worse. My frustration with elections is essentially not so much about politicians than it is about voters.  It is not so much about individual actions, but on how systemically dirty, irrationally corrupt, and utterly hopeless the exercise has become.  Let me tell you of concrete reasons.

Reason 1:  Education does not have a bearing on how voters behave during elections.  Soledad Fuertes (not her real name), a teacher in a municipality for more than 40 years, opined that the voters never lacked awareness, especially in identifying who among the candidates in the local elections are most qualified to run the local government. However, while people may be educated, it does not necessarily follow that their education will have a bearing on the choice of local candidates to vote for in the elections, and whether or not they will be swayed by the lure of money come election time.

Tomas (not his real name), a church leader in a parish said there were persons he knew, his immediate family members who are teachers in the barangay elementary school whose votes were determined by the highest bidder.  In a survey of voters in 2004 in one municipality in Bohol, voters who had completed college, were asked whether or not the money they received from the candidate for mayor influenced their vote during the election in 2004. Thirty three percent (33%) of them said “yes”.

Reason 2:  It is not true that only the poor gets bought on election day.  In Tagbilaran City, 72%  of the population of working age are considered economically active (employed or either engaged in business).  Correspondingly, approximately 12% of the people are earning more than Php30,000 a month.  Senda, a vegetable seller at the public market said that vote buying during election time only sells well with poor people like her, and not with those who belong to the middle or upper class.  She believed that rich people would take it an insult if they received ballots stapled with crisp bills during election day since they will not need it anyway. 

I conducted a quick survey with twenty of my friends in May 2013, right after elections, all of them earning more than Php30,000 a month. The questions I asked were very simple – (1) Did they receive money from candidates?; (2) What did they do with it?;  and (3) Did it affect their votes during elections.  The informal survey revealed interesting results. First, all of them received money.  Second, all of them kept it.  Third, only 40% of them said that it affected their choices, while the remaining 60% had some other answers that are not at all inspiring.  Of the 60%, some said that the money they received did not influence them as they were going to vote for the candidate anyway (60%), others said that they did not remember (20%), while the remaining 20% said that it influenced them a bit.  Much more depressing is, all of them were educated in good schools and are holding positions of influence in the places where they work.

Reason 3: We cannot count on the young to change the way this political system looks like.  In 2011, in the height of the debates whether to keep or abolish the Sangguniang Kabataan, I conducted a classroom opinionnaire among my 100+ students, aged 18-19, at Holy Name University to know if for them, votebuying during the SK elections was alright.  To my horror, I found out 36% of them said that it is alright, as it was customary while 42% said that while not necessarily correct, one cannot really do away with it.  It does seem, that the older generation have taught the younger the wrong lesson well.  There is a significant amount of anecdotal evidence to this, like say, for example, how mayors spend for vacations of SK barangay chairpersons so that they can ensure that they vote for their preferred candidate during SK municipal federation elections. 

If you have read this far, then you will now be asking me whether my choice to be an “election watcher” is something I can be proud of, and whether I will argue that it is the most rational choice.  Of course, I am not proud of my decision. Of course, it is also irrational.  My growing cynicism is accentuated by the fact that I have also become powerless in this context.  I used to believe that one voice, though how small, starts a revolution.  Every time I listen to Barry Manilow sing....

“Just One Voice,
Singing in the darkness,
All it takes is One Voice,
Singing so they hear what's on your mind,
And when you look around you'll find
There's more than
One Voice,

Singing in the darkness,
Joining with your One Voice,
Each and every note another octave,
Hands are joined and fears unlocked,
If only
One Voice
Would start it on its own
We need just One Voice
Facing the unknown,
And that One Voice
Would never be alone
It takes that One Voice.”

 ....sadness overwhelms me as it brings up the question - "where is that idealist of long ago who believed that better things will come?"

But then, I must say, I am just an “election watcher”, but I do not remain to be a “watcher” for eternity.  I participate in local governance activities. I help people engage in local governance better. I research on topics to improve local governance processes.  I advocate for participatory planning and budgeting, I advocate for public disclosure of government data.  I do all these sorts of things because I believe that elections are just one part of this democracy. We may not be able to change the way we elect our leaders, because movie stars and boxing champs can still become president, but we can possibly influence the way we are governed.   

However, at the end of the day, I still wished that schools and universities do more than just token voters' education.  I still pray that the Catholic Church spend more on social action activities than build expensive convents. I still envision a future where local politics is characterized by issues and platforms than favours and threats. I still dream of the time and day that votes are not sold on a daily basis and on election day. I hope, in the next few days, my aspirations will bring back my optimism again.   

Civil Resistance and our History as a Country

Photo credit http://goturboegon.deviantart.com

Today marks the close of what seemed to be a whirlwind week of learning at the Fletcher Summer Institute for the Advanced Study of Non-Violent Conflict at Fletcher School in Tufts University, Massachusetts.  Together with more than 50 participants and speakers – journalists, academics, and activists – various examples of non-violent resistance were discussed and analysed in a course designed and funded by the International Center on Non-Violent Conflict.  The event also afforded me the opportunity to reminisce the activism of my heyday – the activist’s theatre I was a part of when I was 10, the street protests against tuition fee increases, and the tactical planning sessions for farmer’s rights to name a few.  The activist sessions, with the likes of Mkhuseli Jack, Oscar Olivera, and Jenni Williams, made me ask questions again, whether I have done enough, whether how I view my arena of struggle these days is justified, and whether there are still opportunities to do more. 

I firmly believe that one does not stop being an activist. Though my friends would say, that as you grow older, you lose your idealism and start to become real, I disagree with them. I believe that the enemies we face, those that trample on our rights and personhood, just change face as we grow, brought about by the changes in our state of life, in our beings, and in the environment. From oppressive tuition fees in my college days, it has now mutated into structurally violent systems of political, economic, and social governance that rip the people of their rights.  Maybe they have not changed at all; it is my consciousness of how they look, exist, or operate, that has deepened.

Jack duVall, one of the founders of the International Center for Non-Violent Conflict, defines civil resistance as an “emerging force for rights and justice.”  In our history as a country, we are not strangers to this form of struggle, as it was through nonviolent resistance that we were able to oust the dictator, Ferdinand Marcos, who ruled this country in fear for more than 20 years.  In their book “Why Civil Resistance Works”, Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan showcased that part of our history, long forgotten by this generation maybe. In the same book, they argued, using data for violent and nonviolent resistance across the world from 1900 to 2006, that nonviolent resistance campaigns have been more effective in achieving their goals than those that primarily relied on violence. The argument finds strong proof in our history since in this country, all violent forms of resistance since 1901 have failed, while EDSA 1 and EDSA 2 showed the strength of the Filipino people against oppressive and unjust adversaries.

However, what concerns me is how little we remember of our recent history.  EDSA 1, for example, was fought against Ferdinand Marcos, but her widow Imelda is currently a member of the House of Representatives while his son Bongbong is still in the Senate. EDSA 2 ousted Joseph Estrada, but he is now mayor of the City of Manila while his son Jinggoy, like Bongbong Marcos, is a senator aiming to run for Vice President in the next national elections. This, needless to say, excludes the many cronies of Ferdinand Marcos and the many confreres of Joseph Estrada who remain unscathed until now.   I wonder whether this means that our country conferred legitimacy again on the very people against whom we expressed our dissent.  I wonder too whether we will need again another civil resistance at EDSA if this collective amnesia persists.

Maybe it’s not that people forget.  Maybe it’s a case that people have not experienced both events in our history at all, that is why there is nothing to remember.  These historical events, happened and are accounted in its detail in the capital city of Manila, but nothing much has been said of the effect or even the participation or people elsewhere in the country – the northernmost tip of Batanes, the summer capital of Baguio, the whole Bikolandia, the islands of Visayas, and the conflict-ridden south of Mindanao. It does seem, that EDSA 1 and 2 were not expressions of civil resistance of other people who lived outside Manila, in the more than 7,000 other islands who could not be physically present at EDSA.

I remember the time that I participated in a rally in Tagbilaran City, Bohol’s capital, (1.5 hours by plane from the capital of Manila) at the same time that the bigger rally was held in EDSA to demand for President Estrada's resignation in 2001. We were only very few, compared to the total population of Bohol, and what made the crowd were students from schools whose teachers were asked to help in the cause. That time, I skipped my classes and invited my students to come.  But I only saw them watching from the sidelines along CPG Avenue when the march started.  I know that there were rallies also held in Davao, Cebu, Iloilo, Bacolod, among others, but then again, the number of attendees in these gatherings was only a small fraction of the total population.  For the people who attended these rallies, there could be an “EDSA experience”, but for those in their homes or doing things elsewhere, that shared experience could be fictional, if not inexistent.

This is probably one of the reasons why descendants of our once oppressors are occupying seats in our democratic government.  For the most part, we do not have that shared memory.  For example, in the May 2010 elections that put both sons of Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph Estrada to the senate, a total of 38 million Filipinos casted their votes, representing 75% of the total number of registered Filipinos. Of this number, 80% reside outside Metro Manila.  Further, fifty percent of those who voted in the May 2010 elections were aged 18-33, according to the Commission on Elections.  This means that half of the voting population were not yet born when people marched in protest at EDSA in 1986 or were too young to remember.  This means too that in May 2010, 80% of those who voted did not have that kind of an experience protesting against Joseph Estrada.  This, besides the fact, that there is still an argument made by others that EDSA 2 was a civil resistance of the elite than a revolution of the poor who still believes that Joseph Estrada was unjustly removed from power.

In one of the dinners at Fletcher Summer Institute, I had the privilege to sit beside the inspiring Rev. James Lawson, one of the wise strategists of the civil rights movement in the United States.  I asked him a rather naive question – “How do we make sure that we all remember our history so that we do not commit the same mistake of letting the same breed of leaders occupy top positions in our government?”

Rev. Lawson looked at me and asked, “Is it important that all of us have the same memory?”  I was taken aback because I did not expect a question as an answer, and more so because the question he raised was so profound that it needed time for introspection.  After a long pause, he said, “I do not think so.  All of us, distinct as we are, will always have different views and recollection of things and events. But as activists, our role never changes.  We have to make sure that we resist oppressive leaders, structures and systems, those that trample on our rights and our dignity as a people. Whether that is done by a descendant of an autocrat, or by a new leader we have previously conferred legitimacy on, it does not matter.  What matters is that we resist when the time calls for it.”

Very well said.  As I leave Fletcher School today, I bring Rev. Lawson's words with me. I also bring with me the many words, feelings, thoughts, ideas, experiences shared during the week.  The journey home will be long and tiresome, but like all good journeys, they will always lead to somewhere we call home.  Thanks ICNC.  Thanks FSI.  Till we meet again.

Helmets were not the only ones lost that day.....

(image courtesy of gearpatrol.com)

Last Friday, 22 March 2012, I met a Phd student from Belgium Sebastien and his wife Ally at Holy Name University where Sebastien was temporarily stationed while doing his fieldwork in the Philippines.  Sebastien studies climate change adaptation and participatory planning in the Philippines for his degree at the University of Namur (F.U.N.D. P) and he chose Bohol as the place to conduct his fieldwork though he plans to cover a few other sites in the Visayas. 

I met Sebastien through email when he sent me a letter of inquiry after reading a paper I wrote and presented in the Development Studies Association conference in the United Kingdom sometime in 2008.  I explained to him the context of the research he told me his research interests. When they finally decided to come to the Philippines, they went to Bacolod first to explore possibilities of conducting the research there.  We met in Manila a few days after they arrived and still offered him assistance, just in case he would pursue his initial plans of coming having Bohol as a base for his fieldwork.

Sometime in February they decided to come to Bohol. I introduced him to my friends at the Centers for Research and Local Governance and to some people in Bohol who are in the best position to inform his research. We met that day to update each other and to show them around as well.  They parked their motorbike at HNU and we used my car to go around. I decided to bring them to Dauis Church, and showed them a project which I opposed before within the church grounds (that until now I still do not visit or enter with conviction) and proceeded to Grand Luis Lodge for some fresh air and drinks.

Sebastien is a keen observer and an insightful researcher.  Within their first month, his wife and Ally went around the “usual” tourism places in Bohol and like me and the others, lamented over the state of tourism development in the province.  He contrasted how Apo Island in Negros managed tourism, with the growing commercialisation of Bohol as a destination.  He wondered why we allowed the public beach to be private properties of resorts and whether local people have benefitted from tourism activities.  He also mentioned that he find it quite disturbing to see some people begging for money from foreigners like them.

But Sebastien and his wife also noticed the hospitality of the Boholano, the kindness of people around, and the many good things about Bohol - the cleanliness of the sea, the lush greenery, the peaceful and quiet mornings at their place near the Alona Beach.  He said they made the right choice in coming to Bohol than spending it somewhere else.  The day ended in high note and Sebastien was hopeful that with the assistance of people around, he will be able to complete his research in due time.

I learned days later that Sebastien and Ally lost their helmets. They left them inside the motorbike compartment when I took them out to that mini-tour that Friday. In a succeeding meeting, Sebastien mentioned that it is not good to be that trusting, and one needs to be alert at all times.  I felt sad with what happened to them and to the many others that experienced a similar fate.  Bohol, for me, is the best place to stay and a lot of tourists would agree, not until things like these shock your day.

Months back, a burglary happened at our rented apartment in Dampas, near the HNU Janssen Heights campus.  A computer, cellphone, a camera, were taken away by burglars, aided by a child that entered through the aircon hole in one of the rooms at dawn.  We went to the barangay office and the police and reported the incident.  The barangay tanods did an investigation of some sort, the police did nothing.  It is no wonder that no one gets caught, because our government does not give a damn.  I have heard of similar stories after that – burglars sneaking through homes during the night, getting what they can, but no one is doing anything about it.  This is the reason why, even in broad daylight, people commit crimes.  This is the reason why Sebastien and Ally lost their helmets that day.

But there is more to this than just the failure of our police force to protect its citizens.  The reason for this is the nature of development that happened in Bohol and elsewhere in the country.  Development has been exclusionary under this capitalist model. As Joseph Stiglitz argued, development under capitalism has not delivered its promise to the billions of the world’s poor (Stiglitz, 2002: 217).  If you look around Bohol today, who really profits in development?  Undoubtedly, not the poor Boholano, not the poor Filipino.

I was struck by the argument of a friend at a coffee drinking session one time, that the negative consequences of development are social evils – increasing crimes against persons and property, and prostitution.  I would have wanted to add, in this current brand of development.  Amartya Sen, in his influential book Development as Freedom, argued that “development requires the removal of major sources of unfreedom: poverty as well as tyranny, poor economic opportunities as well as systematic social deprivation, neglect of public facilities as well as intolerance or overactivity of repressive states” (Sen, 1999: 3).  Surely, the path of development of this province and this country did not remove poverty, did not remove poor economic opportunities, did not remove systematic social deprivation and so on. Because had it done so,  beggars do not ask money from foreigners in Panglao, people can still enjoy the beach which does not have to be labelled as “public”, and Sebastien’s and Ally’s helmets were not lost that day.

Development requires a strong state, a strong government (Kohli, 2004:  367).  I look forward to the day when our government has the balls to redefine how development should proceed in this country and not just implement projects that temporarily treat the wounds of the poor.  

Promoting Scarcity or Courting Abundance?

(The essay below is published recently in A Revista Conexao Politica, published by the Universidade Federal do Piauí in Brazil. The essay was translated into Portuguese and is published in both English and Portoguese courtesy of my friend, Prof. Batista.  As the essay looks into politics and voter behaviour, I find it apt to put it here at Boholanalysis.)

Introduction

Some countries in the world may have buried machine politics and the predominant role of bosses in defining local governance as matters of nostalgia (Stone, 1996). But undoubtedly, this is not necessarily the case in developing countries which seem to be poor reflections of the colourful past of advanced democracies.  Machine politics and bosses still thrive in these environments where there is widespread insecurity and poverty and where on the hands of politician, rather than the state, rests the relative power and means to appease these conditions (Hedman and Sidel, 2000).

What happens to machine politics and bosses in a period of increasing scarcity, where financial crisis affects the availability of resources to serve competing users, uses, and interests? While this essay may be construed as an exercise in retrospection, it serves the purpose of understanding the persistence of machines in local governance in present-day fledgling democracies characterized by increasing financial insecurity, by looking into one aspect of machine dynamics – the rules of supply and demand in local politics. Grounding the discussion on two persuasive literatures – Erie’s Rainbow’s End (1987) and Chubb’s Patronage, Power, and Poverty in Southern Italy (1982) – this paper attempts to answer the question as to what is the most appropriate political behaviour of machines when confronted by resource insufficiency and massive voter demand.

In answering the question, the paper briefly outlines Erie’s theory of balance between claimants and resources (Section 1) as well as Chubb’s theory on the power of scarcity manipulation (Section 2). In the succeeding section (Section 3), the paper provides an attempt at analyzing the merits and limitations, points of differences and convergence between the two theories presented. As a matter of conclusion, the paper presents answer to the primary question by arguing that despite the similarities and differences in conceptualization, there is a prevalent characteristic that underlines both explanations– that these are context theories that explain the development of machines in a continuum or progression.  Accordingly, the appropriate behaviour depends on the phase to which the structure of local power and the corresponding condition of the electorate belongs.

Section 1. Erie’s Balancing Act

Erie’s theory is anchored on the statement that “The secret of the machine longevity, then, was bringing electoral demand into balance with resource supply” (Erie, 1988: 10). He argued that the nature of local politics and the dominance of machines in election results require that the demand of electorate, not necessarily the whole but a substantial portion of it, must be met and taken cared of at all times.  Failure to do so will tip the balance of the equation leading to the machine’s downfall.

Drawing his generalizations in the analyses of big machines in Irish-American cities between 1840 – 1985, he proposes that what local machines were successful of was to increase the resource base on one hand, to be able to meet the increasing demand for patronage, and deflate voter demand on the other, to compensate for resource insufficiencies.

This requires from machines a handful of things.  First, it requires that the machine is aware of the nature and propensity of demand, not only in terms of current but also of future terms, in order to gauge the magnitude of supply required.  Second, it requires that the machine knows well the limitations of its supply base as well as the prospects of expansion.  Third, it must be able to determine the appropriate mix of resource enhancement and voter deflation strategies that will not compromise current political gains with long-term machine sustainability.

The case presented by Erie suggests certain types of resource enhancement strategies as tax increases, increases in public debt, annexation and incorporation, reliance on private sector patronage, and alliances with county, state and federal bosses to capture additional public sector patronage (his theory of intergovernmental alliance).  But in this case, resource creation is conventional wisdom, since any sane person who would enter politics will know that resources are necessary and that with the growing demographic trend, one has to prepare more.

What is novel about Erie’s theory is the concept of voter demand deflation. It moved away from the traditional notion of indiscriminate inclusion and extensive mobilization in order to “enlarge the electoral universe and pre-empt (their) opponents by reducing the pool of voters available for counter mobilization” (ibid., p. 217). He justifies this by positing costs reasons (doing so would drain the machine of its resources) and the dangers of patronage and power reallocation (shifting allocation from the Irish to the non-Irish).  Several forms were used in this respect but the primary of which were repression and corruption.

How does Erie understand this exclusionary procedure? First, he argued that the procedures of incorporation were highly exclusive – as soon as the machine reached its point of stability, it stopped mobilizing the electorate and warded off new joiners, thereby concentrating on its traditional power base. Second, the machine made a glaring distinction between the new and the old and put an economic premium into the distinction by over-rewarding previously incorporated groups and under-rewarding newly incorporated ones.

This conceptualization however, while novel, is not surprising. The theory, which leans more on the supply side of the equation as evidenced by the statement “to bring the electoral demand, into balance with resource supply”, alludes to the concept of the infiniteness of electoral demand and the boundaries of resource supply. Hence, because the supply is scarce, it is but a logical proposition to curb the abundant demand in order for the machine to cope up and survive.

Within this frame of analysis, Erie did not discount the importance of the manner of distribution when resources are pooled and when target demand has already been defined.  He argued that the Irish-American machines worked on the concept of “different strokes for different folks”, segregating the electorate to classes and their particular interests.  For example, the machines appropriated costly patronage and welfare services to poor inner city wards while offering efficient low cost homeowner services to outlying middle class homeowners.

Part of the whole process, is the skilful management of externalities that has effects on both the supply of patronage and the demand for it.  The resilience of machines first is exemplified by its never ending search for patronage sources, as the bundle decreases due to externalities, and as opportunities for creation becomes evident.  Secondly, this resilience is also evident by the intentional exclusionary procedures that machines undertake in order not to enlarge the mass of people to whom it shall make itself accountable in the midst of an inevitable increasing trend.

Section 2.  Chubb’s Rules of Exploiting Scarcity

Chubb’s theory of machine success, in response to the question of demand and supply, is comprehensively captured by the statement that “the power of the party rests on the manipulation of scarcity, on maintaining large numbers of people in competition for scarce resources” (Chubb, 1982: 215).

Chubb’s proposition is situated in a particular context, where there is amass poverty and insecurity and the only way to salvation is a government that should have responded sensitively to the needs of the people.  In the context of Palermo in Italy, the government did, but in an entirely different way, a clientelistic way that did not only dispense actual material favours but also, ironically, hope.

Chubb’s proposition does not indicate the neglect of the supply side of the equation.  As a matter of fact, she laboriously expounded on it.  However, the process of the party’s wealth creation in the context of the research locale was highly dependent on regional spending, government funds, and nothing else.  While Erie mentioned increased taxation for purposes of revenue maximization, such can not be made an option in Palermo where the majority of people were poor and where even the business community, a primary source of tax revenue could not even be relied upon since it was highly subsidized, and where the white collar employees, a source of tax-deducted-at-source, represented a huge powerful negotiating block that would be very sensitive to these types of deductions in gross pay.

The forms of patronage in Palermo did not differ significantly from Erie’s account.  The primary support mechanism is related to the provision of jobs, by manipulating the public payroll and by the dispensation of hopes of job acceptance through recommendations.  In the case of the business community, there was a very high degree of public intervention in the form of direct public spending (incentives, subsidies, contracts and special industrial salvage programs), credit assistance (both from private and public banks), and the exercise of discretion in the implementation of the regulatory powers of government (e.g., licensing).  As such, “the different strokes for different folks” argument earlier mentioned, also holds true in Chubb’s proposition where the machine sliced the electorate into chunks of homogenous needs.

The critical element, however, of Chubb’s analysis which also made it significantly different from Erie’s account is the trade of future goods in the political exchange - the element of hope that she repetitively referred to in her book. In which case, there is a trade of actual versus future goods. However, this paper argues that both the supply and the demand side are trading on hope in specific and particular instances. For example, the moment the patron signs a recommendation, it is a promise in itself, and thus a future element.  Conversely, the moment the client receives it, he undertakes the promise to vote, thus, another future commodity. However, it will be different if what is traded is a recommendation for a vote on election day and the recommendation is given only upon the sight of an affirmatively-filled ballot.

This analysis, however, is not peculiar. In moments of supply scarcity, it is customary for sellers and buyers to trade future goods (like in the case when two persons pay to reserve an out-of-stock item in an antique shop). What is peculiar is the proposition that one does not have to do so much about supply (like the antique shop owner searching for the reserved item), but to maintain the scarcity (make the item always unavailable) to ensure that the supply is most sought assuming demand is increasing (more people request for the item) or is held constant (the same persons come back to follow up on the request).

How then does Chubb operationalize this theory in the context of local politics?

Chubb proposes that there is a great incentive to maintain the poverty and insecurity that characterized an area while the machine retains political control in alleviating it. So long as there is poverty, and so long as the machine holds the key to all resource opportunities available, the machine will always succeed.  This proposition is very volatile and vulnerable and requires a handful of things.

First, it requires that development is kept beyond the gates.  It means warding off all opportunities that will give people a certain degree of economic power, because surely it will have large implications on political ones.  The reason why Chubb argued that it is economic development, and not economic crisis that presents the greater threat to a machine, is the recognition that it offers alternative sources of economic goods that may not anymore be controlled by the machine and may therefore compete with its power to accommodate the demand. 

Second, it requires the continued hegemony of the government (and therefore the machine, assuming situations of majority control) in the provision of alternatives to the poor. The cooption of business sector, the control of non-profit institutions, the subjugation of labour unions and even the misapplication of development funds are necessary in order to recreate every day the same poverty that fuels the scarcity that assures the machine’s immortality. 

Finally, while ensuring that poverty and insecurity persist, the machine should be able to raise the banner of hope and the promise of the future that one only attains by a sustained loyalty to the machine.  Thus, stories of inspiration, of ascending up the ladder, of entrepreneurial success that owes largely to the possibilities that the machine can offer, should float in the minds of people so that while scarcity is in the air, the much-desired abundance does not seem to be so far.  Conversely, stories of failure because of disloyalty should also be spoken of in the streets so that the reliance on the politics of hope will become more convincingly real.

Section 3.  Points in Conversation

It can be said that both Chubb’s and Erie’s account focused more on the economic favours that the machine can logically, or illogically allocate to clients - patronage, services, contracts, franchises, tax freezes, jobs, garbage collection, homeowner services and how these can be sourced. Both exclude in the discussion the allocation of power as a form of patronage that may also be ably distributed to generate significant results if dispensed and managed at their appropriate levels.

In this context, it can be said that both theories propose that more than anything else, a machine’s birth and survival rely heavily on the economic resources it can dispense to be able to get the monopoly of the political power that it seeks to establish.  This, among others, reflects the electoral exercise as a cycle of economic-gain-for-political-power exchange. The voters get favoured economically, while the boss got favoured politically.  However, this is entirely not so.  With every dispensation of economic favour, a political power is added to the demand side, thereby increasing its potency to bargain and to demand for more.  Also, with every vote that a client gives, it is with the client’s awareness of the patron’s economic gain in it and the latter’s increased power to gather the resource.

Thus, the demand and supply side can not be simply understood as an expression of economic needs and favours. Had this been so, voters may not have the power to demand other types of goods and the machines may not have to give in.    In Italy for example, the bargaining power of the white collar middle class causing fear to the leaders, and even resulting in the passage of a bill that it previously rejected, is an indication that indeed, what were dispensed as jobs are not mere jobs in themselves but also a fraction of the power that the ruler holds. In US cities, the fact that machines shift the response to the client’s demand speaks of the power that the latter is able to wield.

It is important to note here, that in the context of this demand and supply analysis, Chubb’s proposition comes from the same ground as Erie’s – that the supply is finite while demand is entirely the opposite. While Erie suggested on expanding demand and restricting supply, the components of the equation, Chubb’s prescription is not on these but on the context at which the equation is held to operate.

The demand and supply law of economics only applies to the assumed situations of scarcity (which undoubtedly characterizes the world) that when needs are unlimited and there are boundaries in supply, one has to manipulate either the demand or the supply in order to achieve optimal results. Thus, the scarcity, in this case, is a given, in the context of the equation, without which the equation is meaningless. It may be tempting to conclude that Chubb’s prescription is on the demand side, by holding it as constant (as suggested in Erie’s argument), but this paper would argue that it is not so. The scarcity is the reason of the equation, and Chubb’s argument focused on this. In her theory, one does not have to manipulate the equation, but rather to make its underlying assumption hold true at all times.

Erie on the other hand treats scarcity as a given that one can not do anything about, hence his preoccupation with manipulating the two elements of the equation. This is maybe conditioned by the assumption that abundance is never possible, but if it is, it will always be relative and time-bound. However, the differences in generalization are more on the point of reference, the context of the argument rather than the belief of an economic assumption of finite resource, which, after all, is general knowledge. 

Palermo’s scarcity was so overwhelming, that its influence on conceptualization is persuasive. On the other hand, the US cities may have not been in the same condition in its recent history, that’s the reason why the theory can not support the construct.  But what if Erie’s study is situated in the same scarcity situation as Palermo, at a point in the US history that mirrors exactly the same condition? It is very likely that a different generalization may have been arrived at, and may even liken Chubb’s conclusion. Conversely, Chubb’s interpretation is grounded on the seemingly unlimited control of the state since, as earlier pointed out, the manipulation of scarcity requires the precondition of power monopoly.   What if given the scarcity that there was, the machine does not have a near-to-absolute control?  More likely, Erie’s proposition is more tenable.  Indeed, without the machine or the government’s power monopoly, the manipulation of scarcity is not at all possible, even when the population is characterized by intense poverty and insecurity. If the power veil is susceptible to the piercing, the maintenance of scarcity will lead to higher expectations and graver discontent that can even incite revolt.

Conclusion

This is not to argue that the appropriate behaviour of the machine in situations of scarcity and high voter demand is dependent on place, or culture, or time, or ethnicity mix, or nature of people, but rather on the phase by which local politics, defined as the system of control, evolve (the supply side) and the manner by which development, defined as improvement of well-being, has taken place (the demand side). If local control rests on the hands of the machine at a state of monopoly, and the electorate is characterized by extreme poverty and voiceless existence, then managing scarcity will perpetuate the machine naturally. On the other hand, if the control of local politics is on a stiff competition, while society is fragmented as to socio-economic condition where some can afford better living while others can’t, then the machine that has the most resource and is able to capture a significant support base, will likely fare better and exist longer than others.

On this last note, Chubb may be right when she argued that the state of economic development and the structure of political power serve a mutually reinforcing bond. It is just that she framed the argument in the negative that it precludes all other types of conditions to benefit from the explanation.