In Focus (A Semestral Human Rights Situationer)
Issue No. 5 January-June 2007

Unsettled and Unsettling Issues

THE FIRST SEMESTER of 2007 saw the playing out of a tired scenario: politicians traipsing up and down the breadth of the country courting the voting populace.

The circus had returned: was election season once again.

There was hardly anything to distinguish the latest electoral exercise from past elections. All the old and worn tricks were pulled out of the campaign hat: promises were intoned, money was liberally shelled out, goons were unleashed, blood was spilled, and spilled generously.

If there was anything remarkable about the recent polls, it was the ferocity by which the party-list seats were contested.

read the full introduction. . .

2007 Polls
A Resounding Protest Vote Against Unsettled and Unsettling Issues

By * loretta Ann p. rosales

The May 14, 2007 polls was a resounding vote of protest by the people against a long line of unsettled issues: from the dubious count of the 2004 presidential polls, spilling over to the unresolved 2005 congressional inquiry on the ‘Garci tapes,’ the unsettling moves to change the Charter and declare a state of emergency, and the two impeachment efforts to challenge Arroyo’s legitimacy of rule.

read the full article. . .


Philippine Education: Roadmap and Challenges

BY *PROF. FLORA C. ARELLANO

Rich people know that they can pass on money to their children, they can pass on land, they can pass on titles, but there is only one gift that workers can give to their children and that is good education. This is the basis for the hope that the children will live better lives, be able to move to a job, to a position within their countries and within their societies that is different and better than the one they enjoy. —Albert Shanker (Education International)

NO DOUBT we are experiencing once again the social dilemmas in Philippine education system. A cursory look at the sector reminds us of the years of neglect, underinvestment and mismanagement of the entire system, resulting in a vicious cycle of continuing vulnerability of the basic sectors in our society – the marginalized and excluded children and adults – in reclaiming their right to education.

read the full article. . .

A Right to Food Situationer

Just How Hungry are the Filipinos?

By BERNARDO D. LARIN

Banking on the prospects of East Asian economic integration and tighter economic relations with China tackled during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit held in Cebu last January, President Arroyo confidently declared 2007 as the “boom year for the economy” and a time of “great hopes and expectations.”

Little did she know that two months later, her high spirits would be dampened by the reality that despite her pronouncements and projections of economic growth, a substantial number of Filipinos are still food insecure, a glaring reminder that the economic prosperity the GMA administration has been harping on for almost six years now remains a pipe dream.

read the full article. . .

Health Headaches Seek State Cure

By RHODA U. VIAJAR

 

INadequate public spending, ineffective health programs, expensive medicines, declining breastfeeding practices, drug cartels, deceptive advertising by milk companies – these are some of the health issues that have long plagued the country and which again caught public attention in the first half of 2007.

As various measures were put forward to address the ills of the health sector, advocates underscored the government’s commitments under the United Nation’s Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) as well as State obligations in realizing the people’s right to health.

read the full article. . .

 

OFWs: Saving an Economy through Slave Deployment  

By JM Villero

 

DEspite the unabated strengthening of the peso against the dollar (which meant, in the uncomplicated language of ordinary Filipinos dependent on remittances, lesser cash from abroad), the search for greenbacks continued to lure hordes of Filipinos overseas.

Exporting labor, considered a temporary safety valve and source of foreign exchange when it was first pursued as a labor policy by the Marcos administration in the 1970s, has become a way of life for Filipinos. In fact, labor migration has become, in the words of New York Times writer Jason DeParle, ‘a civil religion.’ One in every 7 Filipino workers are employed overseas at any given time.

read the full article. . .

 

The Right to Housing Situation

Still Searching for a Roof

By JM Villero

 

The urban poor communities had reason to be relieved – albeit temporarily – in the few months approaching May 2007. This being election season, there was a de facto moratorium on demolition operations. This time, instead of being hounded out of their makeshift dwellings, urban poor settlers were being wooed by politicians.

In at least one instance, President Gloria Arroyo herself stopped the planned removal of shanties from an area owned by the Philippine National Railways (PNR) in Sta. Mesa, Manila. Some 600 residents would have gone homeless had the demolition pushed through in April this year. But with the May 2007 national elections just a peep away, the president decreed: don’t touch the squatters.

read the full article. . .

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