Senator’s proposed law is unrealistic

This is a proposed law by Senator Lito Lapid (Maintenance of Parents Act of 2010) that is DETACHED from reality. Even without this bill being proposed, we Filipinos have since time immemorial been supporting our parents, financially or otherwise, if we are capable to do so.

Not to be able to support cannot be simply and superficially justified as ‘neglect of the elderly’. A question should rather be asked: “why can’t they give support”? Even if this law is approved, granting for the sake of argument, do you think the parents would bother complaining in court at all?

Gov’t subsidies don’t benefit country’s farmers

The reactions to the reports on the rice shortage are exaggerated. While the “haves” are worried that they might no longer be able to buy rice, the “have-nots” have long been dying from hunger and starvation, unable to buy rice or any food to eat. My wife’s parents and siblings, who spent all their lives growing rice, had to eat rice porridge, boiled green leafy vegetables and root crops. They were producing rice not for their own consumption but for others.

So, who’s afraid of the rice shortage? The government’s immediate intervention has been to subsidize the farmers—by way of allocating funds through the local government units—to help them increase their farm produce. But it did not elaborate how the subsidy will reach the farmers.

Obviously the government is not aware that the farmers, like my parents-in-law, have not been getting subsidies from the government for a quite a time. And only a few of the rice farmers till their own land; most don’t own the land they till and have to share their produce with the landowners or their financiers. For example, my parents-in-laws grosses only P4,000 to P5,000 every harvest season, which comes every three months.

So, how could a family of eight like them survive these days with such a meager income? A few years back, they could at least harvest thrice in one year; but because of the worsening climate condition, these days they can only harvest twice a year.

Farmers like my parents-in-law are generally deep in debt. They borrow money to buy fertilizers, to be paid come harvest time. They have not been getting any assistance, even for fertilizers. I doubt if the any subsidy would benefit the farmers in need.

Unless there is a clear mechanism for delivering subsidies to farmers, such government assistance will have no meaning to them. And these are the farmers who struggle to survive daily. It is unfortunate that the people they have been feeding all their lives pay little attention to their needs and concerns.
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 23:46:00 04/08/2008

A history of walk outs

Even before Senator Antonio Trillanes and Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim walked out from a court in Makati City, our country and outside has already had histories of walk outs that made change.

But unlike other walks outs, for instance the officers of the National Movement for Free Elections (Namfrel) in 1986 snap elections; and the senators during the Joseph Estrada’s impeachment trial in January 2001, theirs was a complete failure.

When Mexican-American or Chicano students in East Los Angeles, US in 1968 felt extremely discriminated against, they too had series of walk out from their schools to protest unequal treatment of students; for instance, they are not even allowed to speak their native tongue, eat Mexican food and toilets open at all times.

Namfrel’s walk out eventually lead to the toppling of the dictatorial Marcos regime, Senator’s walk out from impeachment trial lead to EDSA II, the Chicanos walk out to eradicate discrimination of Chicano students in US schools and eventually improves treatment of students there.

What made this histories of walk outs successful that eventually get peoples’ involvement is that they felt the object of protest and walk out are the people’s issues too. That in their daily lives they have long been suffering and directly affected by this.

I first thought that when Senator Trillanes and Brig. Gen. Lim walk out from court, it was meant to protest the delay of their cases in court and question of fair trial–which is widely common in our court system. Cases in our court drags on for years, if not decade, and thousands of detainees are presently in extremely poor jail conditions waiting for their case to be resolve. Others could not even obtain fair trial due to their inability to get competent lawyers.

But it turns out that Senator Trillanes and Brig. Gen. Lim’s walk out was different, and their demands for change too also was different. Their walk out fails to obtain enormous public support and involvement as those mentioned above. We could only conclude that perhaps the people felt it wasn’t their issue or concern at all, only theirs.