What I wanted to hear from the Magsaysay awardees

Never before had so many intellectual leaders and social activists gathered in one place as they did last week when the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation celebrated its 50th anniversary at the Philippine International Convention Center. Aside from the many awardees from all over Asia, well-meaning civic leaders, do-gooders of great sincerity and vaulting motivation discussed for two days the region’s pervasive problem of poverty, and also what troubles the world — climate change and global warming.

This old man has attended so many such seminars, forums, etc. in the past; I myself have organized such meetings, not just in my bookshop but in venues like the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation building itself.

The problem with this major conference is, as with most conferences promoted by American nabobs and rich business interests, it didn’t really probe the pith of issues like poverty. Like most, it was a namby-pamby gabfest on how to keep secure the positions of the established elite, and to make them feel good with self-congratulatory public preening.

Take, for instance, global warming. In the plenary session, a priest raised this most crucial question: Why is there no religious input in the agenda? Maybe religion is not the term but philosophy, ethics, or whatever pertains to morality and its capacity to moderate man’s greed.

What has really caused global warming? It is the wanton capitalist rapacity in America, Europe and Japan and the wastrel habits, the insatiable consumerist impulse, the acquisition of goodies, Mercedes-Benzes, mansions — all these have impelled the entrepreneurs to pillage the resources of the weak nations of Asia, Africa and South America.

What the capitalists are saying is this: We have done our worst, do not do the same. Remain poor so that global warming will not accelerate.

In fact, the conference was blighted with bitter ironies not visible to the foreign participants but so obvious to us natives: Jaime Augusto Zobel, chairman of the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation; and Cory Aquino, keynote speaker, a failed President with her own sprawling Hacienda Luisita workers seeking reprieve from their poverty. As to Jaime Zobel de Ayala — the Philippines and the Filipinos made the Ayalas (and the Henry Sys and Lucio Tans) fabulously wealthy. If they invested half of their tremendous fortune in productive, innovative industries and philanthropy, then there would be fewer Filipinos eating once a day and these oligarchs would still be on the list of Asia’s wealthiest.

If the organizers wanted a Filipino president to open the conference, why didn’t they ask former President Fidel Ramos to do so? He certainly knows more about development — but then, sometime back, he addressed those Makati businessmen and told them to their faces that they were responsible for the country’s continuing poverty.

But this is what happens when otherwise good organizations are in the hands of comfortable people who are hesitant to raise needling questions for fear of embarrassing their powerful patrons.

Some 40 years ago, a group of wise men — among them the Ramon Magsaysay awardee Soedjatmoko — formed what was called “the Club of Rome.”

That club correctly tried to define man’s basic needs and how limits to growth — not sustainability — should be imposed. If the “Club of Rome” atrophied and died, it is perhaps because it couldn’t stop globalization.

In fact, it is not in countries like the Philippines where global warming should be discussed — it is in the industrialized West because it is in these countries that the worst polluters of the atmosphere remain.

Limits to growth should be imposed on the major Western powers by themselves. And this is where religion and philosophy come in, and with it, a careful look at the jihadists: why they are so suicidal in their beliefs, and in their fanatical opposition to the West.

The West should reexamine its core values. This is where that relevant question raised by that priest comes in. Unfortunately, the organizers did not include values or religion in the discussions.

The panel on poverty and equity that I joined had some interesting speakers from whom it was possible to get a few suggestions on how to bring food to the tables of the poor. But again, the issue was superficially dealt with, even with a feisty Dinky Soliman as moderator. That current buzzword — CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) — was brought up; a perceptive NGO officer said CSR is, for so many, just a public relations gimmick. And she was right, as the self-congratulatory remarks were made.

The discussions merely scratched the surface. I reminded them that in the Philippines, the root of poverty is the absence of responsibility of the nation’s big businessmen, who send their money abroad instead of investing it here so there will be jobs. And if they invest it here, it is not in productive enterprises but in shopping malls, fancy condos, golf courses.

How do you pressure the rich to bring their money back? How do you force government to act? How do you motivate the poor, jolt them from their lethargy, the comfortable from their smugness and spiritual poverty? These are crucial questions that need resolution if poverty is to be vanquished. But I saw no sign of the discussions going this way.

Mang Pandoy, the unfortunate emblem of our destitution, died last week, still poor, in spite of the media focus and some assistance. Why?

I would have wanted to hear speakers censure the Western powers for their wanton depredation of the environment. I would have asked why the United States abjured the Kyoto protocol on climate change. I wanted to see an infusion of morality among the world industrial leaders — something to pressure them to actually evolve spiritual change among themselves and their people.   

For those of us who have known poverty and experienced hunger, it is always disconcerting to have our condition anatomized in plush air-conditioned venues and by well-scrubbed middle-class people; it is also very ironic, if not hypocritical, when oligarchs and incompetent national leaders talk about similar problems when we know that these self-anointed saviors are the very people who made us poor.

But life is often a trite continuum — the euphemisms, the motherhood statements — anything to balm the stricken conscience, anything to keep the show going on.

A former Ramon Magsaysay awardee left early for he found the discussions so bereft of meaning, he couldn’t relate to them, I was inclined to be more charitable — I did not attend the succeeding sessions because, to put it simply, I was bored.

You can surround yourself with Asia’s best teachers but if you ask asinine questions, you will get asinine answers. The conference was a social success; and after two days of all that pomp, dining and hewing and hawing, they came out with the astounding declaration that good governance is the key to the abolition of poverty, etc., etc. Big deal! They could have spared themselves all that trouble and expense had they just invited Bien Lumbera and myself for a cup of coffee and we would have told them the same thing and perhaps a little bit more.

The Ramon Magsaysay Award this year goes to Ms. Grace Padaca, governor of Isabela, who is most deserved. The Ramon Magsaysay Foundation has given a few awards in the past to second raters, but this hosanna to Padaca redeems the Foundation and hoists an exemplar to us Filipinos which, I hope, will be heeded.

Ms. Padaca should be able to teach Governor Panlilio of Pampanga, another miraculous result of the last election. I really do not know — I am just guessing — but since the governor is a priest and has little immersion in the quagmire of Philippine politics, he may be unyielding where give and take could help him get things his way. As a priest, working under a moral straitjacket, he may be unable to give patronage to so many of those small town officials needing it, for which reason he is now facing recall charges — from his opponents, of course.

Take, for instance, jueteng. There is such a cry against it, but it is so much a part of the Filipino social tradition, it is as difficult to wipe out as betel nut chewing. For one, among the very poor, it is their only hope of making a little money; I know for a fact that in the past, the bets were in centavos. And, on occasion, they bring some bonanza to a family gasping for breath.

In small towns, when someone gets sick, when someone dies, when a team needs basketball uniforms, where do they go for assistance but to the town mayor? The incomes of small towns is so niggardly, where will the town mayor get the money?

Jueteng! Where else.

What is needed is to regulate it, not proscribe it, so that not all that take will go to the jueteng lords.

It is the same with the oldest profession in the world. Do not ban it; do not jail those poor girls. If someone should be jailed, it should be the procurer and/or the pimp. Regulate it — see to it that where it exists, there are no drugs, no disease, and no crime.

But back to Ms. Padaca. I hope that the next position for her will be in the Senate. She is one politician to whom many Filipinos including myself would gladly give support.

And because she is young, she should aim for the presidency someday. I am very sure she would be much better than either Cory or Gloria.

Cory Aquino — what a disaster her six-year term was. In hindsight, we should not have expected anything. Shortly after her ascendancy to Malacañang — remember? There she was on TV, coyly stating that she “wouldn’t welcome any unsolicited advice.”

And shortly after, she announced, again on TV, that she would “make the presidency an 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. job.”

As for Ms. Padaca, if she ever gets to this exalted position, I can almost guess what this spunky, crippled provinciana will say: “Narigat, pero kaya natin.”