Occupy Wall Street protest won't happen here

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) admitted to the widening of the gap between the rich and the poor, which could nullify whatever economic gains our country had made in the past years. As IMF Senior Adviser Masahiko Takeda pointed out, “The poor are not getter poorer, but the rich are getting richer. If inequality increases, this will raise social issues. This is not economically sustainable in the long run.”

Apparently the “Gini” index for the Philippines in 2003 was recorded at 46.6 percent, which signifies a greater divide between incomes of the rich and the poor. The IMF suggested that the Philippines needs to further improve growth by staying on the course of fiscal reform if it was serious in eradicating poverty. What the country needs is to increase growth trajectory to substantially raise living standards and decisively reduce poverty.

What the IMF Senior Adviser is telling us is something that we’ve already known for a long time. But Malacañang spokesman Edwin Lacierda was correct when he was asked whether the protest dubbed “Occupy Wall Street” which has now spread to London and even in Hongkong would also affect the Philippines and he said that it wouldn’t. The reason is, people here are not blaming our poverty on the stock market moguls, nor do we have anything that resembles Wall Street except the Tektite Towers in Ortigas.

If there’s anyone that ought to be blamed for widening the gap between the rich and the poor, it is our political leadership. I challenge you to go to the smallest town to the big cities in this country and chances are, the rich and the powerful are the landed few and the industrialists who are also the powerful politicians ruling that city or that town. They live in luxurious homes, while their constituents are dirt poor. This is why the Occupy Wall Street protests cannot succeed in this country.

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I watched the movie premier of “There be Dragons” at the Ayala Center last Sunday and I literally walked into one of the best-made movies that I have seen in a while. Movie Director Roland Joffe (he also did the famous movies, Killing Fields and The Mission) outdid himself this time spicing this movie with the universal values of love, heroism and most important of all, forgiveness, something we rarely see in movies today.

“There be Dragons” is a fictional movie on the turbulent times of the Spanish Civil war that happened just before the start of World War II. Director Joffe sews the real life story of St. Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei, into this chaotic time. The fiction part is that of the fellow who was to write a story on the life of St. Escriva. We’ve already seen a lot of made-in-Hollywood movies of historic events like “Pearl Harbor” where a fictional love story is inserted to spice up history. But the story here fit perfectly. 

I have read the book on St. Josemaria Escriva’s life, and indeed it gave me an idea of the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, where the fascist government of Generalissimo Franco and the Republicans who were supported by the Soviet Union both oppressed the Catholic Church. Yes, this happened to the country that gave us our Catholic faith, and today, Spain, like most of Europe, has lost their Christian faith, in deference to non-believers or Muslims.

Indeed, Opus Dei was formed during turbulent times, but St. Escriva nurtured the idea that we are all called to a life of holiness by doing ordinary work extraordinarily. This is the lure of Opus Dei, after all our Lord Jesus Christ preached “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Alas, this is also part of the mystery of Opus Dei, which often gets misunderstood by people who cannot accept that we sinners have a chance to be a saint; after all, all saints had an ugly or sinful past.

What made this movie unique is that, being a history buff, while I have read about the Spanish Civil War, it is the first time that I have seen a movie that depicts the anarchy that resulted in that conflict where the Catholic Church was caught in-between the Communist Republicans and the Fascists who were anti-clerics. The protagonists burned many churches and executed many priests.

Today, the evil dragons still live within our midst and have manifested itself in the recent murder suicide of the Ponce family last Sunday, they manifest in the people behind the trafficking of women in this country. The evil dragons also manifest themselves in the people who say that they are Catholics, yet they support the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill that allows contraception that kills the unborn. Yes, they manifest in our political leadership who are behind the proposal to pass the RH bill and eventually an abortion and divorce law in this country.

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