In a Democratic Country, Power Resides with the People
The statement that globalization creates a knowledge society because of so-called technological advancement is nothing but a myth. The glaring truth is that we are not living in a knowledge society if we do not know the very basic information why a country that is so rich ecologically, oozing with natural resources, but majority of the people are paradoxically wallowing in poverty. Why in the midst of abundance, the bulk of the people are living in hunger and extreme poverty, based on the data of the Social Weather Station. Because of this painful truism, 85% of the Filipino children are malnourished, according to the Food & Nutrition Institute, especially in Mindanao which is known as the “food basket” of the country. So glaring that we Filipinos are buried in the fallacies of life through outpourings of information by the mainstream media focusing on trivial matters but not on matters that should awaken the Filipinos based on the truism that VERITAS LIBERABIT VOS (The truth shall set us free).
Why are the Filipinos being devoid of basic information of the choices to live a human life, a life of dignity; allow us to know the horrible “faces” of social injustices in the life of the workers, the farmers, fisherfolk, Indigenous Peoples and the common “TAO” in a country that declares in the Fundamental Law (Art.10, Sec. 1) that “the State shall promote social justice in all phases of national development. As Constitutionally declared in Sec. 1, Art. 1, “In a Republican and Democratic state, sovereignty resides with the people and all governmental powers emanate from them.” Such truism is so amazing but when the people are not well-informed on basic information on the root causes of poverty, of gross inequities, of horrible social injustices, of the massive extraction of natural resources and of the non-stop transformation of our blessed land into massive plantations, all of these Constitutional pronouncements are just empty rhetoric or to quote Shakespeare, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Indeed, the Philippines is so rich yet so poor! What a paradox as our ecological people, the farmers, the fisherfolk and the Indigenous Peoples are now the poorest. Who controls? Who decides? Who benefits? Environmental experts and social scientists have concluded that the root cause of plunder is that our country has been subjected by powerful oligarchs to the economic paradigm called “EXTRACTIVISM,” a term originally used to describe economies based on removing ever more raw materials from the earth, usually for export to traditional colonial powers, where value was added.
Our dipterocarp forest which was the first subject of extraction as we have the finest timber in the world, only found endemically in our country, commanding gargantuan profit for the colonizers then and continued by the powerful loggers after the colonial rule. Each shipment of logs would earn a logger some three hundred sixty million pesos, money that they used to bribe government officials to continue their heavy rakings and even to buy votes as many loggers have been elected to high positions. Thus, from 17 million hectares of natural forest, only half a million hectares remain. As our natural forest vanished from the face of the earth, the billions of flora and fauna living in the forest ecosystems for millions if not billions of years have become extinct. The forest are the Invisible water dams that supply water to the rivers and to the communities.
After the plunder of our forest through extractivism, another form of extractivism continues beneath the ground as tremendous mining operations loomed to extract minerals especially here in Mindanao as it has some 72 kinds of minerals. All of these mining operations using heavy equipment worth hundreds of millions of pesos from Korea and China have caused so much havoc in killing our bays and rivers due to massive siltation and the destruction of our mangroves and coral reefs as only 5% remain in excellent condition, to the detriment of our coastal communities now living in hunger and extreme poverty.
Extractivism is continuing in another form which is worse and more horrible. It is seen in the 300,000 hectare-plantations in Mindanao owned and managed by Trans-National Corporations and oligarchs, using toxic chemicals heavily that as if some 2,000 dump-trucks of poisons are being dumped to our water tables daily. Are you still wondering why many Mindanawons are now dying of cancer and there are many babies born deformed?
Yes, high value fruits are being extracted from our lands to feed the consumerist lifestyle of the people in advanced countries while we cannot even sufficiently supply our hungry people with basic staples like rice and milk as these are heavily imported. Indeed, our country is the biggest rice importer in the world while 95% of our milk is imported, the reason why 85% of the Filipino children are malnourished, based on the data of the Food and Nutrition Institute.
As concluded by development experts, “extractivism” is directly connected to the nation of sacrifice zone-places that, to their extractors, somehow don’t count and are therefore poisoned, drained and otherwise destroyed.” Indeed, the mindset of the colonizers of the massive exploitation of our natural resources is being followed now by the neo-colonizers, the super rich businessmen, Trans-National Corporations, the cartels and the oligarchs who are considered the new CONQUESTADORES. I believe that such conclusion has some bearing. Such truism should be known by the Filipino people. Unless the people are deeply conscienticized on what are the reasons why we have lost our ecological integrity, why our people are hungry, why people are poor in a very rich country done through massive extractivism in cohort with power-that-be in a country where economic power beget political power, no social transformation can be had. Indeed, enough is enough of extractivism through oligarchical control that has oppressed our people and drained our natural resources.
Thus, it has become urgently imperative that the people should be well informed on these hidden truism as indeed VERITAS LIBERABIT VOS. It is so painful to note that the mainstream media has not touched on these essential issues that should trailblazed the awakening process. The outpourings of information is just focused on trivial matters, i.e. political quarrels of two families, arrest of a religious leader, the illegal gambling issues on POGO, Senate inquiries on drugs, etc. but not on the many faces of social injustices committed against the Indigenous Peoples on massive grabbing of their ancestral domain to give way to foreign corporations to promote corporate globalization and why we have gone down the drain economically, socially and ecologically. When awakened, the people should strongly advocate for the real essence of development which is for, by and of the people NOT FOR THE FEW OLIGARCHS AN FOREIGN CORPORATIONS. WE MUST NOW HEAL THE BLIGHTED LAND BACK TO LIFE FOR PEOPLE, PLANET, PROSPERITY AND PEACE – ALL FOR GOD’S GREATER GLORY!
