CROSSINGS
Butch Junia
5/30-6/5/2011
If you think the Reproductive Health or RH Bill is only about the well-being of mothers, women and children, think again.
It’s also about going to jail for six months, paying fines of up to P50,000.00, even losing your government job.
After writing last week on HB 4244, The Responsible Parenthood, Reproductive Health and Population and Development Act of 2011, I got unexpected queries from friends who were not too clear on the objectives of the RH bill.
Why the Fuss?
In particular, Mang Naro Lualhati, our institutional memory on Meralco overcharges, called to ask why we were making such a big fuss on reproductive health. Of course, he knew why, but that was his way of punctuating his point on RH: if our objective in RH is to promote free choice, he said, we already have free choice today.
Besides, since President Aquino already publicly declared that he is for free choice, Mang Naro insisted, all he has to do is withdraw support for the bill and let it whither in the vine, in effect promoting the freedom of choice we already enjoy.
Since I will not presume to know this President’s thinking, I could only go as far as to promise to bring it up in Crossings.
Basic Human Rights
Under the bill’s declaration of policy, “the State recognizes and guarantees the exercise of the universal basic human right to reproductive health by all persons… consistent with the… demands of responsible parenthood.” There will be no quarrel on that policy, for who will argue against these basic human rights.
Sec. 4, definition of terms, says: “Reproductive health refers to the state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity in all matters relating to the reproductive system and to its functions and processes.” The bill defines reproductive health in so many ways but has no definition of the “system.” I am sure there will not be any big debate on what that system is, though I cannot say the same on how it is used.
Reproductive health care, under the same definition of terms, “refers to the access to a full range of methods, facilities, services and supplies that contribute to reproductive health and well-being by preventing and solving reproductive health-related problems.”
The latter portion of the definition is pregnant with dire implications – what are the reproductive health-related problems that are to be prevented and solved, and how.
That definition goes further: “It also includes sexual health, the purpose of which is the enhancement of life and personal relations.” Listed among the elements of reproductive health are: “c) proscription and management of abortion complications, g) education and counseling on sexuality and reproductive health, j) prevention and treatment of infertility and sexual dysfunction.” Have we reached that point where we must legislate the management of sexual dysfunction? Do we not have enough legislation to protect those who need medical attention and to penalize those who practice abortion?
Modern Methods
Isipin ho ninyo, may kulong kayo sa RH Bill.You violate this law, you go to jail from one to six months and/or pay a fine of P10,000 to P50,000.
Let us go through the RH Bill in sequence, and see what it holds for us.
Sec. 10, Family Planning Supplies as Essential Medicines. “Products and supplies for modern family planning methods shall be included in the regular purchase of essential medicine and supplies of all national and local hospitals and other government health units.”
“Modern Methods of Family Planning,” according to the bill, “refer to safe, effective and legal methods, whether the natural, or the artificial that are registered with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of the DOH, to prevent pregnancy.” (Emphasis mine.)
Limited Resources
I have a young daughter, Tinie, who recently served in a government hospital, and on a couple of occasions, I did some buying for her at the medical stores in Bambang, for her supply of syringes, specimen bottles, plaster, even cotton buds and swabs, because the hospital did not have enough for the patients who would have to buy these supplies elsewhere.
With many unable to provide for themselves, Tinie and her batchmates always had to have a kind of a “loot bag” from where to draw the basic supplies.
Now, this law mandates the hospital to realign its supplies budget, and there is a penal provision for any violation of that mandate.
Guiding principles of RH bill, Sec. 3, (l) says: “The limited resources of the country cannot be suffered to be spread so thinly to service a burgeoning multitude making allocations grossly inadequate and effectively meaningless.”
We ask the RH sponsors and lobbyists: Where is the adequacy, meaning and effectiveness of the allocation you envision in the RH Bill, where medical supplies basic to the living will be sacrificed for modern methods of family planning?
PhilHealth Coverage
It is timely to note that under Sec. 25, Implementing Mechanisms, sub-sec (g), the DOH and the Local Health Units as lead agencies for the implementation of RH Bill will “...facilitate the involvement and participation of NGO’s and the private sectorin reproductive health care service delivery and in the production, distribution and delivery of quality reproductive health and family planning supplies and commodities to make them accessible and affordable to ordinary citizens.”
Lest we forget, Sec. 7, Access to Family Planning, guarantees full coverage by PhilHealth, both at the pregnancy-related and family planning levels, so cost should not be a problem. I just wonder, though, if the rest of the PhilHealth members will agree to this wanton use of the contributory PhilHealth fund, because I don’t.
Also, I googled the Philippine Legislators’ Committee on Population and Development Foundation, Inc., the one headed by Mr. Ramon San Pascual, and in their “Activities for the Month of May”, they have this for May 26-27: “DOH Training on Political Mapping, Stakeholders Analyses and Position Paper Writing.”
Is the DOH training Mr. San Pascual and his colleagues in political mapping? DOH has its hands full with the country’s health needs, why should it use its precious time and resources training these Philippine legislators? Incidentally, are they a committee of the legislators we voted to our Congress?
‘Pork’ Somewhere
Are DOH and Mr. San Pascual way ahead of the RH Bill, already implementing and facilitating the involvement of this NGO in the delivery of health care services. I hope they have not gone yet into the production components.
Sec. 15, Mobile Health Care Service, provides: “Each Congressional District may be provided with at least one (1) Mobile Health Care Service (MHCS) in the form of a van or other means of transportation appropriate to… deliver health care supplies and services to constituents… The purchase of the MHCS may be funded from the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) …"
So, there you are. Pork had to be lurking somewhere out there. Looking at the bright side, though, this is better than a basketball court or a farm-to-pocket road.
Next issue, the prohibited acts and the McCarthyist mayhem it threatens to bring about. RH Bill says: “The following acts are prohibited: (e) Any person who maliciously engages in disinformation about the intent or provisions of this Act.” (RH Bill) Critics and objectors be warned. You could fall prey to a Lagman Hunt.
(Email crsng_47@hotmail.com)
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Monday, May 30, 2011
Groveling, PeNoy style
DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/30/2011
Did BSA III know what he was talking about when he said last Jan. 4 that the Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking (JMSU) entered into by the Philippines with China and Vietnam — primarily for exploring offshore and deep sea natural resources, including oil and gas — “shouldn’t have happened” and scrapped it on the pretext that it encroached into the country’s territorial waters?
When the Philippines has a written understanding and invitation with two other parties to work together in an area where everyone has agreed to “jointly exploit,” how can there be encroachment? Don’t we have “joint ventures” with other countries in various mineral projects? The biggest fossil fuel project in the country with Royal Dutch Shell, Malampaya gas, necessarily had seismic surveys done. Wasn’t that undertaken with a foreign country and company, too?
What has likely determined the sad fate of the JMSU can be found in a paper written by a senior adviser and director of a Washington DC think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (“The JMSU: A Tale of Bilateralism and Secrecy in the South China Sea” by Ernest Bower), that reflects US attitude toward this joint Asian initiative for common exploration of shared resources for mutual benefit.
To the US, “bilateralism” simply means that it was out of the loop in relation to its former colony, the Philippines — a situation it is extremely uncomfortable with. The term is even inaccurate as the JMSU was a “trilateral” undertaking by the three concerned Asian nations. “Secrecy,” on the other hand, simply means that the US was kept in the dark. This is because it believes that every country in Asia is obliged to keep it informed about matters that are primarily its concern.
The JMSU was a good undertaking in the overlapping parts of the South China Sea for promoting the spirit of “joint development” that would preserve amity as well as provide impetus for economic progress for the nations involved. All three — China, Vietnam and the Philippines —contributed to the funding of marine facilities such as ships as well as equipment for the seismic survey project. The result would have been a treasure trove of information, especially for the Philippines, about each country’s marine resources (even in disputed territorial waters) — which, in the case of the Philippines again, would never have come about given its dire financial straits.
But it seems that BSA III would rather to stay in the dark about this and wait for his US sponsors to do the seismic surveys and keep the information to themselves as they have been doing in the past. Given this, the Philippines will just forever be at the mercy of western interests.
Expectedly, some local print and broadcast media have been raising the China bogey, after reports surfaced of Chinese MIG jets buzzing two Philippine Air Force turbo-prop planes in the Spratlys — this, despite the fact that China has since denied the existence of MIGs in its air fleet; as have Philippine authorities clarified that it was not a “buzzing” incident, since what specific flag those jets flew cannot be ascertained.
Most vociferous were some midget minds on AM radio calling for “the need to fight, even to die” for the Philippine territory, as well as Manila Times “Doctor” Dante Ang, whose column dated May 28 read “Use our US card in resolving the Spratlys issue.”
While the US can and has often used the Philippine card as a Joker now and then in UN diplomatic games (swing votes), as well as a regional gofer to issue derogatory pronouncements on Myanmar or North Korea, the Philippines just has no gravitas to play a so-called US card.
In fact, it was the US that used the Philippines as shock absorber during the Second World War, which sapped the might of the Japanese Imperial Army but decimated the Philippine economy, while the US top general then fled to the safety of Australia.
The US later “granted” independence to the Philippines in 1945 only to take it away with its left hand via the Laurel-Langley Agreement, the imposition of Parity Rights, and, as Salvador Araneta wrote in America’s Double-Cross of the Philippines, the US Congress-issued “Dodd’s Report” in 1948 that consigned our fate as a mere vegetables garden to Japan, an erstwhile enemy which Uncle Sam decided to industrialize to fortify against the “domino effect” from communist China.
Further, when the British, together with the Malaysians, instigated the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) war against the Philippine Republic for the latter’s attempt at retaking Sabah, the US simply sat at the sidelines, refusing even to resupply ammunition for guns and cannons. Why, it has even overtly supported the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) since the late Hashim Salamat sent his kowtow letter to George W. Bush in 2003.
All these therefore provide the context to the groveling of BSA III in relation to the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) and the purchase of old US Coast Guard Hamilton class cutters for the Philippine Navy.
The VFA “embeds” Americans in Philippine military units supposedly for the training of Filipino soldiers. But in actuality, Americans are the ones learning from us, and may someday use this know-how to kill Filipino soldiers if and when a nationalist Philippine government arises, or when the MILF wins a Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain set-up and sends its naval forces to the Sulu Sea that will trigger a military response from the Republic, which the US would then use as a “humanitarian threat” requiring the presence of international troops to “save” the oppressed minority. (Improbable, you say? Well, we can never tell given the vagaries of US geopolitics.)
While there’s a “Scrap the VFA Movement” that condemns this continuing (and escalating) US encroachment into Philippine sovereignty, Noynoy only has ears for Ambassador Harry Thomas. As for those Hamilton class Navy cutters, why is BS Aquino buying these discards (using our Malampaya revenues) when the US gives them as grants to other countries? Bugok na PeNoy talaga!
(Tune in to Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, on “New 2011 Power Scams”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/30/2011
Did BSA III know what he was talking about when he said last Jan. 4 that the Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking (JMSU) entered into by the Philippines with China and Vietnam — primarily for exploring offshore and deep sea natural resources, including oil and gas — “shouldn’t have happened” and scrapped it on the pretext that it encroached into the country’s territorial waters?
When the Philippines has a written understanding and invitation with two other parties to work together in an area where everyone has agreed to “jointly exploit,” how can there be encroachment? Don’t we have “joint ventures” with other countries in various mineral projects? The biggest fossil fuel project in the country with Royal Dutch Shell, Malampaya gas, necessarily had seismic surveys done. Wasn’t that undertaken with a foreign country and company, too?
What has likely determined the sad fate of the JMSU can be found in a paper written by a senior adviser and director of a Washington DC think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (“The JMSU: A Tale of Bilateralism and Secrecy in the South China Sea” by Ernest Bower), that reflects US attitude toward this joint Asian initiative for common exploration of shared resources for mutual benefit.
To the US, “bilateralism” simply means that it was out of the loop in relation to its former colony, the Philippines — a situation it is extremely uncomfortable with. The term is even inaccurate as the JMSU was a “trilateral” undertaking by the three concerned Asian nations. “Secrecy,” on the other hand, simply means that the US was kept in the dark. This is because it believes that every country in Asia is obliged to keep it informed about matters that are primarily its concern.
The JMSU was a good undertaking in the overlapping parts of the South China Sea for promoting the spirit of “joint development” that would preserve amity as well as provide impetus for economic progress for the nations involved. All three — China, Vietnam and the Philippines —contributed to the funding of marine facilities such as ships as well as equipment for the seismic survey project. The result would have been a treasure trove of information, especially for the Philippines, about each country’s marine resources (even in disputed territorial waters) — which, in the case of the Philippines again, would never have come about given its dire financial straits.
But it seems that BSA III would rather to stay in the dark about this and wait for his US sponsors to do the seismic surveys and keep the information to themselves as they have been doing in the past. Given this, the Philippines will just forever be at the mercy of western interests.
Expectedly, some local print and broadcast media have been raising the China bogey, after reports surfaced of Chinese MIG jets buzzing two Philippine Air Force turbo-prop planes in the Spratlys — this, despite the fact that China has since denied the existence of MIGs in its air fleet; as have Philippine authorities clarified that it was not a “buzzing” incident, since what specific flag those jets flew cannot be ascertained.
Most vociferous were some midget minds on AM radio calling for “the need to fight, even to die” for the Philippine territory, as well as Manila Times “Doctor” Dante Ang, whose column dated May 28 read “Use our US card in resolving the Spratlys issue.”
While the US can and has often used the Philippine card as a Joker now and then in UN diplomatic games (swing votes), as well as a regional gofer to issue derogatory pronouncements on Myanmar or North Korea, the Philippines just has no gravitas to play a so-called US card.
In fact, it was the US that used the Philippines as shock absorber during the Second World War, which sapped the might of the Japanese Imperial Army but decimated the Philippine economy, while the US top general then fled to the safety of Australia.
The US later “granted” independence to the Philippines in 1945 only to take it away with its left hand via the Laurel-Langley Agreement, the imposition of Parity Rights, and, as Salvador Araneta wrote in America’s Double-Cross of the Philippines, the US Congress-issued “Dodd’s Report” in 1948 that consigned our fate as a mere vegetables garden to Japan, an erstwhile enemy which Uncle Sam decided to industrialize to fortify against the “domino effect” from communist China.
Further, when the British, together with the Malaysians, instigated the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) war against the Philippine Republic for the latter’s attempt at retaking Sabah, the US simply sat at the sidelines, refusing even to resupply ammunition for guns and cannons. Why, it has even overtly supported the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) since the late Hashim Salamat sent his kowtow letter to George W. Bush in 2003.
All these therefore provide the context to the groveling of BSA III in relation to the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) and the purchase of old US Coast Guard Hamilton class cutters for the Philippine Navy.
The VFA “embeds” Americans in Philippine military units supposedly for the training of Filipino soldiers. But in actuality, Americans are the ones learning from us, and may someday use this know-how to kill Filipino soldiers if and when a nationalist Philippine government arises, or when the MILF wins a Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain set-up and sends its naval forces to the Sulu Sea that will trigger a military response from the Republic, which the US would then use as a “humanitarian threat” requiring the presence of international troops to “save” the oppressed minority. (Improbable, you say? Well, we can never tell given the vagaries of US geopolitics.)
While there’s a “Scrap the VFA Movement” that condemns this continuing (and escalating) US encroachment into Philippine sovereignty, Noynoy only has ears for Ambassador Harry Thomas. As for those Hamilton class Navy cutters, why is BS Aquino buying these discards (using our Malampaya revenues) when the US gives them as grants to other countries? Bugok na PeNoy talaga!
(Tune in to Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, on “New 2011 Power Scams”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
RH bill: A cop-out for industrialization
CRITIC'S CRITIC
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/30-6/4/2011
Last Monday, Conrado de Quiros, in his “There’s the Rub” Inquirer column, wrote: “RH, the antis keep saying, is not the solution to poverty. Of course not, as I said the last time. Not by itself. Neither is land reform, neither is fighting corruption, neither is graduating from college. Not by themselves. But taken together, they do push back poverty and misery immeasurably. Indeed, RH alone may not solve poverty, but the lack of it adds to poverty and misery all by itself. The absence of it deepens pain and suffering all by itself. The benighted opposition to it spreads benightedness and ignorance all by itself.”
I quote him fully here to show that the he omits an obvious common denominator in every country that has begun to overcome poverty, be it China , South Korea, or in particular, India, which had scrapped its population control program back when former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984. That common denominator is agro-industrial development; and there’s the rub in De Quiros’ enumerated solutions to our nation’s poverty.
You can have all the RH laws to try to control population, push land reform and/or fight corruption through all eternity, and graduate all your young people from college; but without agro-industrial development, there’s no chance for them to rise from economic backwardness to progressive modernity.
However, if you have agro-industrial development, even without a population control program, you can grow the economy, expand a middle class, and raise the general level of employment and standard of living, such as what we have seen in India .
China, which is invariably used as a poster child of the pro-RH bill proponents such as De Quiros, would still be in the deepest mires of poverty even with its One-Child policy if it did not adopt a determined policy of agricultural development and food self sufficiency while building domestic industry in all facets, from steel to petrochemicals. China ’s first two great projects were Daching , its first domestic oil production around which industries were built, and Dachai, which was its agricultural prototype.
Conrado de Quiros’ column faulted his and the Yellows’ one-time idol Manny Pacquiao for opposing the RH bill. That after Pacquiao’s great “yellow gloves” in Nevada , where “He was going to put on yellow gloves for the fight, he said, to show that he wasn’t just fighting Mosley, he was also fighting poverty. Yellow is of course President Benigno Aquino III’s special color, so Pacquiao’s subliminal pitch was that he was in fact joining government in fighting it. I was elated and said after the fight that if he could only do to poverty what he did to Mosley, the poor would be saved in no time at all.”
Now, with Pacquiao opining from his simplistic “poor man, obedient flock” platform opposing the RH bill, he is suddenly “not so great” anymore for Conrado. It just goes to show how the pro-RH bill advocates use celebrity endorsers instead of firm demographic and economic arguments. But as Conrado de Quiros himself wrote in the column, “What the right hand giveth, the left hand taketh away.” Never mind if they used Pacquiao before, Pacquiao as an argument has now been taken away.
The major disservice the pro-RH apologists in media are committing against the people is their obfuscation of the issue of the causes of poverty, bringing the discussion to the level of emotional sectarianism by invoking the “prayles” to distract from the economic policy issues. Population is a boon to development and growth if there is a program of economic growth based on the national development paradigm of the establishment of self-sustaining, self-sufficient agro-industrial infrastructure versus the neoliberal economics of liberalization, privatization, and deregulation.
The RH bill debates give the exploitative economic and political ruling class the excuse to distract from the need for the re-nationalization of privatized basic industries and public utilities, as well as the restoration of state direction and planning, its protection for industries, and the institution of anti-trust, anti-monopolistic policies to subdue the runaway greed of the oligarchs and their trapo cohorts amid the backdrop of US-imposed globalization.
Richard Mendoza sent us through our blog New Katipunero a YouTube videolink of an interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the population issue by Dick Cavett 35 years ago. Ono opined that population is not really a problem since it is just a situation that will balance itself out, as some parts of the world have more populations whereas others have surplus food. Lennon called it a myth, a mere scare story to divert from the Vietnam War and the independence struggle in Northern Ireland .
Oh, and do you know that for the past 35 years the Philippines’ population growth of 7 percent has been reduced to 2.8 percent by 2008 without the multibillion subsidy the RH bill wants for RH drugs and devices? By sheer economic pressure and changing attitudes, this rate is expected to naturally decline to the replacement level of 2.1 percent by 2025 according to a group of UP scholars led by economist Prof. Romeo Balanquit. Why then are the pro-RH people insisting on spending billions?
By the way, couldn’t the pro-RH advocates and legislators zero in on other approaches that will utilize an effective exercise of iron free will, or reproductive choice, which will not cost the country a gargantuan sum? Ah, but I don’t think such a measure will pass as the billions waiting to be squandered for condoms and other contraceptives, not to mention other enticements from the contraceptives lobby, are just too tempting to resist for the porkers in Congress.
That said, though, we do agree with our dynamic OpinYon colleague Ms. Liza Gazpar that there is indeed a need for government to focus on the continuing challenge of reproductive health, of preventing abortions, and so on; but again, I maintain that this shouldn’t be before other life-and-death priorities such as support for MRT/LRT fares, rice production, funds for deadly diseases ranging from TB to dengue, and a program (and budget) for the re-industrialization of the national economy, among many others.
Finally, let me issue this challenge to the Inquirer, which is really pushing the RH bill, and its pro-RH columnists, Conrado de Quiros, Raul Pangalangan, Rina Jimenez-David, Jesuit Joaquin Bernas and other comers, to debate the issues--them against my solo self, anywhere, anytime, so long as it is in public. My cable TV show is open to them.
(Tune in to Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; TNT with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, on “More Power Scams”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus select radio and GNN shows)
Herman Tiu Laurel
5/30-6/4/2011
Last Monday, Conrado de Quiros, in his “There’s the Rub” Inquirer column, wrote: “RH, the antis keep saying, is not the solution to poverty. Of course not, as I said the last time. Not by itself. Neither is land reform, neither is fighting corruption, neither is graduating from college. Not by themselves. But taken together, they do push back poverty and misery immeasurably. Indeed, RH alone may not solve poverty, but the lack of it adds to poverty and misery all by itself. The absence of it deepens pain and suffering all by itself. The benighted opposition to it spreads benightedness and ignorance all by itself.”
I quote him fully here to show that the he omits an obvious common denominator in every country that has begun to overcome poverty, be it China , South Korea, or in particular, India, which had scrapped its population control program back when former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated in 1984. That common denominator is agro-industrial development; and there’s the rub in De Quiros’ enumerated solutions to our nation’s poverty.
You can have all the RH laws to try to control population, push land reform and/or fight corruption through all eternity, and graduate all your young people from college; but without agro-industrial development, there’s no chance for them to rise from economic backwardness to progressive modernity.
However, if you have agro-industrial development, even without a population control program, you can grow the economy, expand a middle class, and raise the general level of employment and standard of living, such as what we have seen in India .
China, which is invariably used as a poster child of the pro-RH bill proponents such as De Quiros, would still be in the deepest mires of poverty even with its One-Child policy if it did not adopt a determined policy of agricultural development and food self sufficiency while building domestic industry in all facets, from steel to petrochemicals. China ’s first two great projects were Daching , its first domestic oil production around which industries were built, and Dachai, which was its agricultural prototype.
Conrado de Quiros’ column faulted his and the Yellows’ one-time idol Manny Pacquiao for opposing the RH bill. That after Pacquiao’s great “yellow gloves” in Nevada , where “He was going to put on yellow gloves for the fight, he said, to show that he wasn’t just fighting Mosley, he was also fighting poverty. Yellow is of course President Benigno Aquino III’s special color, so Pacquiao’s subliminal pitch was that he was in fact joining government in fighting it. I was elated and said after the fight that if he could only do to poverty what he did to Mosley, the poor would be saved in no time at all.”
Now, with Pacquiao opining from his simplistic “poor man, obedient flock” platform opposing the RH bill, he is suddenly “not so great” anymore for Conrado. It just goes to show how the pro-RH bill advocates use celebrity endorsers instead of firm demographic and economic arguments. But as Conrado de Quiros himself wrote in the column, “What the right hand giveth, the left hand taketh away.” Never mind if they used Pacquiao before, Pacquiao as an argument has now been taken away.
The major disservice the pro-RH apologists in media are committing against the people is their obfuscation of the issue of the causes of poverty, bringing the discussion to the level of emotional sectarianism by invoking the “prayles” to distract from the economic policy issues. Population is a boon to development and growth if there is a program of economic growth based on the national development paradigm of the establishment of self-sustaining, self-sufficient agro-industrial infrastructure versus the neoliberal economics of liberalization, privatization, and deregulation.
The RH bill debates give the exploitative economic and political ruling class the excuse to distract from the need for the re-nationalization of privatized basic industries and public utilities, as well as the restoration of state direction and planning, its protection for industries, and the institution of anti-trust, anti-monopolistic policies to subdue the runaway greed of the oligarchs and their trapo cohorts amid the backdrop of US-imposed globalization.
Richard Mendoza sent us through our blog New Katipunero a YouTube videolink of an interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the population issue by Dick Cavett 35 years ago. Ono opined that population is not really a problem since it is just a situation that will balance itself out, as some parts of the world have more populations whereas others have surplus food. Lennon called it a myth, a mere scare story to divert from the Vietnam War and the independence struggle in Northern Ireland .
Oh, and do you know that for the past 35 years the Philippines’ population growth of 7 percent has been reduced to 2.8 percent by 2008 without the multibillion subsidy the RH bill wants for RH drugs and devices? By sheer economic pressure and changing attitudes, this rate is expected to naturally decline to the replacement level of 2.1 percent by 2025 according to a group of UP scholars led by economist Prof. Romeo Balanquit. Why then are the pro-RH people insisting on spending billions?
By the way, couldn’t the pro-RH advocates and legislators zero in on other approaches that will utilize an effective exercise of iron free will, or reproductive choice, which will not cost the country a gargantuan sum? Ah, but I don’t think such a measure will pass as the billions waiting to be squandered for condoms and other contraceptives, not to mention other enticements from the contraceptives lobby, are just too tempting to resist for the porkers in Congress.
That said, though, we do agree with our dynamic OpinYon colleague Ms. Liza Gazpar that there is indeed a need for government to focus on the continuing challenge of reproductive health, of preventing abortions, and so on; but again, I maintain that this shouldn’t be before other life-and-death priorities such as support for MRT/LRT fares, rice production, funds for deadly diseases ranging from TB to dengue, and a program (and budget) for the re-industrialization of the national economy, among many others.
Finally, let me issue this challenge to the Inquirer, which is really pushing the RH bill, and its pro-RH columnists, Conrado de Quiros, Raul Pangalangan, Rina Jimenez-David, Jesuit Joaquin Bernas and other comers, to debate the issues--them against my solo self, anywhere, anytime, so long as it is in public. My cable TV show is open to them.
(Tune in to Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; TNT with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, on “More Power Scams”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus select radio and GNN shows)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
