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The super agency would further increase the cost of “socialized housing,” enrich real estate developers and, justify and speed up the eviction and demolition of informal settlers.

By RONALYN V. OLEA
Bulatlat.com

MANILA — The proposed revisions in the 1987 Philippine Constitution and the creation of a new housing agency spell double whammy for the poor.

Urban poor group Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap (Kadamay) maintained that the creation of the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development (DHSUD) would aggravate the housing crisis in the country.

In its critique to House Bill 6775 or the proposed DHSUD, Kadamay said the super agency would further increase the cost of “socialized housing,” enrich real estate developers and, justify and speed up the eviction and demolition of informal settlers.

The House of Representatives approved the bill, Feb. 13 while the Senate passed, on second reading, its counterpart measure.

The bill will consolidate the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) and the Housing and Land Use Regulatory Board (HLURB). The new department will be the sole and main planning and policy-making, regulatory, program coordination, and performance monitoring body for all housing, human settlement and urban development concerns.

The department is tasked to formulate and adopt a national strategy to swiftly provide adequate and affordable housing to all Filipinos. It will create “Socialized Housing One-stop Processing Centers (SHOPCs)” which will centralize the processing of all permits, clearances and licenses relating to applications for socialized housing.

More expensive ‘socialized housing’

The housing crisis could not be underestimated. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights has ranked Metro Manila as the first in the world in terms of homelessness with around 3.1 million individuals, 1.2 million of whom are children, without a home.

The HB 6775 would raise the price of ‘socialized housing,’ which would result in more evictions.

The bill allows revisions in ceilings for socialized housing anytime but not more than once every two years “to conform to prevailing economic conditions.” This means higher amortization rates.

Kadamay has long been pointed out that the problem lies with affordability and accessibility of ‘socialized housing’ units.

The group revealed that a 22 square-meter housing unit in Pandi, Bulacan, for example, costs P305,000. In-city relocation housing units, meanwhile, range from P400,000 to P600,000. For example, a Bistekville unit does not require down payment but still has an amortization of P2,274 per month over a period of 30 years.

In Northville and Southville alone, more than 600,000 resettled residents are threatened of eviction after they failed to pay amortization for their units.

Documents from NHA showed that as of 2016, only seven percent of accounts are updated in payments. Out of the P8.36 billion receivable balance already due, the agency was able to collect P606 million in 2016.

From 2011 to 2016, the National Housing Authority built more than 190,000 housing units. A 2016 report from the Commission on Audit (COA) showed, however, that 60 percent of these houses remain idle until today.

Instead of resolving the present housing crisis, HB 6775 will only make the problems worse.

More money for private developers

Under the bill, the DHSUD may “enter into contracts, joint venture agreements, public-private partnerships (PPP) and memoranda of agreement or understanding, either domestic or foreign, under such terms and conditions that the department may deem proper and reasonable and subject to existing laws.”

As of now, private developers have been enjoying incentives that make it easier for them to earn profits from socialized housing, while poor families are burdened with monthly amortization. According to independent think tank Ibon Foundation, private companies get 30 percent off on taxable income from its profit, which is granted when a real estate project is negotiated as part of socialized housing compliance to Urban Development and Housing Act of 1992 (UDHA).

UDHA also exempts the private sector from paying the following: capital gains tax on raw lands used for the project; value-added tax for the project contractor concerned; transfer tax for both raw completed projects, and donor’s tax for lands certified by the local government units to have been donated for socialized housing purposes.

Moreover, through the PPPs, private companies engaged in “socialized housing” get guaranteed payments from the government.

Ibon Foundation noted that major players in the development of supposedly low-cost housing units include real estate giants such as Ayala Land, Inc. (ALI) and Phinma Property Holdings Corp.

In 2016 alone, the NHA paid more than P15 billion to private contractors in ‘socialized housing.’

Kadamay said the new department would speed up the construction of housing units through the so-called one-stop processing centers. This is good for business but bad for the poor who would not be able to afford the housing units.

The proposed Charter Change will allow foreign corporations to own land, to exploit and use the country’s natural resources, among others. Since the new department will have the mandate to enter into contracts with foreign companies, more infrastructure and other ‘urban development’ projects will push the urban poor out of their homes.

The bill defines urban development as the process of occupation and use of land or for residential, industrial, commercial purposes. Foreign corporations, by entering into contracts with the department, would have their say in defining urban development for Filipinos.

Demolition left and right

The DSHUD can exercise “oversight, develop and establish a monitor on the sector’s performance and be involved in the housing and urban development and ensure continuing improvements in sector policy and strategy formation.” For Kadamay, this means speeding up the demolition process.

The bill merely refers to existing laws such as the UDHA, which, Kadamay said, has only provided steps on how to drive away poor families from their homes.

For this year alone, Kadamay said 200,000 families are set to lose their homes due to Duterte’s Build, Build, Build program. To implement the big-ticket infrastructure projects, the government has allocated P35 billion for “right-of way” (ROW) acquisitions, which spell demolition for informal settlers.

Meanwhile, the proponents of Charter change are pushing for the deletion of Article 13, Sec. 10 of the Philippine Constitution, which read:

“Urban or rural poor dwellers shall not be evicted nor their dwelling demolished, except in accordance with law and in a just and humane manner.

No resettlement of urban or rural dwellers shall be undertaken without adequate consultation with them and the communities where they are to be relocated.”

Kadamay said that this would mean more violent demolition of shanties and would deny informal settlers the right to relocation.

The urban poor group also decried the deprivation of their right to seek redress for grievances. The creation of Human Settlements Adjudication Commission (HSAC) under HB 6775 grants the department immense judiciary power over disputes relating to land and housing, essentially replacing the functions of the actual court system in the country. A representative from the private sector will sit in as a commissioner to handle such disputes. Kadamay said the Department, along with the commission, would have the power to decide on matters based on their vested interests.

Michael Beltran, public information officer of Kadamay, said in a roundtable discussion last week, “The urban poor have no recourse but to defend their homes and livelihood.”

Taking lessons from Kadamay’s Occupy movement last year, Beltran said, “The poor are powerful when they come together.”

The post Homelessness to worsen with new housing agency, Cha-cha appeared first on Bulatlat.

“The fisherfolk is already being battered by numerous issues besetting the fishing sector; namely, the fish catch depletion due to corporate plunder of marine resources, the anti-fisherfolk law that allows commercial fishing fleets to exploit municipal waters, and the government’s lack of support to our sector?”

By RUTH LUMIBAO
Bulatlat.com

MANILA — Fisherfolk remain to be one of the poorest sectors in the Philippines, with a poverty incidence of 34 percent, as recorded by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) in 2017.

Their plight, however, remains unheeded as they commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Philippine Fisheries Code, the “bane” of their livelihood.

In order to register their indignation, the fisherfolk group Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamalakaya ng Pilipinas (PAMALAKAYA-Pilipinas) joined the national day of protest for rights, freedom, and democracy on February 23.

“Fisherfolk issues are related to national issues besetting the people such as the attacks of neoliberal policies on socio-economic rights, state fascism, and oppression,” PAMALAKAYA-Pilipinas chairperson Fernando Hicap said.

20 years (and counting) of an oppressive legislation

A day before the mobilization, three fisherfolk from Navotas were fired at by state agents after being alleged to be ‘smugglers’. They were forced to pay a penalty in the amount of P2,500 ($48), without any receipt given in exchange.

This is how the Philippine Fisheries Code has empowered the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) and the Marines, and officials of local government units to impose strict guidelines and hefty fees for registering boats of fisherfolk.

In fact, some are penalized amounts up to P 100,000 ($1,900) — a death sentence on the livelihood of a member of one of the poorest sectors in the country.

READ: Debunking the Fisheries Code: Small fishers lament heavy fines, loss of livelihood

“Every small fisherfolk and fish workers in the country are considered as modern-day slaves courtesy of the 20 year-old Fisheries Code that is under the framework of foreign-dictated neoliberal policies and was designed to enslave the already impoverished sector in the country. Even its amendments did not eradicate the across-the-nation hunger and poverty experienced by the fishing sector,” Hicap said.

Instead of protecting the interests of the fisherfolk, the Amended Fisheries Code allows private companies to control coastal lands and waters for up to 50 years for commercial fishing or aquaculture. This has led not only to a reduction of communal fishing waters in the Philippines but also to the privatization of these areas. With various reclamation projects also being conducted in former fishing areas like Manila Bay, the fisherfolk are forced out of their livelihood and their homes.

“Commercial fishing fleets weighing 3 gross tons and above continue to exploit the 15-kilometer municipal fishing waters that have been allotted to the municipal fisherfolk. While the corporate take-over and privatization of fishing waters through aquaculture structures and eco-tourism zones have intensified,” Hicap explained.

READ: In the amended Fisheries Code, big foreign fishers rule the seas

More burden for the fisherfolk

Aside from the Philippine Fisheries Code, the fisherfolk also have to face the effects of national policies and laws such as the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (TRAIN) and the impending charter change.

Because of the skyrocketing prices of basic commodities and oil products, there has also been an increase in fishing production costs. According to PAMALAKAYA-Pilipinas, fisherfolk had to cut their trips from the regular 6-8 hours to 4-6 hours in order to save up because of the increased oil prices due to TRAIN.

“The fisherfolk is already being battered by numerous issues besetting the fishing sector; namely, the fish catch depletion due to corporate plunder of marine resources, the anti-fisherfolk law that allows commercial fishing fleets to exploit municipal waters, and the government’s lack of support to our sector. Now the skyrocketing prices of oil products under the new tax-reform law will exacerbate the miserable condition of the country’s poorest of the poor,” Hicap said.

The impending charter change also poses a threat to the sector, as it allows fishing waters and coastal areas to be sold to foreign businesses.

Among the proposed amendments to the Constitution is the removal of the provision that directs the State to protect the rights of subsistence fishermen and their right to offshore fishing against ‘foreign intrusion’. According to the progressive fisherfolk group, this legalizes the entry of foreign-flagged commercial fishing fleets, leading to the exploitation of municipal waters, and thus, leaving nothing to small fisherfolk.

“Today, we join thousands of Filipino youth and patriotic sectors in a National Day of Protest not only to demand the scrapping of the Fisheries Code but also to call for the ouster of Rodrigo Duterte, who acts as the anti-people president and chief executive of all these anti-people policies that are detrimental to the Filipino people,” Hicap said.

The fisherfolk also joined the mobilization on February 24 to commemorate the 32nd anniversary of the EDSA uprising, where they declared their strong opposition against charter change and the “rising fascist dictatorship” of the Duterte regime.

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The 32nd EDSA commemoration was concluded with vows to defeat any other would-be dictator and tyrant.

By MARYA SALAMAT
Bulatlat.com

MANILA – “We were able to get rid of a dictator. We’re not just remembering, we want to refresh and resurrect that EDSA spirit.” Sister Mary John Mananzan, veteran of the first people power, said these by way of opening the 32nd commemoration of People Power at the People’s Monument in EDSA on Friday, February 24. Before her was a crowd broader than recent EDSA protests.

After she spoke, she was followed by other nuns and bishops, a peasant leader from Eastern Visayas and an indigenous leader from Mindanao, a summa cum laude UP graduate and a teenage Lumad student, a journalist, a human rights advocate, a mass leader, a representative of the political opposition, of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and of the Vice-President, among others.

Each delivered a facet of the Filipino situation reminiscent of the times under the dictatorship. They all raised the alarm at the ongoing martial law in Mindanao, the spate of illegal arrests and detention, the continuing rights violations.

“The response of the government to those who do not agree to their policies remains the same,” said Karapatan deputy secretary general Jigs Clamor. He said the government’s response to people’s questions and protests is still imprisonment, killings. Denial of their human rights.

The protesters responded to the Duterte administration’s burgeoning attack on democratic rights with vows to gather for bigger cooperation and collective action.

President Duterte lashed out at the students who were attending rallies; the students responded with a national walkout protest. At the 32nd EDSA commemoration, the walkout against cha-cha, TRAIN tax reform, jeepney phaseout, etc was especially cited.

UP summa cum laude grad Raoul Manuel, now with Resist Against Tyranny, asked, in response to Duterte’s threat against students joining protests, Of “What use are high grades in school if one fails to serve our country?”

Reading the message of Supreme Court Chief Justice Lourdes Sereno, her spokesperson and also a lawyer, Josa Deinla, described the Duterte allies’ “investigation” as just a fishing expedition.

“The impeachment moves [against Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno] is not just about the Chief Justice. This is an attack against the independence of the judiciary,” Deinla said, reading the message of Chief Justice Sereno at EDSA.

Brave women that include former Social Welfare Sec. Judy Taguiwalo and Kabataan Partylist Rep. Sarah Elago read a poem about the female genitals by Joy Barrios-LeBlanc, elevating the women and their struggle in contrast to President Duterte’s latest diatribe. (To watch “The Response of the Vagina,” click here.)

Unlike past presidents, Duterte continued to hold no EDSA commemoration program at the EDSA Shrine. Instead, policemen gathered and surrounded the EDSA Shrine, which that Friday was decked out in pastel banners with no messages.

At the People Power Monument, Renato Reyes Jr of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan said Duterte is probably not attending any EDSA rites “because he fears the ghost of what will likely befall him.”

A gathering of Martial Law fighters and survivors

At the 32nd EDSA commemoration, they agreed that another aspiring dictator needs to be put in his place.

“He is a small man with a small mind and a big, dirty mouth,” Bishop Teodoro Bacani said about President Duterte. To this the emcees added, “He’s also that small man with small mind and bloody iron hands.”

As with Bayan Muna leader Neri Colmenares who described the proposed charter change — Duterte’s vehicle for tyrannical rule — as the worst cha-cha ever, Bishop Bacani said he is also not in favor of changing the Constitution and, worse, at this rushed manner as the administration is seeking.

He admitted that the Constitution is not perfect, but, “You won’t change the framework of your house in a hurry, why will you do that with your Constitution?” he said.

Kerlan Fanagel of Kalumaran Mindanao and Gina Rosco of National Federation of Sugar Workers shared a few live examples of the ills of martial law happening now in their day-to-day lives. Fanagel detailed the martial-law-fueled militarization of their communities, the tens of thousands of Lumad bakwit (evacuees). With the Duterte administration’s drive to change the constitution to legalize up to 100-percent foreign ownership of Philippine resources, the lands being defended to the death by Lumad, for example, are already being seized for foreign corporations’ plantations, mining and energy projects.

Eleonor de Guzman, daughter of detained peace consultant Rafael Baylosis and wife of recently arrested/abducted Maoj Maga, took the stage with fellow relatives of political prisoners.

“You ask us, ‘Are you not afraid?’ And we say, we don’t have a choice but to continue, to hold on and struggle.”
Among the crowd in EDSA were residents from the provinces of Aurora and Nueva Ecija who are struggling to this day to reclaim hundreds of hectares of their lands that the ousted dictator “borrowed” for SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization) activities in the 80s, but did not return to the farmers up to now.

Among the crowd also were parents of martyred New People’s Army fighter Wendell Gumban. The father,65, was teary eyed when the Tag-ani choir sang the song Bayan Ko. Thirty-two years ago, he and his wife were some of the first to arrive at EDSA, before there was a huge crowd. They had been attending rallies with their neighborhood association the years before that. As employees working in Makati at the time, they showered rallyists with confetti and then joined them later. Now, 32 years later, they, too, are commemorating People Power and vowing with others that they’d frustrate another would-be dictator.

Similar to 32 years ago, Edna Gumban, then 32, hopes today the people would be as united and clear in the similar goal of ending Martial Law and ousting a dictator.

Onstage, Renato Reyes Jr of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan requested the crowd to observe a moment of silence for the fallen heroes of the struggle for democracy.

In a statement and onstage, Bayan said of the EDSA People Power, “The uprising was the culmination of years of fierce resistance to the US-backed dictatorship, which included huge mass protest actions in the cities and armed struggle in the countryside by the CPP-NPA, MNLF and MILF.”

The 32nd EDSA commemoration was concluded with vows to defeat any other would-be dictator and tyrant.

[Updated on February 27 to include links, additional pictures)

The post Calls for solidarity, defiance mark EDSA People Power Commemoration appeared first on Bulatlat.

On Feb. 24, different groups gathered and marched to People Power Monument in Ortigas, Pasig City to commemorate the 32nd year of 1986 Edsa People Power. They vowed to resist tyranny, frustrate the government’s move to amend the Constitution and the installation of another dictator through what they described as “pseudo-federalism.”

Photos by:
CARLO MANALANSAN
EFREN RICALDE
RONALYN OLEA
ANNE MARXZE UMIL

The post Groups commemorate 32nd year of Edsa People Power appeared first on Bulatlat.

No better time than never appeared first on Bulatlat.

Women activists and artists perform a poem in response to President Duterte’s statement telling his soldiers to shoot women communist guerrillas in their vaginas.

The poem was written by Joi Barrios-Leblanc of Bayan-USA and performed by Gleeza Joy Belandres, Maningning Vilog, Judy Taguiwalo, Sarah Elago and Angeli Bayani at the People Power Monument during the commemoration of the 32nd anniversary of Edsa uprising.

Video and editing by RONALYN V. OLEA
Produced by Bulatlat Multimedia

The post Sagot ng Puki (Vagina Answers Back) appeared first on Bulatlat.

MANILA — The youth showed their strength on Feb. 23 as they flooded the streets with calls denouncing the “anti-people policies of the President Duterte administration.”

Dubbed as National Protest for Rights, Freedom, and Democracy, youth and students from different universities and colleges nationwide walked out from their classes carrying calls to defend press freedom, stop the killings, free education for all levels, genuine land reform, scrapping of jeepney modernization program, among many others.

Amid threats of Duterte to kick them out from the university, hundreds students of the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City stood for students’ and people’s rights as they symbolically shutdown the university. They were joined by vendors and the jeepney drivers as they gathered at the AS Steps at Palma Hall where they locked the gates.

UP Chancellor Michael Tan has also endorsed the activity as well as the commemoration of the Edsa People Power on Feb. 24, for the students to be able to participate. “We need to encourage our students to participate in the said activities as part of their education” the memorandum read.

“The worsening conditions of politics, the economy, and human rights give all the reasons for the youth to join the masses in their call for an end to President Duterte’s rising dictatorship. State neglect has never been more blatant; state violence has never been more rampant,” Kabataan Partylist Rep. Sarah Elago said in a statement.

The youth were later joined by different sectors as they assembled at España Boulevard in Manila and marched to Chino Roces bridge (former Mendiola bridge) and burned Duterte’s effigy.

Students from the Ateneo De Manila University (ADMU), De La Salle University (DLSU), University of Sto. Tomas (UST), Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP), San Sebastian College, and many other schools and universities also joined the protest in Mendiola. Students from different campuses of the UP system also held demonstrations such as UP Los Banos, UP Miag-ao in Iloilo, UP Cebu and UP Mindanao.

“We are here today to show that we are determined to fight for our rights, freedom and democracy,” said Elago during a short program in Morayta before they proceeded to Mendiola.

Text by ANNE MARXZE D. UMIL
Video by FRED DABU

The post ‘Youthquake 2.0’ | Youth and students show strength amid Duterte regime’s ‘rising tyranny’ appeared first on Bulatlat.