Arrested development
AFTER the drug addicts, President Duterte has pointed at “tambays” as new targets for the police. Mass arrests could reach 10,000 by this weekend.
It is apparent that Duterte has become both desperate and more brutal at cracking down, arresting and hiding the ugly economic conditions in the country under his tyrannical, pro-oligarch misrule.
For the arrest of “tambays” is not only highly suspect for its legality — public interest lawyers led by Neri Colmenares have questioned its constitutionality. It is highly suspect for its shameless fascism, a tyrannical response to growing and worse poverty levels in decades.
We’re familiar with “labor flexibility schemes” — Endo, pakyawan, arawan. Working people are being forced to make do with whatever jobs are available.
In fact, the jobs have become scarce under Duterte. People are forced by this circumstance to wait and chill, to put it figuratively.
Fairly recently, Ibon Foundation pointed out that “going on its second year, the Duterte administration saw the largest contraction in employment in 20 years.”
“Data from the Philippine Statistical Authority (PSA) shows that the number of employed Filipinos fell by 663,000 to 40.3 million in 2017 from the year before. This is the largest contraction in employment in 20 years or since the 821,000 job losses in 1997. The number of unemployed rose by 66,000 to 4.1 million. The unemployment rate has also risen to some 9.2 percent and remains by far the highest in ASEAN,” Ibon said in a statement, after recomputing the government’s data.
Ibon said that labor force participation rate (LFPR) dropped to 63.7 percent, the lowest in over three decades since the 63.1 percent rate during the severe economic crisis in 1985.
In the results of the April 2018 Labor Force Survey released just this month, the Philippine Statistics Administration disclosed that underemployment increased by 0.9 percentage points to 17 percent in April 2018, compared to April 2017.
A Rappler report on the PSA findings said that the 17 percent underemployment rate represents 6.9 million workers who, by the definition of the PSA, are already working but are still looking for more work or longer working hours. Underemployed individuals work for less than 40 hours a week.
It also reported that the number of jobless Filipinos is estimated to be at around 2.36 million with the following regions posting the highest rates of joblessness: Ilocos (7.3 percent), CALABARZON (6.6 percent) and the National Capital Region (6.4 percent) posted the highest unemployment rate.
Where these millions of people should go in between looking for jobs (for the unemployed) or more employment (for the unemployed) to avert arrest, Duterte doesn’t say.
Surely, our urban poor and the lower middle class who comprise the bulk of the jobless and the underemployed don’t have receiving rooms, recreation rooms, bars, verandas, and gardens at their humble homes. They don’t have golf club memberships so they could while away the time in the greens.
Bea Arellano, the chair of urban poor alliance Kadamay, charges — and I think we’d agree with her: “At just about every turn of the Duterte government’s policy making, the thrust is to criminalize the activity of the poor and homeless while offering none of the things they sorely lack.”
“Tinutulak ni Duterte ang pagtingin sa mahihirap na kriminal. Hindi krimen ang maging mahirap. Krimen ang pagpapahirap sa kapwa. Bakit ba may mga tambay? Dahil numero uno ang Pilipinas sa rehiyon sa unemployment at homelessness. Nilalabag ang pinakabatayang karapatan na mabuhay ng disente sa sariling lugar kasabay ng pagkakait ng nakabubuhay na sahod at napakaraming tiwangwang na bahay sa homeless.”
The recent brutal killing of a “tambay,” Arellano said, reflects the Duterte regime’s current attitude towards poor Filipinos. “They are made to look expendable in the eyes of the public without any remorse for violating their political and economic rights.”
I leave you with this sociological insight from Professor Sarah Raymundo of the University of the Philippines, which is too good not to share:
“I loved how they asked me to explain the culture of tambay among Filipinos. I argued that there is no such “culture.” Tambay, a colloquialism for stand by is part and parcel of Filipino labor tied to capitalist time.
“Here, we encounter at least two types of tambay: The precariously employed Filipino worker and the unemployed Filipino citizen (deprived of social services and rights). Tambay who dwell in urban centers are the target of this new policy. They are urban poor precariously employed or unemployed Filipinos, mostly slum dwellers who are out in the streets to commune with neighbors or co-workers.
“Why would anyone stay inside of his makeshift house where there’s hardly any place to move, why would anyone stripped of his/her right to decent housing and employment choose to suffocate inside one’s house? Where would port workers go to wait for their next shift? Why are poor people being criminalized for reaching out to each other, relating to each other and survive each day of Duterte in power?
“So there’s no such thing as a tambay culture. That practice is a result of workers ways of dealing with precarious work, it’s how the jobless deal with joblessness, and joblessness as we all know is a result of a backward nonindustrial economy based on export orientation and import dependence.
“Most of the unemployed urban poor Filipinos come from rural areas, homes they’ve had to flee due to landlessness and militarization of the countryside.”