Are we ashamed of the poverty of the Filipino?

In 1977 the Philippines hosted the World Law Conference that was held at the new Philippine International Convention Center (PICC). Back then; I was still a law student at the University of San Carlos (USC) Law School. Since my late father, Atty. Jesus S. Avila joined the conference, he asked me to come along. So I became the school’s official delegate for the World Law Conference. It was at a time when Hong Kong, Singapore and our ASEAN neighbors envied the Philippines for none of them had any such magnificent International Convention Center, which was created by Presidential Decree No. 520 during the time of the conjugal Marcos Dictatorship.

As we arrived in the old Manila Domestic Terminal, we took a taxi to our hotel. Along the way, we passed by that river near the airport… and we noticed that huge wooden slats were constructed and painted with white along the sides of the bridge. Later we learned that the Marcos Dictatorship did not want the foreign delegates to see the shanties and squatters of Manila by blocking their view with the white wooden slats.

It was in my book, sheer hypocrisy of the Marcos Dictatorship who painted a rosy and glamorous picture of the Philippines… but unashamedly hides the real truth about the poverty of Filipinos. That was way back in the 1970’s when the Philippine economy were still better than most of ASEAN. Forty years later, the majority of our people still wallow in abject poverty.

This is something that our political establishment has to answer for. After all, all of them bar none; ran for public office using the name of the poor in vain. Yet, the politicians have become extremely rich beyond their wildest dreams, while the ordinary Filipino has remained poor. Why do you think that the ordinary Filipino, if given the opportunity would leave the comforts of their home to find work in foreign countries? Four decades ago, the Filipino Diaspora started and four decades later, it hasn’t stopped!

In a World Bank report on poverty published last May 2014, the Philippines had more than 25 million people living in extreme poverty. This is why it should be a heinous crime for our political leaders to steal government funds using the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) and the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP). Yet only three Senators, Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada and Bong Revilla has been incarcerated and charge… the rest of our political crooks are getting away with the money!

So back to the Year 1977 when I attended the World Law Conference and found out for myself the great effort by the Marcos Dictatorship to hide from the sight of foreign delegates the plight of the poor Filipinos who lived in shanties by clinging to the riverbanks.

In a week’s time, the Philippines will be welcoming with open arms, Pope Francis, the leader of the billion strong Catholic Church. And preparations are well underway to show to the Pope that indeed, we are truly Asia’s only Catholic nation. Quite unexpectedly, even Muslim Imams have gone out of their way to welcome the Vicar of our Lord Jesus Christ, after all, Muslims believe that Jesus was a prophet.

However what hasn’t changed is the way that the Philippine government tries to hide the true reality that is the Philippines today. I don’t know if there are efforts once again to hide those shanties using those wooden blinders on the road from the airport; however I read a news report that has become viral in the social networking sites that the City of Pasay has been feverishly at work trying to remove beggars, especially children from the streets of Pasay. Their official reason was that, they were doing this to prevent the syndicates from taking advantage of the papal visit.

At this point, we do not know whether this is only happening in Pasay City only or whether they are doing this upon orders from Malacañang. Although I suspect that the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) is behind this. From that report, we learned that these syndicates use those poor children to beg on the streets in return for food and shelter. Mind you, we too have the same problem in Cebu City and we can only second-guess that this problem isn’t exclusive to Pasay City alone. In short, we knew this a long time ago… so why is it only now that the DSWD is doing something about this problem?

While it may sound like the DSWD is doing a noble job in rescuing those innocent children from the clutches of those syndicates. But on the other hand, clearing our streets from those syndicates that uses children to beg was something that they should have done a long time ago. From the way things look, it is too late in the hour for the Philippine government to do something to hide the poverty of the Filipino people. Let me say it here, we Filipinos shouldn’t be ashamed of our poverty. It should be our politicians who should be ashamed for causing the poverty of the Filipino people.