Pinoy Politiko

Covid Christmas ‘21 to Elections ‘22: Whimpering Hope

2021-12-01T01:06:00.000-08:00

“Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the perfect present for the test of our civilization.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Almost two Christmases into the public awareness of the covid19 pandemic, the global acceptance of the fact that Covid vaccines remain effective at preventing hospitalization and death is still being challenged by those who refuse to be given the shot, now termed the pandemic of the unvaccinated (Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker, 11 September 2021)

“An unvaccinated pool of individuals provides a reservoir for the virus to continue to grow and multiply; therefore more opportunities for such variants to emerge.” - PNAS

The omicron variant is starting to spread in Europe and is called a “variant of concern” while studies on it are being sped up. (Inquirer. net)

Social acceptance is being shaped with information on social media growing haywire from all sources, with just a handful knowing how to discern truth from lies using the same technology as a tool. People start not wanting what they need and taking what they don’t need simply because the source aligns with what they think.

“What I fear has died is any acknowledgment of expertise as anything that should alter our thoughts or change the way we live.” –Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise; the federalist.com

As an exacerbating factor, political impediments such as unequal access to vaccines and other essential covid19 treatment and facilities contradict the national goal to bring the vaccines to more people, making herd immunity difficult to accomplish. Meanwhile, the situation continues to effect horrific personal and national tragedies we must hasten to control and avoid as individuals and as a nation.

Yet the season for joy is here and the Filipino spirit starts to soar bit by bit because we are still alive and kicking, a reason for thanksgiving. What the quality of life we live in an altogether different story: it has never been harder.

Simultaneously, the Presidential and Vice-Presidential elections 2022 caravan is on!

Personal tragedies and national losses

Gasping for breath and panic-stricken, a 76-year old mother was hurriedly half-carried by her eldest daughter into a tricycle to bring her to the hospital where the mother’s doctor attended. There, beyond the family’s comprehension, some twenty tanks of oxygen were administered round the clock to help the mother breathe while tests were made and results awaited. In contrast, the hospital warned the family of being unable to provide the sick with emergency treatment and medication unless a hundred thousand pesos were paid on the first day. For almost five consecutive days the expenses spiraled and the daily collection of a hundred thousand pesos drained the mother’s pension savings, choking the family by the throat. Initially diagnosed with severe pneumonia to having contracted the covid19 virus, it was difficult for the family to move the mother to a public hospital. A few days later tests were redone and the hospital staff said she was covid free! On her tenth day, I gave the mother a call from a long-distance when she told me softly, like an angel’s voice, she couldn’t take it anymore and waved me goodbye on the cellphone screen. I wept.

Before the month ended, she was in the hospital morgue, frozen until the money was raised for her bloated body’s release for a decent burial. The hospital couldn’t maximize her government insurance benefit since they didn’t have that certain procedure which is included in the covid19 benefit package. They casually gave this information while we all tossed our minds in disbelief! The family mourned, but will never forget. My sister died of the covid19 virus made horrific by the inhumanity brought by those in any form of power entrenched in our socio-economic systems.

Countless similar stories are on social media platforms and told from newsrooms all over the country while lawmakers spend time hearing cases of lawbreaking by associates of other law enforcers and other lawmakers, as the judicial players grapple with the paper chase to find evidence. Meanwhile, we continue to lose the lives of health care professionals and other citizens from all walks of life.

Still, the Filipino working class continues to break its back to survive even as they pay taxes, the ill-gotten wealth holders continue to plunder, and the poor are made poorest from disservice, hunger, sickness, and death.

Elections 2022: How we decide as a nation and significance of the youth vote

As the national election of 2022 draws near, we face yet another critical decision to make for ourselves and the nation. How do we do it? Let’s take a look at how we did it during the past presidential elections. Data analytics of a premier advertising and public relations agency presents three trait areas of presidential candidates that make people vote for them: the idol image, the heart image, and the mind image.

President Rodrigo Duterte got a landslide win in 2016 with almost 17 million popular votes or 39.01% of then registered voter turnout, with Millenials putting in more or less the same percentage into the Duterte winning votes.

Value system

Rooted primarily in personal alliance, kinship, obligation, friendship, religion, and commercial relationships, our political arena is laden with so much of these value system traits that breed nepotism and make political dynasties a norm. Alongside these favors come a feeling of superiority and privilege that inevitably result in abuse of power and corruption, leaving the people on the begging end of the continual disparity and imbalance of the justice system.

The significance of the youth vote

Young Filipino voters increase in number each election season and for the 2022 polls, they comprise 52% of registered voters or a staggering 31.41 million voters ( aged 18-40) out of 60.46M registered voters (COMELEC 2021). The future of this nation is in their hands.

The Millenials or those categorized as being born between 1980 and 1995 are generally characterized as idealistic while the Generation Z or those born –between 1996 and 2012 are said to be pragmatic. (en.wikipedia.org)

Probably most are in the BPO industry, married and with families of their own who need to seriously think about their own, more so of children’s future.

The youth thus is apt to ask: Do we have candidates who care to advance the working class and their conditions? Is there anyone who could realize the possibility of helping the poor by honestly giving what is due to them, making them self-sufficient to finally get out of the poverty cycle? Are there those who could help efficiently and effectively jumpstart the climate change campaign for a Generation One carbon emission-free generation by 2045 to lessen air pollution and eventually lessen health issues and probabilities of natural disasters? Do we have candidates who are willing to curb corruption from the bottom-up?

Yes, we demand leaders to do their job of putting the public interest first before anything follows because they are essentially representatives of the people they lead; let us make them remember lest they forget.

Decadence or recovery

Shall we see the tempest done and hope for the sunshine six years after the 2022 general elections? Or do we continue to go into darkness?

Parental and family influences still have a good footing in our young people’s decision-making process: parents and other adult significant others may help the young voters come up with an informed and enlightened decision for the coming 2022 polls. Peer group meets may be turned into healthy brainstorming sessions to aid members in the choices they will make especially among candidates for President and Vice-President.

Technology is an essential and crucial player in our time and the youth is more adept at reaching information via the internet. Researches may be done accordingly and guidance here is much needed to make a credible search possible.

Change for the better is a long time coming and whether it will come or not now lies more in youthful hands. Let us help them in this colossal task.

Once Upon a Refuge Camp

2021-06-19T20:45:00.001-07:00

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: “What are you doing for others?”- Martin Luther King

Uncertain Start

Late afternoon in January of 1980 I got on a service vehicle bound for Morong, Bataan snuggling myself within the space provided by my fellow riders. As we travelled from the central office of the National Housing Authority (NHA) nobody uttered a word and I wondered if I got on the wrong shuttle since I knew it was the Community Action and Social Services Development Group (CASSDEG) I was joining for the job. Actually, it was kind of a relief for me as I had time to look around and bask as we pass through the red orange sunset sky with the Bataan mountain range below it.

We got off for dinner at some point and here my seatmate and I finally fell into pleasantries, followed by almost everyone making their own tell tales like children suddenly out from their no-play hours. I didn’t know what to expect; my teammates were there for about a couple of weeks ahead of me but they looked like they hadn’t fully understood what they got into either. Yet on we went with the novelty of the experience an adventure to be had and the urgent need to earn a living our immediate push. Our destination: the Philippine Refugee Processing Center (PRPC).

The Clinic Floor

The rural health unit was a mini-clinic with a few beds to cater to patients. I was uncomfortable when we were provided with one of the two rooms for our accommodation, thinking there could be patients who would need the beds instead. May, the group head and supervisor was glad to see me (having worked together in an earlier NHA special project) and efficiently briefed me on my duties ahead.

It was almost midnight when I ended up on the floor with a banig (hand-woven mat of plant leaves, dried and dyed) and a pillow for my nonstop thinking head. A voice from someone on the cot beside my floor whispered, “Hey, why did you come?” to which I replied, “Need to work for pay; and maybe write about this.” She commented, “Great! I want to do the same.” That was how Estrell and I started to become the best of friends.

The Camp

The following morning, after trying to take a bath with clothes on in an open space with the deep well pump one needed to work for one’s water ratio, the team headed for the PRPC, some three kilometers away from where we were housed.

It was a big sprawl of 365 hectares of land, and buildings were newly built; it all looked a pleasant place to arrive at after days or weeks on boats adrift in the South China Sea into Philippine waters. The camp was divided into ten neighborhoods, each having ten or more buildings. In each building were ten billets; a billet was intended for 2 families, each with five or more members. There were allotted buildings for common toilets and baths for a neighborhood.

In a very short time, a big number of refugees from Laos and Cambodia came in groups and neighborhoods were organized to keep an ethnic group together. I was initially assigned in Neighborhood 1, a location for the Vietnamese refugees. Incidentally, my Vietnamese neighborhood faced a Cambodian neighborhood with just the main road separating the two groups. A neighborhood could house some 2,000 refugees from six to eight months until their processing have been completed and their countries of final destination ready to accept them. The camp, consequently, housed more or less 18,000 refugees at any given time.

Excerpt from UNHCR Philippines’ Nine Waves of Refugees in the Philippines by Laurice Peñamante, 07 July 2017:

Starting in 1980, the eight wave was made up of nationals from other Asian countries escaping regime changes in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. To accommodate the refugees, the Philippine Refugee Processing Center in Morong, Bataan was opened.

UNHCR worked with the Philippine government to shelter, train and ready the refugees for their new lives once relocated to foreign shores. Refugees were encouraged to attend classes to learn English as well as other education programs.

A total of 400,000 Indo-Chinese refugees escaped in boats to the Philippines from 1980 to 1994. Refugees were admitted into the country to be processed for relocation to other countries that expressed willingness to admit them, like the US, Canada, France, and Australia.

The Ship of Refugees

We were soon relocated inside the camp where we occupied a couple of buildings as staff housing. One night, the siren coming from Napot Point made us all wake up from our fatigue-disturbed sleep and made us hurriedly prepare to meet a shipload of Vietnamese refugees aboard a Philippine naval ship. Once at the dock, we entered the ship and saw the refugees in separate groups of families and friends, most still on the floor and looked as disoriented as we were when we awoke.

My teammates looked at one another and nodded our heads as a sign of “Let’s do this”. I spoke in almost shouting voice going through one side of the ship with “Speak English?” repeatedly, when a young man raised his hand in no time at all; I saw another hand raised on the side where one office mate asked the same question.

In about fifteen minutes we had our first set of refugee volunteers who could Speak English. They helped us interpret the next set of simple and clear instructions on how to proceed from the ship to the camp.

Before leaving the dock for the camp I smiled at my volunteer for the first time which he shyly returned. At that moment I knew the deeper reason why I was there: helping is man’s nature; it’s what make us human.

Reception, Community Organizing and ESL

Once at the camp, the refugees were guided to a big shed where they were made to form into lines and each staff went through an assigned line of refugees to assist the Reception, Processing and Deprocessing Group (REPRODEG). Here the roster of refugee names and other personal details was produced, after which we helped them acquire a bucketful of emergency items including blankets and pillows, and guided them to their assigned neighborhood and billets. Later, among the items provided were quinine tablets to guard against malaria since it was endemic in the place.

Community Organizing immediately started when refugees have settled in their neighborhood. We made them select a Neighborhood Leader as the main channel of communication from our office to the rest of the neighborhood members and a Food Leader who saw to it that all families received the food ratio due them. Weekly meetings were held with the leaders in attendance and at least a representative from each household.

Relaying information to the refugee population needed a regular group of English-speaking refugees in order to somehow break the language barrier. At this point, I was assigned to organize a group of interpreters and translators. They were instrumental in making our information materials be read in their native language.

Two of the Refugee Volunteer Group members were exemplary in the service: Phuoc and Hung. Doing work with Phuoc and Hung was a pleasure as they were taken by the community as knowledgeable, capable and charismatic young men. Phuoc was a jolly spirit and would usually turn a community session with laughter with his jokes; well, he would tell me when it was a joke or not. Once Hung helped as an interpreter while I gave a departure orientation to one of the first groups to leave the camp for resettlement. One of my lines was to remind them that the day they depart from the center could be one of their most special days, and Hung translated with the crowd clapping and smiling. In time there was the English as a Second Language training along with Cultural Orientation for the adult population, both provided by the International Catholic Migration Commission.

Overall center administration included a weekly inter-agency meetings where the management groups and VOLAGs (Voluntary Agencies) would come and share accomplishments, concerns, and plans for the following week. The NHA General Manager General Tobias (a Vietnam war veteran like the other group heads) served as Center Administrator and came personally in the weekly interagency meetings.

In due time I was made officer to assist the CASSDEG staff assigned in the ten neighborhoods, the camp now swelling with some 18,000 refugees to attend to. The international voluntary agencies and staff suddenly increased in number as well. Fides, our refreshingly lively new supervisor, was needed to assist our group head as camp responsibilities swelled. Work went whirlwind and uphill, like there was no time to waste and no time to breathe.

Center Life Was What It Was

There were highs. The refugees in the camp were talented, skillful, and endowed. As our working together became friendly, Hung shared that he was sad to have made the decision to leave his father behind, as it was his father’s intention to keep the family business even during the turmoil. A Laotian couple who were helping us serve their countrymen at the center once invited us for a meal, during which they shared that the wife is descended from the royal line.

At certain weekends, the Vietnamese neighborhoods held night cafes, ones that made them remember Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City). I had a treat of their coffee made in a shot glass (one that Filipino males would use when drinking gin) made out of instant coffee and condensed milk concentrate. I tried it a few times and got a kick out of it. Our Laotian couple taught us how to cook the “eternal” sardine ration and made it so palatable I brought the recipe home and made it a sardine treat everytime.

February of 1981, the first ethnic festival was held in the camp, the Vietnamese lunar New Year, Tĕt. The refugees were excited and glad as they marched along the center main road around the camp, much to our surprise and delight.

One of our staff, Bing, was tasked to initiate a cross-cultural activity for the international staff and Saturday nights of songs and dances became highly anticipated and appreciated.

There were lows. One day at almost midnight, a staff from the Area Supervisor’s Group (ASG) came knocking at our door to inform us that we were needed to settle trouble between two neighborhoods, one of Vietnamese refugees and another of the Khmers. It was reported that they were throwing stones over each other’s neighborhood roofs which was fueled by an argument between representatives from each group.

Immediately we requested the neighborhood leaders and some members to come to a meeting where I was at my harsh self during the proceedings. We never went too much into who or why as much as how the event would affect the processing of their resettlement; that it could mean delay adding to the length of stay in the camp. Further, they dreaded the thought of the "Monkey House", the term they coined to indicate the camp jail for offenders. The event never happened again.

One of the saddest experiences in working for the refugees was to be informed that a refugee has taken her life while in the camp, and that the most one could do was to sit beside the family while they grieve before their child’s wooden casket in one small building used to hold the wake.

I was grateful then as much as now that a new voluntary agency, the Community Mental Health Services (now Community and Family Services International) was established in 1981 to attend to the mental health needs of the refugee population. Thanks to Steve.

The staff was not spared from personal losses. My friend’s father died while she was working in the camp and we lost one staff to a vehicular accident when they were bound to attend Sunday mass in the town church. There were moments when it felt like too much to handle, missing one’s family and loved ones. The first time I went home after almost two months in the camp, my mother couldn’t recognize me from our gate; I was sunburnt and burnt out. Yet, work has to be done.

At the time when Phuoc and Hung were to leave the camp for resettlement, we took a moment to personally wish each other good luck. Incidentally, it was my 3-day off and I took the opportunity to take one of the buses bound for the Manila International Airport on my way home to Quezon City. I didn’t pick the bus where my two volunteers rode but at one stopover they saw me on my bus where I couldn’t bring myself to speak and all I could do was wave them goodbye. I found out later that Phuoc, in Vietnamese, means “good luck” and Hung means “spirit of hero”, as apt as it could get.

Papal Blessing

One rare occasion we were excited to dress up for an event was during the center visit of Pope John Paul II on 21 February 1981. We, the staff in community organizing, helped the refugee community to prepare and meet the Pope with each ethnic group bearing a gift to offer. It was indeed a timely call for compassion for the displaced population and a call for other nations to assist in rebuilding their lives.

Today, the Replica of Papal Shrine stands near the actual ground where we witnessed the Pope bestow his blessings on us, the international staff, and the Indochinese refugees in attendance. On 2nd of May 2011, this replica was inaugurated, the same day that Pope John Paul II was beatified a saint in Rome.

The Humanitarian in Us: A Refugee Haven

At present, the world holds 59.5 million people who are victims of forced displacement. Up to this time the Philippines has not wavered in its responsibility since the first wave of refugees were sheltered in the country.

UNHCR Philippines’ Nine Waves of Refugees in the Philippines by Laurice Peñamante, 07 July 2017: Then came the “Tiempo Ruso” (Time of the Russians): a second wave of 6,000 White Russians were welcomed under President Elpidio Quirino. The White Russian community in Shanghai, China were wary of approaching communist forces to the city and sent out a letter asking for refuge to countries across the world. Only the Philippines replied and granted their request. It was an important act that called for a regime for the international protection of refugees. The White Russians who settled in the Philippines set a precedent for the amendment of the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. The Philippines stood out as the only nation who expressed willingness to accept them even while the young republic was still reeling from the havoc of war.

My experience in refugee service has come in full circle as I happen to marry the grandson of Ernesto Quirino, the President’s brother and the father of my husband’s mother.

I was at the PRPC during its first two years and would not have opted for any other time in it.

I am grateful to my colleagues, supervisors, and heads of offices and agencies with whom I had the privilege to work for the refugee service and I’m glad I found the right time to write this experience to celebrate World Refugee Day today, 20th of June 2021.

In retrospect, we appreciate and value moments better when they have become memories.

The Head of Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in the Philippines Yasser Saad:

“I have served with UNHCR in many countries, each with their own protection needs. What makes Filipinos special is that they seem to naturally and intuitively understand and empathize with people who have been uprooted from their homes by war, conflict, violence, persecution, and calamities.”

COVID-19 Vaccine: Give the Shot a Shot

2021-05-28T04:39:00.000-07:00

“In science credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not the man to whom the idea first occurs.” - Francis Galton

This Can’t Happen but It Does

COVID19 started as a whisper in the 2019 Christmas air; but nothing was confirmed and we couldn’t mentally accommodate something so bad turning up in the midst of our festivity. When reports had it that two Chinese citizens landed on Philippine soil bringing with them a deadly virus, all we could do was to grapple with all sorts of information and make all kinds of speculation. Meanwhile the leaders of the world did seem to be doing their exercise in the playground of power in trying to address the crashing of a health crisis on all of us. With little factual information at hand we, in ignorance, still thought it wasn’t going to be so grave and acted normal in the hustle and bustle of daily life.

Vaccination: Do or Die and Let Die

At once, 500 thousand people died all over the world during the first 6 months of the outbreak, (Frontiers) with the Philippines reaching 19,946 deaths from 03 Jan 2020 to 23 May 2021 (WHO Philippines). The most painful part of the death toll lies in the loss of crucial personalities in the health care system who could have helped greatly in our battle to curb the the epidemic – heads and key officials in health care centers and institutions of epidemiology, immunology, and other vital areas of disease control and eradication. These, while scientists take the speediest effort to formulate an antidote in the form of a vaccine that can be widely used around the globe.

Now we have them! And the fear of having ill-effects from being vaccinated drowns the fear for the disease itself.

If only to calm us down and think objectively about taking the vaccine and study what could be its harmful side-effects, the literature COVID Research: A Year of Scientific Milestones, cite observable benefits of and facts on vaccines, including the following:

Reduced symptoms and serious illness.
Full vaccination reduces risk of infection by 90%.
Vaccines trigger immune responses.
People vaccinated for at least 21 days could still test positive but viral transmission from them to other household members was 40%-50% lower than transmission in households in which the first person to test positive had not been vaccinated.
Vaccinated adults protect unvaccinated kids.
Older people are at higher risk of getting infected twice.
Mutations are linked to increased transmissibility and immune evasion.
Transmission is more likely in low-income areas where people move more when they were supposed to stay at home due to jobs outside their abode, jobs that cannot be performed online, as is true for those in the underground economy.
In Chile, 29 April, (G.E. Mena et al. Science https://doi.org/f9b4; 2021) death rates were found higher in low income areas especially under age 80 than in high income areas likely due to inadequate testing, and this group was likely to experience deaths outside health care facilities due to insufficient hospital beds.

Life is a risk. Learn to weigh your risks, if not for yourself, for others.

Ye Men of Little Faith, We Owe our Lives to Vaccines!

There is evidence to show that the Chinese started the use of smallpox inoculation 1000 CE (www.historyofvaccines.org) before the first successful smallpox vaccine was developed as introduced in 1796 by Edward Jenner, an English physician and scientist.

Two hundred twenty five years (225) years of global vaccination and all of us entertain the initial delusion of suffering and death from having the very armor to defy them. Let us then appreciate how vaccines have been developed to save human lives through time:

To date, smallpox is the only human disease to have been eradicated by vaccination. The disease is estimated to have killed up to 300 million people in the 20th century.
Through vaccination, wild poliovirus has been declared eradicated in 2019. During the peak of polio, it killed half a million people every year worldwide in the 1940s and 50s.
In 1971, the vaccine MMR was developed by Dr. Maurice Hilleman to fight against mumps, measles, and rubella. Measles claim 20 million lives a year, primarily in developing areas of Africa and Asia.
In the 1980s, vaccines against Hepatitis B and Haemophilus Influenza type B were developed and recommended for public use. Hepatitis B kills 884,000 every year.
The list goes on to include vaccines against flu and pneumonia. Pneumonia accounts for 15% of all deaths among children under 5 years old. (WHO)

Save Us; Give the Shot a Shot!

As of 16 May 2021, , 2,778,677 vaccine doses have been administered in the Philippines, as new cases average 6,000 infections daily, giving a total of 1.18 million cases recorded, while having 1.1 million recoveries.

The Covid19 vaccine develops Individual immunity to the disease and this condition is essential to attaining herd immunity, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely, which will, in all probability, result to community protection.

What are you waiting for, next Christmas? It will surely come but could come without you. Decide and act now.

Helpful Resources about the COVID-19 Vaccine in the Philippines:

Vaccine FAQs from the Department of Health

Photo by Thirdman from Pexels.