Mobilizing the people and preparing for floods, draught and hurricanes
By Sonny Melencio
Chairperson, Partido Lakas ng Masa (PLM, Philippines)
I would like to extend our organization’s gratitude to the International Left Forum and the
Left Party of Sweden for inviting us and allowing me to talk on this conference.
The Philippines was ravaged by typhoon Ondoy on September 26 last year. Up to
now the country is still recovering from the calamity. According to official reports, the
typhoon has displaced 794,404 families and left 288 people dead. On the day of the
typhoon, one month’s rainfall poured down in a matter of a few hours.
Urban centers such as Metro Manila were badly affected with over 80% of the
city under water. In some areas the water even reached 10 feet deep, so people had to
seek refuge on the roof of their houses. Areas such as Pasig and Cainta remain flooded
up to this day.
Around 36 people are buried in the mud in an urban poor community called
Bagong Silangan, QC. In Marikina, all our members and organizers suffered from the
floodings. Two children of Aling Linda, one of our women community organizers in Sto.
Domingo, QC, perished in the flood as a result of electrocution, an especially dangerous
problem during flooding.
The media has been pointing the blame for the floods to squatters. They said the
floodwaters in Cainta, Taytay, Pasig, and other low-lying areas away from Laguna Lake
refuse to go away because the drainage pipes are blocked by non-biodegradable garbage
thrown by ‘squatter’ residents who lived near the esteros, creeks, and rivers.
First, it’s not entirely true. The Save Sierra Madre Mountain Campaign Network
has released a satellite photo of Laguna de Bay showing that the lake was full of fish pens
that the local authorities allowed to be constructed by highly connected individuals. Of
course the poor has settled along the banks of the lake, but they could not be faulted for
this; the living condition they have to endure is deplorable at all levels.
Second, according to studies made by Architech Felino Palafox (1977), the
government should have not allowed real estate developers in flood prone areas without
construction of needed infrastructures and facilities. The land development of big real
estate in these areas resulted in the destruction and loss of waterways. Some of the areas
he pinpointed are the western shores of Laguna de Bay; Marikina Valley; Marikina
banks; and the coastal shores of Manila Bay to the north of Manila.
Third, the rainfall pattern has changed and it is expected that there will be more
volume of rainfall during typhoons. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
said that there has been a rapid increase of sea level because of global warming. The rate
of increase has been from 1 millimeter to 3millimeter every year. On top of these, the
infrastructures, especially the drainage system, are shabby and not planned in accordance
to the changing rainfall pattern.
In the study of Ramon Faustino Maniscan Sales, Jr. in March 2006 at the UP
School of Urban and Regional Planning, because of ASLR (accelerated sea level rise),
big percentage of Cavite City will disappear if the rise continues. Over the past three
decades, because of unabated degradation of its coastal resource base and habitats and
increasing socio-economic threats such as poverty and inequality, Cavite City has been
confronted with climate risks. Among these are changes in rainfall and temperature
patterns, increases in Manila Bay’s mean sea-level, and tropical cyclones of varying
frequency and intensity.
Finally, although experts have already warned the government of bloody
calamities even before they happened – such as the landslide in Albay or the flooding of
Ilo-ilo – the government has failed to prepare people for disasters. There has been no
central state planning and immediate disaster risk preparedness, reduction or adaptation.
The government has not put in needed funds for these, and has appeared clueless in
planning settlements, industry, and agricultural developments which tend to disturb the
components of the natural cycle through land use diversions/conversions and the use,
reuse and discharge of wastes into the natural surface water and groundwater pathways.
Typhoons and hurricanes will continue to batter the Philippines. After Ondoy, the
Philippines has been visited by a number of typhoons almost in the same intensity as
Ondoy. One of these has wreaked heavier damage to the country. Typhoon Pepeng hit
the Philippines just eight days after Ondoy, killing 341 people and affecting more than
880,175 families. Pepeng, which stayed for 10 days in the country, also dropped more
rain on Metro Manila that slowed the cleanup and made conditions worse.
Since February this year, however, a new crisis is developing the country. The
Philippines has been reported by CDRC as now suffering from drought caused by El
Nino, a phenomenon brought about by the warming of the Pacific Ocean, which is likely
to last up to June-July 2010.
Water in Magat dams in Isabela are now 20 meters below normal level, according
to hydrologists from PAGASA; in Capiz, El Niño has already caused drought from
August to December last year with rainfall below normal; in Negros Occidental, 7,000
hectares of rice farms and 343 hectares of corn farms are already drying up. Thousands
of farmers in 14 provinces in Luzon and the Visayas are now suffering from drought
caused by El Niño which is likely to last until July this year.
People’s response to calamities
During the typhoon Ondoy, we transformed the PLM office into a relief
operations center. We mobilized all our forces not only in Metro Manila but in other
cities and provinces into teams that raised goods, money and resources for our relief
operations. We asked all our mass organizations from labor, urban poor communities,
schools and offices to send volunteers for the relief operations. Each organization also
did its own resource generation campaign for the relief operations. We got support from
everywhere.
On top of the support we got from your party, which helped a lot in the operations
expenses of our forces, we got an infusion of more than P1 million pesos worth of goods
donated by the Spanish Embassy in Manila. All in all, we were able to provide for goods
(food, clothing, kilos of rice, water, cooking oil, canned goods of sardines and corned
beef, etc.) for 15,000 families, although our initial count of families needing support and
assistance were as high as 60,000 to 70,000 families. Our operations started on last week
of September and went on till the holidays (Christmas 2009 and New Year 2010).
However, I don’t think our forces (or the Left’s forces put together) would be
enough to cover the calamity areas and to do relief among those affected. These should
be the work of government. But government could not be found during the height of the
crisis. When it finally got the support from international funding agencies, most of the
relief items got stuck up in the government warehouses, because there were not enough
volunteers. But a number of volunteers exposed in the Internet that the problem was the
bureaucratism in the government welfare institutions and also corruption (hoarding of
goods for selling to private groups). This is the reason why we got some materials from
the Spanish embassy; they could not trust the Philippine government institutions to do the
relief operations.
That is why our campaign during the calamities, while we do relief operations, we
called on the government to do what it should do. We continued with rallies and
demonstrations asking the government to release the calamity funds to the people, a fund
which has been the source of corruption in government; to subsidize or put in price
control the prices of food, medicines and all basic needs; to give funds to families of
those dead; temporary housing for the displaced; moratorium on demolition of so-called
squatter areas; and moratorium on low-cost housing. One of the main calls is to channel
the debt payment to social welfare and reconstruction projects for the poor. Also to use
the debt payment to purchase equipments that can upgrade the calamity monitoring
capacity of the country.
It has to be said that while the calamities affected everyone, the hardest hit are
always the poor. Many factories have closed and tens of thousands of workers remained
jobless for almost four months. The urban poor people did not only lose their houses
when it got washed away by the flood; the makeshift houses got washed away together
with its occupants, sometimes the whole family getting washed away by the rampaging
flood. There are television footages of these unfortunate events.
While the well-to-do rushed to the high-rise hotels and buildings to stay the night
and the next few days, the poor has nowhere else to go. In fact, when the floods
subsided, they could not even go back home. Their communities were barricaded by
police and security guards who wanted them to leave and vacate the land. So the urban
poor residents got hit twice: by the flood which destroyed properties and relatives, and by
the prohibition for them to come back home and rebuild their lives and resources.
Systemic problem
The government’s response or non-response during these calamities also
highlighted the problems related to the social system. Capitalism saves property not
people. Why was it possible in Cuba to organize the evacuation of more than a million
people in Havana during the onslaught of a typhoon much destructive than Ondoy or
Katrina? Why was Cuba able to prevent that kind of calamity which wiped out thousands
upon thousands of people in Manila and New Orleans through organized evacuation? In
Manila and New Orleans, it’s everyone on his own rescue. It’s only through the goodness
of humankind that people were able to help each other, otherwise its everyone on his own
rescue. I also remember how not many weeks ago, China was hit by an earthquake
disaster. But the state swiftly responded, and even the prime minister of China was seen
leading the rescue operation. In Manila, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her
minions were well ensconced in the Malacanang palace during the height of Ondoy.
We also have to understand that the environment crisis is a manifestation of the
deep crisis of global capitalism – of imperialism – along with the economic and social
crisis of the imperialist system that is wreaking havoc on poor and working people
around the world. This environment crisis threatens the very survival of humanity.
Already tens of thousands of lives have been destroyed as a result of it. Tipping points
have already been reached and breached.
Imperialism or the global capitalist system is not sustainable. Nor can it be
reformed to serve for the interests of the many. The system must be changed and a truly
social and sustainable system must replace it – a system based on the highest levels of
human solidarity, based on fundamentally different human relations with each other and
the environment. We call this alternative society socialism.
Finally, while we applaud the solidarity of the poor during the period of calamity,
we know that such collective endeavor needs to be elevated to a systemic approach if we
want to immediately prevent and prepare for disaster. Socialism organizes society on a
much, much higher scale as it uses the state’s structures and resources to undertake
massive relief and rescue operations for the people. We might not be able to solve the
deterioration of the environment, but we might be able to lessen its impact on the people,
arrest the destruction of society and earth, and rehabilitate and rescue humanity.
Capitalism is the problem; socialism is the only solution.