MALAYBALAY CITY (MindaNews/04 May) – Inclusive growth. That’s the theme of this year’s Asian Development Bank meeting held in Manila this week. It’s such a welcome theme except that it included everybody but the poor. At the very least, they have been kept away from the sight of ADB officials.
Reports said the government fenced a poor community along the route from the Ninoy Aquino International Airport to the Philippine International Convention Center, the venue of the meeting. Imelda Romualdez Marcos is no longer First Lady. Love live, Imelda. Her legacy lives on.
The flamboyant other half of the conjugal dictatorship became notorious for erecting walls along Manila’s slum areas during international events held in the nation’s capital. She made sure the foreign guests only saw “the good, the true, and the beautiful.” I don’t know if this is the English translation of “daang matuwid.” Or maybe, I just didn’t know that a straight path means one that hides the face of poverty.
Reports quoted Francis Tolentino, Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) chairman, as saying there was nothing wrong “with beautifying our surroundings.” There’s no beauty in it, Mr. Chairman, only shades of the same artifice that Imelda had used in her heyday.
All the while we were thinking that the ADB officials came to confront the issue of poverty. If we just wanted to show off, they had better held the meeting elsewhere. Maybe in another Asian country where no walls cover the urban squalor to give the impression that poverty is not the prevailing reality in the country.
Sorry, but the present government has confirmed what it wishes to deny by sustaining its predecessor’s conditional cash transfer program, and even increasing by tens of thousands the number of beneficiaries. Here’s some irony to it. According to the Human Rights Watch in a statement on Thursday, “Some of the poor families hidden from view are beneficiaries of a poverty reduction program financed by the bank,” referring to the ADB.
“By blocking off struggling families behind a fence, the Philippine government is sending the message that dire poverty can just be ignored,” said Jessica Evans, senior international financial institution advocate at Human Rights Watch. “Instead of trying to hide the poor, the Philippine government should be pressing the bank to tackle poverty head on.”
As funder of the dole-out anti-poverty program, the ADB surely knows the facts and figures. And since the number of beneficiaries has increased, the bank can only come to the conclusion that the government’s poverty reduction strategy needs a rethinking.
But a good strategy needs, among others, an acceptance on the part of government that poverty has worsened instead of contained or reduced. Building walls to cover the sight of slums is not accepting but ignoring the problem. (H. Marcos C. Mordeno writes mainly on the environment, human rights and politics. He can be reached at hmcmordeno@gmail.com)