The Current National Context

Filipinos today are living in a society best characterized by socio-economic underdevelopment and political disunity.

The present government has accepted the truth that the country is facing fiscal crisis which is definitely far from over amidst allegations that some government officials committed massive plunder of the national treasury and further indebtedness brought by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s corruption before, during and after the 2004 elections.

In the urban centers, massive and successive demolition of urban poor communities to pave the way to infrastructure and development projects owned and financed mostly by foreign capitals continue to displace thousands of families.
In the rural areas, the more than a decade implementation of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program manifests the continuing failure of the government to guarantee genuine land reform, just wages, job security and social services for the rural poor.
In Negros Island for instance contrary to Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR) claims of high accomplishments in land distribution in Negros, a closer scrutiny of its actual land distribution as of 2004 reveals a measly 15 percent of its total targets of 246,465 hectares. Even DAR’s compulsory acquisition of commercial farms/plantations of 50 hectares and above, which should have started in 1998, has covered a dismal 656 hectares most of which are bank-foreclosed lands anyway.
Another irony is the fact that of 153,650 hectares of sugar lands marked by DAR Task Force Sugarland for land distribution, only 26,992 hectares of sugar lands are actually covered in Negros Occidental, the bastion of landlord monopoly, while 126,658 hectares are in Negros Oriental. Today, of the 1.33 million hectares total land area of Negros, 818,991.026 hectares are under private control. Of these, some 618,991 hectares are controlled by 46,574 landowners; about 200,000 hectares comprising 101 hectares and above are controlled by 486 families only. This practically placed around two-third of Negros lands are under private monopoly control.
The wanton destruction of environment through continuing promotion of large scale mining and logging put to risk the lives and food security of the next generations.

The perpetual subservience to US-led globalization policies and unwavering support to the immoral and unjust US wars of aggression and intervention has put the country in the reign of state-sponsored terror and repression through the Calibrated Preemptive Response (CPR) policy which brutally suppresses the people’s right to hold peaceful assemblies to redress grievances and legitimate demands as prescribed in the Philippine Constitution; and the unnecessary anti-terror bill which considers legitimate political dissent as an act of terrorism. Alarming to note also is the wave of ruthless killings, enforced disappearances and massive displacement of communities resulting into a clear pattern of repression and destroying the people’s efforts to have a life of abundance and dignity.

Aside from the fact that the country is divided into several islands where cultural barriers are real, disunity roots from severe disillusionment caused by economic deprivation and, corollary, the people’s feeling of powerlessness due to intense oppression and exploitation.