He remembers Butch Abad from the old days. He came across him from time to time in the course of hanging out with his older brother. Bimbo and Butch are old friends. Their affinity stretches back to the old days around the time of martial law when they worked as community organizers working along a principle of “people empowerment” back when this was not yet quite the common term it is now.
“People power” has come to refer to any sort of people’s movement from the “Arab Spring” to the most recent “Pro-democracy movement” in Hong Kong.
It was in the Philippines when the term first came to global use. Here, it unseated a well-established dictatorship, bringing about significant change in a country that for years languished under a reign of corruption and abuse.
Its underlying principle is that people can change themselves and the environment inside which they live and suffer. This they can achieve by strengthening common bonds and organizing themselves into functioning communities to pursue common goals. Its most profound example was the civil-rights movement in the United States, which eventually won equal rights for African-Americans.
He remembers his older brother handing him “Rules for Radicals” by Saul Alinski, which book describes strategies and tactics used by blacks and the poor to bring about change.
The core principle was that the powerful will never surrender to change. It must have to be fought for by the poor and the powerless themselves. And they could do it relatively peacefully inside the confines of laws such as they were.
He remembers liberation theology as a hopeful idea describing a vision of the Catholic Church as a true shepherd of the poor and the oppressed leading them from poverty, much in the same way Moses led his people from slavery.
People power was the tool that brought down the dictator. But the system of corruption and patronage Marcos laid down to cement his reign is a structural entity that refuses even now to die. And the deepest root of it is the people’s poverty. Abad described in his visit here the relationship between people power, corruption, patronage politics, and poverty.
He is, of course, the current budget secretary. He is not an uncontroversial figure. Those who are inclined to dislike the president dislike him even more. He is Noynoy with more brains, more experience, and darker of skin. In a better country, he could be president.
He would make a better one than his friend Noynoy. But as he suggests, we will not become a better country until we solve the poverty problem here.
Butch Abad and Noynoy go back a long way.
But few know how they came to know each other doing the rounds of entities like the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) and other Non-Government Organizations usually church-affiliated which funded social-development projects during and after the period of martial law.
Butch Abad and Bimbo Fernandez, now still Undersecretary of the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), also go back a long way.
They have a common interest in organizing poor communities thus enabling them to pursue their rights under the law; thus, priming the poor to eventually work their way out of the poverty which affects them now.
It is easy to understand why they are reviled by hard-core leftists who aspire for revolution. This revolution can only happen if the current system deteriorates to such an extent that there will be increasing hunger and poverty leading to chaos.
Since 2012, extreme poverty has actually decreased by 3% according to Abad. Albeit, they have still a long way to go.
It is much easier to understand why they are hated by the powerful in our country. Despite the criticism heaped upon the presidency of Noynoy Aquino there has actually been unprecedented growth in the economy. But this comes in the wake of Noynoy standing up to the most powerful and traditional interest groups in the country including the tobacco monopoly and the institutional Catholic Church.
As far as standing up to corruption goes, that battle is still in the news. The effects of Noynoy’s presidency are manifest giving us a good picture of what we may expect whenever government serves the people instead of powerful interest groups.
Butch Abad is not running for president. But he explains why 2016 is critical for us. If we do not put our own president to take over from Noynoy, powerful interest groups will put in their own and take the country back from us.
You can sort of guess who their candidate will be.