Do you believe in signs?

I do subscribe to this idea that a greater power communicates to us in so many ways. This includes giving signs - a series of seemingly random events purporting to give answers. And what gives it such enigma is the order and the timing of these events seem to be so orchestrated or designed to precision that it could never just be mere happenstance. It might be what most of us call the feeling of being at the right place at the very precise moment. It might just be the brain playing tricks but we can never discount the fact that it does happen.

We often invoke it when we make big life decisions. In my case, I did not really ask for any signs, it just appeared.

It was in the morning of August 14, 2013. As I was scrolling down my facebook feeds, my brother’s chat message icon popped out.

Then my extraordinary experience started. This was beyond ordinary when a 24-year-old student applies alone for a Schengen visa. It is stressful and anxiety-ridden experience, not to mention the long wait for the news. Anyway, I considered this event my first sign because minutes, just minutes before my brother’s chat. I watched a Rome Reports clip on Pope Francis waiving at the crowds in St. Peter’s Square. Mere coincidence but things got a bit interesting. 

The second sign appeared after I submitted all my papers. It was around 2:30 in the morning. I was about to settle in bed after a long tedious study night. I turned on the tv just to ease my senses. Then as I traversed from channel to channel, I landed on Fox news at the most perfect time. The announcer said “buongiorno! To the people watching in Italy, thank you for watching fox news through Italiano tv!”what are the odds? Right as I landed on fox, this message appeared. Come on! Maybe again it’s my mind just trying to connect patterns.

Surprisingly, the morning after, the Italian Embassy called asking for some clarifications. And they called just seconds before I arrived from a chore in Copya de Oro. What would have happened if I stayed longer?

The final sign came 2 days after that call.  After my NSTP processing session, I hurriedly looked for some food to eat. I was starving so as hundreds of other students. No seats were available but luckily I managed to squeeze myself in one table with some 2^nd year law students who are also my friends. As we were so busy eating and chatting, a friend seated in front of me opened her bag and removed her sachet of coffee. And behold, it was the Italian flavor of Kopiko’s European coffee series named Kopiccino. And to top it of, the colors of the Italian flag shimmered in the choco granule sachet. I just laughed the moment I saw it. I even kept the sachet with the Italian flag out of wonder and fascination of how these things could even be possible.

On Tuesday, October 8, I got my passport back at around 10:30 am – approved.

Will someone notice the empty chair? SK abolition

Like in a Frankenstein movie, this institution is thrown back to the laboratory so its creators can assess whether it’s best to just kill it altogether or reincarnate it into a new body.

The nature and impact of the Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) has been the subject of a long drawn debate with all-too-familiar arguments, but let us just take a minute to see if one day, it will come to an end. Congress finally decided to kill it. Will our society be any different? Will it be better off? It can only keep us guessing. But let us try to imagine what would it be like if it would happen.

For a start, it would save a lot of money. For postponing the SK elections alone, COMELEC is said to have saved P 100 million. Furthermore, if we consider the yearly cost of the Sangguniang Kabataan, which is 10% of the Barangay fund, it would be a staggering aggregate amount of cost reduced or diverted into other expenditures. Let us not forget about their honorarium and educational trip counter parts, which may now be added on to the salaries of barangay tanods and street cleaners. Bottom line, the financial breather would be a definite practical consequence of the SK’s death. Will this make us better off?

With no more “barangay-based” political leadership formation opportunity, the army of 420,028 SK officers will be looking for leadership experience elsewhere if they so desire. They could find it in schools, churches, advocacy groups and so many other youth volunteer groups. It would at least free them from the unavoidable negative influence of barangay politicking, which would tend to pollute their concept of public governance. They could release their energies without thinking of any political calculation and reputation. Much more, they can freely form organic groups – one thing the youth does best - unburdened by their parents’ political plans for them. Will this form our future leader better?

Barangay Sports tournaments would nose dive. In a 2007 study conducted by UNICEF, sports tournaments are the number one reported activity of SK. It comprises 32% of all SK projects nation-wide followed by infrastructure and the environmental projects, which are only 19% each – almost a mile apart from the top 1. This number speaks of volumes. It speaks about priority and quality of representation or the lack thereof as well as where the money is being poured in. So when the SK is gone, so as our beloved sports events. Would an unutilized barangay basketball court be such a depressing scene?

With these rough projections, I do not know if it would be enough to paint a reasonable answer to whether we are better of without the SK. Surely in principle, the death of the SK is a national tragedy. It would be a departure from a proud tradition of youth empowerment, which is not only constitutionally commanded, but also internationally praised. On the other hand, sustaining it with its present form would produce mixed results and a whole lot of division.

In the end, we all agree that the soul of this body should be kept warm and true. Time has come that its reincarnation into a better form is an utmost national concern. Our communities might feel no different in its absence but it does not mean we should forge its worth. There is always a social good in building a lasting mechanism that converts the youths’ ideas and energies into public policy and communal action.

YOUTH AND CITY-BUILDING

(My 2nd contribution to mark.com.ph)

Every time Barangay elections loom, so as the debate to abolish or reform the Sangguniang Kabataan.

In its bare design, the Sangguniang Kabataan is said to be a source of Filipino pride.  Other nations point to it as a lead example of a nation’s commitment to youth empowerment in public governance – an institutional innovation that is in the forefront of the world. However, this source of pride abroad has an all too familiar murky reputation at home which includes being tagged as the training ground of corruption or derided as merely an expensive unit of sports event organizers. But as all institutions are, there are the good and the bad practices. So as the nation debates on the direction of much needed reforms, there is no reason why in the local we cannot push through our own reforms.

The Youth Council

Several bills such as Senate Bill No. 131 authored by Senator Francis Pangilinan and House Bill No. 591 authored by our own Representative Rufus Rodriguez and Abante Mindanao Representative Maximo Rodriguez, Jr have been filed mandating local government units to create a youth development council. But up to this day, they have stayed as bills. But this did not stop several Local Government units to adopt the idea through a local ordinance. This policy-recommending body is an assembly of the varied sectors of the youth namely: (1) the out of school (2) student councils of colleges and high schools (3) faith based youth (4) community based youth (5) Sangguniang Kabataan and joined by senior city hall officials. The details on the number of representatives, accreditation and internal procedures are dealt with by the individual ordinances.

The proposed City Youth Council

Representation and Synergy

This design recognizes one vital fact – the youth naturally organize themselves be it in churches, schools or barangays. The council finds its strength in the inherent quality of the youth to socialize, organize and specialize. Harnessing this cohesion and elevating it into formal sources of governance ideas hold promising potential. In this approach, determining youth policy and its resource allocations is not left to the Sangguniang Kabataan alone but it is now shared by these varied sectors whose own unique and immersed perspective in their specific area of advocacies brings rich policy discussions. With this close proximity between the youth and the city leaders, s youth group specializing in indigenous craft-making can raise a point on needed market access while a youth group specializing in digital marketing can contribute in city tourism promotions. Aside from engaging with city leadership, this also opens an opportunity for youth groups to complement each other to add value to their efforts. In the example, the marketing group can help promote the craft-making group which will in turn help the city promote its youth livelihood program. The combination of talents to produce good fruits is endless if only such venue to meet and engage is provided. The council is a laboratory of youth synergy combining talents and bringing fresh ideas to city hall.

Mobilization and Integration

More than just recommending things on paper, the council also acts as the pivot for massive and integrated youth mobilization. Generally youth groups are organized to forward a social cause or set of ideals but most often than not, they are made manifest in sporadic and one-shot outreach activities. One example is a tree planting activity that is made without considering the city reforestation plan, or a tutorial program in a community that is better off if served with a feeding program. These are good efforts that could have made greater impact if such are well placed inline with a city strategic intervention plan. The council can craft a master plan that outlines the various needs of barangays such as tutorial services, sports clinics and the like. The youth groups, equipped with their specialization can then choose among these specific barangays their area of intervention. The council is designed to funnel and guide the scattered energies of organized youth groups into an integrated and strategic movement that hopes to yield greater impact.

Political Education

The natural consequence of youth involvement in governance is political education. Through the council, the youth base can push the tipping point in elevating our city’s level of political engagement. And more so, the bias towards this kind of participatory-democracy will hopefully produce political leaders whose experience in such a youth council made him or her see the value of collective owning and citizenship engagement in defining our city’s priorities and direction.

A Call for Reform

Our city is home to countless of youth organizations housed in schools, communities or places of worship. In recent years, we have seen STREAMS, an education support and scholarship program and DIRE HUSI, a youth formation and entrepreneurship organization rise to be one of the Top Ten Most Accomplished Youth Organizations in the whole nation. We see others station on parks teaching street kids basic math and others deliver health products to far flung communities. The energy of the youth in the city is powerful. Once given a formal mode to craft and push the city’s youth agenda, they are given a profound sense of communal ownership in the direction the city takes and a clear reason to commit in fulfilling the agenda’s goals.After all, the youth has led this nation before at its rearing. And it is youth that will lead the nation to its destiny.

(Ernesto Baconga Neri is a 3rd year Law Student of Xavier University. He is a volunteer of the Kagayanon Youth for Good Governance and resident intern of the Xavier University Center for Legal Assitance)

Mark.com.ph

The City Youth Agenda

This is one of the most significant engagements in my life.

Last June 22, 2013, I had the privilege of presenting the output of the series of focused group interviews with various youth groups of the city before the Mayor-Elect Oscar Moreno.

For more than half of my life, I only know one family name as mayor. So when we achieved last may, what I personally thought was impossible, it is not surprising to see this massive sense of hope to help build a city hall grounded in good governance.

The new City hall is opening up to civil society after more than a decade of an institutionalized dismissive attitude towards it.

One initial concrete success indicator for the agenda is the creation of the Local Youth Development Council within 100 days upon assuming office. This council hopes to include not only the SK Representatives, but also student councils, church based youth organizations, community based organizations, and out of school youth organizations. This council serves as the policy-determining body for an integrated and strategic intervention of youth organizations to different issues and localities as well.

The city youth agenda from Ernesto Neri

As for the coalition pushing for the agenda. The next move is expansion of coalition members and agenda fine tuning.

Apil nata!

Learning a Language (Summer Internship Reflection)

It affirmed. It deepened.

The Ateneo Human Rights Center Internship Program was by far my most fruitful summer. In almost two months of extra-ordinary experience from the mountains of Mindoro to the sidewalks of Katipunan, it has set the trajectory of my professional growth towards what I see is a more meaningful and powerful-life commitment.

The program was an affirming experience. The issues and advocacies which I tend to gravitate towards since I began involving myself in development work in college have painted a decipherable pattern of what I want to do with my life. This “pattern” has something to do with political education, marginalized sectors, and policy analysis - such big ideas. Law school made me see how these big concepts are neatly worded and structured in our laws. This program made me see the human faces that are affected, good or bad in the operation of these words and structures. I saw how redefining the elements of the legal term “informal settlers” could criminalize a big part of the urban poor. I saw how the quantum of evidence in proving adultery is stacked against the woman. I saw how the legal scheme of contractualization would violate the right of security of tenure among others. It is seeing the bad effects that affirmed my desire to continue to study and understand the substance, the context, and the operation of the laws and more importantly, how to engage for its reengineering so it can better meet the ends of equity and justice.    

The program was a deepening experience. Aside from the theoretical affirmations, the experience has deepened my personal commitment to a line of work that is labelled as “alternative” – not the “main” stream thing needless to say. I can recall that one of my most precious moments in this program are the random conversations I had with my supervising lawyer. While waiting for our case to be called, he vividly shared to me the dilemmas he faces everyday as an alternative lawyer. This includes incentive issues, the politics, and the hard truth that progress is slow and frustrating. But amidst these challenges, you can just feel the ever deeply-seated joy that naturally radiates in his person. There is joy in serving the poor as I understood it. And I guess it is in knowing other people who share the same commitment to a cause higher than themselves that brings so much energy. Knowing that I am not alone and there are brilliant and experienced people in this frontier has deepened my commitment to be part of that
“alternative” community.

This also led me to see how important – very important - this community is. In my encounters with SALIGAN’s counterparts, I’ve seen the spectrum of progressive laws that they were able to pass such as the CARPER and the RH Law to name a few. Moving the nation forward includes the enactment of progressive laws. These laws could not win over vested interest, if it weren’t for the legal inputs, and the public campaign of the alternative law groups and their partners. And this is one thing law school does not teach you - changing the law. The program opened a whole new set of options in building a better society as a lawyer. The work is not only in the courtrooms, it includes the halls of congress and city councils, and in the streets and plazas – a much more exciting work than writing pleadings in front of a screen and arguing endlessly before a cold judge.

The study of the law is learning a new language. It is a language that is evolving ever since human kind decided to live together. The program has shown me that this “language” is not meant to be contained and understood to an educated few as what history has shown. It is meant to be transformed into a language that everybody understands because it is their right to understand. This language is also powerful for it builds institutions and governs relationships. When it is spoken, it affects the lives of people. But the program also revealed to me in the mountains of Mindoro and the streets of Quezon City that this language also has an inherent ability to deny, to enslave, and to ignore. But also, I have seen that this language can also be changed.

I return to Xavier University Law School with a new set of eyes. The language in which I learn from the voluminous books will never be the same. I now see them as powerful potent tools to empower the people at the margins and to build a more just and free society.

Seeing the Law

Since human beings, out of the need to survive, decided to live in small knit societies, the institution of the law began to take root. Unwritten norms that dictate the conduct and govern relationships between hunters and gatherers, wives, and husbands, priests and chieftain kept order and function among themselves and this allowed them to not just survive, but to prosper as well.

As nomadic tribes settled in river valleys and learned how to farm, cities began to form. These cities then became kingdoms. Then these kingdoms turned into empires. And empires break into what we know now as nation-states.

The story of our history is a familiar narrative and throughout the progress of civilization from tribe to nation, it is the consistent and persistent endeavour of human beings to define and establish the norms that bind communities and establish order that has pervaded, held constant throughout the human story.

As novices of the law, what you are about to encounter is not just words on paper but the very fabric that has held our civilization together, in its rise or fall.

It is  the written fruit of that endless effort we have implored to establish order, define what is right and just and set up institutions that affect our daily lives.

You will learn an evolving language  and the best way to start the study of the law is to see it first beyond words. 

(Guide to Xavier Law 2013-2014) 

Bregada Eskwela 2013

It was an extra-ordinary day!

You get to scratch clean the dirty walls and smack yellow paint over it, of course in a coordinated manner. It was my first Bregada Eswkela experience. A yearly program of DepEd where an army of volunteers composed of students, teachers, parents and other concerned citizen do systematic repainting and repairs in different public schools. We were assigned to Old Balaran Elementary School in Quezon City.

It was a fairly small school with a covered court at the center sided by buildings. The new ones, as seen by the bright colour and modernish design sits on the right while we are to repair and repaint the building sitting on the right of the covered courts.

Sanding, cleaning and repainting may at first impression, appear to be a face lift service. But I saw that this one day exercise does more than just give the school a new and fresh feel. It is a symbolic call that education, particularly in public schools is everybody’s business: cleaning it outside – and reforming it within.

Needless to say, education is key in building an enlightened citizenry that would elect enlightened leaders who would eventually make and implement enlightened policies. This series of outcomes will eventually strengthen our intuitions and our nation as a whole.

A heroic response to this call aside from a week of school cleaning is two years of teaching as a public school teacher at Teach Philippines. 

A Call to Action for a City in Transition

For almost half of my life, I only know your family name as the mayor of my birthplace.

Under your watch, I have seen this city rise from a place that is not even included in TV patrol’s weather bulletin to a thriving hub that has attracted big brands and big corporations. Under your watch, I have seen Divisoria rise from its sleepy obscure status to a center of local commerce. And under your watch we’ve seen a slowly defining skyline with flyovers albeit weirdly colored sprout in and around the city. Yes, it is true. I felt economic growth under your watch but as any economics student understands, economic growth can only last when the systems and structures that support it grows with it or else things will collapse under its own weight. Crime will soar, incomes will stagnate health will deteriorate . And this is exactly why I embraced the need for your brand and style to go.

We are transitioning as a city from highly urbanized to a metropolitan area, that is the center of gravity in the region. And this transformation calls a new kind of political leadership . One that does not merely transact the affairs of the city or worse, run it like a business or source of livelihood, but transforms the public institutions within it. This is important and that is also why this victory is historic and critical as well. Historic in a sense that it shattered the seeming invincibility of the Emano brand . Critical in a sense that majority of the solons of city hall still have their hands tied with the old style.

And this in itself poses a rare and great opportunity. The campaign for the candidacy of Moreno has been composed not only of Liberal Party political operatives and allied coalitions but it includes in its ranks a spectrum of local NGOs and Civil Society Groups whose rootedness in community concerns capacitates it to engage fruitfully with the political leadership . A Mayor who won by these broad support and trust opens the door for these sectors to directly engage the political leadership. And this is a chance we never had before in recent memory.

Let us make full use of it. Let us make Hapsay a real thing. And this requires us to organize ourselves in the ground and strategically engage with the  new leadership under the agenda put forward during the campaign. History has taught us that reform oriented leaders fail or get eaten up by the rotten deals of the system when there is no reform oriented constituency to support and engage them. And let us not forget the youth. They play a very vital role in organizing and developing this reform oriented constituency. It is their sheer energy, population,  tech savvy, fresh ideas and burning idealism that would make this project more cohesive and long term. And glad to know that these are the ones who rallied behind the campaign.   

So let us not commit those mistakes in this exciting point in our national story. Cities play a vital role in our national economic development. And for these cities to work, its local public institutions have to be put into proper order. Institutions such as the local school boards, the RTA, the local social service, the health centers, the development councils, the budget and the like must be diagnosed or better yet, dissected so that all can see where the cancer lies. These local institutions are the closest to the people and its state of health are immediately felt and its efficiency or lack thereof spells the big difference in poverty alleviation, city development and risk reduction.  We learned that before the hard and deadly way.

All politics is local as they say. This can never be more true now. The politics of Tuwid na Daan is a national call that sees its face in the locality. It is the LGUs, the more basic unit of government that drives this forward. And most importantly, it is the audacity and commitment of the citizens of these LGUs which will ultimately spell a better city, a better province, a better Philippines. 

It is Short of Marriage

I finally got to  wear my formal attire under the piercing Quezon City heat.

Atty. De Vera and I visited NLRC for a mediation on an a case decided way back in 2006. The merits were interesting. The illegal dismissal case all started with two cans of dalandan and it all ballooned into a million peso damage suit. The decisions of the labor arbiter and the NLRC was all in favor of the worker and them come together to settle. But this day’s story is not about the case but the whole experience I had waiting for our case to be mediated.

I was able to observe cases prior to ours. This one in particular, I can tell you the feeling there was raw and intense. For the first part, there was this lawyer trying to settle with his client’s worker. The employer wasn't there and from the looks of it, has no intention to face the guy. You can see it in the laborer’s eyes. The mix of anger and frustration can be felt even observing from afar. His eyes then teared up eventually.  He has this shrill in his voice that he strives to control because emotions might consume him and compromise the whole thing. And it ended with no settlement.

What I’ve observed is the sheer rawness of the emotion that plays in these mediations. I can just imagine the years of close relationship between them and that was no ordinary relationship. This kind entails confidence, entails mutual benefit and support, entails mentorship as well. Sounds familiar right? It is short of marriage but far from acquaintances. And all of the sudden it is shattered with feelings of deep contempt towards one another. And the bargaining power always tips in favor of the rich employer.

This is the struggle of the worker and this experience has reinforced my view that indeed for the poor who struggles to find regular work , the loss of a job through unjust causes is equivalent to the loss of their chance to pursue their own measure of happiness. It is an attack to an inherent right needless to say.

Labor Law has become a lot more meaningful and interesting.

Araw ng Manggagawa

Under the piercing glare of the sun and on heat-radiating asphalt, the Labor Day march and rally was an experience that has surely left a mark.  Not so much because I endured intense Manila heat, but because of thousands of others who also did in solidarity to get the message of the dignity of labor across to the law makers and the public. 

Balancing the interest of labor and the general cost of doing business is a constant balancing act. It is a tricky policy debate and as an economics graduate, I understand that rushing to conclusion without thorough analysis can only produce detrimental effects in the long run. I am all for security of tenure and I see the intention behind such push is clearly good however this should be viewed with other economic factors such as its effect on the volume of potential jobs, cost of goods, prices, and purchasing power. Further discourse must be ironed out on the immediate and long-term effects of the economy. But all this analysis should be in a framework that highly respects the inherent dignity of human labor over profit and capital. This I believe can only be achieved by constant study and discourse in government halls and/or on the streets.

Life of a Daily Commuter

I am now close to my second week here as an Intern in Saligan based in Ateneo de Manila University Loyola Campus. Aside from my legal training in developmental lawyering, this rugged independent experience has opened in me a greater lens through which I see my world.

Clearly Manila as the capital of the nation has always exerted its gravitational pull in me ever since I’ve known friends leaving home to open new worlds here. Now that I am here, I am, even though for a short two months, appropriate my own version of the manila experience and see if the noise and silence of this place strikes accord in my soul. The place, in itself, with all the accessibility, the resources, the fun, and the sheer mass of concrete and humanity constantly interacting every day, has yet to make sense.

My routine of walking towards the UP Ikot station allows me to pass a community covered with colourful plastic campaign materials. The structures of the houses are caught between the developed and the developing – a community with the perfect mix of the extremely poor and the capable. Those who just cook with fire wood at the side walk and those whose kitchen are as big as their living rooms. Half round in the UP Ikot Jeep, I get to see the state’s Primer University – UP. The sprawling campus spread out with lush greeneries in between - a green learning haven in the concrete jungle of Quezon City which once (and I guess still is) nurtured the minds of the revolution.

I then transfer to my second jeep which takes me to Katipunan. The old and the young, the employed and the student patiently wait under one metal jeepney roof. Sometimes it is obvious that people always rush away from the side near the driver. Who wants to be the defacto conductor of the jeep right? And worse, who wants to be the recipient of everyone’s germs right? A Mother wipes the toddler’s face. A sister shares a snack with the bunso. The old man guards his leather brief case with all of his life. An agent gently secures his item on his lap like it was a child. Workers of restaurants and books stores, and multi-level networking agents, and teachers and students with large framed glasses one by one exit the jeep. I get to do that under a blue overpass.

My day begins as I walk under a series of big trees and the engraved phrase under the shield Lux-in-Domino shines at the horizon. 

Arrival: Ateneo Internship

No pictures for today 

To start with, the Lumbia airport was a mess. The runway light problem has caused the cancelation of all flights 6pm onwards. Thus some flights were crammed in the day to catch the day light. I did not let the terminal congestion  bother me. I just sat on the floor at the corner and read my orange book (Jesuit Guide to Everything).

It was alao fun to see John and April in the terminal. My first year college classmates are going to Vietnam. What a fun meet. Another surprise, my former NSTP student who is now a law student in San Beda was also a co-passenger. Nothing surprising in the plane trip though but the clouds and the setting sun brings some sort of unexplainable feeling. It was beautiful. So beautiful. 

At last, im now in a condo near ateneo law preparing for tomorrow's long day. my road trip to here was intersting. We went through bel air, forbes where the philippine rich mostly live. I even saw the house of pacman. 

Got to meet interesting people who i felt comfortable with. We have participants from zamboanga ateneo law school, western mindanao state and aquinas u. An exciting day awaits.