The Philippine Online Chronicles

Tomorrow, Tuesday, 17 November 2009, I will go on hunger strike with the people of Mindoro. I will be at the DENR early to put up the Kubol Pagasa, a mobile replica of the tent we pitched at the People Power Monument on 10 July 2005. Since then, the current administration has progressively lost its moral authority and credibility to govern. Corruption, human rights violations, and bad governance aggravate what was already a fatal flaw in governance four years ago: the betrayal of public trust.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, 17 November 2009, I will go on hunger strike with the people of Mindoro. I will be at the DENR early to put up the Kubol Pagasa, a mobile replica of the tent we pitched at the People Power Monument on 10 July 2005. Since then, the current administration has progressively lost its moral authority and credibility to govern. Corruption, human rights violations, and bad governance aggravate what was already a fatal flaw in governance four years ago: the betrayal of public trust.

The present government has systematically corrupted individuals, groups and institutions in order to weaken peaceful and legitimate opposition. Corruption simply means buying loyalty and compliance through the distribution of government funds. Those first to be corrupted are government officials from the highest to the lowest, whose loyalty is immediately rewarded through the release of the “Countryside Development Funds” ( CDF) or the Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA). Outside this not too honorable category of government officials are their business partners, friends, and relatives, who get priority or undue advantage in government bidding processes for projects. Aside from the “Kaibigan and Kamag-anak, Incorporated” are the institutional supporters which include media, church, academe, entertainment, etc. Indeed, money flows abundantly towards popular, powerful and influential personalities and institutions which directly or indirectly defend and support the president and her minions.

Corruption has polluted and alienated the Filipino soul. If those in power and those who support them choose to sink in the quicksand of corruption, we cannot allow them to drag the rest of us with them. I fast with those who are continually deprived of food, clean water, safe and decent housing, livelihood, education, hospitalization, disability benefits, and etc. I go on hunger strike with the people of Mindoro who hunger for justice and freedom from the exploitation and oppression of foreign multinational corporations and their counterparts in the present regime. I go on hunger strike that we may still unlearn attitudes and values that pull us down as a people. I fast that we may start doing the following things:

First, we need to learn how to fight for our rights and those of indigenous peoples and the environment

Second, we have to begin a process of inner and personal cleansing vis-à-vis an environment of deception, lies, corruption and stealing.

Third, we need to go back in prayer to the real God and reject the gods of politics, entertainment, business and consumerism.

Fourth, we need to re-educate our wills towards greater discipline and self control.

Fifth, we need to learn how to share not only goods, but hunger as well, in order to form a community.

Sixth, we need to learn how to use a different language, a language beyond words, flashy commercials and noisy speeches. This is the language of silence and hunger, of prayer and self-sacrifice.

Seventh, we need to form, through shared hunger, new and deeper bonds of solidarity with those who also desire deep and positive change in our society.

May God use this hunger strike to stop mining, which ultimately is a source of funds, not for development but for more corruption and exploitation. No to mining! Yes to a genuinely pro- environment, pro- people, pro-poor and pro-Filipino government!

Fr. Roberto P. Reyes

Kubol Pagasa

Nov.16, 2009

Photo: Edd Castro. Some rights reserved.

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