Tuesday, March 30, 2021

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Abellanosa: Retrieving the meaning of Holy Week

Posted: 29 Mar 2021 05:46 AM PDT

OUR struggle with the Covid-19 pandemic has made many of us forget that we have entered the Holy Week. Precisely, the suffering which many have been experiencing for more than a year now has made us ask whether penance and penitence are still needed these days?

The celebration of the mysteries of our faith, however, is not just about the compliance of ecclesiastical prescriptions, and neither is it a matter of just going through the seasons of our religious calendar. In essence, our religious observances are deeply rooted in our existential questions. Religion symbolizes our deepest longings and dreams as well as our anxieties and fears. The gap between God and man is bridged by man himself, the portal to which is the awareness of the most important question: what do all of these celebrations mean to me?

The Holy Week should not just make us enter or re-enter into the narrative of the Lord's passion, death, and resurrection. It must allow us, or even awaken us to enter and re-enter into our own. Unless we see the connection of the narratives that we have been reading to that of our lives, little shall be our appreciation of the repeated liturgies and sacraments. We can only stand in closer proximity to the divine element of our celebrations through the realization that God's reality does not reside outside our very own.

A significant element in the celebration of the Lord's passion is the cross. Described by many as the greatest symbol of Christianity and even the world's salvation itself, it actually has a very worldly meaning. But the cross is not just a religious symbol. It also captures the truth about human existence: burdensome and full of labors. The cross reminds us of our finitude and the certitude of death despite the uncertainty of all other human possibilities. The cross indeed is a scandal not just for Christians but anyone who is human. It reminds us of our weakness despite our strength.

But it is in our limitations, weaknesses, and finitude that we get to admit who we are and thus work only within the parameters of our realities. The cross reminds us not to go beyond what we are only capable of. Above all, it reminds us that though human life has its limitations and end, but, these are not obstacles to making use of the here and now in order to contribute to the betterment of others in the spirit of self-giving.

We have been repeating the celebration of the Holy Week for centuries. It is necessary however to retrieve its significance in our lives. This is imperative not just because it is an integral aspect of our culture, but because its meaning cannot be separated from our own meaning as individuals.

Many have said that the Covid-19 pandemic is our new cross. A closer look at it, nonetheless, would reveal that it is not a new burden but a reminder that we have always been carrying our burdens of poverty, sickness, and death. The world and human existence, with or without the pandemic, shall always be full of struggles. It is just that, we have forgotten, or we have opted to manicure the bare realities of life.

May our celebrations lead us to the deserts of our existence so that there we may also find the wellspring of our hope.

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Lobaton: Many developments and life as gift

Posted: 28 Mar 2021 07:03 AM PDT

IT IS still a continuing situation of uncertainty. And the more that we are slowly trying to resolve things, new and emerging problems are created. Scholars projected that this situation of our fight against the coronavirus could even take longer than expected.

Due to the recent surge of cases in Metro Manila and four other provinces, an enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) was declared by the government on these areas for the next few days, particularly during the observance of the Holy Week.

There are reports that new variants are already the cause of the recent surge, but the health department has not ruled exactly on this. Something could be done to evaluate when data would start to come in to cover days where ECQ was implemented. In situations where the number of cases would remain high, it suggests, something could be wrong that movements of people are not the only reason for the surge.

Vaccine remains the only hope. But how soon we can make a perfect fit for the coronavirus and the new variants, that remains to be seen. Many are skeptical about the vaccines despite it being the last hope for protection against Covid-19. Discussions continue to influence minds that all this is still a work in progress.

It would be sad that in our quest trying to make immediate solutions to the pandemic, many ways may not be perfect at first. There are always false starts and risks that have to be taken on the way to perfection. We just hope that times would not allow anymore to sacrifice lives just because we want to seek a perfect fit for our fight against the Covid-19.

Someone told me that we are still in the trial and error period. Just because we don't belong as one of those lead countries on research and development, in trying to resolve this problem, we are also the least in terms of priority. We couldn't have other options than go to manual mode of fighting the pandemic just like implementing lockdowns to prevent mobility of those possible carriers of the disease.

I was reminded of my talk with my boss and friend, Dr. Jay Estrellas, the Vice President for Academic Affairs of Carlos Hilado Memorial State College, on the importance of life at the height of this pandemic. It came to me to think about our past discussions about life and the many possibilities as Dr. Jay celebrated his special day yesterday. We were talking about the importance of life at present and the manner by which individuals can carry an identity for themselves while still being alive.

We have different views on how we could be remembered by people around us. Some might like to be hated, while others want to be remembered as a nice person, who then becomes very conscious of how he appears to people around him. But all is summarized by the fact that life is just a temporary commodity that nobody could boast about it and a little twist could probably end it all. Just the same, many would like to be thought-about as good as the norms of society dictates.

As Dr. Jay Estrellas would have it, even at this time of pandemic, we can still have our version of celebrating our special day. It is in these trying times that life needs to be looked up to as an important gift from above. Life every day is indeed a gift.

My special greetings on the celebration of Dr. Jay's birthday yesterday. I knew him for many years because he was my former boss at the Graduate Programs of the University of St. La Salle.

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Alminaza: Earth Hour 2021: Switch coal off, for good

Posted: 28 Mar 2021 06:58 AM PDT

THIS weekend, millions around the world once again participated in the annual Earth Hour, in which we were invited to switch our lights and appliances off for an hour. As much of the energy used by humanity is still sourced from fossil fuels, turning our lights off together encourages a decrease in our consumption of dirty energy and our carbon footprint. Each year, Earth Hour provides us with an opportunity to unite in action and reflection for our Common Home. It, too, brings to light an important question: why is our energy dirty in the first place?

Despite its immense renewable energy potential, the Philippines is heavily reliant on fossil fuels for its energy needs. A major part of our power mix is still occupied by coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel. This has caused many grievances to Filipinos, coal being costly to our people and nature in many different ways. Sadly, policy directions in our country have yet to mark an end to the reign of dirty energy. While the Department of Energy (DOE) has issued a moratorium on coal, it provided ways to keep many projects from being shelved, and leaves existing coal plants untouched and able to keep polluting.

It does not help that top Philippine banks are keeping coal plants running thanks to their financial support to the industry, even when they have the ability to switch coal off for good by restricting their funding for it. In particular, the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) and Banco De Oro (BDO) combined have invested over US$6 billion to support coal projects from 2009-2019. Despite claims that they are seeking to pursue sustainability and align to the changes required by the climate crisis, these banks and many others still have not publicly set limits on the financial support they provide to coal. Indeed it is concerning that the banks in whom we place our trust in the form of our financial resources, may be using that to fuel catastrophes we suffer.

Moreover, even while we strive to phase out coal in the country, corporations are already executing plans to make our energy sector reliant on other polluting sources, especially fossil gas. Instead of pushing for a transition to clean, affordable, and renewable energy, we find our government, banks, and energy companies furthering the destruction of our planet by tying us down to the use of more fossil fuels.

Our carbon-intensive ways are especially troublesome given our country's climate-vulnerability. We can see physical manifestations of this in the increasing frequency of devastating storms and sweltering high temperatures plaguing our nation today. No one is more affected by these changes than the poor who are also being robbed by high electricity prices caused by the inability of coal costs to keep stable amid fluctuations, and coal-affected communities who are slowly being poisoned to death by coal pollution.

Earth Hour reminds us of these issues at hand and prompts us to hold our authorities and local banks accountable for their role in aggravating climate change. Seeing that the path to a future that is cleaner seems to be blocked by the very leaders who must be taking us there, we may easily feel discouraged. But it is important to not lose hope in this fight. Our faith teaches us courage through the victorious stories of the small over the mighty. Through faith and hope, Noah survived the flood, David defeated Goliath, and Jesus triumphed over death. We too can rise from ever-growing climate problems and move the behemoths supporting fossil fuels.

For those of us who switched off our lights for Earth Hour, may we be reminded of the bigger reason behind our action. In the same way that we turned our lights off for our planet's future, our government and our banks must permanently switch coal off through concrete policies to divest and facilitate a complete transition to renewable energy. As stewards of Creation, we hope for a time when Earth Hour would no longer be necessary, when the use of fossil fuels has been eradicated, and clean energy from renewables would be the norm across the globe.

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Ombion: Templating CSOs empowerment in governance

Posted: 28 Mar 2021 06:55 AM PDT

THE codal foundations of the above topic are well defined. The 1987 Philippine Constitution is quite emphatic in stating that the "Sovereignty resides in the people, and all government authorities emanate from them". It further says that "The right of the people and their organizations to effective and reasonable participation at all levels of social, political, and economic decision-making shall not be abridged."

The Local Government Code of 1991 provides that "local government units shall promote the establishment and operation of people's and non-governmental organizations to become active partners in the pursuit of local autonomy." It creates the mechanism for citizen participation by establishing local special bodies such as the local development council, local health board, local school board and local peace and order council.

All stresses that citizens' participation can make the government become more responsive to the basic needs of the people, more effective in the delivery of basic service and more efficient in the use of resources.

Ultimately, if these goals are achieved at all levels, citizen participation in reducing poverty, promoting peace and sustaining inclusive and resilient development.

Promoting Civil Society Organization (CSOs) empowerment in governance, however, has not been without challenges, ebb and flow in the process. Among these, some if not many of those in government, especially in LGUs, are not well convinced of the value of citizen participation. On the other hand, the citizens organizations numbering in the few thousands are not also well organized and their capacity to effectively engage government is very limited.

At this juncture, I find it particularly interesting to note that per my direct and indirect involvement with some National Government Agencies (NGAs) and few local government units (LGUs) with programmatic engagement with CSOs, it is only lately that I have learned and appreciated well the good practices of Bacolod City under incumbent Mayor Evelio Leonardia vis a vis CSOs empowerment.

Although the LGC of 1991 provides 25 percent only of CSOs voice in city/municipal development council (cdc/mdc), Leonardia has re-engineered the LGC equation to give the CSOs greater voice in city development programs, and the much bigger marginalized sectors they represent get access to the city's programs and services.

First, the CSOs in City Development Council (CDC) and Local Special Bodies (LSBs) represent federations of major basic sectors, vendors, transport, labor, farmers, fishers, women, seniors, PWDs (persons with disabilities), OFWs (overseas Filipino workers), cultural artists, small handicrafts makers, MSMEs (micro, small, medium enterprises), consumers and force multipliers.

Second, though 25 percent only, the CSOs encompass 70 to 75 percent of around 400 established CSOs in the city, and covering no less than 200,000 poor household youth and adult members.

Third, the above were made possible because of the excellent operational system and structure, and tremendous dedication and works of the Sectoral Concerns Office (SCO), headed by liberal progressive-minded EA III Ernie Pineda, assisted by long time Community Organization Development expert Leslie Garcia and former corporate manager Dr. Pedrito Cabuguason, and under the direct supervision of the mayor himself.

Fourth, supplementing and enhancing the CSOs in CDC and LSBs, are the capacitating services and coaching support of SCO.

The limited CSOs influence in CDC and LSBs are further complemented by the SCO services through its multisectoral desks manned by CSOs sectoral leaders, facilitating services and emergency assistance to marginalized sectors.

CSOs interviewed by this writer admitted that although their dream of getting majority seats in CDC and LSBs is yet far from reality, they are already happy with the present state, at least for now.

CSOs not in CDC and LSBs, while struggling to be part of governance someday, are also happy with the SCO around to run to for some help.

Obviously, despite the limitations of LGC, and intermittent political bickering among some city officials and between them and forces from other sides of the political fence, the Peoples Council for Change with DILG support, is hopeful that the present empowerment level of CSOs will improve.

For its part, SCO plans to seek assistance from PCC, and concerned DILG, and other NGA offices to increase its capacities and resources, and to template its experience to gear for the formidable challenge of truly empowering CSOs in governance and sustainable development.

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