MANILA, 17 January 2007 — ON Monday the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported that around 1,000 domestic helpers and their recruiters held a rally in front of the Philippines’ Department of Labor and Employment. The protesters, organized by a consortium of 700 recruitment agencies, “aired their objections against the raising of maids’ minimum wages to $400, the setting of the minimum age at 25, and mandatory training for all applicants”. It’s not the first time Filipinos wanting to work abroad have had to rally to express their grievances. A couple of years ago, even before the Japanese government under American pressure, moved to impose limits on Filipino entertainers going to Japan, once-and-future Japayukis rallied in front of the Tesda, which announced it was requiring stricter regulations for the issuance of coveted (because necessary for departure) “ARV” certificates.
That the rally represented the flexing of what should be overseas Filipino worker political muscle is devoutly to be wished. But so far, aside from the periodic junkets of Filipino politicians (more for local consumption, to reassure relatives at home their breadwinners are getting attention abroad), only the Philippine Left has tried to organize overseas Filipinos on a systematic basis. Yesterday, Davao Today published an article by Bulatlat, which provides news from the perspective of the Left. According to the article, Migrante International’s offices are “swamped with requests for assistance from detained overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and complaints of government inaction on these cases.” The article focused on the case of three Filipinos detained since the end of last year, in a police station in Kuwait.
One item points to why the lack of an organized, formidable, overseas vote represents a gigantic lost opportunity for reforming Philippine politics. Juan Mercado wrote on the same day the Inquirer protest story came out. He observed that “Filipino overseas workers bought a quarter of the lots sold by big real estate firms in 2006, up from 15 percent last year.” Besides the many jobs — in sales, advertising, management, construction, and so on — such investments create, they have many other significant, and political, benefits for the country.
The Filipino overseas worker who finally buys a home, not only obtains security for his family, but gains a tremendous incentive to ensure that his home somehow increases in value, which will only happen if neighborhoods are safe, municipalities are better-run, and so on down the line. At present, the immense number of Filipinos living illegally on other people’s land makes them pawns in the hands of candidates, who can threaten them with expulsion, or coddle them in exchange for votes. An angry middle class — composed traditionally of office workers but now increasingly composed of OFW families — may not be able to elect administrations, but can bring them down if they want to (that’s the conventional wisdom, at least).
I’ve felt for some time that this new, emerging middle class can radically transform society and government. But it has to realize, as a whole, something a growing number of Filipinos have come to appreciate. That if they are employed, are providing for their families, and securing a tangible improvement in their own and their families’ lives (better schooling for their kids, actual homes, even a business to retire on), it’s because of their own hard work and not what the Philippine government has done.
The best that government has been able to do — on both sides of the political aisle, administration and opposition — is to try to flatter overseas Filipinos while making sure they don’t enter the political equation. For example, the Speaker of the House of Representatives Jose de Venecia (a veteran, incidentally, of Philippine efforts to send laborers to Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Middle East) tried to peddle the abolition of the Senate and an elected presidency, on economic grounds. In other words, abolish national elections to make government more “efficient” (but actually, more unaccountable). For overseas Filipinos, all he could do was promise a leadership position in his party for an OFW representative. More of the usual homegrown patronage, in other words.
The problem is that proposals to “reform” the Philippines’ politics ignores a huge electorate that until very recently, suffered from taxation without representation; and which, having gained a limited vote (only for national officials) was going to be stripped of it. Even among OFW circles I found limited enthusiasm for one idea I hoped they’d propose, which is to do what the Italians did. The Italian Senate reserves seats for representatives of overseas Italians; we often hear of how ridiculous a nationally-elected Senate has become, and suggestions to restore a regionally-elected upper house. What about an internationally-elected one? But no dice, even from OFW’s.
I once heard of an OFW community up in arms, because they were invited to the Philippine embassy, only to discover that the attendance sheet they’d been asked to sign, was sent home to Manila as a “manifesto of support” for the administration. But that was the end of it — and will always be the end of it, until any administration realizes it has to attend to OFW’s year-round, and not just order up brass bands and hand out prizes when workers return home for the holidays.
An entrepreneur I recently talked to told me Philippine officialdom has turned mulcting our workers into a science. They are squeezed dry for permit fees, forced to submit to placement agencies either government-run or well-connected with the government, with exclusive rights to deploy to certain places which means corruption both at home and abroad for the officials concerned. Where is the financial credit to keep OFWs from being buried in debt before they’ve even left? And where are the efforts to keep their families and homes safe? Where, in a word, is the quid for all the quo, quo, quo government demands? It’s nowhere, the entrepreneur angrily said, not even in the promises of the politicians.
And yet you’d expect a Filipino overseas community of over 10 million strong, to put the fear of the electorate in any candidate.
