This is an exert from People’s lawyering Speech (I am sure you can find the whole thing on the internet.) It is interesting to get a perspective on the culture, society and political system from basic facts, not propaganda, so I did not copy much of the propaganda, as I thought it was very self-serving. We can each draw on own conclusions from the facts. These fact do not particularly interface well with the polical rehteric we will hear for the next few months. PEOPLES’ LAWYERING: A TIME FOR NEW CHALLENGES, A PROPER TIME FOR RENEWAL Keynote Speech on the Occasion of the 10th Founding Anniversary of the Union of Peoples’ Lawyers of Mindanao (UPLM) 12 September 2015 Cagayan de Oro, Philippines by: Edre U. Olalia Secretary General National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers (NUPL) . Most of the report is propaganda type information (they particularly like to point out the US as being a strong influence… (For most things that are wrong). Here are the actual facts they presented regarding the Philippines cultural life: According to IBON International, these are the facts and figures: • 66 million Filipinos are poor. They live on just Php125 (US$2.80) or less per day. They are the Filipino farmers, fisherfolk, workers, small-scale traders, vendors, domestic workers and other informal sector workers; • 4.3 Filipinos are million unemployed and 7.9 million underemployed; • 4 out of 10 or 44% of the workers are non-regular or agency-hired workers, over six out of ten or 63% do not even have written contracts; four out of ten or 40% employed Filipinos are in just part-time work with very low pay and no benefits; • the average daily basic pay of millions of Filipino workers nationwide increased by less than Php5 (Php4.50) or just 1.7% between 2005 and 2014; • there are 10.2 million overseas Filipinos in 2013; • 4,508 overseas Filipino workers were deployed every day because only 2,800 jobs were generated at home. • 7 of 10 peasants are still landless; • a third of landowners own or control more than 80% of agricultural land; • the wealth of the 10 richest Filipinos has more than tripled under the Aquino administration from Php630 billion in 2010 to Php2.2 trillion in 2015 (250% increase); • the net income of the country’s some 260 listed firms on the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) rose from Php438 billion in 2010 to Php583 billion in 2014 (33% increase); • the net income of the country’s Top 1000 corporations grew from Php804 billion in 2010 to Php1.0 trillion in 2013 (26% increase); • two-fifths (40%) of approved investment in the Philippines in the last decade-and-a-half is foreign rather than Filipino, not yet counting the use of dummy corporations; • the Philippines paid out over US$36 billion in profit remittances since 1980 which is on top of over US$178 billion in debt servicing; • the Philippines has exported over US$43 billion worth of mineral exports since the 1970s; • there was 115% increase in profit of mining companies between 2010 and 2014; • some 98% of Philippine domestic production is exported; • around 80,000 babies still die of preventable diseases every year; • 6 out of 10 Filipinos die without seeing a doctor; • power privatization has made electricity in the Philippines the most expensive in Asia, even more expensive than in Japan or South Korea; • water privatization has made water in the Philippines the third most expensive after Japan and Singapore; • rail transport privatization has caused fares to increase from 50-100%; • 61,000 houses of urban poor families with some 305,000 individuals were demolished and displaced under the Aquino administration; • over 1.2 million homes were damaged or destroyed by Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) but the government only built 364 homes; and • one million families with 5.6 million people was severely affected by Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) but less than 220,000 families were given livelihood support.
