Edsa

an essay by Roger B Rueda

Edsa belongs to the people, the people who had faith in a very simple optimism. That is unseating the Marcoses was all the way out. Yes, Edsa successfully got rid of the dictator, but it was only short-term. It had no intellectual complexity. It was a chance move: brought the whole country to fumble – as some carpetbaggers made use of Edsa to retrieve what they had lost or to achieve what they failed to realise. For one, it is easy to bamboozle millions of people than just a group of people especially when these people do not have clear goals but only to end something in this country.

Yes, Edsa destroyed dictatorship, yet it has re-energised the system of oligarchy. It brought back media hegemony and everything that the dictator tried to abolish. It helped the oligarchs to breathe new life into the new government – the government that can be duplicitous and treacherous: it seems to solicit votes from the people, yet it doesn’t really mean to serve the interest of the majority. It wants to privatise everything that it has from universities to hospitals. In short, Edsa has paved the way to our hardship and poverty because during the Marcos regime, only they played on our resources but after the Edsa, more voracious and venal politicians came to make the most of our wealth and possessions for their advantage.

It was a revolution without direction because what it did was to pass on the country to several scoundrels, who seem to be good at play-acting. Thus, this country if you have noticed has the majority of the people who have become more hard-up and just a few have become extremely wealthy. Edsa has made some royalties: made millions flunkies and drudges.

Edsa is a big solecism. It was a consequence of antagonising the Marcoses for a mercenary intention by some people. It was a way of disregarding obedience because these people did not like equality amongst all Filipinos. Thus now many government offices do not have their own buildings but lease buildings from oligarchs. Ludicrous: it affronts the candour and resourcefulness of the government. It is an oligarch-serving action.

The thoughtless revolution made corruption pervasive. It was a knife-key tackle: dispatched the dictatorship and undid the door of untruthfulness and manipulation. It has made a government unresponsive to the poor as later government corporations were sold to rich people. Millions of Filipinos have been economic exiles, though political exiles came home.

So now Edsa means utopia for the oligarchs: averts inequality and gradually carves up the government to be privatised and denationalised – and, alas, corporatised at some point.

This country will celebrate Edsa so long as the power is not truly passed on to the people. So long as the people of this country do not understand what Edsa is. So long as the people have not realised the perfidy of antagonising the Marcoses and intention not to unshackle the country from despotism and poverty, Edsa will be called to mind and exaggerated.

Luis G Dato’s ‘Day on the Farm’

an essay by Roger B Rueda

Last night a friend of mine from Ateneo asked me to interpret the poem ‘Day on the Farm.’ Tired from a Roxas City trip, I slept early, disremembering to ascribe meaning to the poem.

When I opened my Facebook, I felt so guilty, having not made any analysis of the poem, so I explained it in a few lines. Then I sent it through the chatbox.  I promised him I would make a longer analysis the next day. So here is it.

***

Let’s establish who the speaker is first. He must be a husband, who loves his wife a lot, so he offers her everything he finds. All he wants perhaps is to make his wife pleased. So he is very happy to announce that he has found the fruits of sweetest taste.

The most amazing part of the poem is the word ‘duhat.’ It means a round or oval smooth-skinned fruit, usually red or purple, tasting pungent. The speaker here is a Filipino I think because he knows what a duhat is. One can’t tell what that fruit is the first time he sees it when he is not a Filipino. Thus, for me, the husband in the poem is not a universal husband. For one, someone who is not a Filipino will call it a plum, not a duhat. The wife I don't know has asked him to look for her a duhat – because, perhaps, she is becoming pregnant. By tradition, the husband has to follow what his wife asks for. Otherwise it is believed she would have a miscarriage. That’s why he has gone to a hill just to look for a duhat his wife craves for.

On the other hand, if one binds someone with something, it is bringing her under control. It means she is struggling or fighting back. It means she wants to get away as it the place she is not comfortable to stay at. She must be a city woman. The husband here sounds ironic: he seems to satisfy what his wife wants but the crying is the indication the wife here is not happy, not content. Her crying can mean her demonstration, her grievance, her resentment. The rare wildflowers can mean something of great value but the wife is not happy having with because all she wants is a different one – something that emancipates her from the shadow of men, something that attaches importance to her being a woman, something that bares her talents and abilities, something that shows her beauty on view, something that doesn’t confine her self to one perspective but regards her as someone endowed with lively intellect and ingenuity.

The husband here is someone who gives his wife something she doesn’t ask for. The wife is someone who cannot appreciate what her husband gives her. With what is happening, the husband convinces his wife to follow him instead of him following her. He tells her that she should not cry because she is no longer young to cry; only the young and the weak cry. But to her, crying is not being weak. It is her way of doing battle with the fallacies of being a woman and how women should be treated. That is crying their displeasure instead of keeping it in secret. It is stirring up the compassion of men and bumping off their triviality and callousness.

When the bells ring, something has to happen. It means they both need to be ready for something. When the rain falls in drop, they need to leave and take refuge. It is telling her to stop sulking. It is telling her to stop huffing and puffing. It is also assuaging her. His hearing of drops of rain is his telling her to stop crying and get up on feet and follow him because of the impending threat or predicament. There seems to have a masculine vanity that is involved here. On the other hand, he must just be so concerned with her.

In a relationship, however, a couple should know what one wants and what makes one happy. In the poem, both the husband and the wife do not know how their differences can become a foil for each other’s happiness and satisfaction. They both get the wrong end of the stick. Because of this, their relationship is so uneven. It becomes a misfortune that will miff them both repeatedly until they realise all their failings and shortfalls in each other.

The poem is full of paradox: he’s caught her in his arms an hour and taught her love’s secret where the mountain spirits meet, yet he doesn’t know what love is: he is so distant from her thoughts and longings, from her dreams and joy, from her contentment and interest; if he knows love’s secret, unbound, his wife will love him, smiling. And such an unusual reality becomes as mundane to the couple as indicated by the poem’s title, which tells where and when the poem happens.

The poem reminds me of an Iloilo woman who got married to a Korean farmer. She was a clerk at a copy centre. When he came to the Philippines, he introduced himself to the woman as a businessman. The woman fell in love with him and they got married after a few months. Later the man went back to Korea with her. Then she realised she got married to a farmer. All she wanted were given by her husband except that she was not allowed to go back to the Philippines. That time she felt so unhappy despite all the things her husband gave her. Their house was on a far-flung farm in rural South Korea, where they had no neighbours. With no one to talk to, she felt so lonely and downhearted. Every day she would cry and cry. It took years for her to go back to Iloilo. When I met her at a mall, she told me that she had to follow her husband or else she couldn’t see her children anymore forever. All her children then were left to her in-laws in Korea, so she couldn’t decide to leave him and stay in Iloilo for good.

Anyway, the husband in the poem doesn’t know what a woman is. He knows of her as someone who should follow him without considering what she thinks of. He is very old-fashioned and intolerant. He thinks of a woman as someone inferior to him, yet in many aspects the woman is intellectually superior to him. And that seems to be what he has failed to realise.

He wants to fill his wife with wonder, but he can’t do it to her. He fails to understand that women are not all the same. An oversimplified conception is very dangerous I think. He should know that individuality is much more in the cards than what he thinks of women or individuals. That being a husband is not something that gives him all the power to be in control. Marriage is not all about men who is in control – it is teamwork:  love cannot go on with modern women when men do not treat women as their equals. For love to work, both should realise their imperfection and inadequacy.

Here is the poem ‘Day on the Farm.’

I’ve found you fruits of sweetest taste and found you
Bunches of duhat growing by the hill,
I’ve bound your arms and hair with vine and bound you
With rare wildflowers but you are crying still.

I’ve brought you all the forest ferns and brought you
Wrapped in green leaves cicadas singing sweet,
I’ve caught you in my arms an hour and taught you
Love’s secret where the mountain spirits meet.

Your smiles have died and there is no replying
To all endearment and my gifts are vain;
Come with me, love, you are too old for crying,
The church bells ring and I hear drops of rain.

—Luis G Dato

Payslips

an essay by Roger B Rueda

The payslip is something that gives a proof that a company has paid an employee. It is signed by the company’s in charge and the employee herself/himself upon getting her/his money due to be paid on payday, of course aside from the payroll which the employee writes her/his signature on.

When a company refuses to let its employees have the payslip, that’s alarming. That is something the DOLE has to know. The employee’s assertiveness has to stir up the company’s deep-seated sense of dishonesties and disregard of her/his right. But this piece of paper is passed over. A shrewd boss especially some Korean bosses cannot issue payslips to their workers. These bosses are motivated not by a desire to practise the fair labour standards, but by fear of being sued someday: they are ready to break the law by dodging tax, by eluding the welfares of workers.

The payslip is like a dagger to them: impales them to be fined – or worse, their companies could be closed down. So one Korean woman I know has cut and run to save herself and her face – and her family who seemed to have adjusted in the Philippines. She was the one who would pay out workers every salary day.

Of late, the BIR has been asking a friend for some payslips: is very willing to sue the company, whose lawyer wanted to accuse its employees of tax evasion. Funny: it could have been the first ever case perhaps –  the one which BIR has not filed; a case initiated out of ignorance or exaggeration or intimidation. He should have advised his client to issue payslips, instead. At least this one has sense. And is legal. That one is so embarrassing: mocks his intelligence, I mean his inanity as a lawyer. He thought he was speaking to mindless people, the ones that pee on edge.

A company which doesn’t issue payslips is so despicable. Cheap: I want to shake my head, frowning. I want to wrinkle my brow inquisitively. Imagine it creates some kind of incongruity to those who have worked in a decent company. For one thing, they don’t issue payslips, yet they have two payrolls – for the BIR, SSS, Pag-ibig, and Philhealth and for the company. And then a mayor is OK with it. Gossiped: I hope not. Anyway no mayor would dare OK it when she/he is an honest one. BS: for tourism. What? Rubbishy mind.

I want to suggest to the DOLE and BIR that payslips have to be signed by their representative – for daang matuwid’s sake. And to avoid dishonesties as well. Copies of payslips, too, have to be given in to the DOLE and BIR every month. But who will when these dishonesties are protected and encouraged subtly and for other reasons not so clear to non-businesspeople. You know I can’t still understand why the DOLE doesn’t want to intervene in the paying out of money the company has failed to pay then. What if these workers were threatened to be sacked if they got their back pays? It’s up to them, makes me upset – an answer of shadiness and unconcern.

The payslip must be filed away, in any case. And the DOLE is just a phone away in case the company cannot make out what it is. I’m sure a dole official can pop up in your workplace and jog their memory. You need to have a forceful request of your payslips. If you are a bit weak and infirm then ask help from the DOLE and have just your identity withheld. There is one officer in there whose job is to sit at table and monitor the logbook aside from a security guard.  I’m sure your problem will be solved almost immediately.

An Observation About a DOLE Policy

an essay by Roger B Rueda

What I have observed with this policy the DOLE has in terms of how an employee is paid out of the money that accumulated for years for a company’s violations of some labour standards discovered by a DOLE inspector is that the company is allowed to pay an abused/cheated employee in secret, with no one else – and not at the DOLE, either. Yes, any employee is old enough to come to a decision for herself/himself. OK, that is given and expected. However, I just have one disagreement with this. Something that can be manipulated by a fraudulent company. For one, if they weren’t fraudulent, violations on labour standards could have been avoided earlier. And that should be the main consideration why all their actions should be scrutinised and arbitrated by the DOLE.

Some workers, undeniably, are not vocal and assertive: all these violations can be ignored by them so long as they have a job. For one, an assertion of all these monetary discrepancy can lead their employers to sack them. So, they would rather not assert anything just for them to stay. A job is more important to them rather than any payment of monetary discrepancy they’ve been deprived of by the company. I think millions are experiencing this practice, yet they all keep mum. And the drama continues every day: they are constrained to tell lies against themselves and their rights. No one notices this either. Or, perhaps, most of them have become oblivious or contentedly immersed in the concept of inequity and injustice.

For me such a process isn’t good. There seems a possibility that an employee can be blackmailed or threatened no matter how educated she/he is, so in the end an employee will just say a lie: will go to the labour office and say she/he has been paid despite disapproval in her/his mind, despite helplessness, for what she/he will do against her/his employer is like crawling up precarious ladders. See, this is obviously my point. Millions of employees in this country are not empowered to be vocal and assertive as they can be sacked straightaway for telling the truth, for not following what their employers have dictated them to do. Thus, I believe that the assertion of payment should not come from an employee herself/himself but from the DOLE itself. Yes, I know it is legal to do this. And understand DOLE lawyers for this. That is why I am appealing to our senators to make a more effective scheme on how workers whose rights are violated are going to be paid out in all conscience, and not mendaciously continually, without any threat of being sacked or beleaguered in the workplace.

A lot of workers in this country are vulnerable. They cannot make a stand against companies with Machiavellian legal representatives. And this is the truth that our legislators should ponder as well. If laws cannot be honestly followed, they need to be altered. Otherwise they become ostentatious laws. Something that exists in our illusion and frustration. If laws are not followed, then they become completely unreasonable: show contempt for our intelligence as a country.

It is high time that such a policy was changed. I hope a senator of this country can notice this problem. Yes, for me it is a problem, a big problem. It is a subtle human right violation, which our government ignores to notice to assume that an employee is old enough to decide for herself/himself. But in all honesty, I’m afraid that this policy causes unfair consequence. It offends the true purpose of an inspection. It indirectly disparages the power of an inspection and the DOLE itself. It isn’t deep. It is so procedural yet so insincere in a way. It can also be sidestepped, deceptively – who knows? Thus, the perfect solution is that payment should be done with a DOLE lawyer and key officials and militant groups from communities or universities like UP if possible. Then the pressure doesn’t come from a worker, which is what most workers avoid doing. What if the company hadn’t paid the worker the exact amount set by the DOLE? What if the company hadn’t paid the worker at all? These possibilities are theoretically capable of happening or existing, and likely in practice as well.

Changing this policy is a signal that the DOLE is sincere in helping workers whose rights are infringed. It also signals whether the government really means parity or whether there truly exists a political will to begin change for better and fairer labour standards and practices.