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| ...people increasingly perceive and describe politics and society in terms of "us" versus "them". (Jennifer McCoy and Murat Somer) |
“In many countries around the world, polarization is driving new human rights violations.” – Open Global Rights
I am a mom who writes from home; an ordinary citizen of an ever-changing nation. Days before “Ides of March” 2020, I almost spilt my coffee over the news, the morning turning quickly up-side-down: a deadly virus, COVID19, forced the Philippine government to impose a lockdown to contain movement of people and lessen the risk of infection and spread. The decision was prompted by the death (from the virus) of a Chinese tourist in one of our main islands, reported as the first outside China. Starting on the 15th to last for thirty days, the community quarantine (lockdown) will suspend almost everything: travel, work, school, church, recreation. My brain felt suspended, too, with a single preoccupation: that my daughter who works in Manila will make the exodus from there to where we are on time.
What’s happening? COVID19 and Social Polarization
As we all try to adjust to a new way of living with strict precautionary health measures, issues that were heating up before started to boil in a homebound and social media- captive population.
Against the COVID19 crisis, health care professionals (HCPs) and advocacy groups find themselves fighting for what they believe should have been provided earlier in terms of mass testing and provision of Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs), this while the Department of Finance reported a PhP242 billion- peso-loan for the pandemic response. Recently, the President declared a two-week Modified Enhanced Community Quarantine (04-18 August 2020 MECQ) to give way to the public plea of a group of doctors and nurses for a time-out and for more beneficial assistance to help them do their almost-impossible job of dealing with the increasing number of cases.
Simultaneously, citizens continue to use social media to express disappointment and disgust over government responses, calling them reactionary. Political commentators note that the granting of the plea was not without a smirk and a warning from the President and a harp from a senator that the workers should do a better job.
Another concern needing immediate action from the government is the urgency to assist Overseas Filipino Workers who have been affected by the pandemic. As of June 23, some 51,113 OFWs have returned home. Videos sent by some workers left behind show sick companions being isolated in poorly kept places without health and medical support. Government says the difficulty in responding to this concern lies in the length of time needed to go through the bureaucracy of foreign country-hosts in order for the Philippine government to rescue and bring home the OFWs.
Messages proliferate and gravitate on health and the economy as they impinge on one another, these across the social strata from government and private figures (including church leaders) to the common citizens. Opinions vary with many demanding more transparent and proactive measures to solve the attending issues, many giving justification to government actions, and many sending more expletives and threats than reasoning.
As if the worst hasn’t come, there’s the recent surfacing of the 15 billion-peso scam in the nation’s premiere health care provider, PHILHEALTH, in the midst of the pandemic. Inquiries in aid of legislation are being heard in both Congress and Senate. This alleged corruption “may lead to the failure of the delivery of services due to fund misuse..” (Senator Vicente C. Sotto III, Senate President). An investigation is said to be in the making with a big price tag to it.
The socio-political scenario is a brewing divide between “anti” and “pro” Duterte leadership, becoming distinct over government response to the pandemic. In a report, the administration has been described as “a mix of change, continuity, and regression”. (Philippine Politics Under Duterte: A Midterm Assessment, by David G. Timberman, 10 Jan 2019 Paper Carnegie Endowment for Int’l Peace).
Thanks to my great tasting coffee (locally grown and roasted), my want to go on finding out information about the issues to understand them rules over shutting it all out.
Most experts believe that if the world’s peoples were to beat this pestilence, the way is for unity. Yet an added misfortune that this pandemic finds itself back dropped is the reality that countries are plunging into more divisiveness and uncertainty than ever before, bringing fear as real as how to beat the Covid-19 pandemic.
An independent research and analysis work in 2019 by the Brookings Institution, Democracies Divided-The Global Challenge of Political Polarization edited by Thomas Carothers and Andrew O’Donohue (2019), cites a number of social dysfunction resulting from this phenomenon, among them that of decreased ability of human rights groups to shape public perception and of producing pushbacks to political excesses that effect to violations of human rights. The report tackles recent events which reflect what extreme polarization can do to degrade human rights in Turkey, Kenya, United States, India, Poland, Bangladesh, Colombia, Indonesia, and Brazil.
Extreme polarization is defined as “a process whereby the normal multiplicity of differences in the society increasingly align along a single dimension, cross-cutting differences become reinforcing, and people increasingly perceive and describe politics and society in terms of "us" versus "them". (Jennifer McCoy and Murat Somer)
“The shrinking fiscal space, coupled too often with the state becoming an agent of private interest, has fundamentally distorted the possibilities of using traditional human rights strategies to produce greater egalitarianism and social endowments, including in health”
( Open Global Rights. Putting Human rights at the center of struggles for health and social equality. 20 February 2020).
What Happened? The Dampened Promise of the New Millennium
Remember how optimistic we all felt at the turn of the millennium, thinking the next generations who will witness the next turn will be after another thousand years, and the next turn of the century after another hundred years? All the promises for a better life in a better world were crafted, including the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) signed by 191 UN member countries in September 2000 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) drafted in September 2015 (the Philippines a signatory to both) as the United Nation’s global development agenda, encompassing 17 areas of action with the vision of “transforming our world and to improve people’s lives and prosperity on a healthy planet through partnerships and peace.”
Unfortunately, stark inequality continues (World Economic Forum). In 2010, a mere 388 billionaires hold as much wealth as the bottom half of the world’s population and became worse in 2015 when 62 world’s richest had as much wealth as 3.6 billion strong bottom half of the earth’s people (Democracies Divided).
This wealth pyramid is similar to that of the Philippines in a national scale.
What May We Make Happen? Urgency to Fight Polarization and Covid19
- Build relevant platforms for freedom, justice and peace.
- Help build consensus.
- Try to bring the balance back whenever possible.
In the context of taking care of everyone’s health, let us safeguard our social institutions starting with the family. Then we can move forward to our barangays, community groups in the church, school, and neighborhood associations. Understand and heed government guidelines and warnings with all our beneficially bright modifications and iterations. We can make the virtual workplace a means to promoting equality and protect our and other people’s freedoms, rights, and dues. And, yes, there is hope with the election process just around the corner in order to try at another chance to fight rampant corruption in the public service. Identifying candidates for government positions may be started this early. Church and other advocacy groups may continue to give their share through proactive activities as well.
There is little study to show that social media is beneficial to building a common ground (Mossel. Elchana and Schoenebeck. Reaching Consensus on Social Networks). Observation alone may lead one to think that time and effort are wasted when people strongly disagree and fight on social media without sight for a compromise. This may actually foster more divisiveness and bad manners. We may assess the issues that emerge during this health crisis and help others close to us to do the same; act out helpful interventions within your personal and professional sphere. Everything good is needed right now.
From the Center for Economic and Social Rights, in their report “From Disparity to Dignity: Inequality and the SDGs”, this set of Sustainable Development Goals has the “potential to catalyze much-needed action to narrow the vast divide between the haves and the have-nots.”
Philippine employers, especially those in the private sector, have shown they can do much for their people in times of emergency such as this. Provision of a clean work place, transportation to shuttle employees back and forth, additional incentives for both virtual and physical workers are steadily being put in place. After all, a workforce protected is an economy reinvigorated.
Government, from borrowed monies, has prioritized financial assistance to the poorest of the poor in the form of the Social Amelioration Program as well as in kind through food packs distributed occasionally at doorsteps. Citizens periodically report anomalies on the implementation of the SAP and should continue to do so.
Private grants and donations, big and small, have poured in as well through local and international NGOs. Here, transparency should be demanded as much.
As the Philippines is a nation of the faithful, religious leaders continue to make government understand that the church has its own place in contributing to the check and balance in government performance and remains steady on messages of blessings as well as the coming of end times.
There is an urgent need to deescalate social polarization while we address the health crisis. Otherwise, the greater fear lies in the increasing divides among our countrymen which prevent us from listening to and understanding the common plight and hinder us from formulating solutions on how to beat Covid19 and other future crises.
It’s a sad state; but coffee, anyone?
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay