Urban poor group sees hope in looming constitutional crisis

PRESS RELEASE
10 February 2012

Urban poor group Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap (Kadamay) looked at the looming constitutional crisis as a result of the worsening rift among the ruling elites, and no less than an opportunity for the urban poor and the oppressed sectors to advance their call for societal reforms, if not for an overhaul of the current system.

"The existing social system always promises to bring reforms to the poorest of Filipinos, and it has succeeded in making us believe that it is doing so," Kadamay national secretary-general Gloria Arellano said.

“The system inherently discriminates to as worse as incriminates a big portion of the urban poor sector, through laws and social norms to favour the interests of the ruling class and their capitalist patrons,” she added.

The militant group cited Urban Development and Housing Act (UDHA) or RA 7279 as an example of laws that have wielded the anti-poor and pro-capitalist character of the existing system.

Arellano pointed out that UDHA, a law passed twenty years ago, has easily considered those who occupy lands without the consent of their rightful owners, who usually is the government, as professional squatters, and members of squatting syndicates.

6.5 million criminals

"But this means, because of UDHA, there are some 6.5 million or more Filipinos considered criminals by the current system, making them subject to a maximum of six years of imprisonment, and to a fine of P5,000 to P100,000 pesos," Arellano said.

Based on data of the National Housing Authority, there are around 1.3 million families in the country tagged by the government as professional squatters, sugar-coated as the 'informal settlers.'

"UDHA also has justified every violent demolition of homes in the urban, and their subsequent dumping into relocation sites of vile and inhuman conditions, tantamount to treating them as social outcasts," she stressed.

Paradigm shift

According to Kadamay, "while the big businessmen have made use of UDHA to evict the urban poor from their communities, the government has used it as basis of its housing policies and urban development programs. The only way for the urban poor to regain its dignity and social stature is to scrap UDHA and similar laws and executive orders that have led them to their present condition."

But Arellano believed that the twenty year-rampage of UDHA on the urban poor, the decade long campaign of the workers for meaningful wage increase and national industrialization, and the unending call for a genuine land reform only prove that the elitist bureaucracy will never allow any of such paradigm shifts in the system.

"A constitutional crisis is a great opportunity for the collective effort of the oppressed to bring an end to the highly-corrupted judicial and societal order in the country," Arellano said. “The urban poor and the oppressed sectors must grab the opportunity to further the rift among the ruling factions, and lead the collapse of the capitalist system that has bound them to poverty for generations,” she ended.###


Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap (Kadamay)
Militant Center of the Urban Poor in the Philippines
Reference: Gloria 'Ka Bea' Arellano, national secretary-general (09213927457)