Al Jazeera features in its ‘People and Power’ programme the video clip Begging for Life, a look into the lives of street children who make a living begging on the streets of Manila. The video is noteworthy because it captured eyewitness accounts of the roundup of street urchins conducted by the Philippine government in and around the vicinity of the routes to be taken by motorcades transporting delegates of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum held in Manila in 2015.
DSWD Secretary Dinky Soliman interviewed on Al Jazeera
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Al Jazeera correspondent Barnaby Phillips pressed Soliman on the notion of a stepped-up effort to “clean up” Manila’s streets mounted selectively. Phillips opined that the presence of US President Barrack Obama (who led the US APEC delegation) should, perhaps, not be the main impetus for such operations and that the Philippine government should be, as a matter of routine, “looking after its own people”. To this, Soliman merely highlighted that the DSWD has routine programmes in place doing just that.
The video used lots of footage that, together, served to highlight the stark contrasts in Manila — a city that is a modern cosmopolitan metropolis and, at the same time, a teeming Third World megalopolis whose most needy residents are largely invisible to those who are in the best position to change things for the better overall.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
It is sad and shameful for the Philippines an indictment.
The indictment is not so much based on the material values possessed by the people – rather to the moral values of a nation.
During the period of my stay in the Philippines much properties as resentment and envy in a specific measure.
In many conversations around the theme of learning, education, qualification strictly defensive posture was taken.
A Christian coexistence which is tricked into a facade, is by pressing of an enormous egotism.
I saw the ignorance of the suffering of other people in such a large extent, how I got it to any other place in the world to face.
And I see what a Aquino is doing precisely in order to cover up this misery.
Let us remember the Pope’s visit! The same scenario as in APEC.
A pitiful nation that does not accept help. And why – PNOY – is much easier. You have nothing to learn, and just living from day to day, without hope, without any real future.
Aquino and Soliman are “sweeping the dirt under the rug”…
Aquino failures in the economy, produced massive poverty among Filipino families. The Oligarchs, who are Aquino’s cahoots, got richer and richer. While most of the Filipinos are mired in abject poverty.
Just go to Aquino’s Hacienda Luisita. Observe the conditions of his tenants/serfs. They are living in poverty; while they are working on his Hacienda.
Another arrogant clueless government official with blue hair give me a break. Sums the Philippines up perfectly
They did only the same thing the Marcoses did back in the 1970s: hide the poor behind walls. They did that in an ADB meeting some years back too.
See the typical Filipino way of doing things: instead of fixing faults, they hide them.
The subterfuge and sleight-of-hand employed by the administration wouldn’t have escaped the foreign dignitaries and their entourage. They could have just smiled and played deaf-and-dumb, but among themselves they would have knowingly smiled and shook their heads. President Aquino and his flunkies did not fool anyone; and, with this gimmickry they only succeeded in demeaning their country yet again. Our hypocrisy, our propensity for “pulling the wool over others’ eyes” is boundless. Those old enough might remember Imelda Marcos’ sprucing-up and painting the shanties that were along the route of a visiting Pope. And then, in a different fashion, the President’s President-mother, in her state visit to the US, nixed, (declined) an offer to have the country’s massive external debt written off. If that was not hubris, I don’t know what is. Sure..’Standard & Poor’ and ‘Moody’s’ could have taken our credit rating a few notches down; but, we would have started a difficult recovery with a clean slate.
We are what we are. If we have a problem accepting this; from where, and how do we start to move forward?
All these kids will grow up and in the near future they will be the ones who will rob and kill you for a few pesos. Crime will be out of control. You all just wait. Manila is doomed.
If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it.