The problems of population and unemployment

One does not need to be a genius like Dr. Jose Rizal, whose 150th birth anniversary we are celebrating tomorrow, to establish a correlative link between high population rates and the rising unemployment. Historical records indicate that our national hero’s less famous brother, Paciano, has written to Dr. Rizal in Dapitan, during the latter’s exile, whereby the elder sibling raised the issue of too many children amidst a growing poverty under the Spanish regime. Rizal’s comment was both succinct and categorical. He was reported to have commented that the two related problems should be attacked from two fronts: to manage population growth and to promote economic development, in order to generate enough employment opportunities and adequate livelihood for the growing populace.

 More than a century later, that is today, our leaders and social thinkers are still grappling with the problem, which the Rizal brothers found very simple and basic as early as more than a hundred years past. It is our luck that we have an incumbent President who has the courage and the guts to stand behind the RH Bill, unafraid of the powers and influence of the Catholic Church, and with a vision focused at the big picture, at the strategic implications of the problems of a run-away population rate vis-a-vis the very high unemployment statistics. The SWS survey indicated a number of unemployed at 11.3 million and an underemployed of about double that number. With a population of 92 million, with inadequate food, housing and both health and education facilities, our country is going to be a social volcano just waiting to erupt.

 The critics of the RH Bill are trying to apply squid tactics, by transforming legislative debates into an argumentation on biblical passages. They also commit the fallacy of  “argumentum ad hominem’’ by calling the Rh proponents names and threatening them with excommunication. But beyond that, they do not admit that our population is a problem. They turn a blind eye to the truth that lies right before our eyes, that economic development is not catching up with rapid population growth, that there is not enough food for the millions of poor, that there are no jobs in the domestic labor markets, and that the children we all give birth to are just being trained and schooled in order to become domestic helpers abroad and other kinds of OFWs. They do not open their eyes to the truth, thus there is no truth to set them free.

 The forces of the Church are being mounted to fight the government on the RH Bill but the Church does not have a viable alternative. It is only out to derail the solution that is being worked out by the administration. But it does not offer a practicable, affordable and acceptable modus vivinde. The Church does not have a solution to the population issue because it refuses to admit that there is a population problem. Thus, there is no intelligent debate because the issues are not joined. 

 The Church wants to save the soul, well and good, but alas, it has no offered procedure on how to save the body, which is, after all, the temple of the Spirit. And certain honorable members of the august Congress, notably a couple of legislators representing some districts in Cebu, pride themselves as experts on the word of God, but have no solutions to the unemployment problems in their own district. They use both the floors of the House and the pulpit to attack a solution, while offering nothing as a viable alternative. I am a Catholic and I take communion regularly but I stand firmly on the side of the proponents of RH Bill because they are the guys with the solution. They do not just criticize. They have the answer to the question.

One does not have to be a genius, or to be a Rizal, to deduce the agenda of these men who are not only self-righteous and all-knowing. With all due respect and with malice towards none, we should have the discernment to expose these modern pharisees. They are the guys who are out to deprive free men like us of our freedom to choose, to rob us of the use of our free will, which is a gift of God Himself. Of course, God Himself, who is Almighty and All-loving, would not threaten us with excommunication, or losing an election just because we make use of our conscience.  We have long been led and misled by such men, and we always followed them. But the time has come to tell them: In matters of style, we will swim with the current or dance with the music. In matters of principles, like this, we shall stand like a rock. They cannot fool all the people all the time. They should know better than the way they appear to be.