New income status in the Phl

President Benigno “Noy” Aquino III is winding down his last two years in office. However, Malacañang has not given up sending signals on the possibility that the incumbent administration could stay in office through concocted popular clamor. To boost this claim, the latest Palace-friendly survey purportedly showed President Aquino’s popularity slide has been arrested and, in fact, has rebounded. 

As he himself trumpets at every opportunity, President Aquino insists he could not possibly ignore the voice of his “bosses” who wanted him to continue his reforms which he can only do if allowed to stay beyond his term ending on June 30, 2016. But this would require changing the rules of the game to enable the sitting President to extend his stay in office by amending the country’s 1987 Constitution.  

However, such rhetoric does not match the realities on the ground. The leaders of both chambers of the 16th Congress have time and again publicly declared they would not accommodate any political amendments of the Constitution. So it would do well for inconsequential members of the ruling administration’s Liberal Party (LP) in Congress to cease foisting in the public’s mind their persistent exhortations for P-Noy to push for Charter change (Cha-cha) to extend his term.  

For Cha-cha initiatives to succeed, congressional leaders are ready to support and push amendments to ease existing constitutional restrictions related to the provisions that affect the Philippine economy. The Cha-cha initiatives now pending in Congress are projected to help fulfill President Aquino’s “inclusive growth” policy for all Filipinos to share in the desired economic prosperity.  

But instead of prosperity, more and more Filipinos are now being included in the ranks of the poor. The most recent findings by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) showed roughly one out of every three Filipino children has been living in abject poverty with their families.

According to the PIDS findings, the poverty problem goes beyond mere lack of income for these children’s families. The PIDS cited the incidence of poverty averaged nearly 25 percent of the entire Philippine population of 100 million as of latest census in 2013.

These official figures were validated by the Philippine Statistics Office (PSA) which noted the top three sectors experiencing extreme poverty in the country were fisher folk, farmers, and children. The per capita poverty threshold was pegged at P9,626 as of last year.

The lack of inclusivity of economic growth, being vulnerable and prone to disasters and natural calamities, and rapid population growth are expected to worsen the child poverty incidence in the country in the next years, the same government study warned.

National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) director-general Arsenio Balisacan warned last year the series of calamities to hit the country with catastrophic magnitude may impact again on the poverty problem. Balisacan rang the alarm bells after the most devastating natural calamities, from super typhoon “Haiyan” in Leyte and Samar to the earthquake that crumbed Bohol coming one after the other last year, wrought much economic losses.

The NEDA chief admitted these twin disasters could push more Filipino families  into becoming “transient poor.” As defined by the NEDA, “transient poor” refer to people previously not poor but who were suddenly pushed below the poverty line because of untoward incidents, including natural calamities.

The latest official statistics on poverty showed that 27.9 percent of Filipinos were living below the poverty line in the first semester of 2012.

The ranks of “transient poor” may swell further as another natural disaster threatens to disrupt the lives of people in Albay. After more than three weeks of manifesting signs of possible eruption, Mt. Mayon started spewing lava flow yesterday. The national and local governments have mobilized additional relief operations after initially evacuating residents living around the 6-kilometer danger zone.

As done before, long period of evacuation naturally forced families to leave behind not only their homes but also their crops, poultry and other livelihood activities. How many more would become “transient poor” as a result of this Mayon disaster?

Meanwhile, government agencies led by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) conducted a forum last week and turned to the country’s social scientists and statisticians to scientifically identify the country’s poor. In that forum, the DSWD adopted a new target of the administration’s anti-poverty program which they now classified as “near poor.”

The DSWD defines “near poor” families as “non-poor families that live at a knife-edge with little or no buffer against the economic shocks.” These families, the DSWD explained, can easily become poor when faced with crisis as a result of economic dislocation. A threshold of P18,935 per year per capita income for an individual for a family of five is being proposed to be classified as “near poor.”

As the implementing agency of the government’s anti-poverty program dubbed as conditional cash transfer (CCT), the DSWD is mandated to develop, implement, and coordinate social protection and poverty reduction programs and services for and with the poor, vulnerable, and disadvantaged. DSWD Secretary Corazon “Dinky” Soliman announced they hope to formulate a policy on the “near poor” soon. Once a near poor threshold was set, Soliman said, the government can set up social protection programs to keep the “near poor” from becoming poor.

Sadly, these swelling ranks of Filipinos living in poverty are now either classified as “near poor” or “transient poor” – the latest terms to describe the new statuses in life they acquired during these past four years of the Aquino administration.

Amid the squalor and poverty that we Filipinos have to live with in our nation, many of our political leaders who project themselves as pro-poor have been at each other’s necks actually to score brownie points for themselves. In particular, these “pro-poor” politicians have only moist eyes for the next presidential elections in May, 2016.

As leaders of the country’s political system, they have in their hands the power to at least make a difference in helping improve the lives of the people, especially those disadvantaged and marginalized by extreme poverty.

Every administration seeks to address the high incidence of poverty in the country but always getting nowhere near to close the gap between the rich and the poor. Whether “transient poor” or “near poor,” these Filipinos are in the throes of full-fledged poverty. P-Noy’s splitting hairs over definition of poor does not solve the problem.