- Kim’s Dream
- Orlando R. Ravanera
In his book, “An Urgent Call for a Cooperative Revolution,” then Chairman of the Cooperative Development Authority, Roberto Pagdanganan said that, “If a few elite will continue to have much too much and the many who are poor will continue to have much too little, we will find our country in a condition horrible even to contemplate.”
No doubt, poverty breeds conflict; it is the best recruiter for terrorists. Thus, by all means, poverty must be met head-on with all determination if the country has to survive amidst the onslaught of a pandemic putting it in a brink of disaster.
Like a sinking ship, people are jumping on board in droves so as to find decent jobs in foreign lands. While they have abandoned the sinking ship, yet, wonder of all wonders, they are the ones keeping the ship afloat by their thirty-three billion dollars or so remittances every year. But now, due to COVID-19, they are now on their way back home and many have to undergo quarantine. In a meeting with DOLE officials, it is the roadmap to organize the OFWs into cooperatives.
While we have no qualms that the OFWs have done so much in terms of their annual billions dollar remittances, we have to understand that in the long term, the destiny of this country should not depend on these remittances but on the decision of those who remained to reverse the trend of economic difficulties.
Reversing the poverty trend is easier said than done. This means making the people productive; this means, finding jobs for those who have none; this means having food security and ecological integrity, this means, uprooting the root causes of why we are poor. It means making farming productive as four out of five rural people especially the young ones are leaving farming, going to the urban areas that make the cities very congested. Thus, the Balik Probinsiya, Bagong Pag-asa Program. We must now confront the roots of the problems.
However, before we can solve the problem, we must first know why there is such a problem in the first place. Why is there so much poverty in a country oozing with so much ecological resources? Why all the regions in Mindanao are suffering from high poverty gap ratios than the rest of the country notwithstanding the fact that this second biggest island is the country’s “food basket” and where two-thirds of the country’s exports are coming from? How can we mobilize whatever we have to stop our accelerating drive toward economic disaster against the backdrop of rising prices?
Before we know the answers, we must first ask the questions, so to speak. In my sorties around the country, talking to farmers, fisherfolk, women, workers, the youth, the indigenous people and social innovators, these are the many questions raised. While we may have so many questions to answer, however, all these have led to only one answer, and that is, cooperativism!
This is so because it is the common analysis that the root cause of the problem of poverty is the marginalization of the people to participate in development processes. Thus being the case, the only remedial measure is to capacitate the people to mobilize their collective energies and potentials so that they can be put in the mainstream of development.
When people bind themselves together to craft their own destiny, the spirit of cooperativism shines through. Such is now manifested in so many ways. In the coastal areas, the fisherfolk are joining hands to protect their delicate fishery resources, their means to life, against all forms of ecological degradations. They are now organized into cooperatives to protect, rehabilitate and conserve ecological wealth through coastal resource management. In the uplands, the Lumads are now the vanguards of their forest resources, advancing community-based resource management through their cooperatives.
Even the MILF combatants, the 15,000 fighters in the North Western Mindanao Front in Camp Bilal, Korakora, Munai, Lanao del Norte under Kumander Bravo have been organized recently into some 150 cooperatives, shouting, “MGA PAGARI AKON SAMASAMA TANU KOOPERATIBA. ISA LANG ANG ARMAS NATIN NGAYON –KOOPERATIBA NA. This was followed by the MILF North Eastern Mindanao Front under Kumander Sultan Abdul Amoran, half-Maranaw-half Higaonon with some 1,500 combatant in Camp Argam, Magauing, Lanao del Sur but are now based in Kibulag, Talakag, Bukidnon. They are now organized into IGPANUYADUG SA ABAGA TA BAYUG COOPERATIVE. (Protect Mindamora Falls Cooperative).
The farmers, who all these years have been abused by the fertilizer dealers, usurers and local traders, are standing up to the call of unshackling themselves from the oppressive grip of conventional agriculture to make their farming sustainable through their multi-purpose cooperatives, be producer or marketing. The tenant-tillers are now claiming the dignity of owning the land they till, making their cooperatives the vehicle of agrarian reform
We can aptly claim that the wind of change now hovers over the land to rectify social flaws of so much inequities and poverty. People are now responding to the call, a clarion sound so loud to establish a society that is based on the time-honored principles of social justice, meaningful popular participation and sustainable development. STOP POVERTY. STOP SOCIAL INJUSTICE AND INEQUITIES. This can only be done through TRANSFORMATIVE COOPERATIVES FOR PEOPLE, PLANET, PROSPERITY AND PEACE.
It is a peaceful but active resistance to fight the rule of a few elite thereby democratizing wealth and power – that is what we call, A COOPERATIVE REVOLUTION. Join us to countervail against climate change and violent extremism.
