Create a New Forum Owner Login Contribute & Create Your Member account VoyUser Login (see contribute) VoyForums Directory/Categories No-ads: Completely remove ads from your forum VoyForums Homepage VoyForums News Help Desk VoyForums Exchange FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions Search VoyForums

[ VoyUser Login optional ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, [8], 9, 10 ]

Subject: Article: Culture & Corruption/ RV Gets Mentioned Author: Inquirer News Service [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] Date Posted: 09:45:23 05/24/05 Tue The President could find time to have photo opportunities with Jerry Yan, the Viva Hot Babes, Regine Velasquez and the latest show-biz freak, but she has to defer meeting with artists and cultural workers who are at least being polite and open to her agenda for good government. At the very least, this betrays her artistic preference, if not her management style and priorities. ====================== The full article as is: ====================== Editorial : Culture and corruption Posted 10:19pm (Mla time) May 23, 2005 Inquirer News Service ==================================================== Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the May 24, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer ==================================================== THE CULTURE Summit organized by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) is playing to a packed audience of cultural workers at the Manila Pavilion Hotel, but with hardly any fanfare or even interest among the public and the media. The surprise is that the media are pretty much in the consciousness of the organizers, who decided on its theme, "The Power of Arts and Media Education in Breaking the Cycle of Corruption and Poverty." How the media figure in the cultural equation is something for metaphysics to unravel. In fact, the summit seems too amorphous with its concerns -- corruption, poverty, pollution and violence -- as to become too ambitious and messianic and thus prone to lack of focus, distracted attention and dissipated efforts. Definitely the media's partnership with culture and the arts in raising awareness about corruption and the need to combat it is not debatable. Nobody would argue against the need for a war on corruption. In fact, the NCCA is perhaps the first government agency to come up with a summit as a response to the agenda of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to stem corruption. For this, credit should go to new NCCA Chair Ambeth Ocampo and Executive Director Cecile Guidote-Alvarez. But artists and cultural workers have reason to be wary about any campaign against corruption led and waged by the government, which, after all, is the playground of the corrupt. This is not to say that the government is totally corrupt. But if the President and her men want to stamp out corruption, their wish is their command. The solution is in their hands because they -- or at least some of them -- are part of the problem. To be sure, in their preoccupation with the expressive and the beautiful, artists and cultural workers participate in the battle against corruption. Artists provide visions of beauty and a purer world; they limn an idealistic landscape and a purer environment that all people could aspire to. In comprehending the reaches of that beautiful vision painted by the artist, people would thus be emboldened to fight anything that would sully or pollute it. The artist is the enemy of the corruptor whether or not fighting corruption is part of the agenda of a sitting president. Therefore, for artists and cultural workers to take on the agenda of the President to combat corruption may risk co-opting the same people who fight corruption through their pen, brush, kinesis, or expressive instrument. The danger is rife for the NCCA, which is unique among government agencies for having volunteers and private-sector participants. It is made up of 22 national committees covering the arts, cultural education, cultural communities and cultural heritage. The committees are mainly made up of volunteers and leaders of different art and culture sectors. They are understandably wary about any government attempt to engage the arts and culture regime in the fight against graft. They fear co-optation, and the fear is legitimate. Presidential sincerity IN THE END the success of the war on corruption depends on the sincerity of the Arroyo administration. The arts and culture regime can only do so much in raising awareness about the corruption. If the administration doesn't deliver, then not all the summitry in the world can stamp out the scourge. But is the President really sincere? After several postponements of the summit to accommodate the President's tight schedule, after the NCCA leadership formulated a summit program that looks too complementary to the President's agenda, the word from Malacaņang is that she would not be able to make an appearance at the event. Worse, Malacaņang could not even host the awarding of the Gawad Manlilikha ng Bayan, the state awards for traditional or folk artists. The awarding has been put on hold since February because of the President's hectic schedule. In the meantime, Darhata Sawabi, the Tausug weaver of Sulu and one of the awardees, has died. The President could find time to have photo opportunities with Jerry Yan, the Viva Hot Babes, Regine Velasquez and the latest show-biz freak, but she has to defer meeting with artists and cultural workers who are at least being polite and open to her agenda for good government. At the very least, this betrays her artistic preference, if not her management style and priorities. End of article.. posted by mmJun :-/ [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Replies:

[> Subject: Public Lives : A future worth fighting for Author: By Randy David / Inquirer News Service [Edit] Date Posted: 10:26:48 05/24/05 Tue Public Lives : A future worth fighting for Posted 02:18am (Mla time) May 22, 2005 By Randy David / Inquirer News Service ===================================================== Editor's Note: Published on page A15 of the May 22, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer ===================================================== ONCE again we find ourselves at a crossroad. We don't know where to turn, but we have a strong sense that we must alter course if we are to survive and grow as a nation. We are convinced that if we allow our current crop of politicians to continue governing the country, we are doomed to go around in circles. We have a vague idea of the kind of leaders we need: they must be firm, inspiring and trustworthy. But we are not sure who among our remaining leaders we can still trust. The degrading poverty of the majority of our people remains our most daunting problem. Our historic failure to solve it has meant the waste of so much human capital. It has broken the spirit of our young people, who, increasingly, are unable to look at their nation's heritage with pride, or to imagine investing their lives in its future. We search our minds and hearts for any explanation for this failure. And always we arrive at one conclusion-the lack of a visionary and selfless leadership. This insight is basically correct, but it does not give a complete picture. It overlooks the fact that there have been leaders of great integrity and capability in every generation. It glosses over the system that actively co-opts or excludes the visionary rebels among them, usually portraying them as enemies or fools, and installing them as heroes when they are safely dead. Even now, it is not difficult to find many good leaders at every level of our society. But in their youth, they are typically broken until they learn to bow to the imperatives of the system. Subdued, they often become its cynical apologists. So it is important, when we ask for new leaders, to remember to also ask for new structures, new values and new practices. The routines and forms of government are probably the easiest to change. The change may be done by executive order, by legislation, or by constitutional revision. Far more resistant to change, however, are the basic structures that determine the distribution of wealth and power across society's classes and groups. The operation of these structures is carefully masked in everyday life, or explained away as an aspect of the natural order of things. Access to wealth is the most contested part of social life, the final object of all politics. Shifting from presidential to a parliamentary system, or from a unitary to a federal government, is nothing more than cosmetic change unless there is also substantive alteration in the distribution of economic resources, and in the nature and basis of state power. The present system, to state the obvious, remains in the hands of a small oligarchy, whose chronic inability to develop a robust economy and alleviate mass poverty is at the root of its recurrent crisis. The economy's weakness is visible in its almost total dependence on the remittances of overseas workers. The country's agricultural base, where the majority of our people still work and live, is a picture of stagnation and neglect. Manufacturing has progressively contracted over the years. The remaining vibrant sector, services, thrives mainly on the resources made available by our overseas workers. But the most significant index of the present system's bankruptcy is the gigantic debt burden that successive administrations have passed on to the Filipino people. The debt service constitutes the single largest component of the national budget. The senselessness of this burden is best exemplified by the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, a facility that Filipinos have been paying for since 1986 even if it has not produced a single kilowatt of electricity. Our problem clearly is not just Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. It is the whole country's political leadership. It is not just corruption, patronage politics, or electoral fraud; or smuggling, jueteng and illegal logging. It is the entire system. It is not just the high population growth. It is the whole way of life that the poor have been forced to invent in order to deal with the pressures of unmitigated want. We have not been lacking in people who tell us that the system itself must change as a precondition for solving our most pressing problems. However, it is doubtful if such people will ever be elected into office under the existing rules of the game. Yet ironically, the three extra-constitutional episodes in the nation's recent past-martial law in 1972, Edsa I in 1986, and Edsa II in 2001-have only nurtured in our people a distrust for political upheavals. This defensive conservatism is what is propping up the dysfunctional government of Ms Arroyo. In the presidential elections of 2004, the upper and middle classes turned a blind eye to the massive cheating and gross misuse of public funds that attended the election of Ms Arroyo. They suspended their values and lowered their ideals in the belief that the alternative to her presidency could be worse. Their fear of chaos has made them politically quiescent. I personally do not think that anyone needs to worry about a catastrophic breakdown of public order. What I find disturbing is the corrosive mood of surrender that is spreading among our people. Many are simply giving up and moving out. How to reverse this tide of demoralization is the challenge of leadership in our time. The country awaits leaders who can still mobilize trust, and instill hope in our people by offering them a roadmap to viable social reform and a vision of a future that is worth fighting for. (Comments to public.lives@gmail.com) >End of article.. > >posted by mmJun :-/ [ Post a Reply to This Message ]