The CENTERPIECE feature of BIZNEWS ASIA for its January 2007 issue
New Politics, New Methods, New Fervor
By Ruby Ann Kagaoan – Calo
The late Jaime Cardinal Sin declared, “Politics is not dirty. It’s good. It is ordained for the common good of the people. It is the people who practice politics who make it dirty.”
It was the Cardinal’s voice that called on the Filipinos to go to EDSA in February 1986 to protect the military and government men who were defecting from the dictator. The late Church leader made his mark in Philippine politics.
What is politics, after all? It is good governance and authentic public service – this is its truest definition. It is not a dirty thing to be avoided. It is what we need to put order in our society. “The just ordering of society and the State is a central responsibility of politics,” Pope Benedict XVI wrote in his first encyclical.
The Pope further stated, “A just society must be the achievement of politics, not the Church.” The Pope has called on the laity to take up the cause of a just society by participating in politics. He wrote, “The direct duty to work for the just ordering of society… is proper to the lay faithful.” This is the gospel of politics.
Responding to the call of the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines, which urged the Catholic lay faithful “to participate actively and lead in the renewing of politics in accordance with the values of the Good News of Jesus,” a band of ordinary Catholic lay faithful led by Nandy Pacheco and on fire to put their faith into action started a new political movement.
The primary aim of the movement is the common good. The two major components of the movement are political education and political action.
The vision of the movement is a new Philippines as a nation of character, enjoying a politics of virtue, good citizenship, duty, transparency, and accountability, and where every Filipino is living life to the fullest.
Soon, Filipinos of other faiths, like the Evangelicals, joined the movement, and in August 2002, this interfaith, nonpartisan, nonviolent, and communitarian political movement was registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission as Kapatiran sa Pangkalahatang Kabutihan (KPK).
It is on a mission to evangelize politics and awaken the laity and the rest of the citizenry to their duty to be vanguards of politics and good governance.
New Politics
KPK drew up a list of aspirations, but no political party took up its aspirations. As a consequence, some KPK leaders led by Pacheco formed a new political party adapting the movement’s principles and aspirations as the party’s founding principles and political platform. The party will field candidates that fully believe in and live by its aspirations.
On May 8, 2004, two days before the last national elections, the Commission on Elections accredited KPK’s political party, Ang Kapatiran, as a national political party.
The party’s platform is open-ended and the party welcomes specific proposals that are consistent with its principles and that enhance the common good.
Ang Kapatiran’s new politics is focused more on moral principles than on political expediency, more on the needs of the poor and the vulnerable than on the interests of the rich and powerful, more on the pursuit of the common good than on the demands of special interests, and more on the culture of life and peace than on the culture of death and violence.
The party is anchored on universal moral principles like belief in God Almighty, the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person, preferential option for the poor and vulnerable, the dignity of work and the rights of workers, solidarity, commitment to the common good on all levels: in local communities, in our nation, in the community of nations; rights and responsibilities, care for God’s creation, people empowerment, and peace and active nonviolence.
“There is no way to escape politics,” declares Nandy Pacheco, founder and former president of both the political movement KPK and the political party Ang Kapatiran. “Politics is like air. Without air we will die; unfortunately, we ourselves pollute the air. That’s why people develop respiratory ailments,” he says. Since 1989, Nandy has been fighting for a gun-less society. “Let buy guns be bygones,” was a catchphrase he coined that used to be on a prominent billboard on EDSA.
In 1995, when Pope John Paul II was going to visit the Philippines, a 21-gun salute was planned as a welcome for His Holiness, but Nandy, who was a member of the welcome and arrival committee, opposed that plan and the Vatican’s representative seconded it.
Nandy was a former international civil servant who served in high positions in the United Nations Information Center and the Asian Development Bank. When he opted to take an early retirement in 1990, he was the highest-ranking Filipino in ADB.
Like cleaning polluted air, the task of cleaning up Philippine politics is gargantuan. But Ang Kapatiran is undaunted.
“We are evangelizing Philippine politics,” says Nandy, who now serves as the Secretary-General of the party. He boldly declares, “We are the David’s, the trapos (traditional politicians) are the Goliaths.”
The Ang Kapatiran party may be small like a David, but it charges with a sure aim with its clear and specific platform. It is not intimidated by the political Goliaths with their machineries of guns, goons, and gold.
Indeed, Ang Kapatiran is moving forward fearlessly like a David charging a Goliath. “We will surely topple down the Goliaths if we work together,” Nandy said confidently during the November 4, 2006 General Assembly when the new set of Ang Kapatiran officers and national committee chairpersons were presented and ratified.
“There can be no Easter Sunday without a Good Friday, no resurrection without the cross. Right now, we are at the cross, but we will surely reach the resurrection,” Nandy declares passionately.
One of the original incorporators of the movement and the party, Mario Ongkiko, a prominent law practitioner, is back after taking leave and is now the new President of the party. This is a welcomed development. Mario Ongkiko’s presence puts turbo power into the party as it prepares for the 2007 national elections.
The other incumbent officers of Ang Kapatiran are Manolo Dayrit as Chairman; David Lim as Vice-Chairman; Benny de Guzman as Vice President and Treasurer; Nonet Abellana as Vice President for Western Visayas; Feliciano Perater, Jr. as Vice President for Mindanao; Amador Astudillo and Rafael Enriquez as Deputy Secretary-Generals.
Seventy-three years old and still going strong, Nandy is passionate about the cause of Ang Kapatiran and KPK. “It is for our children, and their children, and their children’s children,” Nandy appeals.
Ang Kapatiran is now on an active search for principled Filipinos who will commit their futures to serving the Philippines and bringing it out of the bottom ranks. It is possible to skyrocket the Philippines and make it catch up with the Asian tigers, but the prerequisite is good governance and a peaceful and just society. “Ang Kapatiran is the antidote,” proposes Nandy.
New Methods
What makes Ang Kapatiran unique?
First of all, Ang Kapatiran upholds a platform-based politics, in contrast to the personality-based, celebrity-driven politics that our countrymen have been subjected to election after election.
Ang Kapatiran’s new method of campaigning includes a built-in education component that will promote basic political education, platform-based politics, and the politics of virtue and of duty, good citizenship, transparency and public accountability.
Ang Kapatiran will accord the highest priority to projects and programs for the underprivileged, the homeless, the indigenous peoples, the elderly, the prisoners, the disabled, the veterans, and the youth. It will support nongovernmental organizations and communities whose projects and programs directly benefit the poor.
Ang Kapatiran is the only political party that will promote progressive disarmament nationally and internationally through the United Nations. Ang Kapatiran promotes a “respect life” attitude in society and a consistent ethic of life. Thus, anyone running as a political candidate under Ang Kapatiran should not only be against abortion but also against anything that promotes violence in any form, even toy guns and violent movies.
Ang Kapatiran will dismantle the social structures that glorify vices and immorality and the culture of death and violence and replace them with the structures of virtue, peace, responsibility, and achievement.
Ang Kapatiran is for strict gun control in public places except for law enforcers who are in uniform and on duty. It supports the abolition of the death penalty. It is the only political party that is committed to abolish “pork barrel” and gambling, which discourages honest work and promotes poverty, fraud, and deceit.
Ang Kapatiran is for the immediate liquidation of cash advances of public servants. Un-liquidated cash advances in the Philippine government already run in the billions. It is against the unwholesome practice of setting up billboards in public places naming the public officials responsible for the project. It will disallow elected and appointed public officials from writing regular columns, acting in movies, anchoring on radio, and appearing on television, commercials, and billboards.
As a preventive measure against corruption, Ang Kapatiran will do away with laws, rules, and regulations that give government personnel, like the BIR, the discretion to allow or disallow certain tax deductions and exemptions.
Ang Kapatiran will limit future government borrowings within the growth levels of our exports, OFW remittances or GDP. It will create micro-finance facilities harnessing OFW remittances and will encourage the development of new export products.
Ang Kapatiran is committed to protect God’s creation, the most important of which are people. To protect people, Ang Kapatiran will promote a safe, clean, and wholesome environment – and that is environment in the broadest sense, which includes not only physical but also the social aspect.
New Fervor
A new fervor is rising for a new way of doing politics in thePhilippines. KPK and Ang Kapatiran will go to the parishes and the dioceses to educate the laity about their responsibility to ensure the just ordering of society and to inject moral sense in the political process. It is now creating chapters all over the country and even abroad, wherever there are Filipinos. As long as there are at least 10 members meeting regularly in a locality, that will comprise a chapter.
Ang Kapatiran calls on all Filipinos, regardless of religious affiliation, to support its campaign for a new politics and help bring the good news that a newPhilippines is possible. Don’t give up on the Philippines just yet. It is time to stop complaining and for those with moral courage to step forward and run for public office.
Consider the platform of Ang Kapatiran, and if you support it, join the party, help evangelize Philippine politics, and if you know anyone who wants to run under the banner of Ang Kapatiran, encourage him/her to contact the party. Website: www.angkapatiran.org Telefax: (02) 635-27-96 Email: angkapatiranparty@yahoo.com Mobile: 0917-8826700.
August 7, 2008 at 8:00 am |
PRESS RELEASE:
MR. ERIC B. MANALANG, Ang Kapatiran Party President
Contact nos: + 632-6342137, Mobile: +63917-5359702
Email: angkapatiranparty@yahoo.com
akpcommunication@gmail.com
A SOFT BUT LOUD VOICE OF ANG KAPATIRAN AGAINST THE REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH BILL
July 29, 2008
JC de los Reyes , Olongapo City Councilor
(Manila, Philippines.) Let it be of record that as City Councilor of Olongapo and member of Ang Kapatiran, I opposed in no uncertain terms, the Reproductive Health Code of Olongapo City as early as August 1, 2007. My reason for doing so was that it had confusing objectives. It provides for a policy of mandatory sex education for the young, school and community based teen centers ‘to cater to the needs of adolescent reproductive health.’ Are these the kinds of programs we want for our youth? More so, tubal ligations and vasectomies destroy reproductive functions… IUDs, pills (abortifacients) and condoms curtail and damage reproductive processes. How then can there be “a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing in all matters relating to the reproductive system, its functions and processes” (Def. of reproductive health)? An amusing play of words but these are neither reproductive nor healthful.
Behind these terminologies are foreign governments, development funding agencies and interest groups like the United Nations Fund for Population Activities and USAID among others, in line with plans and programs of rich nations to maintain access to strategic resources of poor countries like ours. They intrude into the most intimate and delicate aspects of our national life, influencing our religious values, conjugal and family life, local autonomy to state policies the objective of which is to limit our population using means offensive to Filipino culture and incompatible with our Judeo-Christian and Islamic beliefs.
Huge funding is appropriated for artificial birth control. It is noteworthy that a number of contraceptives induce abortion. As the Philippines is one of two countries in the world which prohibits all forms of abortion, it may very well be one of the last bastions of civilization. A nation which limits their own kind (at the behest of other nations) is a nation run by fools… one that kills their own is a barbaric one.
I exhort pro-life lawyers who share the same conviction to assist us in waging a legal battle to question the constitutionality of these deadly legislations on the basis that it violates Section. 12. The State recognizes the sanctity of family life and shall protect and strengthen the family as a basic social institution. It shall equally protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception. The natural and primary right and duty of parents in the rearing of the youth for civic efficiency and the development of moral character shall receive the support of the government.
The word sanctity means sacredness, integrity or inviolability. It means that the state will not unnecessarily, paternalistically spoon-feed and dictate to it. Do these pro-choice legislators respect this constitutional principal when this reproductive bill usurp parental functions by mandating sex education programs to teach the youth so called safe sex? The social cost is not hard to fathom when our barangays are flooded with chemical and mechanical contraceptives that will spawn promiscuity, pre marital and extra marital affairs. Is it on the premise of overpopulation? How can parents effectively teach moral character when the State seeks to compete with them by assuming to be the experts in sex through the promotion of a flawed and individualistic understanding of reproductive health and reproductive rights which they now regard as a human right?
Another issue I raise is that it is void for vagueness as it does not reasonably put one on notice as to what the legislative objective is. The proponents sugar coat their intention with many noble advocacies but underlying it all is population control – a historically proven uneconomical, unnecessary, immoral priority vis-à-vis other national problems like malnutrition, unemployment or lack of books and classrooms ( human rights that fall within government’s core functions).
There are no comprehensible standards except this, the complete well being in all matters relating to the reproductive system, its processes and functions. Ironically it promotes artificial birth control, vasectomies and tubal ligations which are major physiological alterations to the body, pills change nature’s balance and cycles…all these have chemical side effects such as physical illness and emotional depression, they are proven to be injurious to the health of Filipinos and their moral consequences damaging.
Political action is pivotal in this advocacy and vigilance is necessary as the fate of these anti-life policy interventions will ultimately rest in the hands of politicians we have entrusted to represent us. We urge Pro-life politicians to fight this platform within their own political parties as a non-negotiable party stand.
Since the inception of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines in the middle of this century, more than half of its pastoral letters dealt with political issues. The lay faithful has failed to assume their prophetic role of actively take part in the renewing of politics – the just ordering of society. This was the frustration of my father, the late Sonny de los Reyes, a former national president of the Council of the Laity of the Philippines. He was also former Executive Director of the Commission on Population where he witnessed first hand government’s policy of subservience to foreign interest groups to insure that this nation depopulates at all costs.
The transcendent common good (God) is realized through the immanent common good (the good of society). When majority of Filipinos are enslaved in poverty, the urgent challenge is to seek the truth on why they are poor and to engage in a war against all those structures that make them poor to alleviate their suffering. We must educate them so they could know God, fight side by side with them so they could feel God.
The reproductive health bill is anti poor because its target is to eliminate, not poverty but poor families. Will governors, mayors, congressmen agree to a vasectomy or ligations? Are they coerced to limit their families? It seeks to ban the poor from the world by prohibiting them from being born so that the rich and powerful, the same people who legislated and lobbied for it could solely enjoy the fruits of this world without ‘others,’ without opposition. I believe the real challenge is to fight graft and corruption and to get government to be responsive to the real needs of the real poor and to prepare this country to be God’s faithful people in Asia.
I am a proud member of Ang Kapatiran, the only national political party which explicitly espouses as a political platform where a consistent ethic of life and the promotion of the ‘fullness of life’ for every Filipino, is top priority. This is found in Sec. 2 in our Declaration of Principles, that ‘every human life is sacred, from conception to natural death, people are more important than things and that the measure of every institution is how it enhances the life and dignity of the human person.’
As this debate rages on, I pray for a closure to this issue when the Church as ‘an expert in humanity,’ at least in this nation, shall have thwarted the momentum of this deadly ideology called anti-natalism, when it shall have raised lay defenders of her social doctrine, zealously fighting for that ‘kingdom’ we all seek – here, now! This could only be achieved by a government that is progressive towards social justice. Only then could we claim to be a truly Christian country, fighting against the evils of a selfish, materialistic and controlling conspiracy for the few rich and powerful who rule in the world…fighting for all that is socially reprehensible, that which spawns the culture of death. Ours is a wide ranging ethic of life where children apart from ours will have a future full of life in a ‘civilization of love.’
April 27, 2009 at 7:14 pm |
Hayaan nyo po ako na sa aking wikang kinagisnan ko kayo makasama at makapalitan ng kuro-kuro.At labis ang aking kasiyahan sapagkat eto,me ganitong mga paraan tayo kung saan pwede tayong makibahagi sa mga usaping pambayan,panglipunan at pati na sa pang-kaluluwa.At dahil ako’y Pinoy e syempre,isa sa paborito ang ‘pulitika’. At sana e kahit paano e maibahagi ko rin ang marami o may ilan ko na ring mga nabasa at patuloy na mga binabasa at akin na ring naisusulat o naibabahagi sa ilang mga kaibigan,kababayan at sa mas-malawak at mas malaking lugar na tulad na rin ng mangyayari dito.Isa na dito ang hindi ko matapos-tapos na kay-gandang munting aklat na aking nadampot sa tindahan ng mga Madre.At syempre lalo na kung ang pamagat e me ‘politics’ at lalo na kung ito e para bagang laging gusto kong usisain ito ng husto at tila palaging upang makahanap ng maaaring mga maging kasagutan sa mga ilang o marami para sa ating Lupang Hinirang.Kung minsan e kinakailangan kong mag-ipon ng lakas ng loob,at salamat lagi…kaya hanggang sa muli.
April 29, 2009 at 4:56 pm |
me-konting karanasan na rin ako sa pulitika sa atin,kaya naman,halos mahal ko ang topic na ito,at siguro nga e dapat talaga na tutuong maki-sali tayo ng husto,at ng lahat tayo e lalong kumilos at tumulong tungo sa kapakanan ng bayan at maka-tulong sa mga kababayan at mga pulitiko natin,at syempre,mas gusto ko yung sa maliit lang,tulad ng barangay o maliliit na bayan.Lalo na kung kilala ka doon at halos lahat e kilala mo at pati na ang munting kasaysayan ng bayan,at ng mga namuno at kasalukuyang pamunuan,at kung sino ang mga pwedeng makasama.So sana e maraming maka-alam ng ng site na ito at maki-sali sa mga usapan.’Upang ‘lahat e lumakas,ha,ha ang loob at tutuong kahit paano e tumalim o lumawak ang kaalaman.At sana me-online,ang ASOG,para makapag-aral kami o ang iba rin…tungkol sa pamamahala.
April 29, 2009 at 5:15 pm |
Roger, inaanyayahan kitang dumalaw sa website ng Ang Kapatiran Party (AKP), http://www.angkapatiranparty.org. Tingnan mo kung sang-ayon ka sa mga alituntunin ng AKP, at kung sang-ayon ka, mainam kung makilala mo ang mga liders ng AKP, at baka sakaling makalahok ka sa aming mga adhikain. Hanapin mo si Eric Manalang, ang AKP President, at maaring mong banggitin sa kanya ang tungkol sa nabasa mong artikulo sa aking blog na ukol sa politika sa ating bayan at ang ating pagpapalitan ng mga kuro-kuro. Charter member ako ng AKP.
July 24, 2009 at 2:01 am |
Greetings!
We are a group of christian volunteers at general santos city in need of trainors to train us and be effective agents of change in values formation program for the government. Thanks and God Bless the Philippines!
September 24, 2009 at 2:26 pm |
sa mga kaganapan ngayon e,tutuo,dapat lang na magkaroon ng malalim na pagmumuni at dasal pa…lalo na sa isyu ng kung paanong magkakasama-sama at kung paano haharapin ang mga isyu.