INQUIRER.net Eleksyon 2007

Kapatiran’s lone winner keeps party’s flame burning

Inquirer

Christian V. Esguerra

MANILA, Philippines—The flame of Ang Kapatiran and its campaign for a God-centered politics did not die with its crushing defeat in the May elections.

Keeping it alive is a city councilor—the only one who won out of the 27 candidates that the party fielded—who is now engaged in a lonely battle against a key population control measure being introduced in Olongapo City.

John Carlos de los Reyes is fighting what he says is an attempt by foreign and local organizations to introduce a city measure to curb the Philippines’ runaway population growth “through the back door.”

Following the consistent failure to get a population control bill through Congress, agencies like the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the local Population Commission (PopCom) are taking a different tack, trying to sneak population control measures into local government units, De los Reyes said.

“They’re now using a backdoor approach which is more discreet,” he said in an interview.

In a speech before the Olongapo City council last week, De los Reyes denounced the proposed Reproductive Health Code (RHC) for Olongapo for, among other things, pointing to “a need to curb the population growth rate for better population management.” A copy of the speech was sent to the Inquirer.

According to De los Reyes, the RHC was just a continuation of the earlier Contraceptive Self-reliance Ordinance (CSRO), another population control measure introduced to the LGUs but which failed to pass. The CSRO sought to fund the purchase of contraceptives with the use of public money, to replace the grants and assistance that used to be provided by the United States which donated condoms and birth control pills through USAID, he said.

De los Reyes said that at a public consultation conducted by population control advocates that he attended three weeks ago, it was explained that the RHC and the CSRO were “pro forma, template” measures being introduced in local government units around the country.

He said the gathering included representatives from the Department of Health, the National Economic and Development Authority, and the UNFPA.

“They were asking the [Olongapo City] council to adopt the Reproductive Health Code,” he said.

“They know that such measures can’t pass in Congress because of the strong lobby of the Catholic Church, that’s why they’re bringing them to local government units,” De los Reyes said.

He said it was much easier to lobby at the local government level than in Congress where media focus is more intense.

He said lobbyists often try to bribe local officials through “incentives, loans, grants, aid packages and even vehicles.”

De los Reyes’ stance on population is consistent with the tenets of Ang Kapatiran (Alliance for the Common Good), a political party that a group of Catholic professionals founded three years ago “to bring back the teachings of God into the center of politics.”

The goal is to infuse new blood in Philippine politics, one that would put God at the center of political decisions and actions.

The party fielded more than 20 candidates last May, four of them in the senatorial race. Except for De los Reyes, everyone lost.

“As a Catholic politician, I am in office to deliberate and argue what I perceive to be the best policy direction for our constituents based on my conscience,” De los Reyes said in his speech.

Wrong solution

He said the RHC was “not wrong in general,” saying he agreed with the need to care for the health of women and children.

But he said he was disturbed by its policy statement, a portion of which read: “Unmet family planning needs due to shortage of supplies may contribute to the looming surge in the city’s population in the near future.”

De los Reyes said population control was the wrong solution to the problem.

“We are poor not because we are many, but because only a few wittingly or unwittingly deprive our kababayan [countrymen] of opportunities to prosper,” he said.

Citing figures from the UN and the National Census and Statistics Office, he said the country’s annual population growth rate was only between 1.61 and 1.99 percent, not the 2.36 percent that he said was being quoted by groups that advocate population management.

“The population control bills, by their advocacy of ‘reproductive health’ and ‘reproductive rights,’ will slowly render the Philippines captive to an official language and ethic that accept abortion as a legitimate human right,” he said.

“Please, not that all countries which have officially legislated the use of abortifacients eventually legalized abortion,” he said.

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