Engage in politics, not frivolities

 

 

Four months from now, the Filipino community in Toronto will be abuzz again with festivals commemorating Philippine Independence Day. Filipinos will come out in droves to join the parades of beauties and beasts, the latter being roasted pigs or lechons. In addition to parades, there will also be singing and dancing contests, picnics in the parks, and trade shows. At least three major community organizations, just in the city of Toronto alone, will hold separate Independence Day celebrations, as if a common observance is inadequate to embody the collective aspiration of the Filipino people to be free from colonial rule.

Filipino Centre Toronto (FCT) presents the winners of the Filipino Singing Idol contest
 during the Philippine Independence Day celebrations at Toronto City Hall. Click link
to view http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-cTF0gCEP0, "Pinoy Fiesta Toronto."



If only this huge annual coming-out event by Filipinos in the biggest Canadian city could be an accurate gauge of our participation in civic, community and political events, then we could say that Filipinos in Canada, or at least in the city of Toronto, constitute a powerful political force to reckon with. That’s why these Independence Day festivals are attended by Canadian politicians, federal, provincial and local, those in office, those running in the next election, and political wannabes. And one could also probably say that Filipinos, by their sheer number of close to 250,00o in the metropolitan area, are well represented in the city and provincial governments.

 

The sad truth, however, is either we are disinterested in politics or our divisive nature has failed us miserably to send at least one Filipino in Toronto’s city council or in Ontario’s provincial parliament. But this is not the case in the West where we have elected Filipinos in parliaments in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba. Manitoba has also sent to the federal Parliament the first and only Filipino Member of the House of Commons.

 

But wait; let’s not be too quick to put down Filipinos in Toronto. We just have a Filipino senator in Canada’s Parliament, even if he wasn’t elected. Responding to an interview hours after his appointment was announced, the new senator said: “I was completely shocked when they told me about the appointment. I couldn’t believe that this was happening.”

 

Prime Minister Stephen Harper chose Tobias “Jun” Enverga as one of the senators to represent the province of Ontario, albeit without a real and a natural constituency. Before this appointment, the newly-minted senator was elected a school trustee in his first attempt to run for office, though with no memorable record to speak of. Not even his political stand or opinion on the issues of the day is known to many, other than being an active supporter of the ruling Conservative Party.

 

Of course, Mr. Enverga’s charitable works speak volumes for him in the community. He was a former president of Philippine Independence Day Celebration (PIDC), the supposed umbrella organization for all festivals commemorating Philippine independence in Toronto, and founder and adviser to Philippine Canadian Charitable Foundation (PCCF), a rival organization that also holds similar Independence Day festivities. The new senator is on the record saying: “I always advocate for charity wherever I go. So for every organization I join, I make sure they have a cause to build on–not just social and cultural, they should also be a charity. It’s important because we’re so blessed here in Canada and we should share all the time–have fun and share.”



Senator Tobias "Jun" Enverga, only Filipino senator in Canada's Parliament.
Click link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovqo2XROb6I to view interview
of Mr. Enverga after his election as school trustee, "A Voice for Toronto's Visible
Minorities," by FilipinoWebChannel.

Now, who’s to question the motives of the Prime Minister if that singular devotion to charitable causes is not enough to qualify one to become a senator?

 

Canada’s Senate has been plagued with problems in the past and is currently under siege from the opposition parties and the public in general. Its relevance to Canada’s democratic process is once again under scrutiny with the most recent expulsion from the Conservative caucus of Senator Patrick Brazeau who was charged with domestic assault and for bringing to the Senate a string of negative news, from controversial expense claims to mental incompetence. Another senator from Prince Edward Island, former television journalist Mike Duffy, is also on the hot seat for reportedly claiming living allowances for senators from out-of-province, even though he apparently lives in the Ottawa-area where he also votes. Both senators were appointed by Mr. Harper.

 

The Canadian Senate is a house in great disarray. Poll surveys have indicated that majority of Canadians would rather want the Senate be abolished or senators be elected instead of allowing the Prime Minister to choose and appoint them, usually on the basis of political patronage.

Senator Patrick Brazeau was removed from caucus by the Conservative Party
after his arrest in Gatineau, QC. Photo by Chriss Wattie/Reuters.

It’s therefore disturbing to hear a group of Filipinos in Toronto who feel offended by those who criticize the appointment of Mr. Enverga to the Senate, as if being a senator in Canada is comparable to an elected senator in the United States or Philippines. They claim the appointment is a boost to the image of the Filipino in Canada. To put down Mr. Enverga, they said, “demeans and ridicules individual Filipino achievers and sets back community-building efforts and is not in the best interests of the Filipino community in Canada.”

 

In announcing the appointment of Senator Enverga, Prime Minister Harper highlighted Mr. Enverga’s “broad range of experience and dedication” to the Filipino community, which he said will further strengthen the Senate and benefit the entire country. Didn’t Mr. Enverga say he was an advocate of charitable work? Beyond raising funds for the benefit of a medical mission in his home province of Quezon in the Philippines, Mr. Enverga has not done anything significant, for example, in helping newly-landed Filipinos resettle and find employment opportunities, or reducing gang violence among Filipino youth or advocating for better working conditions for Filipino domestic caregivers or access to the professions by trained Filipino graduates. He is clueless on significant political and social issues, and has been conspicuously absent in efforts by some Filipino groups in a broad range of social advocacy issues in the province. His only foray in politics was his election as a school trustee two years ago, but even in this position, Mr. Enverga did not leave any lasting imprint of his contribution.

 

There is perhaps something Mr. Enverga can do for the Filipino community at this crucial time of discord among Filipinos in Toronto. Admittedly, he and his wife were partly responsible for the issues that currently divide the community. He cannot deny this because he founded PCCF, a rival organization to PIDC, and his wife, also an officer of this new organization, is so enamoured with managing beauty contests that also raise funds and have been relentlessly questioned by the local media for lack of financial transparency. Mr. Enverga could be greatly instrumental in bringing our folks together with his stature alone as a Canadian senator and a distinguished leader in the community. At the same time, this could be a litmus test of his leadership ability which will assist him well in the Senate where he would be serving until he reaches 75.

 

But Filipinos in the Metropolitan Toronto area cannot be smug and content that we have Mr. Enverga in the Canadian Senate. We need to elect Filipinos to our local councils and to the provincial or federal Parliament if we must politically empower our community as a whole. Empowerment is not a dangerous word that should scare some of our so-called geriatric community leaders. I heard one community leader say that she doesn’t want “activists” because they are rabble-rousers, perhaps harkening to those days in her youth when student activists in the Philippines had to battle armed riot police.

 

To achieve political empowerment, our community organizations and their leaders must refocus their objectives and priorities, and redefine their political engagement by helping identify and encourage those that have talents for leadership who can be tapped for potential political runs. They won’t find these talents through the usual singing idol contests which the Filipino Centre Toronto (FCT) sponsors every year or the beauty pageants that PIDC or PCCF organizes to select beauty queens from among our young women so they can parade and showcase them during Independence Day celebrations. Above all, our older so-called leaders perhaps need to step down and let the younger crop of leaders lead us to the future.

 

A recent survey of Canadians’ satisfaction with our democratic process yielded an all-time low of 55%. Only 27% of Canadians think Ottawa deals with the issues they care about satisfactorily. Overall, statistics show that Canadians are getting disengaged from politics, in ways similar to the trend in the United States.

 

We usually blame politicians for how we feel towards our government. But we can’t keep on complaining and making it a national pastime. If we‘re not happy with the way our government works and responds to our problems, then let’s not elect those representatives and leaders we believe are responsible for the sad state of our democracy.

 

The same can be said of our community. Most of the time we blame our division, our lack of unity, for not being able to elect one Filipino in city council or in parliament. It’s about time to change this attitude. We cannot continue to disparage our community or our government if we are not engaged and doing our part. The engagement of citizens in public affairs is an indispensable condition of our democratic process.

 

We should encourage our young people to join the public life. Their political engagement, more than anything else, will advance our image as a community here in Canada and even back home. Let’s not simply be content with basking in the glory of those who are given the plum job or appointment for loyalty to one’s political party. A sign of political maturity among our people is when we start to encourage our young to skip the frivolous in favour of substance. Beauty and the beast pageants will bind us to petty squabbles and distract us from aiming for a deeper involvement in the political arena and the issues that matter: jobs, better work conditions, zero discrimination in the workplace, access to higher education, and work opportunities for our youth.

A community struggles for civility

 

 

 

The Filipino community in Toronto is being torn apart by a nasty spat between a long-standing and established community newspaper, on one hand, and a group of so-called concerned members of the community, on the other. It is sharply dividing the community and the growing rift does not reflect well on the Filipino’s unwarlike image.

 

It all begun when Ms. Rosemer Enverga was grilled by Ms. Tess Cusipag, editor of Balita during an open forum on why there were no audited financial statements of Ms. Enverga’s running of beauty pageants when she was still an officer with the Philippine Independence Day Celebration (PIDC). Ms. Cusipag, who also runs a similar beauty pageant called Miss Manila but not as big as the ones ran by Ms. Enverga, has claimed that her pageant earns money every year it’s held. Ms. Enverga is the wife of recently appointed Filipino senator in Canada’s Parliament, Mr. Tobias “Jun” Enverga, who was at one-time the president of PIDC.

Filipino-Canadian Senator Tobias "Jun" Enverga and his wife, Rosemer, meet
with Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim when they visited the Philippines. Click link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyla69pZUnI to view "Senator Enverga's
Message to the Filipino community."

But the squabble could really have started even much earlier when Mr. Enverga, not yet a senator at that time, his wife and their group organized the Philippine Canadian Charitable Foundation (PCCF) that rivalled and duplicated the activities of PIDC. Whereas before, PIDC was the umbrella Filipino organization in Toronto responsible for holding all festivals related to the commemoration of Philippine Independence Day, PCCF has replicated the same activities and been fighting for the same advertisers and sponsors that supported PIDC.

 

Here are some relevant questions to ponder, though. Would Mr. Enverga encourage the formation of PCCF if he had foreseen his appointment to the Senate by Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper? Or, have these so-called community leaders realized early on that their fascination with senseless beauty pageants would somehow become the spark-plug of this present crisis in the community? So, should blame be assigned on the Filipino’s obsession with the trivial?

 

However petty the nature of this bickering, the parties involved have raised the conflict to a point that is now breaking up the community. Balita, the community newspaper formerly edited by Filipino journalist Ruben Cusipag, husband of the present editor, maintains that the genuine issue in the ongoing schism in the community is the question of transparency and accountability which the Envergas’ failed to adequately respond to. Romeo Marquez, Balita’s associate editor, further alleges that the rest of the disagreement between the two groups such as the petition started by Mr. Oswald Magno is only a smokescreen to divert the attention from the Envergas’ fixation with power.

 

For its part, the other group argues that Balita has abused its newspaper’s stature by harassing and ridiculing certain personalities in the community, not just the Envergas but also Mr. Magno, Miss Lilac Cana, and now, Ms. Livvy Camacho. The group has asked the Philippine Press Club of Ontario (PPCO) to intervene by way of sanctioning Balita’s behaviour as a contravention of its Code of Ethics. The choice of the PPCO as an arbiter is rather unfortunate since it was never intended to make determinations contrary to the exercise of free press, besides the fact that it is a mere social club.

 

Short of litigating in court the defamatory damages that both sides have unknowingly or apparently hurled at each other, one way to resolve the conflict is to bring both groups together in a community town hall meeting where they can discuss their differences in a friendly and civil manner. But obviously this appears not a viable option anymore, because so much hurt and pain have already be been cast by both sides. Or perhaps, egos have been so bruised that the concerned parties have obliterated from their cultural background the natural inclination of Filipinos to sit down and settle family disagreements. Maybe, too much obsession with the adversarial process has shaken our Filipino cultural trait of promoting amity and harmony among ourselves.

 

One thing I personally know is this. In my more than 25 years in Toronto, long before Romeo Marquez descended upon the city to peddle his journalistic skills, Balita under Ruben Cusipag has never been at the centre of a community controversy, much less as one of the parties involved. Ruben understood what investigative journalism is. That it is not enough to expose the bad apples in the community, but a newspaper has the obligation to present news stories to help shape perceptions of the future of our community. So to Ruben, it is equally just as important to write stories that uncover the roots of injustice and unfairness in our society as a whole.

Former Balita Editor Ruben Cusipag and his wife, Tess, who now runs and edits
the iconic Filipino community newspaper in Toronto. Click link to view "The
Rouge, the Bad & the Wiggly in the Filipino Community" by Romeo Marquez,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNgA25EFHBs.

If Balita today were still in the able hands of Ruben Cusipag, this ongoing row will never have escalated into a senseless shouting match that uses so much inflammatory and hateful language. Ruben had given up the day-to-day running of Balita to his wife Tess after a serious car accident almost took his life. We became close friends after he covered many of my court hearings that involved Filipino children who were taken away from the custody of their parents. As I knew him then and now, he would have continued to expose shenanigans in the community or issues that were inimical to the best interests of the Filipino community, but in a fashion that would never sow discord or break up our people. He knew when to be doggedly critical and pursue an exposé to its rightful conclusion, but at the same time to be keenly aware when to mediate disputes before they spread like wildfire.

 

Early in my law practice, Tess Cusipag had invited me to sit as a judge in her Miss Manila beauty pageant. When you’re a lawyer or a doctor, you get invited to these fancy occasions. Normally, I would not accept any such invitation but as a courtesy to her husband Ruben I agreed. Ruben told me it was all right as the contestants would not be allowed to parade themselves in swim suits and even told Tess he would never support beauty pageants because that would objectify the contestants. In fairness to Tess, she kept her promise to Ruben and her Miss Manila beauty pageant has been a successful activity every year although I still can’t find its relevance to our cultural empowerment.

 

This current community spat started with Tess Cusipag’s zealousness to compel Ms. Enverga to be accountable and transparent with her own beauty pageants, consistent with Balita’s objective to report any irregular activity in the community so the people may know. It is far-fetched to suggest that Tess and Balita wanted to reverse the appointment of Mr. Jun Enverga to the Senate. Mr. Enverga was not a senator yet at that time and no one knew—including himself—which he admitted in a press interview, that he would be appointed.

 

But the arrival of Romeo Marquez, Tess Balita’s Associate Editor and a former San Diego journalist, has added fuel in the already-raging controversy, particularly with the kind of incendiary language he employs in his articles. It is the same modus operandi that Marquez followed in his newspapering stint in the US that he is now replicating here in Toronto. The trail of controversies he has left behind—his quarrels with various Filipinos, community leaders or otherwise, and videos on YouTube—speaks for the kind of journalism that Balita is currently espousing.

 

In its latest issue, Balita published an article written by Carlos Padilla, a board member of the Kalayaan Cultural Community Center (KCCC) in Mississauga, who claimed he has asked Mr. Enverga way back in 2000 to report on fundraising events he held at KCCC. According to the article, to date, Mr. Enverga has not complied with Mr. Padilla’s request but he made a pledge he would clear up everything eventually. During a chance meeting with Mr. Enverga last April 2012, and as if he could already read the ominous handwriting on the wall, Mr. Padilla warned Mr. Enverga that his continuing failure to honour his pledge could spell trouble for him in the future.

 

Maybe the office of Prime Minister Harper did not fully vet Mr. Enverga’s record as a leader in the Filipino community. Perhaps, Mr. Enverga’s high profile in the community was not enough to qualify him as senator, save for his unabashed support of the Conservative Party. There are many skeletons just coming out of the closet. Mr. Enverga needs to address them if he must win and earn the respect and support of the Filipino community which he’s been proud to tell everyone is his natural constituency.

 

As many a statesman is apt to do, maybe Mr. Enverga could bring the folks in our community together again. There is no better and more opportune time for him than now to show his gravitas in helping heal the wounds inflicted by this raging unfortunate squabble in the community. Just because he wasn’t elected doesn’t mean he could simply watch idly and ignore his community’s disintegration right before his eyes.

 

As to the controversy in the community, both Balita and the group allegedly led by Oswald Magno should take a break and let cooler heads prevail. As a newspaper, Balita should understand that it is the freedom of the press that makes it a powerful and significant pillar in the community. It should not take this freedom and power lightly— that it can outrightly censure, silence or even bully its critics anytime it’s not happy with complaints from groups in the community about their news reporting.

 

By the same token, disgruntled or unhappy groups in the community, just because they also have the right to free speech, cannot dictate how newspapers should write their stories. It is the free market of ideas that makes our society vibrant, but how these ideas can be expressed should not be subject to the whims and caprices of overzealous newspapers or the short fuses of some groups unwilling to take criticism if their favourite idol in the nation’s Senate is subjected to the probing eye of the community.

 

As Goethe once said, “there is a courtesy of the heart,” and out of it arises the purest courtesy in outward behaviour. While conflict is natural to the human condition, it behooves us to bear in mind the pleas for civility as a means of at least managing it.

Shameless subculture

Summer is almost around the corner and Filipino community organizations in the Greater Toronto Area are once again soaked in unabashed excitement over their so-called cultural offerings to more than 250,000 Filipino-Canadians in the area. This is usually the time of the year when these organizations wake up from their winter hibernation to prepare for the parade of Filipino beauties—young and old, Mr. and Miss or Mrs.—along with the retinue of roast pigs or lechons that vie with the frenzy and revelry of the entertainment festivals that go with the celebration of Philippine Independence Day on June 12.

Time again for Filipino beauty pageants in Metro Toronto, courtesy of the Philippine
Independence Day Council (PIDC). Click image to view "Money Issues Surface as
New  Officers Take Over  Toronto's PIDC,"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFvfAV26CIQ&feature=relmfu

Two major organizations are currently embroiled in a simmering feud about transparency and accountability in financial reporting of the monies raised by their respective beauty pageants. The Philippine Independence Day Council (PIDC), the “mother” of all these so-called organizations, has raised some questions on the way its beauty pageants were run before by a former officer who now sits as a ranking official of the Philippine Canadian Charitable Foundation (PCCF), a rival and spin-off organization.

At the centre of the feud is the allegation made by former PIDC president Ms. Minda Neri that Ms. Rosemer Enverga, now an official of the PCCF, did not make a full financial disclosure with regard to the beauty pageants she managed when she was still with the PIDC. Ms. Enverga, during a press conference she called recently, denied any wrongdoing with her previous running of the PIDC beauty pageants.

This kind of bickering between organizations within the Filipino community is neither unusual nor unheard of. With hundreds of groups organized and motivated to cater to the entertainment of Filipino residents in the metropolitan area, it is almost natural to expect that rival groups would eventually clash and even hurl allegations of improprieties against each other. That has been the practice among Filipinos everywhere, whether at home or overseas. It is as if without the in-fighting everything becomes lifeless and dull, a habit that does not speak well of Filipinos, a baggage they have not done away with even in the Diaspora.

But it’s not the feuding among Filipinos in Toronto that is really depressing. Rather, it is the subculture that these so-called leaders have brought to this metropolis. It is their penchant for crowning Filipino women and girls as beauty queens that has become a shameless exercise, not to mention the appetite for showcasing “bakya” entertainment for the masses, as if this is the best of Filipino culture that one can offer.

During her press conference, Ms. Enverga said that with more than 250,000 Filipinos in the Greater Toronto Area, “we can have as much fiestas and festivals every year, yet we cannot be able to accommodate” all our Filipino kababayans. “This goes also true to beauty pageants; we can have as much beauty pageants. The more, the merrier. So much the better if we can have a lot of choices,” she added.

Not to be outdone, rival organization, Philippine Canadian Charitable Foundation (PCCF)
hosts it own Pinoy Fiesta & Trade Show at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

Who are these beauty queens? Let us just mention the titles.

Miss PIDC-Philippines, Miss Philippines-Canada, Little Miss Philippines-Canada, Mrs. Philippines-Canada, Paraluman, Miss Carassauga, Miss Caregiver, Miss Manila, Miss Santacruzan, Reyna Elena, Miss Photogenic, Miss Congeniality, Miss (insert name of town or city in the Philippines), etcetera, etcetera.

Why do the likes of Ms. Enverga and other so-called Filipino leaders in the community keep on celebrating our culture in this brazen way? Beauty queens do not represent Filipino culture, and putting these women on the pedestal shows an utter misunderstanding of cultivated behaviour that underlies the fabric of one’s culture.

In holding these beauty contests every year, these so-called leaders are entrenching this tradition as a subculture, no matter how useless and insignificant to our lives and struggles in this foreign city. Sure enough, they offer us fleeting entertainment and diversion from the humdrum struggle of survival that most of us go through. But we are stooping so low in the estimation of other people who think that Filipinos are a beauty pageant-crazy nation. To say that we can hardly accommodate the hundreds of thousands of Filipinos living in the Greater Toronto Area only blows up our collective low self-esteem, that there’s really nothing we can be proud of except for our “Miss-whatever” contests.

A young Muslim woman replying to an opinion survey whether beauty contests are degrading wrote the following response:

“I agree that beauty contests are degrading. They degrade women to mere objects. The sponsors exploit women by requiring them to parade in swimsuits or even lingerie. They are judged mainly on their physical appearance rather than on any other qualities they may possess.

“When the women parade themselves on stage, the judges will look at a number of things, but the most important criteria will probably be poise. To achieve proper poise, a woman's body should be well proportioned—having a neck proportionate to her height, lanky legs, and so on. This process of evaluating poise can be compared to dog shows where golden retrievers of the wrong bodily proportions are kicked out of the competition. I feel judging women primarily on their looks degrade womanhood.”

Indeed, beauty contests project an unrealistic image of the ideal woman in the eyes of the public. We are already inundated with silly standards of beauty by the mass media; we don’t need beauty pageants to further aggravate such situation.

Just consider this as a thought. The first modern beauty pageant was held in 1854 by P.T. Barnum of the renowned circus called the Ringling Bros. & Barnum and Bailey Circus, but his beauty contest was closed down by public protest. Barnum also held dog, baby and bird beauty contests, quite an unpleasant category in which we can lump our present-day beauty contests.

Including young children in beauty competitions further degrades this tradition. Like the American reality show, “Toddlers and Tiaras,” a search for Miss Little Philippines is totally disgusting, an excuse for physical and emotional abuse of the child.

Most psychologists are unanimous in finding that children's beauty pageants are not in the best interests of healthy child development. There is enough undue, exaggerated focus on superficial beauty in our culture without children being pitted against each other in a contest of looks. Our so-called leaders in the community like Ms. Enverga and company pay no apparent regard to considerable body of research that demonstrates why beauty contests are harmful to kids.

This Filipino passion for beauty queens is a mere extension of our collective appetite for shallow entertainment as a panacea for our shortcomings as a people. We tend to hide under the veneer of popular songs, dances and other forms of amusement in order to distract others from seeing our borrowed and western-oriented culture. Because we are good entertainers, we keep others amused and somehow forget our insecurities.

As a people, we tend to be easily distracted by the more mundane and ordinary pursuits in life. Take the case of the Gawad Kalinga (GK) Global Summit which is going to be held in Toronto this coming June 8 and 9. This GK summit is about GK’s role in eradicating poverty and their thrust on learning social enterprises as a platform for liberating the poor from the vicious cycle of poverty. Yet, the Toronto organizers have focused on promoting a gala concert by Philippine musician Ryan Cayabyab and his ensemble of singers on the eve of the summit, instead of giving play to GK founder Tony Meloto who is scheduled to give the keynote speech the following day.

This much shows our priorities and scale of values: singing and hobnobbing with the community’s rich and famous trump the substance of the GK Summit. Just like the celebration of our national independence, the significance of the day is lost and buried in the various festivals and beauty pageants which people would rather see in droves. But the shameless part of all this preoccupation with the commonplace and banal is obviously the role played by our so-called community leaders in promoting this heritage of trumpeting our biggest shame: our penchant for celebrating the inane, our propensity for embracing shallow pursuits over substantive issues that truly affect us as a community.