The midterm elections are drawing near, and it is striking how few candidates genuinely advocate for the poor. Most Senatorial aspirants have reduced their campaigns to empty theatrics, resorting to gimmicks, spewing sexist remarks, and hoping that, as the pattern suggests, misogyny and macho posturing would secure votes.
Are we past the days when traditional politicians (trapos) would at least feign interest, promise to lift us out of poverty, or even pretend to share the same class origin? Has standing for the poor become a political liability, as it has been discredited by government’s own failure in poverty alleviation?
Peasants, the poorest of the poor
Official poverty statistics have been revealing about the magnitude of the poor population in each basic sector. In the latest (2023) release, the new sector category, ‘indigenous peoples’, has the highest poverty incidence (32.4%), followed by fisherfolk (27.4%) and farmers (27%). In 2021, when the indigenous peoples (IPs) were practically invisible to government poverty statistics, fisherfolk (30.2%), farmers (29.9%) and rural population (25.6%) were recorded with the highest numbers of poor people.
These sectors overlap even if they are defined with specific characteristics by the official survey. For example, there are farming IPs or there are fisherfolk who work seasonally as farm hands. In any case, these sectors collectively comprise what we consider the peasantry, the single largest sector in the country and whose nature has been mainly shaped by the agrarian and backward character of the economy that has been perennially battered by market forces.
Peasants are landless and disenfranchised, working in low-wage and precarious jobs, under poor and back-breaking conditions, and tend to have seasonal and migratory work. A large portion of peasant jobs are informal, unrecognized and unregulated. They are most vulnerable to land use conversion, land reclamation, ‘development projects’, and the accompanying militarization to enable these. Peasant work is gendered – women receive lower wages and incomes, are excluded from ownership and leadership roles, and often go unrecognized and unpaid.
Minoritized
IPs have been historically driven to the hinterlands, displaced and barred from returning to their ancestral domains by the very state that is supposed to respect and uphold their right to self-determination. With the Indigenous Peoples’ Rights Act (IPRA) of 1997, the government has superimposed a land concept of private ownership on the IPs’ customary appreciation of collective land stewardship. Along with IPRA, Philippine laws have favored land privatization, foreign mineral extraction, megadams construction, ecotourism, among others, which have often conflicted with IPRA’s rhetoric of recognizing IP rights.
IPs have long suffered the historical process of minoritization. They have faced the brutality of militarization – mass evacuations, indiscriminate bombings, destruction of livelihoods, and killings – to facilitate the exploitation of their ancestral domains. They are the least priority in the delivery of social services and victims of stereotyping, prejudice and political misrepresentation.
The Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) reports that IPs, covering more than 110 ethnolinguistic groups and the Bangsamoro, comprise only 9.1% of the household population, or roughly 9.9 million people, which is the figure used in the estimation of the cited poverty incidence. But other estimates suggest that IPs account for up to 20% of the national population, which is equivalent to about 22 million people. The estimates are far from official figures, which is telling of how IPs’ special characteristics have only been blurred by minoritization and exclusion.
Marginalized
Ironically for an archipelago, majority of the country’s fisherfolk rely on simple and passive fishing gear, and low-powered or even non-motorized boats, often without outriggers. Most of them do not even own these tools of production – they rent or join fishing trips with only their labor power as contribution. Due to this low level of production, along with commercial exploitation of fishery resources and environmental degradation, the small fisherfolk’s catch has been diminishing for decades.
The Philippine Fisheries Code of 1998 reserves municipal waters for the small fisherfolk – including marine waters extending up to 15 kilometers (km) from the shoreline. Yet, the law has a provision that allows local government units (LGUs) to grant commercial vessels access to municipal waters under certain conditions. Commercial fishing in the 15-km zone is allowed if the zone is deeper than 7 fathoms (12.8 meters) and if the LGUs permit it. Unfortunately, some coastal areas reach this depth only a few kilometers from the shore.
The loophole provision has allowed fishing corporations to enter the fishing grounds of artisanal fisherfolk, contributing to the decline in the small fishers’ catch. It even gives corporations the power to sue local governments, and courts often rule in their favor.
The latest (2022) statistics from the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) reports 2.3 million registered fisherfolk – 1.2 million are in capture fishing; 259,448 in aquaculture; 157,161 in fish vending; and the rest in other related livelihoods. Municipal fisherfolk make up the vast majority, around 1.9 million. Like the IPs, tens of thousands of fisherfolk – though their exact number is difficult to determine due to the fluid and precarious nature of peasant livelihoods – also rely on other seasonal and informal occupations to survive.
Denied of social justice
For centuries, farming in the country has remained mainly family farming, small-scale, rainfed, and dependent on hand tools and animal brawn. Meanwhile, there remain haciendas and corporate farms that employ agricultural workers at peon wages to produce export crops. After centuries, private land monopoly prevails.
On top of paying rent, farmers are captive to middlemen and traders who lend capital at usurious rates, underprice the farmers’ produce, and overprice farm inputs and the families’ basic needs. Their labor is underpriced as well, with rural provinces having the lowest mandated minimum wages.
The latest (2022) census of agriculture reveals that 78.2% of the agricultural population still do not own the land they are tilling. Agricultural population is defined as households with one or more members engaged in agricultural activities and operations. Seven out of 10 farm parcels are still not fully owned by the farmers. The number of fully owned parcels fell from 3.6 million in 2012 to 2.4 million in 2022. After about 70 years of land reform programs, landlessness has only worsened.
It is alarming but not surprising. The last land reform program, the 1988 Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP), reduced ‘land reform’ to a mere land sale transaction. Riddled with loopholes, it ultimately led to the reconsolidation of land in the hands of landowners. From there, it has been easy for the government to introduce a neoliberal “market-oriented land reform”, which basically calls for prioritizing land profitability. Land can be both a financial and production asset, and neoliberalism has prioritized land values over agricultural production, triggering frenzied land grabbing for real estate development.
This has led to utter government neglect of agricultural and rural development. Only 69% of irrigable lands are irrigated, which is equivalent to only 19% of agricultural lands. Only 22% of farm work – mostly in land preparation and threshing – is mechanized. The country relies on imported fertilizers, pesticides, farm machinery, metals used for small-scale fabrication of tools, seeds, and eventually food and agricultural products. Farmers have cultivated the land for generations, but there hasn’t been a program of free land distribution to the tillers. Neoliberalism has deprived farmers of social justice.
For the win
Policymaking has been unapologetically anti-poor, and impoverishment systemic. The state has not only neglected the poor but has also actively sponsored violence against them through militarization, crackdowns, red-tagging, and killings. The human rights group Karapatan noted that from July 2022 to December 2024, there were tens of thousands of victims of virtual martial law in the rural areas, food and economic blockades, restrictions of movement, forced evacuations, aerial bombings, and destruction of farms and livelihoods. Out of 119 recorded extrajudicial killings nationwide, 86 were peasants.
Only a few Senatorial aspirants genuinely represent the poor – most notably those from the Makabayan slate. These are leaders rooted in their respective sectors and equipped with a firm grasp of comprehensive policies for national economic development, which aim to address the structural roots of poverty . Ronnel Arambulo represents the fisherfolk, Danilo Ramos is a long-time peasant leader, and Amirah Lidasan is a Moro leader from the IP alliance Sandugo. The rest of the slate likewise champion the basic sectors, especially the most marginalized among them. There are Makabayan party-list groups that are genuine, as they are not backed and controlled by trapos and truly advance the causes of the poor.
But state-sponsored human rights violations have been extended to these leaders. They are red-tagged, vilified, and even criminalized to ensure that their voices are silenced and discredited and their constituents disenfranchised.
The 2025 elections shall be a game-changer. It’s drawing our attention to the real issues, the real causes, and the real choices. It shall make us learn the hard way that real democratic change through elections will come when we find policymakers and leaders who are working with the poor in their daily difficulties, in their struggles for a better nation. Until then, we shall realize that standing with the poor is a political asset that ultimately assures winnability in any political endeavor.
