“Though unelected and ignorant of local realities, they confront the democratically chosen and those who voted them into office. A few of them are enmeshed in crime and corruption.”
by Ducky Paredes
Dr. Sam Vaknin has written several books on non-governmental organizations (NGO). He writes: “Many of them live in plush apartments, or five star hotels, drive SUV’s, sport $3000 laptops and PDA’s. They earn a two figure multiple of the local average wage. They are busybodies, preachers, critics, do-gooders, and professional altruists
“Always self-appointed, they answer to no constituency. Though unelected and ignorant of local realities, they confront the democratically chosen and those who voted them into office. A few of them are enmeshed in crime and corruption. They are the non-governmental organizations, or NGO’s.
“Some NGO’s - like Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Amnesty - genuinely contribute to enhancing welfare, to the mitigation of hunger, the furtherance of human and civil rights, or the curbing of disease. Others - usually in the guise of think tanks and lobby groups - are sometimes ideologically biased, or religiously-committed and, often, at the service of special interests.”
This is what crosses my mind when I read of a bishop campaigning (with the help of an anti-mining NGO) against the award of a mining concession to a firm that gave up its plans of continuing with the project a year ago because there was not enough coal in the ground to make the project economically viable.
I ask why the NGO did not know that the plans for the mine had already been abandoned. Or, did the NGO still do what it did because the headline in a major newspaper in the Philippines would give them the funds for more laptops, PDAs, cars and condos?
Not all NGOs are on the up-and-up but a journalist who writes about them will often be accused of being in the pay of those that the NGO has taken on. Sadly, too often, their reason for taking on the firm or the problem is also for the immediate reward – a check from a donor from somewhere in the world for the noise that the NGO created. It is noise because, in many cases, there are no facts behind the accusations, which are really just for show!
Last July 30, Mamamayan Ayaw sa Aerial Spraying president Cecilia Moran and a certain Liezl Bacalso talked to the parishioners during mass for the Feast of St. Ignatius at the Ateneo de Manila University, the seminarians at the Ateneo School of Theology, students of the Ateneo Law School at Rockwell in Makati and to socialites at the Nine-Mile Bar along Kalayaan Avenue in Quezon City.
“Their forum is a grossly one-sided affair and is a repudiation of Ateneo’s time-honored tradition of being issue-confronting but dialogic and educative,” said one of their listeners. They related that when the aerial spray plane passed overhead, residents dropped to the ground dizzy and disoriented. A Total lie
Meanwhile, a member of a women’s support group, Damayan, based in Utrecht, The Netherlands alleged that the charitable Dutch agencies funding the lobby against the Philippine banana industry might have no idea that their humanitarian aid have been misused to promote economic interests.
“If what we heard are true that Dutch-funded cause-oriented groups are into lobbying against Davao’s banana industry then said industry is in trouble as, contrary to popular belief, they are a David facing a Goliath of well-funded networks,” she wrote in an e-mail to Sulong Mindanao Foundation. She asked that her name be withheld for the moment.
She claimed that the funding agency is one of the biggest in the European Union having a declared asset of a billion guilders and counts 370,000 institutional and individual donors in the Netherlands alone.
Many countries control funds sent to NGOs. In Israel and other countries, for instance, receiving money for an unregistered NGO is a crime; and NGOs must account for the money they received from donors.
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A study supposedly under the supervisions of the Department of Health was done by Dr. Alan Dionisio and his team in Camocaan, adjacent to a banana plantation.
From this study, Dr. Romeo F. Quijano, president of the Pesticide Action Network Philippines alleged that their findings were that Camocaan villagers were “sick and dying due to aerial spraying.” These were eventually found to be merely anecdotal and totally unfounded.
Philippine Banana Growers & Exporters Association, Inc. (PBGEA) spokesman Anthony Sasin says of Dr. Quijano: “Being a medical doctor does not license him to be infallible.” Dr. Quijano denies being the principal instigator of the DOH study of Camocaan; but, Dr. Alan Dionisio and Dr. Annabelle Yumang identified Quijano as the one who asked for the study during the July 3 Public Inquiry hosted by the municipal government of Hagonoy.
“Who will believe him?” asked Sasin. Quijano has challenged the PBGEA to agree to a new study. “Why make a big fuss out of something that is almost a non-issue?” All that anyone has to do is for anyone to just visit Camocaan, talk to the residents, the mayor, the barangay health workers, the municipal health officer, the tribal chieftains and anyone of those they claim to be adversely affected by aerial spraying.
“Camocaan is a typical Filipino village that is peaceful and where the villagers are hospitable and friendly and they welcome everyone with honest intentions,” said Sasin.
Sasin said that they can also talk to Mr. Lolong Pelletero, an NGO worker in Digos City and Mr. Ramil Murillo, both of whom were brought to New Zealand by Quijano sometime in 2006 and paraded before delegates of a pesticide-elimination convention as “survivors of a poisoned village.”
“I am not a doctor and one does not need to be a doctor to appreciate the actual situation in Camocaan and separate facts from lies,” said Sasin. “He said he is a well-trained toxicologist and has the people’s welfare at heart, then why recommend ground spraying?
The PBGEA spokesman told media that aerial takes just 30 liters of low-dose fungicide to cover a hectare while it will take 60 or more liters for ground spraying. “So where is the logic in his proposition as a toxicologist — that the more chemicals we spray, the safer?”
The truth is that aerial spraying is less toxic than ground-based spraying but is more effective.
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hvp 08.19.09)
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