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Issue Number 31, October 2008
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Kapatiran Issue
No. 31, October 2008
PHILIPPINE TRIBUTES TO KA BEL
CRISPIN BELTRAN: MOST OUTSTANDING LEGISLATOR
In session, Beltran stood tall and dignified among many,
untainted by the corruption that soiled many
multimillionaire-congressmen's seats.
As the Center for People Empowerment in Governance
(CenPEG) prepares its assessment of the first 10 years of
the Party-list system this year, we deemed it apt to
devote this issue analysis to the life and struggles of
Crispin Bertiz Beltran, first nominee of the Party-list
group Anakpawis. Beltran, a charismatic labour leader who
died in a fatal accident last May 20 in Bulacan, was a
central figure in the Party-list system - defending it
from subversion by the powers-that-be yet tirelessly
asserting the people's right to democratic representation
in governance.
Crispin Beltran is an exemplary product of his times.
Trained in genuine unionism, steeled in the parliament of
the streets, and more defiant after Marcos imprisonment,
he brought new politics in Congress. Through it all he
remained at the forefront of the workers' struggle
and that struggle has produced a hero. Beltran, known to
many Filipinos as Ka (short for kasama or comrade) Bel,
was adjudged Most Consistent Outstanding Congressman from
2002-2005 and was elevated to the Congressional Hall of
Fame by the Congress Magazine in 2006. He filed the most
number of bills in the 13th Congress among the Party-list
representatives and would have achieved the same record
in the present one had he not met a fatal accident on May
20. The Philippine press and the whole nation
ruled by a government seen as one of the most corrupt in
the world - were astounded to find that he died a poor
man and had maintained an even frugal life.
But why was Beltran tagged and imprisoned as an
"enemy of the state" by two Presidents
Ferdinand Marcos in the 1980s and, for a year-and-a-half,
by Gloria M. Arroyo? What kind of politics did he wage
that provoked state authorities to believe that by
neutralising him either by arrest or physical harm
(he had faced countless attempts on his life) they
would put an end to his ideology as well?
Humble Beginnings
Born of humble beginnings in Bikol in 1933, Beltran's
life had been etched by struggles whether as a young
guerrilla courier fighting the Japanese imperial
occupation or as a farm worker, office sweeper, gasoline
attendant, messenger, bus driver and later, as a cab
driver to support his education. His legacy as one of the
country's outstanding labour leaders traces its roots to
when, at age 20, he joined fellow drivers in a strike.
From thereon, there was no looking back. He either helped
organise or served as leader of pioneering labour
organisations, the last as chair of the Kilusang Mayo Uno
(KMU) in 1987 following the abduction and brutal murder
of Rolando Olalia and his driver by military operatives.
Three years earlier, he escaped Marcos torture and
imprisonment and went to the countryside to organise
workers and farm labourers.
For Beltran, working alongside the country's proletariat
did not only mean going on strikes for bread and butter
or facing company executives in tough wage negotiations.
The years spent in labour leadership also produced
hard-fought lessons in ideological skirmishes with
"yellow" or compromising trade unionism and
also linking up with organisations of farmers,
youth-students, urban poor and other sectors in a
nationwide cause-oriented movement. It meant taking up
the cudgels of the poor through peaceful but militant
engagement with state authorities in denouncing
oppressive policies while advocating for genuine social,
economic and political reform. He knew that any picket or
street protest would be met by police truncheons, water
cannons, or even bullets but Beltran never for a second
vacillated in the frontline of the struggle, as
colleagues in the street parliament would narrate.
Known for his solid pro-people leadership in the labour
movement, Beltran was invited to join the senatorial
slate of the Partido ng Bayan (PnB or people's party) in
the 1987 elections the first to be held after 14
years of Marcos dictatorship. Reminiscent of the fate
suffered by the Democratic Alliance (DA) whose six
representatives elected in the 1946 elections were
unseated for opposing onerous economic and military
agreements with the United States, the PnB came out badly
bruised from the polls with many of its volunteers killed
and most of its candidates for Congress and local
positions victims of fraud.
Beltran and the Party-list organisations that he
represented (Bayan Muna and, later, Anakpawis) garnered
significant seats in elections for the House, with BM
topping both the 2001 and 2004 polls. House records show
that the labour leader championed the issues of the poor
in privilege speeches as well as by filing bills and
resolutions on their behalf. The speeches, bills and
resolutions penned by Beltran, among others, called for
investigations of violations of the rights of workers,
farm labourers, urban poor, migrant workers, consumers,
GSIS members as well as public employees and victims of
human rights violations. He was most vehement in opposing
the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), Arroyo's support to
the US war on terror and the invasion of Afghanistan and
Iraq.
Vindictive Arroyo
These initiatives inevitably antagonised government
agencies, big industrial and agricultural corporations,
energy companies, and military authorities. Consequently,
the congressman earned the vindictive ire of Mrs. Arroyo
as she watched her centrepiece policies and bills
sponsored subjected to condemnation one after the other
by the labour leader - together with Party mates and
other legislators - inside and outside the halls of
Congress. Co-authoring three impeachment initiatives and
denunciations against scams linking the Arroyo couple
also cost Beltran's office access to the countrywide
development fund, among others.
The denial of funds became part of what the progressive
Party-list bloc denounced as a systematic campaign to
unseat them from the House through demonisation, election
fraud, and the use of physical violence. The campaign was
integral to a national security doctrine that seeks to
neutralise the underground Left's alleged political
infrastructures resulting in a series of summary
executions and forced disappearances. Beltran was picked
up and jailed by Arroyo authorities in February 2006 in a
crackdown mounted by the President's attack dogs against
the progressive bloc. After nearly two years in
detention, he was set free by the Supreme Court which
dismissed the trumped-up charges. By then, however,
Beltran had physically weakened - a result of harassment,
threats, and stress he suffered under a government that
considered him "a threat to national security"
and only because, as workers in the labour movement said,
he stood by his principles and refused to be cowed by
Malacanang through bribery and other pressures.
The last public performance that he did was when as a
minority member of the House energy committee he spoke
against attempts by the President to place Meralco (a
giant power company. Ed.) in the hands of her business
cronies in the guise of State nationalisation. Before
that, he filed a bill calling for a genuine agrarian
reform programme in place of CARP (Comprehensive Agrarian
Reform Program) which for two decades he had denounced as
a hoax. Just like the P125 legislated wage increase that
Beltran and the militant labour groups had been asking
for nearly ten years, the genuine agrarian reform measure
that the progressive legislator filed will be shot down
by Congress' dominant conservative members and Arroyo
allies. Ever a leading figure in major rallies even while
he was already in Congress, Beltran delivered what turned
out to be his valedictory wearing a white T-shirt
and a red cap together with co-workers at the May 1 rally
in Liwasang Bonifacio, Manila.
Tributes
In a tribute to the fallen labour leader, Senator Alan
Peter Cayetano said Beltran is probably among the few
members of Congress deserving of the title
"Honourable." People who visited him while in
detention to lend moral support left being inspired
instead, a fellow activist leader recalls. Down with
ailment, he still took pains serving food or coffee, a
former KMU public information writer also says.
"Don't deprive me of my wanting to serve you
no matter how small it is - if that's the only way I'll
be of service," Beltran told him.
There are at least two lessons that can be drawn from the
legacy left by Beltran. One is that his participation in
the Party-list system led to the infusion of new politics
in an elite-dominated Congress and with it a sterling
record of legislative work for social and economic reform
for the poor. A member of the legislature once noted that
the entry of the progressive Party-list bloc into
Congress gave the body the meaningful role that it never
had. In session, Beltran stood tall and dignified among
many, untainted by the corruption that soiled many
multimillionaire congressmen's seats. But the political
repression that Beltran and his colleagues endured
and continues to endure all the more unmasks not
only the State's subversion of the Party-list programme
that aims to represent the poor in policy making but also
the continuing dominance of elitist politics that denies
the poor a role in governance participation.
Beltran is vindicated for devoting his life to labour
militancy alongside other marginalised classes
building power from the bowels of poverty and injustice
from where people's governance will rise. The
labour and legislative record of Beltran proves that the
breed of people's leaders is bound to increase as
it now appears - and that elitist rule will be a thing of
the past. And that is the second lesson.
Bobby Tuazon, Director, Policy Study, Publication and
Advocacy (PSPA) Center for People Empowerment in
Governance (CenPEG), Issue Analysis, No. 8 May 23, 2008.
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