POPULATION-PHILIPPINES: One, Two and Stop, Urge Congressmen

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Diana Mendoza

MANILA, Aug 13 2004 (IPS) - ”In China, they stop at one. Indonesia stops at two. In the Philippines, they stop at …4 a.m.” Jokes like these flooded the simple text messaging systems of cellular phones as a debate brewed over a proposed two-child policy in Congress, suggesting why such a measure could not succeed in this country.

Disputes over limiting the number of children were resurrected when Congressman Edcel Lagman of the House of Representatives filed a proposed bill late last month law urging Filipino parents to have at least two children to address problems arising from a rapidly growing population.

Support picked up when the most senior lawmaker in the lower house, Speaker Jose de Venecia, threw his weight behind the bill and asked the Philippine government to once and for all act on it in order to address overpopulation.

”Our resources can only afford a small population. The two- child policy is part of a strategy to save the nation because over population is killing us,” he told a radio interview.

In its 2000 census, the National Statistics Office counted 76.5 million Filipinos and placed the population growth rate at 2.36 percent or an annual increase of 1.8 million. Based on the growth rate, official estimates now place the population at 84 million, with four babies born per minute. The population will double in 29 years if the growth rate continues.

Poverty affects 38 percent of the population, or 26 million Filipinos in absolute numbers, who cannot make both ends meet. In the freshly issued United Nations Development Program report, the Philippines ranked 83rd among 177 countries in its human development index.

This is where the bill’s proponents anchored their arguments. A massive population burden will undermine the country’s effort to rebuild the national economy, they said, and could especially discourage President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s pledge to create six million to 10 million jobs during her six-year presidency.

Lagman, mover of House Bill 13, said the measure is not mandatory, “but it seeks a policy of two children through a system of incentives such as reduced tax payments and school fees for couples who would limit their children to two.” It does not suggest sanctions for those who exceed the limit, he stressed.

It came as no surprise when the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), the organisation of the Catholic Church’s hierarchy and leadership, voiced their staunch opposition to House Bill 13.

Jo Imbong, its legal counsel who also spoke for the CBCP Episcopal Commission on Family Life, called the bill ”anti-life” and ”an affront to religious freedom especially if it targets Catholics.”

”The family is not created by mistake. It is a natural institution and not even Congress can meddle with it,” she said.

In explaining why the lawmakers are wrong, the lawyer said life expectancy in the Philippines has increased, ”but to say the growing population is the culprit of poverty is flawed.”

Critics of Arroyo said the issue of population is crucial but the president did not include it in her State of the Nation Address on Jul. 26.

The speech contained her blueprint for the next six years centering on poverty eradication by 2010 through executive and legislative packages covering job creation, economic growth, eliminating corruption, improvement of basic needs like education, giving opportunities to young people and self-reliance in energy to make savings.

The critics said Arroyo, a staunch Catholic, evaded the issue of managing population to avoid rejection by the Catholic Church that opposes family planning through artificial means. Philippine politicians have always done the same thing to woo the votes of Filipinos, 80 percent of whom are Catholics.

Last week Catholic Church advocates belonging to 50 private and non-government organisations held simultaneous press conferences in Manila, Cebu and Davao – the key cities representing the three geographical divisions of the archipelago – to press for a government response to the interlinking problems of population and poverty.

Social and economic planners remained unfazed. They are preparing a draft report to be launched next month for the 10th year anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development in which the Philippines was a signatory with 178 other countries in 1994 in Cairo, Egypt.

The supposed Philippine report card singled out three improvements in the country’s development.

These were the decline of fertility, the increase in the use of family planning methods and the decrease of infant deaths.

In 1993, the fertility rate or the average number of offspring of a woman of childbearing age was 4.1. In 2003, this declined to 3.5. Family planning practice through the use of contraceptives was 40 percent in 1993, and 49 percent in 2003. In 1993, 36 out of 1,000 infants died from pregnancy and childbirth complications. This declined to 29 in 2003. ”Much still needs to be done,” the report said.

Arroyo waded in the debate, saying, ”It has always been my policy to follow what is stated in the Constitution on responsible parenthood – parents are responsible for spacing their children and are left with the discretion on how to attain such based on their belief, religion and culture.”

Arroyo further explained by asking women to leave more time between births – about two to three years – so that they and their children are healthy.

Beyond this, she brushed aside queries seeking her comments on population. ”My priority now is not to deal with overpopulation to overcome the challenges we face in social justice and economic development, but to go directly to the social and macroeconomic issues that strike at the root of all these challenges.”

Meanwhile over at the Senate, feisty Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago – adding her own colourful but always intuitive input to the population explosion debate – kept her colleagues rolling in the aisles during the deliberation on birth control when she stated that if any of her suitors had been interested in her only for the purpose of making babies, she would have threatened them with physical violence.