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Interview: Tonyo Cruz on Digital Activism in the Philippines

I am in the Philippines this week with fellow DigiActivist Lynn Casper to participate in a training organized by the Computer Professionals’ Union. While here I decided to interview one of the country’s most prolific digital activists – Tonyo Cruz – and ask him about digital activism in the Philippines.

Tonyo Cruz (foreground) at a recent event in Manila on digital campaigning

Mary Joyce: You are a very prolific digital activist – president of the famous mobile activism organization TXTPower, prominent blogger at tonyocruz.com, and  founder of a Filipino bloggers’ organization. How did you first become  involved in digital activism?

Tonyo Cruz: I’d like to think that I started my activism in high school. I was among the students of Manila Science High School who published an underground paper called The MaSci Times in 1991. We used the old program Printshop to design this one page newsletter that poked fun at our school principal and voiced out our complaints, among others. We just had it photocopied and came out with about a dozen issues.

Bayan, the multisectoral group I worked for in 2000-2003, was among the first people’s organizations in the Philippines to go online. Their first website was hosted in Geocities. As Bayan media officer, I introduced email, email groups and text messaging as ways of quickly and surely reaching journalists. Bayan officials later used email,
email groups and text messaging as tools for managing the organization. These tools — mobiles and the web — later proved crucial in the mass actions that led to the People Power uprising of 2001 which ousted President Estrada.

Following Estrada’s ouster, a group called Plunder Watch pressed [now President] Arroyo to prosecute Estrada. The group held a big media event for the launch of its website which contained Estrada’s accountabilities and liabilities. I was also the media officer of Plunder Watch and oversaw the management of the said website.

That same year, my friends and I gathered in Quezon City to form TXTPower. The following years, I was also involved in trying to form Indymedia Pilipinas which gave way to Indymedia in Manila and in Quezon City.

MJ:  Social networking is very big in the Philippines and Friendster is the most popular. According to their Country Sales Manager, Narciso Reyes, there are about 14 million active Filipino users on the site, which is almost 70%
of the total online population of the Philippines. Has this large user base translated into Friendster being used for digital acitivsm in the Philippines? If not, why not

TC: We will see by late this year whether Friendster will get the attention of candidates and parties, or whether voters themselves would use Friendster for their choice of candidates or for election-related causes. I do hope they do so.

MJ: Although there aren’t figures yet available, there is a growing number of Filipinos migrating from Friendster to Facebook, particularly the tech-savvy urban middle class. You recently used Facebook to organize a blogger
meet-up in opposition to President Macapagal Arroyo. Why did you choose Facebook to organize this mobilization? Which is more activist-friendly, Friendster or Facebook?

TC: Friendster has provided limited use to political activists simply because Facebook has overtaken it as the preferred social networking site of the most articulate, most dynamic and most political segment of the lower, middle and upper classes. They may be fewer than Friendster but these Facebook users are more influential. Also, there
are more activists, journalists and politicians on Facebook than on Friendster.

We did not have a Friendster group vs. Cha-cha [the charter change to increase the President's term in office]. Nobody bothered to form one there Our friends at the Facebook group/cause Pilipinas Kontra ConAss meanwhile reports to us that they now have 30,000 members there.

We however yet to see hundreds or thousands mobilized via new media for whatever political or social cause. I mean, I wish these groups would be able to convince their supporters to go from online to offline and have those contingents of Facebook users join the broad, multisectoral mobilizations in the streets. This can happen. TXTPower hopes to do something like this.

MJ:  Filipinos practically invented mobile activism with the “coup de text” of President Joseph Estrada in 2001. How has mobile activism in the Philippines progressed in the last 8 years? What do you see in the future  for Filipino mobile activism?

TC: We now have over 70 million mobile phone users out of a population of 90 million. In the urban areas, most already have mobile phones.  Cellphones have also been integrated into parties and organizations as tools for maintaining their organization, reaching out to new and old contacts, for mobilization, and for publicity.   Some have used it for fundraising. These positive developments have all in all armed citizens with a new tool or weapon in the battle against poverty, injustice and traditional politics.

We foresee more battles ahead on consumer issues. Mobile phones and services themselves are heavily taxed and government has repeatedly tried and have not given up its dream of imposing all sortsd of new levies and taxes. We also wish the government will take on the oligopolies boldly regarding bad services and expensive rates. We want
government to bring down the cost of mobile phone services so more people can enjoy them and so people’s organizations can maximize them for progressive ends.

Take for example the use of access codes. The telcos charge huge fees for providing and maintaining these access codes. On top of these fees, the telcos and content providers charge P2.50 per message sent to these access codes. A regular text message costs P1.00.

Another example is data subscriptions or mobile internet. This is only available for corporate accounts and they are very expensive. This is a reason why the Blackberry and iPhones have not become popular. Mobile internet (GPRS/EDGE/3G) remains very expensive. There are cheap options like bulk pricing of P10 for 30 minutes or P5 per 15 minutes but we think mobile internet will be more popular if there are daily, weekly or monthly subscriptions that should be cheap and affordable.

MJ:  You recently started a Filipino blogger’s association, and you have also said that bloggers will play a critical role in tracking the 2010 election.  What are the characteristics of blogger activism in the Philippines?

TC: Filipino bloggers have not been involved in many activist causes due to many reasons. But there have been attempts to open the blogosphere and blogs to progressive causes such as the Blog Action Days for the past two years which tackled poverty, the anniversary of the People Power uprising and, most recently, the No to ConAss campaign.

Two years ago, a newspaper columnist caught the ire of bloggers for writing an article lambasting and humiliating overseas Filipino workers. Editors suspended the columnist after bloggers took on the issue across the blogosphere and mainstream media. I think that was a first.

The Philippine blogosphere is still growing and there should be more opportunities in the future so bloggers can exercise good citizenship using new media. The next issues looming in the horizon for blogger activism are electoral reform, election of progressives and new media coverage of the 2010 elections.

MJ:  Social networks, mobile, blogs – there are so many areas for digital activism in the Philippines. Which do you think will be most active in the near future, particularly for the 2010 elections?

TC: Filipinos are now using all these new media tools. In fighting for social justice, the more people involved, the better. This is also true with the arsenal of tools which can be used by activists and people themselves. Filipino activists should be able to discover and learn to use these new tools. New media practitioners like bloggers
meanwhile should take the opportunities available to them to redirect these tools for social justice, not just for profit.

If and when new media players attempt to form a group that will coordinate new media coverage of the elections, all these tools will come to play: the social networks and mobiles for internal and external communications, the blogs for publishing, etc. If and when that time comes, such a group would be able to defend its rights against possible government restraints and to cooperate in a toe-to-toe manner with mainstream media.

image credit: DigiActive