Filipinos seem to have found a ray of hope among themselves, as a sense of community is being forged and manifested in community pantries. The motto, “Magbigay ayon sa kakayahan; kumuha batay sa pangangailangan,” has inspired many individuals and groups to contribute to those who are in need.

This modern bayanihan is a remarkable phenomenon for us today. At a time when our physical mobility and resources are limited, we still manage to gain a collective understanding of the situation. We know that the pandemic has serious effects on our health and on our jobs. We sense that many of us, especially the poor, struggle to feed their families. We see that by coming together our individual limitations can be overcome by organizing for a common goal.

Feeding the hungry and binding people together are the intended purposes of community pantries. But their continued emergence tells us another thing: the weakening of the state.

According to the American political scientist Robert Rotberg, the distinction between a strong state and a weak state is in terms of their effectiveness in delivering the “most crucial political goods.” These are the expectations and obligations conceived by the people that give content to the social contract between the rulers and the ruled. The most critical, as Rotberg argued, is human security, because it makes possible the delivery of other desirable political goods such as free and open political participation, efficient medical and health care, and a beneficent fiscal and institutional context.

In a state such as ours, that does not have concrete plans to protect the people from the pandemic, to feed the poor, and to properly govern the nation amid these trying times, human security is hardly experienced by the people. Individually, we can attempt to secure this for ourselves. We can come together, as in the case of community pantries, to maximize our sense of security. But the full spectrum of public security requires the state to perform its function: to provide security for its people.

Community pantries are a significant movement. But it cannot save us from the pandemic for the basic reason that they are designed for a specific purpose. They fill the stomach, but they cannot eradicate the virus. They can put food on the table for a family at a definite time, but the long-term effects of this pandemic demand a set of programs and policies that will safeguard our means of human survival: food, health, jobs, education, and technology. In other words, the government must efficiently and adequately address the complexity of the problems created by the pandemic.

It is the community taking the initiative for the poor to meet their most important basic needs, when the state should be the one providing this in the first place. In a crisis, it should ensure the survival of its people. And it starts by putting food on the table of every household. Whether community pantries continue to persist while the crisis exacerbates, the state must do its job: it must sustain the population by using all its resources intelligently and faithfully for the people.

Weak states often fall to the rule of a strongman, a leader who promises a swift solution to the problems that plague the nation through his own means. President Rodrigo Duterte himself, through his populist rhetoric, tried to convince the public that the complex problems of illegal drugs, graft and corruption, and territorial disputes can be solved by himself. He even belittled the capacity of the rule of law and the role of democratic institutions in his speeches.

In his weekly address to the nation about our country’s response to the pandemic, his style remains the same. He was confident that the virus will naturally go away. He reassured us that the vaccines will be here soon and that we should just wait. But what the people need and demand from the government are way beyond pure rhetoric. What will save us are not the words and simplistic approach of a strongman in this weak state but concrete and effective solutions with long-term benefits such as mass testing, vaccinations, and good hospitalization benefits.

The current situation reveals the shortcomings and limits of the present administration. With wrong priorities, corruption in the healthcare system, and unclear and ineffective solutions to address the pandemic, the people can sense that they cannot bet all their hopes on the strongman. Workers are losing their jobs. Households are living on a tight budget. Individuals are paying high hospitalization costs. For the poor, having one or all these problems will put them in greater precariousness.

The state and the strongman have failed to secure the basic needs of its people. When the people got hungry, it was the people themselves who responded with a concrete solution of feeding them through community pantries. Whether this phenomenon will last long or not, community pantries have left a mark in our history and have reminded us that the strength of a nation is in the people, not on a single ruler nor its government. After all, the people are the most important element of the state.

I think that part of the community pantries’ motto is not just an encouragement to those who line up to get food. “Magbigay ayon sa kakayahan” is also a question to the state and all our leaders: what can you give to secure the people? – Rappler.com

Prince Kennex R. Aldama is an assistant professor of sociology at the Department of Social Sciences, UP Los Baños. He is the Vice President of the Philippine Sociological Society.