Two valid IDs
Worse than being poor is being treated as if one did not exist. In today’s world, this means being barred from the most basic services for lack of an acceptable identity document. It is to be, in short, undocumented. And in our country, one valid ID is often not enough. We are asked for two.
This may feel like a sick joke played on the powerless, but it can happen to many of us. It is precisely the theme of the film “2 Valid IDs,” which was shown at the Cinemalaya film festival in August. I caught it last week in its brief commercial run, and came away feeling I had just watched one of the truest depictions of what it means to be poor in a modern society.
The film revolves around Sylvia (sensitively played by Marietta Subong, aka “Pokwang”), a farmer who has brought her ailing husband Ramon (Joey Marquez) to Manila for treatment of his COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). They land in a crowded ward of a poorly equipped government hospital. There they find a support system among other patients’ families, and staff who make up for the hospital’s inadequacies with simple acts of kindness.
Ramon needs surgery, but the wait is long and uncertain. He could be prioritized, they are told, if he were moved to a semiprivate room. Sylvia persuades a relative of Ramon’s working in New Zealand to send money in exchange for a piece of land. The amount (over a hundred thousand pesos) is promptly wired. That is where the trouble begins.
At the remittance center, Sylvia is told the PhilHealth card is no longer accepted as a primary identification card. She needs to present two from an approved list: passport, driver’s license, national ID, Unified Multi-Purpose ID, National Bureau of Investigation clearance, voter’s ID, postal ID, senior citizen’s ID, and so on. She has none of these.
Mercy, a relative who has given them shelter during their stay in the city, knows the way. Through her connection with a barangay official, she gets Sylvia a barangay clearance. A fixer supplies the voter’s registration forms. Sylvia has her biometrics taken at city hall and, days later, gets her voter’s certification. She uses it to apply for a postal ID: more biometrics, another week’s wait. Ramon’s condition worsens. Sylvia returns to the remittance center to plead that one ID should suffice. “Do I look like a cheat?” she quietly protests. She is politely told to come back with two valid IDs.
When the postal ID is finally released, she rushes back to get her money. The queue is long. A text message arrives. She tries to cut in, begging for understanding, and loses her composure when people at the back tell her to fall in line. I will not reveal how the film ends, except to say that Sylvia bears all this without self-pity.
The film is a searing ethnography of cascading exclusion. Each door that closes on Sylvia also closes the next. Without an ID, she cannot claim money that is already hers. Without the money, her husband cannot be moved up for surgery. No one in this chain is cruel. The girl at the remittance center follows the rule, and the rule is there, she explains, to prevent fraud. The refusal is firm and real; yet it has no author.
Notice where help comes from. In the hospital ward, people look after one another on the basis of personal trust. But that trust counts for nothing at the remittance counter, which recognizes only documents. The irony is that Sylvia can enter this impersonal world only through the old personal channels: a relative’s barangay connection and a fixer. And to collect a family remittance, she must first become a registered voter.
We are witnessing a new way of doing things. It is one that no longer runs on personal trust but on verified identity. Years ago, many resisted a national ID system for demanding too much personal information. Today, people surrender far more to e-wallet providers and remittance firms, because these have become necessities. Meanwhile, the process of getting a national ID remains slow. The system is unable to serve those who need it most, many of whose paper trail fails at the very first documentary requirement, the birth certificate.
The promise of modernity has always been that the circumstances of one’s birth shall no longer determine admission to schools, the economy, citizenship, or the courts. What has been overlooked is that access to all these depends, in the first instance, on being recognized as a person.
Before anyone asks whether you qualify, the question is whether you exist–i.e., on paper. That question now comes before all others. No valid ID, no entry.
————–
******
Get real-time news updates: inqnews.net/inqviber
