My column yesterday was Charisma versus routines, which is a further attempt to explore themes I began exploring in this blog on December 9, in Charismatic expectations in noncharismatic times.
It will take some time before The Explainer on ANC blog will upload the full script, but many thanks to Torn & Frayed for his kind words and for sharing his thoughts my last episode, with Federico Macaranas as the guest.
Below is reproduced the chapter I wrote for the book In Pursuit of the Philippine Competitive Edge: An Oral History of a Continuing Journey by 50 wisdom-keepers, which touches on some of the points Torn raised in his entry.
The perpetual avoidance of opportunity
Manuel L. Quezon III
(From In Pursuit of the Philippine Competitive Edge: An Oral History of a Continuing Journey by 50 wisdom-keepers, AIM Policy Center, 2007).IN 1953, the Philippines Free Press published an editorial in which it observed that “The need to establish a regime above personalities, a government of law instead of men, cannot be exaggerated. In a rule of law alone lies social stability. Those who are for chaos may welcome a personal regime; those who are for order know the need for an impersonal government.” It said that while notable Filipino leaders in the past had a “private conscience drew the line beyond which it would be dishonorable for a public official to go,” the country couldn’t continue pinning its hopes on officials privately drawing “a line which only an impersonal law should draw.” The editorial writer couldn’t know how prophetic he was being.
That year, Ramon Magsaysay was elected in a landslide not seen in Philippine politics since before World War II; such was the charisma and integrity of the man that he almost single-handedly rejuvenated public confidence in government. But by 1957 Magsaysay was dead; and the country was left with the painful realization the editorial writer had expressed three years before: in the absence of a genuine rule of law, the restoration of public confidence was an impossible task.
By 1962, the Philippines had begun the decline that it continues to experience to this day. The decline has, at times, accelerated; at other times, it has slowed to the extent that it offered up hopes, though always dashed, of reversing that decline. And yet the decline has been inexorable: due to an inability, often bordering on an obstinate refusal, to embrace modernity. Because of that, the foundations of a cohesive, progressive, society -a sense of national solidarity arising from confidence in the law, and in government’s ability to mediate contending sectoral interests- has been absent.
Politics and government are all about competition -and competitiveness. The manner in which leaders and followers choose to compete, and the methods they adapt and permit to either foster, or stifle, competition, are reflections of the larger competitive abilities of society. The Philippine experience in the fifty years that the country has been said to be have been declining, has been that of a society’s refusal to compete.
NATIONAL solidarity, already brittle prior to World War II, fractured over the question of resistance to the Japanese and alliance with the United States. The national leadership prior to the war had been extremely attentive, and thus derived a strong legitimacy, to a limited electorate. The late 1930s had witnessed developments that had already begun to weaken the relationship between leaders and followers: the introduction of women’s suffrage in 1937; the gradual extension of suffrage from the propertied that had a monopoly on the vote prior to that point, thus increasingly injecting populism as a means of attracting the masses; an increasingly cosmopolitan, and radical, intelligentsia; and the impatience of young leaders to wrest political control from the leaders that had dominated government for forty years.
What emerged as the official response to these trends was a series of constitutional amendments approved in 1940: the restoration of a bicameral congress to replace the unicameral National Assembly, in order to forestall the radical infiltration of the legislature being foremost among them (just how inevitable this was going to be would only be demonstrated after the war, with the election of peasant leaders to represent certain districts in Central Luzon: the Roxas administration had to embark on evicting these leaders from their congressional seats). Bloc voting was introduced, both to enforce party discipline and as a means for ensuring dominant coalition control, which would also be fostered by institutionalizing a Commission on Elections, whose rules strongly favored the interests of the dominant coalition.
The carnage and virtual civil war that was the Philippine experience during the war not only laid waste to the country’s physical infrastructure, but took an enormous toll on the country’s leadership, young and old. The veneer of unity and statesmanship carefully-nurtured for forty years was stripped away by questions of collaboration with the Japanese and the struggles within the guerrilla movement.
In this book, Gerardo Sicat argues that “when we began as a new republic, we were on a competitive footing with the rest of Asia and the world. We had good resources and human resources. We had then the prospect of building a good future because we had financial resources, despite the destruction caused by the war.” But maximizing those resources required a sense of national purpose fostered by cooperation. Neither would be particularly evident in the postwar years: or to be precise, a divided national leadership made the effort; that effort, however, was hampered by developments already foreseen prior to the war, but accelerated by the trauma of the war: too many had had their faith in the leadership shaken, too many had operated in an atmosphere of lawlessness and unpredictability, to be satisfied with the restoration of the antebellum order.
And the onset of independence in 1946 also marked an unrecognized but important development.
The prewar elite, from that date, actually retreated; its ranks decimated, and displaced politically, it ensured its primacy in commerce through a kind of elaborate protectionist racket: since politico and businessman now increasingly came from different worlds, the camaraderie and common affectations of gentility of prewar days was untenable. Politicians gladly alternated between outright extortion and (increasingly) indiscreetly being on retainer to financial interests to fuel their campaigns; the old elite, still firmly entrenched in business, demanded protectionist policies in turn to protect their monopolies.
STILL, from the 40s to the late 50s enough of the pre-war political leadership survived to give the impression that pre-war solidarity had not only survived, but been rebuilt; but this was a case of old assumptions artificially supported by nostalgia and the old generation’s believing its own propaganda.
But with Magsaysay this all came clearly to an end: the old parties built on generations-old networks of leaders had been supplanted by his strategy of barnstorming and media manipulation. His election had been as much a referendum on the old ruling class as it was a validation of the vitality of a new generation. The means for political control and continuity put in place during the Commonwealth were systematically dismantled: bloc voting abolished; the power of the president to appoint mayors taken away; celebrity politics introduced (signaled, for example, by the election of matinee idol Rogelio de la Rosa to the Senate) and with it, the unstoppable transformation of both the standards expected of candidates by the electorate, and the manner in which candidates courted voters.
The Last Hurrah of the old cozy relationship between the politicians and businessmen was the Garcia administration: its election as the first plurality, and not majority, presidency in Philippine history again served as a harbinger of the fatally-divided and unresponsive political culture familiar to Filipinos today.
The Garcia government, however, nationalist as it was, presented an increasingly clear picture of an elite stripped of actual political power, but canny enough to continue fostering and pandering to a new grasping class, the guerrilla generation with its warlord inclinations. Macapagal’s election was the final repudiation of the prewar leadership, but his attempts at modernizing the political system foundered due to a combination of his own authoritarian instincts and his inability to counter the cunning of his opponents. They marshaled a coalition of landowners antagonized by talk of land reform, financial interests hostile to liberalizing the economy, and the guerrilla generation contemptuous of the New Era’s prewar pretenses to class.
WHEN Ferdinand Marcos, exemplar of that grasping class, came to power, he knew that the ruling class’s control of politics was fiction, and that armed with the populism and anti-elitism of the Magsaysay era, he could preside over the liquidation, socially, financially, and politically, of that class; he could, in turn, appropriate the Marxism of the youth more successfully than Macapagal ever could; he could turn it, at least, into a weapon to frighten his generation into supporting him in waging war not only against the Old Society, but the New Generation rallying in the streets. There was simply no line, written or unwritten, that he would not cross.
By the Marcos years, a middle class born in the American period had matured; educated and trained in the style of the ruling class, it shared many of that class’s biases and even pretensions. Among them was the illusion that it was the successor to the old landed and industrial families. They were not; they remained employees: the managers and directors comfortable in the new suburbs designed in imitation of the suburban communities of their bosses. They had homes, their children went to college, but in those colleges their children increasingly asked impertinent questions. Their reaction to impertinent questions and demonstrations was to express solidarity with the alarmed political and business leadership: after all, even as students established the Diliman commune, solidly middle-class residents of the vicinity established vigilante groups to assist the constabulary in flushing the rebels out.
FERDINAND Marcos mounted a coup after efforts to buy the 1971 Constitutional Convention failed; he was pleasantly relieved to discover that the country, on the whole, welcomed his “constitutional authoritarianism.” Democracy had proven to unpredictable; dictatorship was a more palatable approach, mirroring the preferred way for handling problems of the propertied and influential. It was, in more ways than anyone could imagine at the time, a deal with the devil.
Dictatorship demands conformity and conformity kills innovation. The systematic plunder of the country by Marcos and his cronies stripped the Old Society of its finances and thus, its political means; next came the looting of everything else. The middle class discovered itself defenseless, and without a champion in government: with the disgruntled old oligarchy it rebelled but lost to the old oligarchy as it, in turn, proceeded to loot the post-Edsa democracy to compensate itself for the losses of the martial law years.
The middle class, disheartened and disillusioned, clinging as it had to the romantic notion it represented something noble together with the old oligarchy, fled the country (and is now virtually absent from the scene). What’s left of it attempted its own Last Hurrah with Edsa Two, only to discover it was fatally divided over a residual romanticism towards politics, and the adoption of the Marcosian grasping class’s attitudes towards government. A society growing exponentially, and increasingly unexposed to the old institutional controls of education, religion, and civic organization, in turn has reduced the political, business, and middle classes to even more of a minority status, and thus even more fiercely dependent on the military as its protector and enforcer than even the Marcos government was.
TWO gentlemen in this book, one identified as having tried to mitigate the excesses of the Marcos years, and the other an eminent voice since the Edsa Revolution, have succinctly summarized the political call of the times. Former Prime Minister Virata said, “We need the concentration, we have to develop more other areas, we have to complete the communities.” For the Philippines has lost its sense of national unity, or feelings of solidarity, which serve to moderate the winner-take-all nature of politics and governance.
And Jesus Estanislao points to the perpetual failure of the country’s leadership to institute the real rule of law, and thus genuine modernity -and by extension, authentic competitiveness- when he asked, “The prospect depends on many Filipinos are willing to take up the cudgels for deep genuine reforms. This is where we begin thinking: ‘Where will these reforms come from?’ Reforms always come from a set of individuals who see the future or wanting to change or committed to doing something, and I think it can be done.”
But for it to be done requires an appreciation of the past; and how each time the country has been confronted with an opportunity to institute change, it has shrunk from the task.
The Philippines since 1962, faced several choices, each of which presented the opportunity to expand democracy, integrate the formerly marginalized into the body politic, and rejuvenate public confidence in its political institutions. Instead, protectionism, not just economic, but political, was the preferred choice. The 1971 Constitutional Convention ended up pandering to a dictatorship that sent an entire generation of Filipino professionals, stifled by the dictatorship, into exile; an entire political generation was deprived of power until it came to geriatric and greedy power in 1987, in a sense triggering a second exodus as devastating as that of the 70s: the middle class exodus from the 90s to the present.
A new Philippines, it must be said, is being born. Together with the academic and professional elite that migrated in the 70s went Filipinos of modest means who have only begun to establish themselves as a new, entirely different, middle class. Their influence in politics is only beginning to be felt, not in Metro Manila, but in the provinces. The increasingly cosmopolitan and entrepreneurial nature of such Filipinos is, at present, inspiring yet another effort to hold change at bay. It is a confusing, chaotic, even dangerous situation. But proof positive that the lost opportunities of the past needn’t represent an eternal regret, but only a means for reflection in order to more firmly, and daringly, embrace the future.
Bibliographic note
My thoughts on the trends in Philippine society were initially developed in two essays: “Elections are like Water,” and “Circle to Circle”, in i-Magazine (2004). The Free Press editorial, “Politics: Means and End” from August 29, 1953, has also influenced me greatly.
The relationship between Filipino politicians and businessmen is best explored in Amando Doronila’s The State, Economic Transformation, and Political Change in the Philippines, 1946-1972 and in Nick Cullather’s Illusions of Influence: The Political Economy of United States-Philippine Relations, 1942-1960. Controversial and debatable though many of his assertions are, Lew Gleeck’s President Marcos and the Philippine Political Culture also makes for informative reading.
An over-reliance on the (at the time) trailblazing ideas and scholarship of Teodoro Agoncillo and Renato Constantino is, to my mind, unhealthy. State and Society in the Philippines by Patricio Abinales and Donna J. Amoroso incorporates the tremendous advances in thinking and scholarship in the four decades since, and makes for indispensable reading, particularly in exploring the evolution of the Philippine state.
Technorati Tags: Blogging, books, history, ideas, philippines, politics, president, society
“And nationalism has been a driving force in the rise of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, need I say more examples. Take it from a Korean who said that one of the problems we Filipinos have is that we don’t love our country enough.”
Well now. This simply means that we Filipinos are REALLY screwed.
For one thing, the Philippines, unlike Japan and Korea, is an ARTIFICIAL country — a bunch of unrelated tribes summarily declared a political unit by colonial edict and named after an obscure Spanish king.
If you think nationalism saves societies, then tough luck for “Filipinos”, since we will be pinning our hopes on something we will NEVER achieve. 😀
I suggest we look for a different silver bullet — an alternative to hollow-headed “nationalism” — to cure our chronic inability to unite and prosper.
Madonna, Marcos simply replaced the people. The system remains, agree? Simply democratizing Filipinos at all levels would’ve been enough to set all sectors of this country to rights. But, er, some people refer a more complex and decidedly elitist approach. Explaining the need for democratic education to these people is like explaining the humanity of the Jews to Nazis.
that’s prefer a more complex and decidedly elitist solution.
benig0, bravo on the slideshow. You remain an underrated commenter on this blog.
The same can be said for other former colonies, Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Latin America, the USA and, of course, Singapore. Just like these countries, history has brought the inhabitants of these islands together. As our neighbors don’t consider this a problem so shouldn’t we.
” Just like these countries, history has brought the inhabitants of these islands together. As our neighbors don’t consider this a problem so shouldn’t we.”
But obviously WE do. Singapore retained and even celebrated its colonial heritage. We on the other hand childishly renamed all our streets.
BrianB, thanks for your thoughts. Pictures and bullet points speak louder, don’t they? 😉
I agree with you, BenignO.
Philippines is an artificial country built from different tribes. Up until now there are some sort of subtle “antagonisms” between the tribes that constitute our country. An example is that Tagalogs thinks they’re supreme. Visayans do not go very well with the Muslims in Mindanao (which I observed when I was in Davao), and many other things that keep our country fragmentized.
Benigno, keep on thinking we’re screwed and we are. Besides, you twisted what I wrote again. I didn’t say only nationalism will save us, did I? It takes leadership, hard work, political unity, economic reforms, strategic vision, etc to get this country going. So if you believe that the Philippines is not a country — e di fine, e yun pala ang pagtingin mo dyan e. So what’s your beef then? What’s with all this gothic crusade of yours? You really are a funny sort.
Coming from the bloodline of Lapu-Lapu, I refuse to believe that the Filipinos are a hopeless case. Filipinos have this propensity to turn a bad thing into something unbelievably good. Take the “brain drain” issue of the past for example, when so many critics bewailed the exodus of skilled workers to other countries, we thought that would be the end of us, but not – the OFWs became a major dollar-eaning industry! The BPOs, they said these will make moronic robots of our graduates working as call center agents, but no – we have a resurgent middle class earning way above the minimum wage set by DOLE. What about the SMEs? Some nay sayers said they will only get eaten up by the Multinationals, but no – we have a robust SME portfolio.
We, in the private sector will never allow MEDIOCRE results INSPITE OF GOVERNMENT!
What we need to do is KICK OUT THESE AMERICANS! They dragged us into the war with the Japs (who had no beef with us) while paying the USAFFE only half of what they paid the US soldiers. Why? Did our soldiers face cheaper bullets? They even used our halpless soldiers in Korea and Vietnam against a people that were only trying to defend their freedoms. I have no intention to disrespect the memory of these Filipinos turned MERCENARIES just for measly dollars, chocolates, and citizenship, but they were just that – mercs. Lately in Afghanistan where they wanted to control the largest COCAINE source (poppy fields) and Iraq for oil. Not content with accelerating the rise of the NPA, now they are aggravating the Muslim situation in the south by using the region as a training ground for supposed counter terrorism.
The US’ imperialistic foreign policy brought down dollar-denominated markets down the drain with them with their flagging local economy. Now they dump their cheap low grade overruns on us when we could produce more globally competitive products using European material? If its RUN LIKE HELL, its not by Filipinos. Who shocked and awed Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, and Iraq? Who literally brought hell anywhere they went to? I LOVE THE SMELL OF NAPALM IN THE MORNING – the fools, the smell was of buring human flesh!We don’t need the Americans but they can’t live without us, they are just lazy SOBs who can’t even wipe their own asses.
The Filipino will prevail. Its going to be a bumpy ride, but we will get there, no thanks to deadbeats that never contributed anything worthwhile to the country and have never tired of their sore behinds while holding hands with this a big hairy American somewhere.
Madonna,
Its obvious that Benigno et al, don’t work for a living. So they will never understand how it is to lead, motivate, train, and control. Focus on the particular business you are in, excel, and let these jokers eat your dust…
The bread-and-butter issues of rice, jobs, productivity/higher-wages which translates into all Filipino families today having an extra P1,000 a week is enough to move any country forward, in fact, this is a primary goal. Nationalism is a driving force because Nationalism helps a country’ leadership communicate with its population. So the population buys into a set of project priorities, prioritization meaning that some segments/cities/communities/constitutiencies get less (of the government budget/resources/attention) so another segment/constitutiency/project gets more. If the prioritization is good, the country moves forward. If the prioritization is bad (e.g. Bush prioritizing the Iraqi invasion, Mao’s Great Leap Forward) a country’s economy moves backwards.
As for Filipinos being nothing more than a bunch of tribes… NOPE. A simple test is that there is an automatic kinship between an Ilokano who meets a Cebuano in Copenhagen.
Ramrod: I agre with you. In fact, one way to get the Philippines to move forward is for all Filipinos to agree to go to war against US-of-A…. then lose. Man, that country US-of-A treats the losers a lot better (e.g. Japan, Germany… now Vietnam).
And ramrod: You are a bigtime slimeball in the way you address the Filipinos who fought side by side with the Americans against the Japanese.
UP n student,
Guilty of the bigtime slimeball – same thing my cousins called me when I said it earlier, my uncle fought in Korea 🙂
We don’t go to war, its against our foreign policy. We just kick them out, just all. And if they still insist, go down on their hands and knees to allow them to train in Mindanao for counter terrorism – we make them pay big money this time, these delicate stomach creatures can’t- live-without their transportable water filtration systems and bug sprays.
UP n stude,
Its time you and your kind stop offering your behinds to these big hairy Americans and say THANK YU SUH, MAY I HAVE ANUTHA! We won our independence a long time ago, wake up man!
cvj, your american economist-author was comparing the gdp’s of south korea and philippines from 1960-1988. i was talking about the macapagal presidency from 1962-1965. obviously if you commingle macapagal’s gdp with that of his immediate predecessor (garcia) and successor (marcos), the latter having ruled for almost 2 decades, there would be no contest as to korea’s superior economic growth.
upns, you have fed the troll. he (it) had been howling for attention for sometime. now, he got it. watch out, the thing claims to be a “deadly” shot!
Ramrod: You are lucky it is your cousins calling you slimeball. I’ll put a thou down that your soldier-uncle, enraged, can slap you around silly. [Side-question: We did not have any Filipino soldier casualty in Korea, did we? Same with Vietnam, right? Also Iraq? ]
Ramrod: so why don’t you want to go to war mano-a-mano against Americans? Takot ka ba?
Ramrod,
Not that I’m agreeing with the rest of what you said but its best you leave out the part of America dragging us to war with Japan and our soldiers fighting people who are just out to protect their freedom in Vietnam and Korea.
With an empire stretchimg from Korea to parts of Australia; it would be hard to think that they would have left us alone whether the Americans were here or not.
And I think the North attacked the South in Vietnam and Korea.
UPN,
I think we were actually involved in skirmishes in Korea. I seem to have read that we were tasked to relieve a gloucester brigade of Britain. I’m surprised we didn’t incur losses.
THE GRINCH WHO STOLE THE VET’S CHRISTMAS
Remember the Filipino soldiers who fought side by side with the Americans, they got shagged big time.
Read the whole article : http://www.philippinenews.com/article.php?id=1567
ramrod:when WW2 broke out, nehru, jinna, and others wanted to take the opportunity to throw off the british yoke. gandhi dissented. As far as I know, he dissented because he didn’t want to take advantage of the trouble the british were in; he wanted indian independence to take place in an atmosphere of respect and camaraderie. which was a good thing because it showed that the indians were honorable; they were willing to treat their former colonial overlords with respect (despite the abuse indians received from brits) and so showed that they deserved respect.
like I said, that’s all i know about Gandhi’s motives. but i think Gandhi’s decision was significant in another sense. it showed, i think, great foresight in that Gandhi probably understood that going against the british didn’t necessarily mean the nazis would stay away from the sub-continent. and so, casting their lot with the british, fighting the nazis was also an act of self-preservation for india.
the same for the Philippines in the early 40’s, i think. If anything, the Philippines is more strategically located in the pacific theater than india was to hitler. Especially with Rommel, at that time, having already established dominance in north africa.
So, as justice league pointed out, it’s far fetched to say that the japs had no beef with us. Oh sure, they probably had no grievance, but they wanted what we had, and they would have come to take it whether the americans were here or not. they took nanjing, didn’t they? and manchuria?
benigno, on your “philippines is an artificial country”, no state worth its salt is not artificial. as marcus aurelius said, rome (the great empire) was an idea that existed in the heart and mind of the people, an evanescent entity that could vanish as instantaneously as one could say “i don’t believe”. usa is an artificial nation of all races; uk is a an artificial state of the britons, celts, engels, and scots; france of franks, gauls, and normans; etc., etc.
we can call ourselves luzonians, visayans or mindanaoans but as long as we believe that we constitute one country and abide by the same constitution and government, we are one.
If war with the USA did break out, i wonder whose side the Fil-Ams would take.
cvj, farfetch, unless philippines becomes godless, terroristic, murderous, lawless, and rapacious totalitarian state. in that case, you know whose side i would fight for.
For poor students that had to take Military Strategy or Philippine Military History, the Philippines became a prime target for the Japanese because of the presence of US bases, thus turning us into a HOSTILE country. Of course we are just blood brothers of an otherwise unknown historian, Uldarico Baclagon.
Read the whole article :
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Crete/9782/
Ramrod, i do hope that more of your fellow soldiers share your awareness of history. If the Philippines is ever to kick out America, we would need the full support of our own military.
War is a nightmare as far as I’m concerned. And I’m just talking about the weeks of sleeping on the ground, muddy, sometimes bone dry, but most of the time weeks of showerless, feasting on sardines and sky flakes while patrolling (a nice word for goofing off in the mountains or jungle). Of course this doesn’t take into consideration the prospect of getting shot and beheaded that no amount of combat indoctrination could prepare you for.
I really believe that there is no place for war in a civilized global community. We should all be vigilant about leaders calling for war, most of the time the reason is economic rather than patriotism.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/excerpts/2004-08-24-folly-empire_x.htm
cvj,
I just heard from one of them, unfortunately he’s in Tanay with Col. Querubin. A waste really, he was one of our dean’s listers and I heard a brilliant officer in the Scout Rangers.
Honestly, to be fair to Americans, not all think that way, only the Bushy kind. A substantial number of Americans are fighting for reforms also, and I hope to God they win, for their sake as well as ours.
History used to be a time for dozing off, that was before the Explainer.
“pragmatism rules the day, business-wise but pragmatism has been turned from something amoral to a new kind of morality (the cult of the market).”
In economics markets are about consciousness, while in business markets are about human interaction.
Markets operate on one simple foundation. Price information. At the turn of the century the Americans recurited agricultural workers from Japan and the Philippines to work in the plantations in Hawaii. Then there was no market but a form of indentured labor.
Today the rise of emerging markets in different parts of the world and the spread of communication technologies have spread price information on wages, salaries and opportunities to all corners of the world.
However governments as they are always reactive are slow to respond.
One of the greatest challenges facing China and India today is the rapid spread of rising expectations of their people who see how the people in urban centers live and they want the same standard of living. The same holds true of the Philippines.
However the Philippines is distinct as the people who run the country evolved from the old colonial mindset. They are tied to the outside world instead of ties to the country. After all the people were taught that the Philippines was discovered by Magellan. There is no sense of country wherein the country’s resources belong to the country and should be used for the benefit for the community’s self interest.
However the ties to the outside pervert the natural self interest of the local community and we instead serve the interest of what the elite see as their ties to the former masters of colony. The Philippines is notorius for working for U.S. interests more than for national interests. In later years this loyalty has been split to Japanese and now Chinese intersts.
It is a natural process since the elite is dependent on these economies for their economic self interest and then you have the professional class who are employed by the transnationals companies as they provide the only major option for viable employment. These foreign companies own and control the major productive capacities of the country.
It is an irony best exemplified by the fact that we import our energy needs even from our own resources within the countries boundaries. The domestic companies who utitlize the gas and oil resources from Malampaya have to open dollar instruments to pay for gas and oil within our own boundaries. No different from what we import from the Middle East. We save on the transportation cost.
It is an important fact of economic survivsal that we have a huge deficit when it comes to obligations of the domestic economy, deficits from the public sector foreign debt which includes contingent debt that have accumulated over the last 50-60 years.
The effect is well felt by the citizens who have been forced to seek economic opportunities abroad.
In nature even animal’s migrate for physical survival. Man is no different. But in the case of the Philippines the people have not been able to take care and develop and sustain their own intervention using the resources of the country for their own benefit.
We see nothing wrong is sending our crude resources to other contries for them to benefit in the more advanced division of labor.
That consciousness of national self interest is lacking in the people who run the country. They see other countries as their primary home and thus see nothing wrong in simply extracting whatever resources is left in the country.
The Sy’s, Ayala’s, Cojuangco’s, Gokongwei’s and the rest all have their safe havens abroad. Hence the middle class follows suit.
Rom,
Much obliged.
Ramrod,
Your own caption carries the term “imperialistic Japanese”.
Are you in fact implying that those “imperialistic Japanese” would have left us alone if the americans were not here?
throughout all of world history, and until the second world war, conquering stronger nations invade and occupy, and kill inhabitants, of a weaker territory. the barbaric practice persists in a much smaller scale, even in contemporary times, e.g., kuwait by sadam’s iraq (albeit briefly). what happened in the philippines, and what the americans did, were not uncommon. what is more important is the fact that the americans ruled with relative justice and civility, and eventually voluntarily ended its occupation. it is easy for us who live in a supposedly more enlightened era to judge conquerors of yesteryears. but, i think, such judgments must be made in the context of the time, and the gradual development of reason and civilization.
UPN,
Sorry to say but we had casualties in Korea.
Depending on where you read; its about 92 KIA or a combined 500 for killed and wounded.
justice league,
It depends on how the Japanese would have treated nations that were NOT HOSTILE to it, or NOT A THREAT. In combat, you normally avoid dying by NOT MAKING YOURSELF A TARGET.
The Americans (at least the Bushy kind) have never changed, even now they still wage their MANIFEST DESTINY on everyone, actually on selected targets with economic value.
US MANIFEST DESTINY
http://www.answers.com/topic/manifest-destiny
THE US’CONTRIBUTION TO THE MUSLIM SITUATION IN THE SOUTH
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/EC06Ae03.html
FROM A WEST POINT GRADUATE
http://www.sundalo.bravehost.com/The%20Last%20Word.htm
“So if you believe that the Philippines is not a country  e di fine, e yun pala ang pagtingin mo dyan e. So what’s your beef then? What’s with all this gothic crusade of yours? You really are a funny sort”
Everyone’s got their beef. Even you do. What’s so funny about that?
By the way, this is what I wrote on my opening message in my site’s “What’s New” page so that you will know where I am coming from:
We open 2008 with the expectation that the next two years in the Philippines will essentially be a mind-numbing “presidentiable”-obssessed waste of time and energy. Appropriately enough, our first major content addition this year is our groundbreaking slideshow Why Filipinos Suck at Democracy. While the rest of the world goes on to achieve brilliant feats of innovation and human progress, Filipinos will, as usual, be busy muddling along in mediocrity, discussing the latest cellphone trinket, and debating the singing and dancing skills of the next presidential candidate in the months leading up to the 2010 presidential elections.
Despite this “freedom” we imagine ourselves to possess, we are clueless as to how to wield this power productively. The way we squander “freedom” today to participate in the crusades of the very characters reviled by the masses — our politicians, religious leaders, and “elders” — is no different from the way we squandered other assets that came before it — our forests, our minerals, and, now, our most skilled compatriots. Randy David revisited Jose Rizal’s timeless essay “Indolence of the Filipinos” in an end-of-year article on the Inquirer.net, quoting the man:
” […] the blind subjection of youth to his elders, influence the mind not to aspire to excel those who preceded him and merely to be content to follow or walk behind them. Stagnation inevitably results from this, and as he who devotes himself to copying fails to develop his inherent qualities […]”
Indeed, freedom grants Filipinos the power to explore options that the small minds of their elders failed to chart. Instead, subsequent generations of Filipinos have chosen to mold their minds around the very same kinds of thinking that our “elders” had beholden themselves to; ultimately resulting in the chronic failure that is Philippine society today.
And so we as a people continue to sing and dance to the same tunes today, applying the same thought processes that, not surprisingly, always yield the same outcomes.
“… of course, the strings are to be expected but as to what kind of strings are to be allowed to be attached is another matter…”. beancurd.
to be allowed? beggars can’t be choosers, and the vanquished cannot dictate the terms of surrender.
Ramrod,
Well you obviously wish to persists with this idea.
There is an article titled “Japan’s March Toward Militarism” by Bill Gordon.
It also speaks that Japan considered itself as having its own “manifest destiny”.
Though this is not in the article; its still kind of interesting that what you claim as our hapless soldiers being used against people only trying to defend their freedoms was perpetrated by the Japanese on Koreans.
They conscripted Korean men (and some claim that women were also conscripted to a different kind of “army”) into their war effort. And worth noting also is that some of those Korean men ended up fighting in the Philippines.
Justice League: Ramrod gives me the impression that he is not a judicious student of history. And Ramrod also does not seem to understand soldiering. Just look at his understanding that all Filipino soldiers who served with the United Nations in Korea are merceneries.
What terms of surrender? Beancurd was referring to the negotiations towards our formal independence in 1946.
Bencard, despite your rhetoric of America’s ruling with “relative justice and civility” and its having ““eventually voluntarily ended its occupation“, it turns out that Americans, at the core, believe in the logic of might makes right.
Assuming we were an independent state by then, we could have declared our neutrality and built up our defenses like what Switzerland did.
What the Americans did was to paint a bullseye on us without building up any defenses and leaving us on our own so they can help with the war effort in Europe. Those were a mix of halfway measures that resulted in our people becoming collateral damage.
Alternatively, going by UPn’s logic above (which i realize only operates on hindsight), we could also have chosen to be a nominal ally of Japan.
“The increasingly cosmopolitan and entrepreneurial nature of such Filipinos is, at present, inspiring yet another effort to hold change at bay”
we need an expanded middle class to make democracy at work. more jobs mean more people can get educated and be discerning enough not to vote the likes of Erap and Binay and vote really competent politicians
“when you divorce entrepreneurship/business from larger reforms, you close off the avenue of political change, as dangerous, because destabilizing.therefore you help foster an amoral business environment. the same reason bankers and businessmen admire the political will of expanded vat, while ignoring why that will had to be exercised to compensate for politics-as-usual”
how could that be? if 75% of the people are from the middle class up, hunger and poverty become less of a problem, perhaps making insurgency and terrorism go away also. yes, reforms are still needed. but at least hunger and poverty are decreased significantly.
this new breed of Pinoys will create the much-needed jobs.
and an expanded middle class, lots of jobs, less unemployed will produce great economic figures. yes reforms are still necessary by then. even Singapore needs reforms
Anthony Scalia, from earlier discussions, i understand that you believe that the country can develop even with minimal participation from the State. It used to be that it was only communists who believed in the withering away of the State. It looks like you share this belief as well.
The foundation for a sound business environment is a State that looks after the interests of the population and not just a few. If you leave the selection of its leaders to corrupt politicians and their allies in the military and the bureacracy, we undermine the mechanisms of governance that everyone, including entrepreneurs rely on.
As some big businessmen have found out, under the status quo, you run the risk of someone planting a bomb in your basement and then getting charged for negligence after the fact.
Bencard,
Thamks! You made my day! You gave Benigno the bitch slapping he has been asking for ever since he crowned himself philosopher king.
“benigno, on your “philippines is an artificial countryâ€Â, no state worth its salt is not artificial. as marcus aurelius said, rome (the great empire) was an idea that existed in the heart and mind of the people, an evanescent entity that could vanish as instantaneously as one could say “i don’t believeâ€Â. usa is an artificial nation of all races; uk is a an artificial state of the britons, celts, engels, and scots; france of franks, gauls, and normans; etc., etc.
we can call ourselves luzonians, visayans or mindanaoans but as long as we believe that we constitute one country and abide by the same constitution and government, we are one.”
Many intelligent comments were made. They are all, in one way or another, very correct. But, these only discuss the Philippine problem on the surface. Barely touching the very root of the problem.
It is TALIBA’s humble submission that the seeds of our country’s present problems (social & political) were sown initially when Spain subjugated and stripped our ancestors of their ancestral possessions. We, in TALIBA, would aptly call this as “The Great Land Grab”, which was given the semblance of legality and justified by the so called “Regalian Doctrine”. All wealth and possessions of our great ancestors were taken in the name and turned-over to the Crown of Spain. Leaving our ancestors with nothing. These “seeds of greed” thrived unabatedly in the colony. They are now prominently given the name now commonly known as “feudalism, “lordism” & “patronage”. When the Americans arrived, the same seeds flourished and continued (they just differed in shape and form), and continued up to the birth of Aguinaldo’s Republic, up to the establishment of the Commonwealth and even after the birth of the First Philippine Republic.
Many leaders came and went. But, very unfortunately, not one of them was able to eradicate these bitter “seeds of greed” (unfortunate vestiges of foreign colonization). This failure brought about and resulted to greater sufferings amongst the inhabitants of the country (gasping and stripped of wealth and dignity). The sad situation consequently gave birth to the communists insurgency/ rebellion (CPP-NPA), the secessionist movements in Muslim Mindanao (MNLF/MILF/Abusayaff) and the clamor for greater autonomy in the Cordilleras.
The same bitter “seeds of greed” thrive to this very day. Sadly, now a days, they have reached certain degree of sophistication suiting today’s greedy politicians and technocrats.
TALIBA: Going back to the Hukbalahap insurgency and how the Great One, the Late Ramon Magsaysay, then as Defense Secretary considered the main grievance of the Movement, Land for the Landless and offering them ownership of parcel of land in the south, which at the time was mostly owned by the State..But guess what, the labor move south and the Oligarch and the Warlords were not very far behind… now look at the South Philippines? The Zubiris, the Antoninos, Custodios and the same Oligarchs that dominate Luzon and Visayas…Opportunity sqaundered indeed!!!