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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| Meloto for President
By Antonio C. Abaya Written Aug. 16, 2006 For the Standard Today, August 17 issue According to the latest nationwide Pulse Asia survey, as written up in the Aug. 10 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, �three out of every 10 Filipino adults, or around 14 million, will migrate today if it was possible for them, as levels of public hopefulness amid uncertain times have dropped to their lowest, at 49 percent....� The survey was conducted from June 24 to July 8 among 1,200 Filipino adults nationwide. In a similar survey in July last year, 52 percent were against the idea of migrating to another country. This year, that percentage has dropped to 37 percent. Last year, 32 percent were unsure about migrating; this year that percentage is down to 21 percent. I wish the Inquirer and other print media would publish the results of these surveys in tabular, instead of or in addition to its textual, format, for greater clarity. The Inquirer story said: � �.the sentiment of hopefulness dropped to 49 percent from 69 percent in July last year. Between March and July, levels of hopefulness nationwide dropped 10 percentage points, from 59% four months ago. But the number of those who agreed that the country was hopeless increased 10 percentage points in a year, from 11 percent in July 2005�� This means, I presume, that the percentage of hopeful Filipino adults dropped from 69 percent in July 2005, to 59 percent in March 2006, to 49 percent in June-July 2006. The Inquirer also said that ��the number of those who agreed that the country was hopeless increased 10 percentage points in a year, from 11 percent in July last year�� This means, I presume again, that the percentage of Filipinos who find the country hopeless increased from 11 percent in July 2005 to 21 percent in June-July 2006. This is a bleak picture for any country in the world, more apt for Iraq or Afghanistan or Somalia . But how does one square that with the image that other surveys have painted of the Filipinos, namely, that we are the happiest people in Asia ? Is there such a thing as happiness in the midst of hopelessness, or hopelessness in the midst of happiness? I think the fault lies with the survey organizations. They should make an attempt to reconcile these two divergent results. And they can do this only by combining the two surveys into one: at the same time that respondents are asked about their levels of hopefulness or hopelessness, they should also be asked about their levels of happiness or unhappiness. The results, in my opinion, would be a more accurate portrait of the Filipino as bellyacher occupying the same space-time continuum as the Filipino as Pollyanna.. Having said that, I can hazard the guess that Filipinos� sense of hopefulness/hopelessness has to do with his/her economic and political milieu, while that of happiness/unhappiness has to do with the social freedoms that he/she enjoys on a personal basis. The economic future may be bleak and the politics hopeless, but as long as he has his Wowowee narcotic and his showbiz fornicator-idols and his anarchic barkada, the Filipino will stay happy. Any attempt at social engineering by a serious social reformer would have to input these givens. As for the feelings of economic hopelessness that seems to be spreading, both among the middle-class and the lower-classes, this seems to spring from the realization among more and more Filipinos that wages and incomes in this country are not going to increase significantly for most breadwinners in the near future. Not everyone can be a call center agent or a tourism worker or a caregiver in a foreign-funded retirement home � three of the sectors at present that show the most promise of higher wages. For the vast majority, the only way out and up is a job overseas. It is significant that the 27,000 Filipino workers left stranded in war-torn Lebanon have opted to stay there, rather than be evacuated home, now that a tenuous ceasefire seems to have taken hold. The measly $200 (or P10,500) a month that most of them earn as domestic helpers or unskilled laborers are deemed more desirable � despite risks of war, unfair employer and separation from family � than an uncertain, even hopeless, future in their own country. As for the feelings of political hopelessness, this seems to stem from the realization that the political system of this country is rotten and corrupted beyond repair and is no longer capable � if it ever was � of cleansing and regenerating itself. The feeling is that elections after elections do not seem to result in better leaders and better governance, but only in more stealing, more lying, and more cheating. This is not an endorsement of ChaCha. Without an overhaul of the electoral system and a rewriting of the rules of electoral engagement, the trapos who dominate the present presidential set-up will wind up dominating the parliamentary system as well. There is an urgent need to expand the selection process for choosing the country�s leaders so that even those outside the (discredited) party system can be seen and heard and evaluated by the electorate. Archbishop Angel Lagdameo, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) voiced this concern several months ago, when he called for the �emergence of a new breed of leaders.� See my article �New Breed of Leaders� ( May 09, 2006 ). But, so far, the CBCP has not come up with any mechanism for enabling this new breed of leaders to emerge. With elections looming in 2007 and 2010, are we going to lose out again, by default, to the trapos, the communists and the coup plotters? If so, then this country will truly be politically hopeless. Because I do not believe that this country is hopeless, politically or economically, I would like to encourage discussions on the emergence of future leaders, especially those who do not belong to the traditional and discredited political parties, but who may be just as worthy and qualified as, or are even more so than, the trapos. At this critical stage in our development, when the credibility of practically all branches of government is at record lows, the trapos, including most of the incumbents, are totally discredited. People are almost universally cynical of everyone who is occupying any government position. That is why the anti-Arroyo forces cannot gather any critical mass in their demos and rallies. Cynical voters, especially in the middle-class, do not see anyone, whether in the administration or in the opposition, as an acceptable alternative to Mrs. Arroyo, not because they see her as morally superior to everyone else, but because they see everyone else as equally morally flawed as she is, by the very fact of their immersion in the same political waters that she has muddied. There is also no reason to hope for political or economic salvation from anyone in the communist movement. These shrill and noisy banshees do not offer any new or original ideas that have not been tried out � and proven to be failures - in the 24 countries that have had the misfortune of falling under communist regimes since 1917. Communists may be mostly correct in their critiques of Philippine society but the alternative that they offer � a Maoist dictatorship of the proletariat � has been rejected and discarded even by the former followers of Mao Zedong. Communists anywhere are infatuated with a Theoretical Ideal that does not exist in reality, and never did even during the heyday of Mao or Stalin.. To look for the new breed of leaders that this country needs, we should search outside the polluted circles of the trapos, outside the silly make-believe world of showbiz fornicators, outside the failed ideologues of the communist movement, and outside the narcissistic cliques of military coup-plotters. To start this discussion, I propose that we examine the life and work of Antonio Meloto, founder and chair of the Gawad Kalinga, who is being honored this month as Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for community development. Meloto for President! (To be continued.) ***** Reactions to [email protected]. Other articles since 2001 in www.tapatt.org OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |