| OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Reactions to �Not Worth Dying For� CORY (WAS) not able to change things much because of her lack of preparation to be president. Ramos balk(ed) at offending vested interests and suspended major reform measures because of his desire for a second term. His last three years in office (were) completely wasted on the cha-cha debate. Moreover, unlike Cory who, for the sake of the country, (chose) a strong candidate to be her successor (at the expense of Ramon Mitra, a close personal friend), Ramos (chose) a clear loser to be his successor because of utang na loob. Ramos simply could not go beyond personal interest. He could have chosen Gloria or De Villa, who (had) been rating better in the surveys. Of course, we all know why Erap (was) not able to change things either. GMA is paralyzed because of the exigency of the 2004 election. I still think though that our one six-year presidential term can still do wonders for us. That is if GMA wins the election and goes for the history books. She is competent and knows the problems. But she has to set aside personal interests, ignore political debts and confine Mike and Mikey Arroyo to quarters in order to make a difference. If only Ramos (had) opted to do this during his term, Teddy Benigno would not be hoping for a Freedom Force today. I am really sorry but I still think that our democracy is still workable. The key is GMA if she decides to be. Gico Dayanghirang, Davao City. [email protected] September 19, 2002 I HAVE READ or heard a story about Raul Roco just before the 1998 presidential election. In fact, I seem to remember Cory narrating this story while being interviewed on TV. As the story goes, Raul (had) been an aide of Ninoy Aquino. When Ninoy (was) arrested, a petition (was) circulated by some lawyers asking then President Marcos to release Ninoy. Raul refused to sign this petition, saying that people have to adjust to new realities. If this story is true, the Filipino people must know about it. Raul is aspiring to be president of the country. This story, if true, would say a lot about his character. He is not ready to die for the Filipino people. I have no way of verifying this story from my vantage point here in Davao City. Could you then do the Filipino people a favor by finding out more about this story? It would be easy for you to do this in Metro Manila. Thank you in advance. Gico Dayanghirang, Davao City. [email protected] September 19, 2002 MY REPLY. You could easily do it in Davao City, if it is really your intent to embarrass Raul Roco. You could feed the story to the Davao media next time Roco goes there and he would have to react to your feed one way or another. ***** YOUR FACTS are correct. But I continue to hope � mainly for the sake of my children. I continue to hope that we can still overcome many of the problems that you mentioned. And the media industry has great influence in making that possible. We at the AIJC are now trying to help media work for development through our graduate school, R&D, and consultancy work. We�ve very little resources. But our employees work very hard (I�m just resting from my midnight shift now!) to finance our graduate school. I just took over Dr. Flor Braid�s work last April 1st. There�s a lot of work to do. That�s another reason why I have to be hopeful. I appreciate your sharing of thoughts through email. My only request is for you to just share with me the hopeful, good news. At the Management Association of the Philippines, where I serve as co-chair of the Committee on Environment and Urban Development, we just started a newsletter, �The Good News,� partly to counteract the bad news. And we�ve noticed that when we start counting the good news, rather than the bad ones, they do increase! For example, at the just-concluded UN World Summit for Sustainable Development, our business community got one of the top 10 business awards (Shell Malampaya) for sustainable development and our Business Agenda 21 got featured as one of four models on the topic. Perhaps, if we�d pay more attention and space (in our papers, heart and mind) to the good news rather than the bad ones, we might have more real good news. Sometimes I also exert much effort to think positively � after a full day�s work, disturbed only by the news that my best friend, who just underwent removal of a cancerous growth (result of our high level of pollution, perhaps) is suffering from something else and another just had a heart by-pass. So do share better news next time. Thanks and more power. Cora Claudio. [email protected] MY REPLY. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on good news versus bad. I agree with you that Philippine media is a bad news media. Principally, because it is a profit-oriented media, and good news just does not sell copies or attract viewers as much as bad news does. When the government builds ten bridges, the news would be buried, unread, in the provincial section. But when the NPA or the MILF blows one up, the news is splattered on the front page and is highlighted in the TV evening news, to be lapped up by all. How would you treat it differently? The media in communist and other authoritarian countries are a good news media; they would play up the building of the ten bridges, and will not mention the blowing up of the one bridge. Or if they mention that one bridge, it will be to denounce the counter-revolutionaries or the imperialist lackeys who blew it up. Which kind of media would you rather have? Or how do you look at MMDA Chair Bayani Fernando�s campaign against sidewalk vendors? Is it good news that some sidewalks were cleared of vendors? Or is it bad news that many vendors lost their livelihood? |
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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| Not Worth Dying For? By Antonio C. Abaya August 22, 2002 In Gene Orejana�s Online interview last August 21 with former DECS Secretary Raul Roco, who is certainly the most attractive alternative to President Arroyo in 2004, the conversation inevitably gravitated to the seminal statement of Ninoy Aquino, whose death anniversary was marked that day, that �the Filipino is worth dying for.� As an eloquent politician, Roco was able to parry the probing questions of Orejana that tended to intimate his (Orejana�s) doubts that the Filipino was worth dying for, with the saving rejoinder that �the Filipino was worth living for.� Touche, Raul. I hope you meant every word of it. I myself doubt very much that Ninoy, were he alive today, would have found Butz and Tessie worth dying or living for. That�s the problem with epigrammatic one-liners. They make excellent material for books of quotations but sometimes get debased by the cruel realities of everyday life. ***** During the 45-minute Online interview, a sidebar on the Channel 21 screen invited viewers to vote on the question; Are we (Filipinos) still worth dying for? As Orejana posed his questions and Roco answered them, the bar chart in the sidebar went up and down as the responses from texting viewers filtered or flooded in. The bad news is that never once did the Yes vote command a majority in the tally. The good news is��.the Meralco power did not fail and the program continued to the very end. And the final vote was 31% Yes and 69% No. Filipinos are not worth dying for, according to the majority opinion. Orejana tactfully ignored the results of his own survey in his closing statement. Of course, the survey was not a �scientific� one. The respondents did not represent a cross section of the Philippine population, and the different socio-economic classes were not proportionately represented. Those who voted with their cell phones were, we can assume, mostly members of the middle classes (upper, middle and lower) who are concerned enough about conditions in the country to watch programs of this kind. The rich were probably too engrossed with their evening meals to care, while the poor, as usual, were getting their brains addled even more with their daily dose of showbiz narcotic. ***** This latest �survey� comes in the heels of recent, more scientific others that told us that 19% of Filipinos consider the Philippines a hopeless country and would move to other shores if they could, and that only 35% of us are satisfied with the way democracy is working here. What we are witnessing is a revolution of subsiding expectations in which vast numbers of the middle classes, especially the young, are giving up on this country in droves and despairing of any hope that anyone can fix it anytime soon or ever. What we are witnessing is a growing malaise of despondency that our problems have grown so numerous and implacable that there is no possibility of their solution within the lifetime of anyone over 40. ***** And there is empirical reason for making this statement. All the successful countries in this part of the world � South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong and the People�s Republic of China � got to where they are only after 20 years of rapid economic growth of 8 to 12% every year, based largely on the export of manufactured goods and under strong states that did not hesitate to use draconian measures to ensure industrial peace and public order. An economic laggard and political marshmallow like the Philippines, muddling along at 2 to 4% GDP growth rate every year and under weak governments that cannot enforce their own laws, is not capable of making a meaningful, qualitative change in the daily lives of its people. Its daunting problems are made even more insoluble by too rapid a population growth rate and a constitutional requirement to change leaders every six years. It is just not possible to turn a country around in only six years. South Korea�s Park Chung Hee was in power for 18 years, Taiwan�s Chiang Ching-kuo for 13 years, Singapore�s Lee Kwan Yew for 30 years, Malaysia�s Mahathir Mohamad for 21 years and still counting, Thailand�s generals for 16 years, China�s Deng Xiao-ping for 15 years. Of course, our own Ferdinand Marcos stayed in power for 20 years, but he did not use that time to build for the Philippines what the other Asian leaders built for their countries: an economy geared towards the export of manufactured goods. Instead, Marcos gave his relatives and cronies cartels and monopolies in the domestic market and did not encourage them to compete in the global market. ***** That�s why when Monsignor Nico Bautista asked me, when we saw each other in a recent birthday bash, what I thought was in store for this country in the immediate future, I said, �More of the same.� No matter who becomes president in 2004. I do not see any breakthrough in the economy that could give us 8-12% GDP growth for even only one year, let alone 20. The political system of the Philippines has so developed that running for public office, especially national ones like the presidency and the Senate, has become so expensive that only the very rich � or those who are beholden to mega-bucks financial backers � can afford to run. And when they win, they feel obligated to give favored treatment to those who invested in their campaign by giving them government contracts or by appointing them or their assignees to key government positions which they then use to seek rent from the captive public. The system carries in its womb the seeds of its own corruption. No matter who becomes president in 2004, the political culture of the Philippines will not allow him or her to succeed. After a 100-day �honeymoon� period, he or she becomes the target of daily diarrhea from the �free press�, (which, not by coincidence, did not/does not exist in the all the successful tigers of East Asia), partly because the Philippine press, like its American model, is inherently anti-government, and partly because it is in the payroll of vested interests who do not want him or her to succeed. Add to this the strident militancy of the communists and their pro-communist allies in the press and the clergy (again, non-existent in the successful tigers), who will never be happy unless and until a communist government is in power. Any president who does not play along with them is and will be publicly insulted, humiliated, hooted down and burned in effigy. Even the smallest mistakes are magnified, the few successes are belittled and every public conflict is expanded to fan the flames of discontent. Given this implacably hostile environment, with public confidence in the government deliberately eroded everyday by various groups for various reasons, and the government unable to reply in kind, it is hard to see how any president can succeed in uniting the Filipinos in a grand enterprise of nation-building. On the contrary, as public disenchantment with the trapos grows and the economy fails to generate jobs in the numbers needed, civil unrest and criminality are likely to spread, driving away investments and tourists even more, in a vicious cycle that can rob a humiliated and disheartened people of the last shred of self-esteem that they are worth dying for. ***** The bulk of this article appears in the September 9, 2002 issue of the Philippine Weekly Graphic magazine. |
| ***** THANK YOU for including me in your mailing list. I really like the things you write. As a matter of fact, I share them with my friends and officemates. Unfortunately, Tandag doesn�t sell the Weekly Graphic and the broadsheet where you write. Romel : ) [email protected]. ***** WHAT THE Philippines needs is a new model for the Filipino. The current model has not yet escaped from the Middle Ages. His social anchors are a decrepit but tyrannical religion, feudal family outlook, superstition and the unstable Malay temperament, all aggravated by poor education. With the practice of baptism at birth and constant bombardment with religious crap thereafter, there is no way to create a New Filipino and the Church will see to it that such practices will continue. The country is really hopeless, like Colombia, Mexico and all the other former Catholic/Spanish colonies. Robert Hanan, Australia. No email address given. MY REPLY. You are overstating the influence of the Roman Catholic Church on the daily lives of Filipinos. Islam is no more enlightened or enlightening than Catholicism, and yet Malaysia has built a successful country under the leadership of a devout Muslim. The key point was/is in choosing the correct economic strategy, as a result of which broad-based prosperity nurtured the growth of an educated middle class, the most enlightened in any society. ***** YOU CAPTURE the specific Philippine problem quite nicely and completely. Return to growth rates of 8 to 12% will be impossible with the dotcom and stock market bubbles gone poof and no replacement on the horizon. It�s back to the salt mines in the old economy, with its old economic rates, growth and profit. The American economy and consumers, like a sponge full of liquid, are nearing the capacity and will soon cease to absorb worldwide products at the former rates. Buying stuff they don�t need with money they don�t have will stop. That�s bad news for export-oriented countries. A basically very rich country with so many poor people as the Philippines, the government should regard it as an opportunity to improve the local economy and make buyers out of the many who are not. It has been done in many other places and is possible here, with the correct programs, which should initially be centered on agriculture. Non self-sufficiency can become very tricky in the future, particularly for an island nation. Peter Ritter, Manila. [email protected]. MY REPLY. The midterm development program of the Arroyo government specifically focuses on agriculture, plus information technology and tourism, as the areas in which it will concentrate to raise GDP, and so far it has been moderately successful in agriculture. The problem is that an impatient press and people want GMA to create a New Hong Kong in 39 months. Just not possible. ***** THANKS for your interesting article. But I�m wondering why you consider Roco as an alternative for Arroyo. He quitted (sic) because of an official investigation about fraud rumours (sic). Not an ideal candidate, I would say. Secondly, he got in the Presidential election of 1998 only a low score (sic). Personally, I don�t see any reason for a very long stay of any President. Reelected Presidential and other political leaders act in their second term better than in their first one. When people are too long in power, they become usually deaph (sic) for new ideas. Therefore I find it better for a democratic society to change its leaders every 4 or 8 years. This is called the Pluralistic theory from Dahl (sic). Every political leader in every country has to face a lot of criticism. You know the expression: if you can�t stand the heat you must go out of the kitchen. I don�t see any reason why a new President can�t do her or his work. I think people are mostly expecting too much of a President. It�s not a messias (sic) who will solve all the problems of a country. Most of them are structual (sic) And are caused by international developments. If we accept, the limits of a Presidency and the government, we won�t become too soon disappointed (sic). Compare it with the imagine (sic) children often have from their parents. In the beginning they see them as powerful human beings, but later they will see they are just normal human beings with their good and bad sides. About your criticism about the patriotic mind of Pinoys. Dying for a country seems for me not necessary anymore. The last war was more than 50 years ago. So it�s not an actual theme anymore. Besides I think if you would change the question into: Would be prepared to give your life for your family (sic)? Most would answer it with yes. A country is a quite abstract term (sic). With regards, Mr. Pacha. emsi [email protected] . ps. I don�t think you have to be worried about the communists. They are relicts (sic) from the past; supporters of a death (sic) 19th century philosophy which failed obviously. So I can�t take them serious (sic) anymore. MY REPLY. Pwede ba, tagalugin mo na lang. Bugbug na bugbug na ang wikang Ingles sa iyo. ***** NINOY AQUINO has become lionized too much. What were his original ideas? Nothing. As I told one parachute journalist in 1986. Had Aquino gotten power he would have been one in the long line of predators who have brought misery unto this land. Better to study Diego Silang who made the frailes tremble and was betrayed by a sacristan assassin. Ross Tipon, Baguio City. [email protected]. MY REPLY. But what were the original ideas of Diego Silang? Nothing also. And you can probably say that of everyone all the way back to Lapu Lapu. The measure of heroism is not what original ideas a person had, but the circumstances of his/her life and death. It is shortsighted to look at the blemishes of a recently dead person and conclude that he/she was not made of heroic stuff. Time has a way of glossing over those blemishes. And well it should. At the time Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, he had as many detractors in the north as he had in the south. Look at him now. ***** OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |