QUO VADIS? ...MY BIRTH COUNTRY PHILIPPINES...THE FUTURE GENERATIONS. (Repost of June 30, 2005)

"Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. This struggle may be a moral one or it may be a physical one or it may be both moral and physical but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand It never did, and never will." 

NOTES TO READERS:  
1. Colored and/or underlined words are HTML links. Click on them to see the linked posts/articles. Forwarding this and other posts to relatives and friends, especially those in the homeland, is greatly appreciated. To share, use all social media tools: email, blog, Google+, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, etc. THANKS!!
2. Click the following underlined title/link to checkout these Essential/Primary Readings About Us Filipino Natives:
Primary Blog Posts/Readings for my fellow, Native (Malay/Indio) Filipinos-in-the-Philippines
3. Instantly translate to any of 71 foreign languages. Go to the sidebar on the right to choose your preferred language.
*************************

LET US NOT KEEP OUR HEADS IN THE SAND

To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; credible we must be truthful." - Edward R. Murrow (1908-1965)

In recent weeks, there seems to be a gathering storm of demands for Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to resign. With the Jose Pidal case, Gloriagate tapes, the alleged P10MM payola offered to a Catholic Bishop, etc.; all these relatively "minor" compared to the prostitution and plunder of our national economy and patrimony that the Arroyo government and her technocrats have been perpetuating via the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreements, at the expense of the poor native majority and the diminishing native middle class. Gloria and her cohorts may be made to go. But then what?

Does a change in the faces of leadership, taken from the present contenders, pretenders, and/or their supporters, resulting in the radical and fundamental changes needed for the betterment of the majority, in the long term?

We have seen such facial changes before since the dictator Ferdinand Marcos: Cory Aquino, supposedly pious but only brought back the old oligarchs, and see today what and how her family's Hacienda Luisita treat their plantation workers; Fidel Ramos, a former Marcos henchman who continued the politicization of the military (putting them in civilian posts), a West Point graduate and strongly pro-American, wasted people's money on APEC, brought in the WTO to destroy our nascent industries and agricultural economy, among others; Joseph Estrada, a supposedly "pro-poor" celebrity who was an incompetent drunk and thief; now Gloria, supposedly a Catholic college girl, highly educated, economist, an exponent of the WTO and all these alleged corruption in her immediate family. We have had a very smart strongman, a religious widow, a military man, an incompetent drunk thief, and currently a highly educated Catholic woman, what's next?

Who can our fellow Filipinos in the homeland turn to? What can they do?

At this point in our homeland's history, the western-type political democracy does not seem really fit given the level of political maturity or understanding of democracy by the majority, the lack of national unity, and the absence of adequate economic foundation necessary to decent livelihood for all, which democracy requires to become truly effective and useful for most members of society [it is difficult to talk about ideas to hungry stomachs]. At this point in time "guided democracy", "limited democracy" as was practiced in Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, and Taiwan especially during the early stages of their economic development seems more appropriate. (refer to: http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/2005/05/learning-from-taiwanese-from.html). 

But of course, the specific histories and cultures have to be understood. Nothing is completely transferable. There are many ways to skin a cat. At best, an eclectic approach is needed. Given the large economic inequality or gap between a handful of socioeconomic elite and the majority, this economic elite wields political power since "those who have the gold, rules" and with "gold, goons, and guns." It is only when a large middle class --not just 8-10% of the populace as estimated now-- has been formed will a western-type political democracy with its institutions be fully appreciated, understood, and made to truly serve the interests of most citizens [of a democratic society].

More specifically, in a country like our homeland, when all is said and done, political democracy is presently not very empowering for the average citizen. The individual Filipino citizen, the "common tao", does not feel that he is a participant in nor influence running the country. In his past and present history, unpopular or dissenting individuals/groups, including journalists have been harassed or murdered without redress and justice. Then and now, the regular elections and the courts have, more often than not, become a circus and a sham. In times of peace, the citizen feels that he is empowered only by his political connections since the normal democratic institutions do not function effectively and efficiently for him; in times of crisis, he feels empowered only in a crowd, by his participation in a mass demonstration, an EDSA, or the "politics of the streets". Therefore such a conception of western-type political democracy is a disappointment, to put it mildly. Political parties have come to be recognized as a necessary part of a functioning political democracy. In our homeland's case, such parties do not really exist since their candidates are not different from each other. They have only paid lip service to democratic principles and/or mouthed nationalist pretensions; while the socio-economic-political elites with the cooptation by the military and/or apathy of the middle class, who control these political parties, exploit, fool and look with scorn upon the poor and illiterate whose interest they claim to represent. The political parties will only be effective as a vehicle of democratic education and practice, of fundamental changes designed to serve the basic needs of the majority, when their control is taken, peacefully (preferably) or violently, by a politicized, nationalistic citizenry from the relatively small elite group that now rules and controls. Given the present conditions in the Philippines where peaceful change is a practically impossible and armed rebellion is still unpopular, untimely, and suicidal, the main and immediate task of Filipinos in the Philippines today is to learn their history, by firstly politicizing the multitude to increase their national consciousness and nationalism: to know why they need and how to take control, to correctly identify potential, truly nationalist leaders who will work, fight with them for the economic [firstly] and political [secondly] well-being of present and future generations, preferably peacefully; but not hesitating to do so forcefully, if required, that is, when every peaceful means have been exhausted. The people has the right to revolt (America, now the sole and most powerful bully in the world and which profits from the current state-of-affairs, has conveniently forgotten its revolutionary history and tells each suffering, poor nation to go the "legal" way --which has not worked in the last 60+ years for us). A politicized and nationalistic citizenry will also be capable of monitoring and keeping a watchful and active eye on its leaders to ensure that the leaders truly represent and serve their common good while minimizing violence [we do not want a Pol Pot-like communist revolution]. The 1949 Chinese and 1954 Vietnamese Revolutions were both nationalistic and communist. In both cases, it now appears that they are giving way to accepting capitalism (theoretically opposite to communism and therefore anathema) as the way to economic progress. But these nations' road to economic progress are strongly monitored and controlled, and gradually implemented by a nationalistic though communist cadre/party. It can be foreseen that they will evolve into a democratic and nationalistic society in the following decades. In our homeland, ideally, a nationalistic revolution is preferable, if there is such a realizable wish. THE BAD NEWS: if nationalist politicization were reached in our homeland, it may take a generation (30+) years from thereon to attain true political and economic independence. And it will probably be a much harder and difficult road since the countries benefiting the current socio-economic and political conditions i.e. mainly the USA, Japan, via their transnational corporations and their effective control of the IMF/WB/WTO will make it so; as happened in Chile, Nicaragua, Peru, Venezuela, etc in recent years.That is why a combination of strong nationalist leadership and nationalist populace are imperative to withstand expected embargoes and financial squeeze by these powerful countries and entities (note Cuba). We should realize though that with market globalization, the US and the developed world do not care about a country's political ideology including communism; as demonstrated by their currently humongous business partnership and trade with communist China.

What the US and transnational corporations (TNCs) are worried about and actively oppose is a country whose leadership and citizens are united by a strong nationalism to assert themselves and defy them (as Mohammad Mahathir of Malaysia). 

THE WORST NEWS for our homeland is to stay the course as in the past and present, that is, continuing the present liberal economic policies via the still generally unperceived neo-colonial relationship with the US and other developed countries [the G7]; absolute adherence to WTO/IMF/WB, etc. that have been leading only to the complete destruction of indigenous agriculture and nascent industrialization, with the resultant massive loss of jobs, destruction of natural resources and environment, the continual and consequent sham and ineffective political democracy; which in the long-run will produce the feared widespread chaos and violent upheaval, initiated by either the military or communist rebels. 

This feared probability will be hastened when opportunities for our OFWs greatly diminish as it will, given the increased competition from other poor countries because, for now, OFWs serve well as a pressure-relief valve for the social volcano of the Philippines. 

Unfortunately, I do not find true and lasting good news in the next decade or two for our next generations but, I hope I will be wrong.

"Cuba has ... been condemned for not allowing its people to flee the island. That so many want to leave Cuba is treated as proof that Cuban socialism is a harshly repressive system, rather than that the U.S. embargo has made life difficult in Cuba. That so many millions more want to leave capitalist countries like Mexico, Nigeria, Poland, El Salvador, Philippines, South Korea, Macedonia, and others too numerous to list is never treated as grounds for questioning the free-market system that inflicts such misery on the Third World." - Michael Parenti

“Nations whose NATIONALISM is destroyed are subject to ruin.” - Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, 1942-, Libyan Political and Military Leader 

 "We shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know..." - SOCRATES 

 "Upang maitindig natin ang bantayog ng ating lipunan, kailangang radikal nating baguhin hindi lamang ang ating mga institusyon kundi maging ang ating pag-iisip at pamumuhay. Kailangan ang rebolusyon, hindi lamang sa panlabas, kundi lalo na sa panloob!" - Apolinario Mabini La Revolucion Filipina (1898)

Corruption in our homeland
..why, who, what, etc.

My definition here: Corruption is the use of public office for private gain.

If you want a job, in a land where jobs are hard to come by, then you have to pay for it. If you want your house saved from the neighborhood fire, then you have to pay for it. If you want to have your documents expedited, then you have to pay for it. If you want a driver’s license without taking the test, then you have to pay for it. If you want to pay less or no taxes, then you have to pay for it. These are just a few (minor) instances of corruption in all dealings between the public citizen and government employees/officials, which everyone, I guess, has heard, read or experienced first hand. Sometimes in social gatherings we talk about it, laugh about it, get mad about it.....

Here I attempt to cogently analyze and understand corruption in our homeland where it is seen and seems accepted as a way of life. Specific details of big, numerous, current or historical instances of government corruption by the military and politicians -then and now- will not be discussed here lest we get “lost in the trees” and not see the forest.

Corruption is a symptom, not the disease. It seems rampant corruption is a typical symptom of a social cancer at the heart of previously colonized countries and that includes our birth country and as some of you may be aware, it is among the countries with the highest corruption index. Just like the disease, this social cancer requires radical treatment; not from a corrupt military but from informed and active citizens (it is another topic though).

Also, it is true that corruption exists in any society, in matter of degrees. Even here in the USA, our adopted country it does, but the existence of an economic democracy among the populace, the presence of a significant number of informed and active citizenry, the active imposition of and thus respect for the law, under a democratic system of government with its checks and balances, prevents its spread.

Obviously, corruption that is widespread creates a climate of moral degeneration and makes a mockery of government. It is a symptom of government incompetence and in itself undermines the government’s ability to rule. Corruption is rarely uncovered – or when uncovered – often those responsible for eradicating it also became corrupt. Even if they did not become corrupt themselves, evidence was hard to come by.

If the bribe-giver had actually received the service he paid for, he was a satisfied customer and so kept his mouth shut. If he was a victim of corruption, he could not prove it as there are no written contracts for corrupt deals.The effects of corruption are such that it does not only weaken government and undermine social discipline at all levels. It is also another mechanism by which inequalities are created and increased.

Some say corruption is caused by low salaries in the public sector and could be cured by increasing them. This may or may not be true. If you pay people more, it is quite possible that they will develop even more inflated expectations and charge more for bribes. Corruption increases pay differentials: it gives it free, unseen pay rise to people already earning many times the poor man’s income.The corrupt individuals, especially those in high governmental positions, comprise the kleptocracy, and are using their political power to extract an economic surplus for themselves.

For those at higher positions, the bigger the stakes to be won. They turn political (or military) power into economic power, which make their political power even stronger. Import licenses, government contracts, jobs, educational success are given out not according to rational principles such as need, ability or rank in a bid list, but according to who can pay most. Thus, reinforcing the fact that corruption from the user’s point of view means that money talks.

The rich and the connected (kumpadre/kumadre/relative and/or kababayan, friends, etc) can buy or get themselves further advantages over the poor. They can buy themselves exemptions from laws designed to redistribute some of their wealth and income to the poor. Corruption diverts social reform. It contributes to mass poverty (and elite wealth). It perverts development. It undermines the entire economy of the country. It makes a mockery of rational planning.

It leads, for example, to substandard engineering that costs more in lives than it shaves off in materials as indicated by say, a Ruby Tower or a new road that easily collapsed or deteriorated. (If my memory serves me right, recently in Tondo a relatively new 5-storey building tumbled down!).

Loyalty to family, town, province or region comes before loyalty to the country or nation (“tribal” mentality). The “get-rich-quick” mentality borne out of local customs of gift-giving in return to favors spread as people jockeyed for status in the only universally acknowledged manner: material ostentation. A marked tendency towards putting greater premiums on material values, and a growing craze for getting rich quick by all means, fair or foul.These explain the greater propensity to corruption.

The opportunity for corruption is provided by the poverty of the economy and the complexity of bureaucratic regulation. The government controls so many precious scarce resources, from jobs and houses to contracts and licenses. These things have a fixed price but demand for them far exceeds supply so they can easily command a premium price. If a business man is willing to pay a bribe, he sees it in the nature of an investment which will pay off a profit like any other, helping him evade taxes, charge excessive prices to the public or the government, or use less and/or inferior materials than the law stipulates.

The extra profit that “justifies” the “investment” (bribe) is milked from the masses. Either the country loses revenue that could be spent on development, social programs or the public pays more for the goods. The bribe only appears to come from the businessman’s pocket: in reality it is extorted from the general public. And wherever power-holders and policy-makers become rich through corruption, the policies they make are less likely to threaten wealth or alleviate poverty.

Politicians, bureaucrats or military leaders who own estates will not vote or support in favor of more preferential treatment for small businesses (who may compete) or land reform. And when politics comes to be considered as a path to wealth as well as power, it tends to attract fewer idealists and more opportunists, whose presence speeds up the degeneration process.

"The quest for riches darkens the sense of right and wrong." -Antisthenes, c390 BC

"No man should so act as to make a gain out of the ignorance of another." - Cicero, c63 BC

"For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul." - Matthew 16:26 c 80 AD (reminder to those who claim Christianity)

"He that will be rich before night may be hanged before noon." - Roger L-Estrange, 1692

"Rich men without convictions are more dangerous in modern society than poor women without chastity." - George Bernard Shaw, 1898

"It is difficult but not impossible to conduct strictly honest business." - Mohandas Gandhi, 1946

"It is good business men that are corrupting our bad politicians." - Joseph W. Falk, 1956

"People will swim through shit if you put a few dollars in it" - Peter Sellers, 1975

”Ethics is not a branch of economics." - Yerachmiel Kugel, 1977

"Nothing is illegal if 100 businessmen decide to do it." - Andrew Young, 1978

HYPOCRITES ALL
-Luis Teodoro

Poverty is the reason most cited for the desperate desire of Filipino workers, most of them women, to leave country and family for jobs abroad. The women picketing the Japanese embassy in protest over the Japanese government’s new rules on the accreditation of entertainers who want to work in the fabled land of the quick yen said so in as many words, and described unemployment opportunities in the land of their birth as nil, besides.The women’s claims belied those rosy reports on the astounding 6.1 percent growth of the economy–which, of course, was mostly driven by OFW remittances, which as of last count stood at over $8 billion a year.

The protests were as badly timed as the killing of a journalist this week and of a witness in the killing of Pagadian journalist Edgar Damalerio in 2001. These deaths occurred in the middle of government indignation over the International Federation of Journalists’ (IFJ) report that no one has been punished for the deaths of over 50 journalists in this country since 1986. Such is life in the neo-colony of our nightmares. Like violence and government indifference, poverty and unemployment are not only regularly described as non-existent by the government; they are also regarded in this paradise on earth as part of God’s infinite plan.

Few, if any Filipinos–and certainly never the government– ever bother to ask why Filipinos are so poor, and why most of them can’t get work and have to leave kith and kin for abroad so they can scrub bedpans all day or be on their backs all night in countries whose names they can’t even spell. Philippine poverty is the result of policies one Philippine government after another since 1946 has willingly implemented on the “advice” of such US-dominated agencies as the International Monetary Fund.

Those policies have studiously prevented industrial development even as successive landlord-dominated governments saw to it that no real land reform would ever be implemented. The result is declining agricultural productivity amid rapid population growth the small and shrinking manufacturing sector can’t absorb, as desperate peasants make for the cities by the tens of thousands each year. What economic policies now exist is focused, not on the basics of industrialization and land reform, but on tourism development, attracting foreign investments, and the export of labor.

These complementary policies have ruined the countryside most, and women and the Filipino family have been their primary victims. As purchasing power declined and population doubled, the destruction of traditional livelihoods among rural women such as arts and crafts accelerated, forcing young women to move to the cities in search of work, often to fall victim to the lures of various syndicates, among them those that send women off to other cities or other countries as sex workers. No doubt some women look at the hitherto worse-than-death fate as better than the slow death of grinding poverty and as the sole means through which their ideas of luxury–an apartment with a TV and flush toilet, three square meals a day–can be realized.

A subculture that makes willing prostitutes of some Filipinas so long as the price is right has arisen in this country. The same subculture looks at washing chamber pots and bedpans in a nursing home in Australia in the same light. For that we have to thank the continuing decline of the economy and, correspondingly, that of traditional values, plus the conspicuous affluence of newly returned OFWs in the blighted countryside.

The new Japanese rules–which now require applicants from the Philippines for entertainer visas to have trained or to have had experience in a country other than the Philippines for at least two years–were provoked by the inclusion of Japan in the US State Department’s “Tier 2 Watch List” on human trafficking last June, 2004.Since 2000, Japan has been in a US list of countries regarded as destinations for men, women and children “trafficked for sexual exploitation” across borders, as well as a country in which those trafficked are “resold".

The 2004 “Tier 2 Watch List,” however, is a special category that includes countries where trafficking is worsening in terms of the number of victims.The US human trafficking list has three “Tiers” in which Tier 1 refers to countries whose governments comply with the minimum standards of the US Trafficking Victims Reauthorization Act of 2003; Tier 2 refers to countries whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum standards of the Act but “are making significant progress” in complying with those standards; and Tier 3, in which countries “whose governments do not fully comply with the minimum standards” and are not doing much to do so are listed.

Both Japan and the Philippines are in Tier 2, as well as in the special “Tier 2 Watch List,” meaning these countries, while supposedly trying to comply with the US Act’s standards, have recorded increases in the number of victims of trafficking. Japan has imposed the new rules so as to be de-listed from this special category as well as from the Tier 2 list.

What’s significant about the new rules as applied to the Philippines is that it assumes Philippine government accreditation as unreliable. That’s the assumption of the requirement that an applicant for an entertainer visa should have had training in a third country or at least two years’ experience as an entertainer.The trafficking of Filipinas to Japan and elsewhere has in fact flourished with the cooperation-for-a-fee of the bureaucrats of the government agency tasked with accrediting Filipinas as “artists". It is widely known that the accreditation can be obtained through bribery, and that many bureaucrats in that agency have enriched themselves as a result.

Internal trafficking in the Philippines has been a problem of long standing, driven not only by poverty but also by such other factors as the presence of US military bases from 1946 to 1990, and lately, the return of US troops via the Visiting Forces Agreement and the Balikatan military exercises. Presumably all these are known to the present government, but are of no consequence to it, given the cost of protecting Filipinas from international and domestic trafficking not only to the economy but also to its relations with the United States.

The Arroyo government’s campaign to either get the Japanese government to loosen its rules or to defer their implementation–for three years is what the women protesting at the Japanese Embassy and their recruiters want–is of course premised on the huge losses in remittances, estimated at 90 percent, that are likely to result. While Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo has landed in Tokyo in what’s likely to be a doomed effort to plead for a change in Japanese policy, the Arroyo government has not said anything about the internal trafficking of Filipinas. That figures, given its commitment to allow more US troops more frequently into the country in furtherance of its time-honored role as a US client.

Conclusion: they’re all in this together, the hypocrites.There’s the Philippine government, the corruption of whose officials has contributed immensely to Japanese perceptions that government accreditation of entertainers is unreliable and whose policies since 1946 have steadily impoverished the country.

There’s the Japanese government, which, before the US put it in its special list couldn’t have cared less about the fate of the men, women and children who end up in Japan as victims of sexual exploitation; And then, last but certainly not least, there’s the compiler of the Watch List itself (USA), the presence of whose troops then and now made internal trafficking so profitable for the pimps and sex syndicates in this famished land, and whose surrogate and own agencies turned the country into a basket case–and in which, incidentally, there are an estimated 16,000 victims of trafficking, according to its own US Justice Department.
http://www.luisteodoro.com/archives/2005/02/05/hypocrites-all/
(Today/abs-cbnNEWS.com)

“Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime” - Aristotle, 335 BC

“They do not easily rise whose abilities are repressed by poverty at home.” - Decimus Juvenalis, 120 AD (CE)

“To be poor and independent is very nearly an impossibility.” - William Corbett, 1830

"The accomplish to the crime of corruption is frequently our own indifference." - Bess Myerson, 1924-present

“Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent” – Benjamin Disraeli, British Prime Minister (1804-1881)

"Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country." - Karl Kraus, 1874-1936.