Breaking up is hard to do

I first thought about the breakup of the Philippines into numerous independent states as an academic exercise. I was detached; it was something intellectual, remote even.

As I tossed the idea in my head many times over, prodded by my friends on the Internet who forced me to look more closely at the consequences, I started to feel a sense of nostalgia, of loss, of a hole where the heart should be.

Do I really want our beloved Philippines to break up and its numerous parts be cast into the lonely ocean where every new nation must prove that it is a man?

That's when I realized I had to turn cold and analytical. I'm not suggesting that the country become like the old Yugoslavia, which was torn apart and its former dysfunctional parts cast away to become fully independent states. Or the old Soviet Union, which splintered into various fully independent states twenty years ago.

What I am suggesting is that the Philippines be broken up into numerous independent states bound together by a constitution. The government entity that will be the unifying force for the states will be a cross between the European Union and the first United States of America, which was a confederation and not the federation that it is now.

We know that the European Union is weak and is concerned mainly with common market and monetary issues. The EU model may not be sufficient for our purposes. So let's take a look instead at the United States of America when it was first established - in 1781. The thirteen states (former colonies) that formed the U.S.A. were independent states and will serve as models for the emergent states that shall be under the umbrella of a new confederation that I shall tentatively call Katipunan ng Mga Malayang Bansa. The authority that shall be ceded to the Katipunan government shall be:

1. A Katipunan Congress drafting laws governing the relations among the various states. The Katipunan shall be governed by a Congress made up of representatives of the various states. The Presidency of the Congress shall revolve annually among representatives. No President shall preside over the Congress for more than one calendar year.

2. Each state will be independent in every respect except where those states' rights are limited expressly by the constitution of the Katipunan.

3. An attack on any state by foreign powers shall be considered an attack on all the states and an army shall be raised for the purpose of repelling the invaders' attacks. Financing of the armed forces shall be provided by the states in proportion to the states' gross domestic products.

4. Laws of each state shall be honored by all the other states and extradition treaties shall be enforced from day one.

5. Taxation shall be the responsibility of each state. A percentage of those taxes will be assessed for the maintenance of the Katipunan government.

6. All military officers from the rank of colonel shall be appointed by the Katipunan Congress. Such officers will serve only in times of war.

7. A committee of states representing a simple majority can petition the Katipunan Congress to take up matters that those states feel important and warrant a special session of said Congress.

8. Assumption of debt. All debts of the former country known as the Republic of the Philippines shall be allocated to the various states on the basis of the states' gross domestic product.

Prior to the formal reorganization of the Philippines into the various states, the country shall seek to renegotiate the national debt under a range of options that shall prominently include interest moratorium and debt forgiveness.

No state shall be allowed to borrow in the name of the Katipunan government.

9. Currency. There will be a common currency, known as the Piso, with each state determining its own monetary policies through its own Central Bank.

10. Citizens of all the resultant states shall be free to move across borders, except vagrants, criminals and those who will likely be homeless in the states that they seek to enter.

The operating principle in the Katipunan should be that only those powers that are absolutely essential to an effective Katipunan government shall be granted to the central authority. All rights and powers shall remain with the states.

It is well-known that Jefferson, Franklin, Madison and others were greatly influenced by the Native American nations they found in mainland America. Those nations operated as confederations, complete with supreme councils that passed laws governing the various independent nations. The framers of the U.S. Constitution were impressed by the Iroquois supreme council and its management of the various Iroquois nations which for all practical purposes were independent states. Each Iroquois nation had its own tribal council that functioned as a House of Representatives.

Indirectly, therefore, I am harking back to the Native American confederations as a model for the Katipunan confederation. This is as it should be since the Philippines is a mere patchwork made up of disparate pieces that used to be separate nations.

We were taught in school that Tagalog is our national language and all the other tongues spoken in the islands are dialects. This, of course, is befuddling. A language is supposed to be the root and the dialects are its branches. Thus, if we look at English as the root language, the dialects are Cockney, Irish, Scottish, Australian, Filipino Standard English, Singaporean English, Hongkong English and many others.

Note that all the dialects derived from the English language.

In the case of the Philippine "dialects," none of the other tongues spoken derive from the so-called national language. One cannot recognize Tagalog in Cebuano, or Ilocano, or Kapampangan, or Panggalatok, etc. Each of the so-called dialects in the Philippines is in reality a distinct language.

I looked into this matter recently and discovered that the non-Tagalog languages were determined to be dialects only by a cultural commission and not because they had derived from a root language.

Why is language significant? Language evolves in a society where there is commonality in culture. And vice-versa. Cultural development is possible only when there is a common language. Language is what distinguishes one culture from another.

The Cebuanos evolved differently from the Tagalogs and have different thinking processes and traditional memories from the latter.

Imagine a world where the Cebuanos are independent from the Tagalogs and the two are in competition for foreign investments, tourism, economic development, exports, etc. Those two nations would be operating at optimal levels.

The Ilocanos, not to be outdone, will figure in the resultant free-for-all. So will the Kapampangans, the Bicolanos, the Visayan groups, the Muslims in the south and the Mindanaoans.

Intially, the Tagalog state, which I tentatively will call Tagala and which will be made up of metro Manila, Rizal, Bataan and Bulacan will be the preeminent state. Because it's GDP will be disproportionately higher than that of any of the other states, Tagala will have a per capita income that will approach those of the more developed Asean states. I will research this further and hopefully I can provide an approximate GDP per capita for Tagala in the near future.

This is important. A Tagala, with its higher per capita income and educational standards, will be able to quickly add vital infrastructure, further improve educational standards and approach full employment. The resultant vibrant nation will be able to compete with its Asian neighbors and quickly attract foreign capital.

It will be a short drive towards an economy that will approach that of Thailand. The net effect will be a further rise in wage levels which eventually will make it necessary for industries in Tagala to relocate factories in low-wage areas such as the Cagayan valley, the Visayas and eastern Mindanao.

Tagala factories shall eventually develop vast areas in the remote states such as Agusan and Bukidnon, which of course will also become attractive to foreign investments because of much lower wages than in Tagala and because those remote states may have constitutions that allow foreign ownership of land and businesses. I am assuming that the Tagala government may find it more difficult to scrap the constitutional prohibition against majority foreign ownership of businesses.

The accelerated economic development in the remote states will ease the pressure on the cities and equalize the availability of opportunity. While currently many of the remote provinces function as servile provinces to the metropolitan magnets such as Manila, Cebu and Davao, the hastened economic development in those servile provinces turned economic engines will greatly reduce the population flow from those areas to the metropolitan cities.

It will also dramatically slow the out-migration of the former Filipinos who find it necessary to uproot themselves and their families in search of jobs and the good life.

Because each state will be responsible for its own viability - in fact, survival - the voters in those new states will be challenged to elect only the qualified candidates in important positions. Depending on the electorates in those states, each state constitution shall mandate either a presidential or parliamentary form of government, or any form that they may elect to experiment with.

The initial leaders will be the founders of each state and the likelihood that such leaders will be of the George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and James Madison variety will be greatly enhanced.

The people will know that their future and the future of their children will depend on the quality of their choices, so they will tend to vote into office only the best and most qualified leaders.

Every citizen in every state that emerges from the breakup of the Philippines shall know that she is in position to create her own world. Her children, too, will have an opportunity to create their own world. That is an opportunity of a lifetime, of many lifetimes, and with proper education of the electorate, when the breakup of the Philippines does occur - after perhaps an adjustment period of five to ten years - the people will be ready.

The leaders will no longer be of the Erap and Gloria variety because to elect such people into office in the various states would be suicidal. Leaders such as the Ampatuans would be run out of town.

Next week: How do we partition the Philippines into viable and inspirational states?

The Heart of a Champion

I've read countless explanations of why the Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather, Jr. fight spun into the kitchen sink drain, never more to be seen. Many have sided with Manny, nearly as many are on Pretty Boy Floyd's side.

No matter how I turned the issue in my head to look at all the possible angles, one image always stuck out. It was the image of a boxer's heart.

The boxer's heart probably pounds at 160 to 180 beats per minute while the boxer is in the ring, according to some scientific researches that have been done. In a championship fight that lasts 12 rounds, that means the heart races for 36 minutes at a pace that would kill average Joes like you and me.

I'm sure I would die of a heart attack after one round with my heart racing at 160 to 180 beats per minute.

Boxers, especially world-class boxers like Manny Pacquiao and Pretty Boy Floyd, don't even notice that their hearts are racing at breakneck speed for long periods. Manny Pacquiao, in fact, trained for 5 hours per session, non-stop, at the normal speed of his championship fights to get ready for his last outing, the one against Miguel Cotto.

I'm sure that Floyd Mayweather, Jr. also trains as hard and works his heart to the limit and even beyond.

Both fighters must have very strong hearts, else neither one of them would have reached the pinnacle of their boxing careers at this point.

But that is not the heart that concerned me about a month ago, when I decided to deploy the electronic fly I use to spy on famous people. The electronic fly, which I call "Drone-y" (I know, it's not original) attaches itself to walls in rooms where famous people meet and strategize, takes videos and tapes conversations.

I wanted to examine the true heart of the two boxers, the intangible "heart" that people talk about when they say: "Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier dug deep in their hearts and put on the show of the century, The Thrilla in Manila. They left everything in the ring that night, two warriors joined in a struggle that would define each boxer's life, two boxers whose hearts were bigger than their muscular frames, bigger than the sport that was their career and livelihood."

That is the heart I am talking about, the intangible that one cannot put a finger on, cannot discern with the regular senses, but which one can deduce from the actions, the words, the thought processes of the protagonists.

Why do I question the hearts of either Manny Pacquiao or Floyd Mayweather, Jr.? Haven't they proved enough to the world that they were two brave warriors who would take on the best opponents available to them over the years? Did they not handily or brutally beat all comers?

Yes, I would question them because while they have fought the best fighters around, they have never fought each other. Now it's Manny vs. Floyd. It's not about either of them fighting the other contenders in the world of boxing. It's now about them fighting each other.

Who was the first to blink? Whose intangible heart had a slight twinge of inadequacy? Who was first to decide that finding out who is the best pound-for-pound is not really that important?

I wanted to reconstruct the sequence of events that led to the cancellation of the Manny-Floyd fight of the century (so far in the 21st) so I went to work. I deployed my spy, Drone-y, to an undisclosed war strategy room of the Mayweathers. Drone-y came back to me after observing and recording the conversations of the chief strategists in the Floyd Mayweather, Jr. camp.

Floyd, Jr., his father Floyd Mayweather, Sr., Richard Shaefer of the Golden Boy promotions, were in the room along with a couple of handlers. They were just shooting the breeze, figuring out a ring strategy to use against Manny, a fighter unlike any that Junior had ever fought. What strategy would work against Manny, who has proved so unorthodox that none of the best fighters he has faced in recent years have been able to device a strategy that proved effective?

"I know," said Floyd, Sr., rising from a mahogany desk he had been sitting on, "Let's toy with his head. Let's make him angry, let's make him overeager and unsure of himself."

"But how do you do that?" asked Floyd, Jr.

"Do you see them muscles? Notice how Manny has bulked up too fast over the past year? Man-alive, how can anyone go from lightweight to welterweight in a year and not lose his strength?" continued the older Mayweather.

"No," chimed in Shaefer, "you just can't do that, not unless..."

"You mean he's on steroids?" said Floyd the younger.

"That's got to be the explanation," said one of the unnamed handlers, "he's got to be on steroids. After all, didn't that dude Atlas say Manny was on steroids?"

"Forget about Atlas," Jr. said, "How do we prove that he uses steroids?"

"I know," said Sr., "let's insist on drug testing a la Olympics."

"But nobody in boxing is tested for drugs using the Olympic Games rules," protested Jr. "Manny will not agree to that, he has too much pride. The Nevada Athletic Commission rules are in effect here, and those rules are far less restrictive than the Olympic Games."

"Well, if he doesn't agree to it, we have him by the b___s," Sr. says. "People will think that he has something to hide and the whispering campaign will make him put up. His mind will be all over the map, he will not be able to concentrate."

"Sounds like a brilliant strategy, dad," said Floyd, Jr. "Let's run with this."

My electronic fly went on the blink at this point and though I've tried and tried to make it reveal to me the rest of the taped conversation in the Mayweather planning room, so far I've been unsuccessful. Maybe someday new technology will be invented that will allow me to retrieve that part of the Mayweather camp's conversation that has been truncated off.

Oh, and going back to that intangible heart. The taped conversation that I played over and over was revealing in a very important way. Floyd, Jr.'s voice sounded tentative and suggested an analytical bent. Jr. appeared on the tape to be coldly analyzing Manny and trying to figure out how best to fight him.

There was none of the swagger of an Arnold Schwarzenegger promising "I'll be back."

The winner of the now-scuttled Manny vs. Floyd fight must have that Arnold swagger. He is the one who emerges as the brute in the ring, the one propelled by his heart, not his brain.

Floyd chose to fight with his brain, to out-think, out-strategize Manny. Unbeknownst to him, he was psyching himself to lose that fight. If the fight were to go on, he would be destined to lose.

He must be very glad the fight has been canceled.

If this fight can be salvaged at all, Mayweather must be prepared to fight with his heart. I mean his heart of hearts, that intangible palpable beating heart that tells the man that this is it, this is the place where the man either lives or dies, emerges victor or loser.

It takes a very brave man to put himself in that moment of decision. Will Mayweather find that heart that he had temporarily misplaced and call Manny and say he will no longer insist on Olympics-style testing for PEDs?

Is he even interested in finding out who the best pound-for-pound champion in the world is? Does he already know?

By the way, the Mayweather camp must now defend itself against a defamation suit brought on by Manny. Manny is very upset because there have been suggestions, in public, that Manny may be on steroids, something that Manny has never been accused of anytime in the past. Manny has passed every blood and urine test he has taken and no one has even remotely suggested that Manny was helped by steroids or any performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) leading up to any of his fights, except from that Atlas flake.

This suit appears to be a potential KO in the first round, an open-and-shut case. In my opinion, Manny was in fact defamed.

The Heart of a Champion that beats in Manny's chest is now set to take the fight to the courtroom. It is not a one-dimension heart after all. It is also unafraid to fight in the ring of justice.

I said I was interested to find out which fighter did not really want a part of the other, yet I have deployed my electronic fly only to the Mayweather camp. I will next send the fly to Manny's camp in the Philippines.

(Looking at the recent pictures of the two fighters, which one appears more puffed up and bigger? Don't steroids make the user more muscular, rounder, bigger? You be the judge.)