Adrift in an Ocean of Troubles

I asked a friend recently if she was interested in what was going on in the Philippines and was stunned by her reply. The woman, who at one time occupied some of the highest government positions in the country, confessed to me that she held out very little hope that the country would be able to emerge from the ocean of troubles that smite it constantly.

She is not alone. Many of my friends - retirees all - do not want to retire in the Philippines even though it would make good economic sense because they feel that the country, at least in the foreseeable future, will not prove equal to its many challenges.

Even leaders of industry in the Philippines seem to think that it will be a cold day in hell before the Philippines starts functioning like an efficient Tiger. One very successful Filipino industrialist and businessman told me, quite frankly, that it will take 500 years before the Philippines can emerge as one of the South East Asian tigers.

Why is there so much pessimism about the prospects for our country?

I'm sure a good part of the reason is that we seem unable to produce first-rate leaders. With the exception of perhaps Fidel Ramos and Ramon Magsaysay, all Philippine presidents since independence from the U.S. on July 4, 1946 have been damaged goods with feet of clay.

The Filipino people elected Benigno (Noynoy) Aquino last year amid so much pomp and high expectations that even if he did very well it was almost impossible for him to live up to the people's hopes and wishes. And he hasn't exactly governed well. In fact, his administration is adrift, seemingly unable to decide which gargantuan problems it would tackle first.

Why can't we find good inspirational leaders who can hit the ground running, taking the country where it must go?

I noticed a copy of my book, Out of the Misty Sea We Must, on my bedside table last night and chanced upon the last chapter in that book. That chapter, which is also titled Out of the Misty Sea We Must, perhaps has the answer for why the Philippines is a perennial candidate for membership in the Union of Failed States, or UFS.

The chapter is quite long, so I'm copy-pasting only the relevant parts.

Chapter 19: Out of the Misty Sea We Must

A friend recently commented that all the Philippines needs is more time. The U.S., after all, took more than a hundred years before it found its stride and galloped toward an economic development and boom that had never before been witnessed on earth. A lot of countries, such as Australia, Canada, South Korea, Japan, China, India, Ireland, Spain, Brazil and others took a long time to mature and got on the road to economic and political development only after many tortuous years.

Based on the experiences of those countries, does it necessarily follow that the Philippines – if given more time to develop – will eventually hit its stride and become a first world country?

To answer this question, we have to ask: Does the Philippine experience share the same characteristics as the American experience, or that of Australia, Canada, Brazil and other countries? Do we have anything in common with America other than our love for everything Hollywood?

The U.S. and the Philippines both revolted from major world powers to erect their own self-determining independent governments. But, there is one very important distinction. In the case of the U.S., the rebels were the same people as the tyrants they revolted from. The American patriots were the same racial stock as the Red shirts they drove away.

In the Philippines’ case, it was not Spaniards in the Philippines who revolted against Spain. It was the natives, more specifically the educated natives. The country was founded not by westerners but by the native populations who had never experienced being citizens of a modern country.

The Australian experience is similar to that of the U.S. The Australians are mainly people who came from Britain and who eventually cut their umbilical cord. Australia was not founded by the Aborigines, which were the native nations in Australia before the white man arrived. The same was true of Canada. Canadians are mainly British and French people who gained their independence from Britain and France. They are not descendants of American Indians. Brazil was founded by Portuguese and black immigrants, not the Indians who are the original owners of the land, and who still live in the interior Amazon regions.

Philippine independence is remarkably independence from a foreign people. The same is true of African independence. When the world’s powers – England, France, Germany, Belgium and others – were driven out of Africa, the people who took over were native Africans, not descendants of citizens of the foreign powers.

This is key. America did not miss a beat when it separated from Britain because Americans were the same people as the British. Americans simply did what they would normally have done if they had remained subjects of the British throne. Americans also had in their possession the advanced culture and thinking habits of their oppressors. They had the genetic memory of an advanced civilization when they founded the new country that the world now lovingly or disgustedly call America.

The economic development that was going on in Britain and the rest of Europe was also going on in America, though it was refined and Americanized further by the introduction of slave labor in the large plantations.

The Philippines and African countries were exploited unabashedly by their colonizers. Filipinos were intentionally kept ignorant by the Spanish authorities for fear that Filipinos would realize that they were being exploited and would revolt. Only the Filipinos in the elite class became educated, with literacy levels remaining dismally low.

The Americans who came after the Spaniards left introduced an American-style public school system that tried to educate the masses and lift their standard of living. This American initiative was successful, but only to a point. The Americans were never able to erase the effects of centuries of educational deprivation that the Filipino people had been subjected to. While literacy rates have improved dramatically, it is by and large basic-level literacy. People think in oversimplified terms, which is why they cannot change their political, economic and religious systems if their life depended on it.

Filipinos lag way behind their southeast Asian and Asian neighbors in quality of education, which probably explains why the Philippines is underperforming economically in a region where most countries are overachieving.

The quality of a democracy is determined by the educational level of its citizens. A quantum leap in the Philippines’ educational system will improve the quality of democracy there and this will lead to a dramatic improvement in governance. This in turn will lead to a decrease in corruption levels, which will then lead to an increased willingness on the part of the people to pay their income taxes. If people have assurance that their taxes will be used to educate their children and not line the pockets of their corrupt politicians, tax collections will increase dramatically.

WE MUST FIND THE RIGHT TRACK

We got to where we are almost by trial and error. We had never had any experience being one nation. The pale faces cobbled together a group of island paradises and handed it to us saying, “here, this is your country now, do with it as you please.”

We did not start out like America, or Australia, Canada or New Zealand, so we should not expect to get the same results that they did. We, rather, started out like the Congo Republic, or many of the small and inconsequential African states who were freed from exploitation by their white masters and let loose in an ocean of uncertainty and chaos.

We cannot therefore expect that eventually we will become like America, or Australia, or Canada. The track we’re on will probably lead us to where the African nations are. Or, if our population doubles as expected, to where Indonesia was before its recent resurgence.

Giving ourselves more time when we know we are on the wrong track means that eventually we will be so deep in that un-enchanted forest of our own creation and may sink in the bog of our Malthusian existence.

We must get off that beaten path that has led us to where we are and find the right path. It will mean that we will listen only to our own hearts. We must not be captives of the thinking processes that the IMF’s, the World Banks, the CBCP and others have programmed into our brains.

We must do all the thinking, all the imaginings, all the statue wrecking, all the creation ourselves and set sail with the confidence that we alone are capable of thinking of what is good for us – not for the world. The world has led us to where we are, just as it has led much of Africa where it is. It is time we wrest back control of our fortunes from the rest of the world.

We must find that solution that makes sense for us, even if this solution causes our patrons to abandon us. No one will shed tears if we as a nation fail. Failure has only one author and success has many fathers.

If we succeed in this venture to get on the right track, to build a new Philippines, the whole world will rejoice with us and claim that they too had fathered our child.

We already know that we have been wrong all these years, that all our assumptions have been wrong. That the trust we have placed on our masters – including the Church that has stifled progressive thinking in our country – has been misplaced and undeserved.

We have to ready our boat now. It is morning, and we must set sail on our own and be masters of our ship.

Out of the misty sea we must.