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.)

When I'm 64

The Philippines' second republic will celebrate its 64th birthday this year. When I reflected upon our nation's coming birthday, I was reminded of lyrics in one of the enduring Beatles' songs:

Will you still need me,
Will you still feed me
when I'm 64?

This is the question that our republic has asked us Filipinos for sometime now, and on its 64th birthday, perhaps it deserves an answer from the people.

Whether we will continue to need or want the Philippine Republic on its 64th birthday will depend a lot on what happens in the elections of 2010.

If the candidates with clear leads in the polls in the weeks leading up to the elections actually win, we could conclude as a people that at least in one instance, our electoral system worked. Elections shall not have been stolen, those widely expected to win shall have actually won.

It will depend a lot on the outcome of the elections but not entirely. There will still be the question of what the victors actually do or try to accomplish once in office. There will still be the question of what the Commission on Elections does with regards to election protests, recounts, etc.

Even if the main elections - Presidential and senatorial - are not stolen, will there be questions on the legitimacy of outcomes in the congressional and local government races? Will Gloria really beat Randy David? Will the Dys succeed in preventing Grace Padaca from winning back her governor's seat?

Whether Philippine elections - at the local and national levels - are judged ultimately fair and democratic will determine whether we will still need this second Philippine Republic.

The Iranian people are sending Filipinos a clear signal: every vote is precious, more precious than human life. Iranians are willing to die to defend the sanctity of their ballots. Iranians know that they elected their hero, Mir Hossein Mousavi, President in the Iranian elections last summer. Yet, incredibly, the incumbent President who many Iranians consider a dunce unworthy of the presidency, Ahmadinejad, emerged as the winner. The Iranians know that the election was stolen because in the major strongholds of the opposition, Mousavi got far less votes than Ahmadinejad.

If the Philippine elections are stolen, will Filipinos react the same way? Will there be another EDSA that will topple not only the current and emerging leadership but also finally demolish the second Republic?

Is there sufficient pent-up anger and disappointment in the Philippines that shall result in a major volcanic eruption that will bury the second Republic in lava, ash and mud and confine it to the silent pages of our history?

The Iranians are poised to do this. The bells are tolling for the religious constitutional monarchy installed in Iran after the Iranian revolution in the late 1970s. The system they will replace the Ayatollahs with, from all appearances, will approximate the European model. It probably will be a parliamentary system with a strong Prime Minister. That, after all, was the system that the Iranians had during the monarchical rule of the Shah of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, who eventually seized the government and ruled as a brutal and murderous dictator from 1953 to 1978.

The Iranians will insist on a democracy similar to what we have in the U.S., but the system they will install will probably be closer to the British model. The late Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, who as Prime Minister from 1951-53 nationalized the Iranian oil industry and made enemies out of Britain and the U.S., nevertheless tried to install U.S. style freedoms and for that became a beloved figure to the Iranians.

Though the Iranians have never known a democratic system of government, they did experience personal freedoms during the brief stint of Dr. Mossadegh as Prime Minister. The memory of that brief sunshine in their history is probably what is keeping them focused on the overthrow of the Ayatollahs.

If Filipinos finally rebel against the rapacious greed and lust for power of the ruling elite and through another EDSA succeed in an extra-constitutional change in government, it must be a real change. Not a change in the members of the cast, but a change in the system, a change in the dynamics of the players, a change in the panorama itself.

We must not go back to the old system that does not work, that has never worked. The old system brought us leaders who bought their way, who murdered their way, who cheated their way into office. We have leaders we would not elect if we were not desperate for help in order to buy much-needed medicine for a sick child or a sick old relative.

We hold up our noses and elect certifiable crooks because those crooks have promised us government jobs and have lavished gifts to our neighborhoods in the current election season.

We elect know-nothing showbiz and sports people, jueteng lords, smugglers, convicted plunderers, 20 percenters (those who earn 20 percent commissions on government contracts), leaders of government-sponsored assassination gangs, or hit squads for short.

We know that we have entrusted our future and the future of our children - alas, our nation's future - to people who we already know will not work for the benefit of our people but rather concentrate on lining their own pockets and the pockets of the hangers-on who manage to get close to them.

And this does not faze us. It's A-OK 24/7. A recent survey, the 2009 Happy Planet Index, found that Filipinos are the 14th happiest people on earth. We endure earthquakes, typhoons, mudslides, ferry boat sinkings, mass murders of politicians and journalists such as recently in Maguindanao, extra-judicial killings of critics of the administration.

We smile through all this with the patented innocent smiles of paradise dwellers. If Gaugin were alive today, he might have gone to an island in the Visayas instead of Tahiti.

What matters that Filipinos must endure privation, hunger, permanent unemployment, subhuman living conditions when most of them are happy and contented with their lot?

Those who have owned nothing expect nothing and find happiness in their very existence. The Tasadays - albeit later proved fakes - were some of the happiest people on earth, if not the happiest.

It will be very difficult to break Filipinos' preoccupation with their everyday lives that they feel is shared with their Creator and their much-respected religious leaders. As long as their link to their God, to Virgin Mary, to their parish priests and bishops is unsevered, what else could anyone want?

The older generations are long gone. They are done. You can stick a fork in them, as sports journalists are wont to say.

The youth, those who constantly text each other and move as one - like the migrating Canadian geese in their V-formations in the autumn sky - may have other ideas. While today's establishment and elders were once the youth that started the EDSA revolution, the People Power revolution that toppled Marcos and has since been copied by peoples all around the world, today's youth is primed for the next Big EDSA.

They don't understand why they have to flee their country to find employment. They don't respect authority that has time and again proved Machiavellian and predatory. They are itching to march and scream and dump blame on someone. They want to change society.

We People Power revolutionaries of the late 80s can only look now to our children - the youth of today - to continue the job of changing our society.

They don't know, cannot know, what system of government they want to replace the second Republic with. They will look to us to show the way. They are smart enough to know that if they themselves decide on what's next, they might end up with another loser.

We know that Philippine democracy does not work. We know that communism has never worked. We know that religious constitutional monarchies - the system at work in Iran - are flawed in the extreme and susceptible to abuses of absolute power.

What system shall finally emerge from the streets after another, bigger and earth-shaking EDSA?

Think about this, and think hard. Think Fidel Castro without the communist ideology. Think the Roman triumvirate of Julius Caesar, Pompeii the Great and Marcus Crassus. A triumvirate of Noynoy Aquino, the top military man and an elder statesman such as Fidel Ramos can lead the country in the aftermath of the next EDSA.

Those three, with the help of the country's best minds and most admired youth leaders, shall blaze the trail towards a new system that will actually work.

If there's massive cheating in the 2010 elections, if there's a paralyzing breakdown in the new computerized voting system thereby rendering the elections null and void, which would perpetuate the Arroyos in power, the Filipino youth will probably take to the streets.

And this time they will insist on real changes.

2009 - A Retrospective

2009 ends in a few days and with this year-end the first decade of the 21st century ends. In all the years I have been privileged to exist on this planet - or anywhere, as far as I know - there has never been a year when so many have disappointed nearly all of us.

If you are a thinking man with blood pressure problems, don't live in the Philippines for surely your elevated blood pressure will rocket through the ceiling. Don't live in the U.S. either, where the Lords of Chutzpah held a never-ending Shriners-style convention all year. Don't live anywhere in the world, except perhaps Australia, Switzerland and Canada, where people seemed to get most things right.

I am creating year-end awards this year that I hope to keep up over the years. Luckily, there are some "points of light" in the heavenly darkness which leads one to conclude that there may be hope yet.

The Nykos2 Person of the Year: The deposed governor of Isabela province, Philippines -

Maria Gracia Cielo "Grace" Magno Padaca

The 46-year-old Grace Padaca, a recipient of the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay award for public service in 2008 and the International Women of Courage Award in 2007, was stripped of her governorship after the Philippines' Commission on Elections held a "recount" of votes that found Benjamin Dy had actually won the 2007 election for governor of Isabela. More than 17,000 votes previously counted for Governor Grace were invalidated by the Commission on Elections, First District, because Governor Padaca's name had been mis-spelled, yada-yada-yada.

The shenanigans employed by her opponents in the Comelec were reminiscent of the "hanging chads" controversy in the U.S. Presidential election (Gore vs. Bush) in 2000.

In the U.S. election, the question of voter intent was paramount, according to the Florida Supreme Court. If there was a clear indication that voters had selected either Bush or Gore, the votes should be counted even if the chads were hanging, indented, etc.

In the case of Benjamin Dy vs. Padaca in the Philippines, voters had clearly voted for Governor Padaca even though those voters had mis-spelled her name. Mystifyingly, the Comelec, First District, invalidated those ballots and thus awarded the governorship to Benjamin Dy.

Mr. Dy apparently does not think that if there is a rematch he will prevail over Governor Grace, which is why he is running for mayor of his hometown instead of governor next year. Governor Grace will again run for governor and will probably win by a landslide. The Dy in the Dy dynasty who will be Governor Grace's opponent is the one who defeated her in 2001 for Congress, Faustino "Bojie" Dy. Ms. Padaca initially won that election, but her win was overturned by the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal after votes marked only with "Grace" were invalidated even though no other person going by the name of "Grace" had run in that election.

Governor Grace Padaca, or simply "Grace" to her supporters, was a green revolutionist who stopped all the illegal logging that was going on in her province. She was a fighter for good governance and a passionate advocate of true democracy, which abhors dynasties. She openly campaigned against the dynastic stranglehold of Isabela politics by the Dy clan.

This created for her some very powerful enemies which eventually led to her downfall. She is an environmental and good governance martyr.

Courage and Conscience Awards

1. Governor Ed Panlilio of Pampanga, Philippines - a potential martyr for the cause of good governance. His election in 2007 is also under protest and may be overturned by the Commission on Elections. There is widespread apprehension that the Comelec may yet find a way to "sell" their looming decision to the public.

2. Naga City, Philippines Mayor Jesse Robredo - a good governance advocate allied with Governors Grace Padaca and Ed Panilio.

3. San Isidro, Nueva Ecija, Philippines Mayor Sonia Lorenzo - a good governance ally of Panilio, Padaca and Robredo.

4. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, U.S.A. - once he had his jaws locked on health care reform in the U.S., he would not let go. His advocacy of the health care reform issue may yet turn out to be the final straw that will cost him his job as U.S. Senator in 2010. This was a sacrifice that he was obviously willing to make.

5. President Barack Obama - He used all of his political capital, and then some, to push through the unpopular stimulus package, the bailout of banks and the U.S. automobile industry, caps and trade, climate change and the health reform package in the U.S. Congress. All this at the risk of becoming a one-term President. A real stand-up "Profiles in Courage" guy.

6. The Christian Brothers (De La Salle Brothers) in the Philippines - They were the first mainstream religious group to condemn the Maguindanao massacre and to lay the blame at the feet of President Gloria Arroyo for coddling the alleged perpetrators, the Ampatuans. No other major religious group in the Philippines has had the courage to point out what is obvious to a lot of Filipinos, that the close ties between President Arroyo and the Ampatuans were partly responsible for the heinous crimes allegedly committed by the Ampatuans.

And now for the sad stories of 2009:

Sons and Daughters of Beelzebub Awards

1. Andal Ampatuan, Sr., Governor of Maguindanao Province, Philippines. While the guilt of his son Andal Ampatuan, Jr. is yet to be proved in court, the Sr. Ampatuan's complicity in the crime of the 21st century (so far) is obvious to many because the backhoe that was used to move the dirt that covered the bodies of the 57 murdered Maguindanaoans and journalists was property of Maguindanao province. It is inconceivable to many that the provincial property could have been used for the purpose without the governor's approval.

2. The Ampatuan brothers, scions of Andal Ampatuan, Sr., who have been identified by eyewitnesses as having participated in the murder of the 57 Maguindanaoans and journalists. The brothers are a long way from being convicted of anything, of course, but then again...there are witnesses.

3. The Ayatollahs of Iran, who brutally quashed the Iranian students and freedom fighters who were agitating for electoral reforms.

4. The Pakistani-led mass murderers who went on a rampage in the streets of Bombay, India.

The Lords of Chutzpah (Filipino translation - Ang Kapal ng Mga Mukha)

1. Former Philippine President Joseph Estrada, who is running for President - again - after serving time in prison and house arrest following his conviction for the crime of plunder of the Philippine treasury.

2. The Philippine Commission on Elections, for allowing Estrada to run for President again and for its egregiously one-sided decision in the Dy vs. Padaca electoral complaint.

3. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and the Arroyo clan, for filing candidacies for Congress despite their dismally low approval ratings and despite questions about the legitimacy of the Arroyo presidency and the widespread allegations that the family is corrupt to the core. Also, for her decision to attend a conference in Asia while half a million Filipinos remained homeless as Typhoon Ondoy floodwaters continued to threaten their lives.

4. Former First Lady Imelda Marcos, for thinking that she deserves to be elected Congresswoman from an Ilocos Norte, Philippines district being vacated by her son, who is running for governor of the province.

5. U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, for opposing the expansion of Medicare which he previously championed as a candidate for President in 2004, presumably as a vindictive attempt to plunge a stick in the eye of U.S. progressives.

6. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, for suggesting that the health reform bill was establishing "death panels" that would decide on which old people lived, and which ones died to save government money.

7. "President" Ahmadinejad of Iran, for claiming that he won the Iranian election "fair and square."

8. Senator Panfilo Lacson of the Philippines, for fingering Estrada as the mastermind in the Bobby Dacer murder, despite the fact that everyone in the Philippines - all 90 million of them - know that Estrada's henchman during the two's glory days was none other than Panfilo Lacson.

9. Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina and U.S. Senator John Ensign of Nevada, for refusing to resign after being exposed for marital infidelity and probable ethical misconduct in the use of public funds and in the case of Ensign, the alleged use of campaign funds to silence the husband in his adulterous menage a trois.

10. Former U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney, for suggesting that President Obama is neglecting Afghanistan, after he and former President George Bush neglected Afghanistan from 2003 through 2008.

11. The U.S. banks that were "too big to fail," for refusing to grant small business loans after the U.S. government bailed them out from near-certain bankruptcy. Instead, the banks invested the bail-out money in the fast-recovering stock and financial instruments markets and made record profits.

The Worst Persons in the World (apologies to Keith Olbermann)

1. Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh of Fox News. Beck for calling African-American President Obama a racist and Limbaugh for wishing that the economy stays bad so the American people will turn on Obama and the Democrats.

2. President Gloria M. Arroyo for declaring martial law in Maguindanao, apparently to protect the Ampatuans, after doing nothing to prevent the slaughter of the Ampatuans' political enemies and independent journalists.

3. Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme ruler of Iran, for allowing the murder, rape and torture of Iranian electoral protesters in the aftermath of the disputed Presidential election in that country.

There you go, folks. Comments and suggestions for additional award recipients and citations are welcome.

Noynoy Aquino must offer a full slate of candidates

Spencer Haywood was a basketball star in the U.S. in the mid 1960s and, though a mere sophomore in college, he led the U.S. to an Olympics basketball championship in the 1968 Olympiad.

After a brief glorious career at the defunct American Basketball Association, he was drafted by the Seattle Supersonics in 1970 and went on to star for that team. Though he did not deliver an NBA championship, he made the Sonics a perennial contender. Eventually, the relationship between Haywood and the Sonics soured and he was dispatched to the New York Knicks. The Sonics replaced Haywood with a heralded legitimate star of the Denver Nuggets, Marvin "The Human Eraser" Webster.

The New York Knicks were in unfamiliar doldrums after their championship runs in the late 60s and early 70s, and Haywood was the hired gun to put the team back on track to another championship season.

The New York press was unimpressed and asked him (my paraphrase), "You are being hailed as the savior of this franchise, do you think it's the position you want to be in?"

Haywood replied, "If they want me to be the savior, then I will be their savior."

Haywood flopped as a New York Knick, just like Bob McAdoo before him, who had earlier been hailed as the Knicks' savior. Marvin Webster turned out to be the Sonics' savior and put the team in the NBA championship in 1978. The Sonics team lost in the 7th and final game against the Washington Bullets.

One of the lessons we can perhaps learn from this is that quite often the "savior" that we all seem to be looking for turns out to be a dud, while the one we never ever thought could be any help turns out to be the savior who comes in from the cold.

I have been tossing in my head this "savior" notion over the past few days because of an emerging phenomenon in the Philippine political scene that seems to put the country inexorably in the path of a Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino, III presidency.

The country seems to have coalesced behind the son of the late Benigno and Cory Aquino tandem that ended the brutal and corrupt dictatorship of the Marcoses' self-proclaimed royalty.

The "savior" that the country was looking for until lately appeared to be Senate President Manny Villar. His rags-to-riches story resonated with the people, and with his enormous riches fueling his television campaign, Manny was the odds-on favorite to nail the presidential election in May, 2010.

Then Cory died and the country's focus was, as if by magic, redirected to a search for an uncorrupt and incorruptible man in the mold of the late Cory Aquino. The new "savior" is now the late Aquino's son, Senator Benigno "Noynoy" Aguino, III. This savior seems to have come in from the cold.

Nobody expected anything from Noynoy. A confirmed bachelor more interested in beauty queens than the country's welfare and much less charismatic than his sister Kris Aquino who many were projecting as presidential material in the not-too-distant future, Noynoy was a political afterthought.

Then the late revered Cory dies and BAM! the country turns to the un-charismatic Noynoy.

Why do people consider him their next "savior"? First, he is an Aquino, a thoroughbred issue from the latest heroic Filipino historical figures in a long list of Filipino tragic historical figures. Second, because there is no record or accusation of Noynoy Aquino being a corrupt politician, the voters assume that once in power Noynoy will be an uncorrupt and incorruptible President.

While there is always a chance that Noynoy will turn out to be the exact opposite of his current image once in power, it's a safe bet that he will not tarnish the memory of both his parents by governing as a mere trapo (traditional politician).

If I were a betting man, I would bet that "corrupt" would not be an adjective that we all will be using to describe Noynoy as a President. What he actually accomplishes as a President, by way of infrastructure projects, attraction of foreign investors, helping millions of Filipinos escape the clutches of poverty - all remain question marks for this relatively old bachelor.

The country is poised to elect a man President on the basis of one issue: he is not corrupt. What that signals is that the Filipinos are ready to slay the dragon that guards the castle and has imprisoned the fair Princess Fiona. They are seeking to slay the single, most fearsome creature that is preventing Filipinos from dreaming that any positive changes can take place in the Philippines: corruption in the highest levels of government.

To this writer, it is reminiscent of the Obama phenomenon. Americans wanted Change, and they were betting that Change was what they would get from Obama.

Filipinos want change to an uncorrupt Presidency and by extension an uncorrupt government, and they feel that this change is what they will get from Noynoy.

I would rank corruption in government as the most important problem confronting Filipinos. Many have correctly pointed out that a lot of other countries, including the U.S., are plagued with official corruption also, but corruption does not seem to be a barrier to economic development and continued prosperity.

Yet, while other countries have never rid themselves of corruption, it was only after corruption was minimized and controlled that such countries actually took off economically.

We all know about North Korea. The leaders and well-connected live lavish lifestyles, while peasants have either died from famines or are in danger of being the next ones to die. North Korea is a classic case of the egregiously unbalanced distribution of scarce resources and wealth through official government corruption, resulting in periodic famines.

Afghanistan is feeding in the trough of U.S. largess, but it seems that only those well-connected have a place in the pigs' dining tables, while the rest of the country must resort to growing poppies and distributing the derived heroin to survive.

In addition to the uneven distribution of wealth in the Philippines, any 6th grader in the Philippines knows that the reason a lot of people make it big there and a whole lot more people live their lives in quiet desperation is not because of a meritocratic distribution of wealth and opportunity, but because in Darwinian Philippines, the survivors are often the corrupt, the corruptors, smugglers, jueteng entrepreneurs and other law-breakers.

Too harsh? Visit the Philippines and talk to the urban middle class, the taxi drivers, the legions of men and women who earn less than $3 a day and have trouble feeding and housing their families.

Filipinos are telling us loud and clear that they do not want a continuation of the status quo. They want a new leader, one who will break down the culture of corruption, one who will end the tradition of Presidents using the Philippine treasury as their personal bank account.

Filipinos want a clean government, a level playing field. They want to wake up one day and find that the deserving and the entrepreneurial, not the well-connected, have the corner on the scarce wealth and resources. They dream of a rags-to-riches storybook ending, like the two Manny (Pacquiao and Villar) stories.

But they are not turning to either man, they are turning to Noynoy.

Therein lies the danger. If Noynoy wins the Presidency in May, 2010, which he seems poised to do at this stage of the campaign, the expectations will be very high on three fronts:

1. He is expected to end the corruption at the highest levels which the Arroyos are perceived to be engaged in and for which similar corruption Arroyo's predecessor had been convicted of plunder.

2. His style of governance is expected to inspire lower-level government officials to focus on good governance and not on self-aggrandizement.

3. He is expected to have a love affair with the people the way his mother, Cory, had such a love affair and to the extent that his father had been inspired to surrender his life to benefit his countrymen.

People don't seem to care that Noynoy is not known as an economic development type. The recent SWS (Social Weather Service) survey seems to correlate support for Noynoy with the anti-corruption issue, while support for Manny Villar, who comes in a distant second, appears to correlate with the preference for someone who emerged from poverty to become one of the richest men in the Philippines.

The perceived ability to lift the country economically is second only to honesty as a trait people are looking for in the current presidential race, based on the same survey.

The danger in all this is that if Noynoy fails to deliver, that is, if no measurable progress is made in the country's fight against corruption and he is perceived as not one who champions the causes of the people, it may be the end of the line for the Filipino nation as we know it.

Filipinos have tried perceived intellectuals, actors, economists, revolutionaries (Cory Aquino and Marcos), technocrats, military heroes, lawyers. Nothing has worked.

The only solutions that Filipinos have not tried are the rule of a military junta and a Mao Zedong-style revolution, both extreme and scary scenarios.

Tony Abaya seems to think that a short-lived military junta that will quickly clean up society and turn over the reins to a civilian government staffed by patriots is the only solution left. Some have championed a Chinese "cultural revolution," complete with the tarring, parading and quickie trials of reputed corrupt government officials and bureaucrats.

I don't think Filipinos are that desperate. With the election of Noynoy Aquino, coupled with a revolution in the ballot box that I have been advocating, we have a unique opportunity to install a President that a huge segment of the population loves dearly and has great hopes for. We can also hand him a clean slate of government officials who will owe their election to a Filipino people dreaming of and clamoring for a new kind of leadership that focuses on good governance and the fight against poverty.

What are the chances that this scenario will unfold past May, 2010? The election of Noynoy is eminently doable because all that has to happen is for the people who are leaning towards Noynoy go to the polls.

The second part, the revolution in the ballot box, is problematical right now because it will require that Filipinos realize that Noynoy must be given a great supporting cast to succeed. Assuming Noynoy tries to govern as a clean and effective politician, his efforts will likely be thwarted if most of the lower-level officials, especially senators and congressmen, govern like the pigs-in-the-trough party never ended.

We must drain the swamp. Then we will fill it up with new water and put in only the fish that we want to live and propagate in that swamp.

Short of a true revolution, the only way this can be done is by voting down most politicians who are running for re-election in May, 2010. Noynoy is the key. He must offer a new slate of politicians - from town mayors all the way up to senators, Vice-President and President. The slate must consist of his personal selections, not those handed him by his political party, the Liberal Party. His choices will give the people an indication of whether he is serious about reforming the country, that he is the change agent Filipinos are looking for.

He must have a long coat-tail. As he ascends into power, he must take with him his hand-picked running mates - from senators and congressmen, all the way down to local offices that are holding elections in 2010. And in elections beyond 2010, he must also offer his slate of candidates.

The country is eager to turn the country over to Noynoy and his team of similar-minded and dedicated political allies.

Vote for change, vote for new leadership. We do not have to be married to the trapos who run the government now. We can replace most of them, especially the ones who are thumbing their noses at us as we beg them to put country first and their relatives, cronies and hangers-on second.

If we do this - if we trade the bums for new blood and new leadership, the country can be saved and put on the right path to economic, cultural and ethical development. The country must insist on a "savior," not just a new President.

China's Cultural Revolution vs. Marcos' New Society

When Brother Peter FSC, the dean of the College of Commerce at De La Salle in late 50's and early 60's called me to his office one morning, I knew I was in very, very deep.

I had rounded up a few schoolmates and made them contributors to an alternate campus newspaper that I published by using a mimeograph machine in the school's business office. I had quit from the official campus paper and had set up my own. The theme of the initial and only issue of the renegade paper was the youth's disaffection with our parents' generation.

Brother Peter was not amused. He considered expelling me. But then there were others, what to do with them? He knew he couldn't expel them all. There was also this additional factor in my favor: Brother Peter and I got along very well in those days. I worked on campus - in the Library and the Business Office - during my vacant hours.

So we publishers of the renegade newspaper were given a warning, never missed a day in school. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief - except the faculty moderator of the legitimate campus paper. He quietly steamed; he thought we got off easy.

I did not know it then, but my open defiance of the older generation - the generation of my parents - would turn out to be a part of the opening salvo in a worldwide societal realignment and upheaval that would span nearly two decades, the 60s and the 70s.

The Filipinos were just then waking up to the realization that not everything the U.S. did was righteous and just. The opposition to the Vietnam war was starting to build momentum. I was one of the marchers in the very first peaceful demonstration against the Vietnam War in front of the U.S. Embassy in 1964. I was scared, did not know what to expect. There were police cordons in spots along the road. I did not want to be billy-clubbed to death, which was all I could think about as I marched with candlelight along with all the others to the end.

In San Francisco, Seattle and other cities across the U.S., a new alternate culture was being invented by kids in their late teens and early twenties, all rejecting the wisdom of their elders. They were rebelling against the older generations' predilection for waging war that young people must fight and die at, but which the oldies had never adequately explained was a necessary war. They also rebelled against what they perceived to be the hypocritical culture of their parents' generation.

In Europe, the anti-American sentiment had metamorphosed into an open rebellion against the institutions, the established order, the enablers of American policies in Vietnam.

No one could explain China's rampaging youths breaking down doors in people's houses, seizing the old people living in those houses and parading them through the streets, branding them dunces, corrupt and reactionary.

The Cultural Revolution in China, which started in 1966, exposed the soft underbelly of Chinese society. That closed society - the one that developed out of sight from the rest of the world, behind the Bamboo Curtain - was being exposed by China's youth. The news that reached the world's press was grim: China was imploding. The youth everywhere were leaving school to spend a year, two years to cleanse China's society of its unwanted elements, mainly the older, corrupt generations that stifled economic growth.

Mao Zedong, the sublime Machiavellian, observed what was happening in the free world, saw the potential of tapping into the restlessness of the Chinese youth, and launched a movement that he knew would cleanse the country of the remnants of the old, pre-Communist order. The ideologically impure, the corrupt, the holdovers from the Kuomintang regime, Mao knew could be swept from positions of authority and prestige and ridiculed before the whole nation. It was also a way for Mao to get rid of his rivals.

Mao stoked the anger of the Chinese youth at their elders whom they perceived to be suffocating the growth of the Chinese revolution through corrupt practices and gross incompetence.

By the end of the Cultural Revolution in the late 60s, Chinese society had rid itself of corrupt, incompetent and reactionary elements, and Mao Zedong's victory over his enemies was complete.

China, the Sleeping Giant, was lean and ready to do battle in the global world of commerce and industry.

It would take the passing of Mao Zedong and the ascension of new technocratic leaders to launch China, finally, into the developing high-tech infrastructure that was being erected by IBM, Xerox, Bell Labs, Sony, Panasonic and their European and Japanese competitors.

China had its Cultural Revolution, the U.S. had its counter-culture that changed its music, its ideology, its racial and gender politics, its business culture, its military. Europe finally emerged from under the thumb of the U.S. and became a powerful counterweight to the domineering U.S. influence.

Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union saw their young people challenging the elders and demanding a better life and toned-down militarism. Much later, Soviet leader Gorbachev saw the handwriting long before everyone in the world did and allowed the European youth movement to tear down the Berlin wall, whose twentieth anniversary was observed this past week.

Japan and the rest of Asia flourished when the rules were changed from the pursuit of security and military muscle to the pursuit of exports.

In the Philippines, the youth did not prevail. They were crushed by the Marcos forces, specifically in the Battle of Mendiola, when demonstrators against the Marcos administration were routed by the police and military. After the declaration of martial law in 1972, the leaders of the youth movement were rounded up and incarcerated, some disappearing completely.

While China and the rest of the world was cleansed, made better, became responsive to the aspirations of their people, especially the youth, the Philippines only saw the brutal suppression of the people's fervor for social change.

Marcos initially promised the founding of a new nation steeped in the ideals of good governance, societal discipline and economic bonanza. What Marcos delivered was years of centralized corruption. Only Marcos and his cronies were allowed to be corrupt, to form armies, to exploit the country. The rest - those who lacked connections, who quietly toiled for an honest living - never even saw the crumbs. Even the crumbs belonged to those who curried favor.

While China got rid of its corrupt class, the Philippines merely changed the face of corruption in the Philippines. Just as old money is often overshadowed by new money, the old corrupt were merely bested by the new corrupt.

There was no Cultural Revolution to speak of. The Philippines remained the same, stayed in place, in fact, in many respects regressed, while the rest of Asia continued its march towards economic deliverance and eventually ascendancy. In the case of Japan, the ultimate reward was a GDP that rivaled even that of the U.S. by the late 1970s.

The other countries had their cultural revolutions, their societal realignments and cleansing. The Philippines had Marcos and Imelda and Supreme Court justices in a country where there was no justice.

This was why the incipient Cory revolution was doubly significant. It was a chance to get rid of the Marcos machinery and to remake Philippine society. Cory never saw it that way. She saw an opportunity to be Christ-like: to forgive one's enemies, including those who had killed her husband, and the communist insurgents. The country, especially elements in the military, saw this as weakness and after six years of the Cory presidency all that the country could show for its mini revolution was 7 military coups, brownouts galore and flights of capital.

It would be wrong to say that Cory did not finish the revolution because it never really started. In contrast, while Marcos snuffed the life out of the Filipino youth's idealism, he unleashed his army of Marcosites on the country to cleanse it of presumed corrupt and criminal elements, and of course his rivals.

In the early days and months of the 1972 martial law Philippines, there was an unmistakable flavor of a revolutionary regime. Marcos was a revolutionary in the mold of Mao Zedong, the difference was that Mao used the idealism of Chinese youth to advance his goals, while Marcos used the military. Mao worked to improve the lot of the Chinese people; Marcos stole from the people.

If Noynoy Aquino ascends to the Presidency next year, he must know that he has to do the exact opposite to what his mother did. Do not be too quick to forgive the corrupt, the incompetent, the enemies of the state. There must be justice from the top, there must also be clarity. Noynoy must instill a sense that it is not OK to be corrupt, to be incompetent, to rebel against the central authority, and there's hell to pay for the transgressors.

If Noynoy is destined for greatness, he must do so on the wings of the concept of accountability. The transgressors must be punished, so the average Filipino knows that society is changing.

Is a Cultural Revolution similar to China's or the United States' 60s and 70s possible in the Philippines? I doubt it. The Church would never allow it. We are also masters of the Erap and Pandak jokes. We even smile all the way to the gallows.

The only way we can remake society is by changing leaders through the democratic process - through the ballot box.

Filipinos intuitively know this. First, they responded by electing actors and famous personalities, hoping for good results. Now that experiment may be coming to an end.

What class or genre of leaders will Filipinos elect next? There are snippets of evidence that the quality of those presenting themselves to the electorate for consideration is swinging in the other direction.

It will take years, not just one election. But the May, 2010 elections are critical. If Filipinos do not start the cleanup next year, they will have to wait another six years to get started. A lot can happen in six years.

2010 is the key. Filipinos must indict most incumbents who are seeking reelection by voting them down. Start anew with a fresh slate of alternative candidates. Elect the best qualified candidates who are just coming onto the scene.

Keep doing this, until most of our leaders are clean and competent.

This is how a new nation is forged without resorting to arms and the kind of Cultural Revolution that Mao Zedong unleashed in 1966.

The Coming Revolution in the Ballot Box

My friends inform me that any attempt to cause a change in the way Filipinos elect their leaders is doomed from the start.

"Filipinos will always elect those who give them the most money, who promise them jobs, who spring for that goiter surgery that some voters need from time to time," my friends tell me, "even - and perhaps especially - if the candidates they elect are corrupt and routinely send out their goons to force their will on the public."

It's just the way it is, my friends tell me.

And, my friends are right. Philippine democracy is a big joke. People do not embrace the concept of the greater good. There's only the personal good, or the welfare of the extended family to think of. The country be damned, it's damned anyway already.

Why is Philippine culture so everyone-to-himself, the-country-be-damned? There are several theories about this. One theory is that the Philippines is made up of 7100 islands and each large island or island chain developed over time into a separate nation. The provincial, or the parochial psyche developed and went into full bloom, while the nation remained an elusive ideal, a chimera.

The second theory is poli-cultural, i.e., both political and cultural. In Nick Joaquin's famous essay, he bemoans the fact that the country's culture is a culture of exploitation. One is either an exploiter or the exploited. One's job and lifetime preoccupation is to remain an exploiter if already one, or become an exploiter if not one already. Those in government exploit the citizens and do not serve them.

The third may be the explanation for the second. The landed gentry in the Philippines, which became the aristocracy in the vastly agricultural Philippines during the Spanish era, were installed by the Spanish crown, notoriously by Queen Isabela, who granted her favorites large tracts of land in the Philippines. These royal grants created a European-style feudal system that forced the native populations into a position of servility vis-a-vis the feudal lords who were supported by the Spanish crown through the dreaded Guardia Civil.

Unlike in the wild west of the United States, where adventurous Americans acquired properties through homesteading and commercial acumen, the native inhabitants of what would eventually become the Philippines almost suddenly woke up to find that large tracts of land that they might have hunted on and might have cultivated now belonged to powerful feudal lords, as mandated by the Spanish monarchs. The distinction between the Philippine experience and the American West experience is, of course, an oversimplification. The native Americans (Indians) were in fact deprived of their hunting lands by the hordes of frontiersmen and women looking for land and gold, with the U.S. Federal government serving as brutal enablers.

Over nearly 400 years of Spanish colonial times, the native populations in the Philippines became wards of the owners of the big plantations and eventually became so dependent on those owners that they surrendered even their thinking processes to them.

The natives learned not to think for themselves; they depended on the big bosses, the big landowners to think for them.

By late 19th century, the winds of change were already howling, and a new intelligentsia class had begun to challenge the social order. This intelligentsia class, schooled in Spain and trained in the intellectual concepts of European Masonry - most of the Philippine revolutionaries were Masons - rebelled from the Spanish-installed aristocracy and friars and successfully erected the first Philippine Republic on June 12, 1898.

The new revolutionary government, however, never actually sat in power. The emerging interventionist global American power intervened and the Philippine-American war of attrition began.

Much of the Philippines was unaffected by what was going on in Manila. Much of the Philippines was still feudal, exploitative, provincial, parochial and clannish. Throughout the rest of the Philippines, the Manila government - now run by Americans - was for the most part a foreign power.

The Americans introduced Filipinos to American-style democracy, but it seems that they were content to democratize only those in Manila and the surrounding areas. The rest of the country remained feudal. Examples of American modus operandi are today's Afghanistan, where the Americans have democratized Kabul and other important cities, but not the great Afghan countryside, which is ruled by warlords and the Taliban.

These were the conditions that were present at the time of the Philippine independence from the U.S. in 1946. Not much has changed. People in the provinces still vote for the candidates who can give them the most money, who can promise jobs for relatives, who come with medicines in times of need.

The idea that people should vote for those candidates who are projected to do good for the country is still alien to them. Their likely reply to entreaties from people like me is: "Define what's good for the country" or "Define country."

This may no longer be true in the not-too-distant future, however. In many cities and towns of the Philippines, local leaders and intellectuals schooled in Manila, Cebu, Davao and other major cities, are already trained - have long been trained - in thinking in terms of what's good for the country.

The recent voters' revolt in Pampanga, which installed a lowly and most unlikely priest as governor, is the strongest hint yet that Filipinos are waking up to the need for good leaders. Before that, the election of Estrada demonstrated that the common tao - the drivers, maids, sidewalk vendors, farmers and slum dwellers - would buck their masters to embrace a politician who vowed to fight for the welfare of the downtrodden and dispossessed.

While nothing seems to ever change in the Philippines, there are strong hints that the country is on the cusp of revolutionary upheavals in its electoral process. The groundwork has been set for a coming revolution in the ballot box.

While the intelligentsia and patriots never win elections, there is evidence that someday they will be racking up big, important wins. This despite contraindications in many small towns and municipalities, where people are still falling in love with the most popular and highly-visible personalities such as actors, TV hosts and boxers like Manny Pacquiao.

What this all means is that the electorate is becoming neurotic. Changes are happening quickly, unexpectedly. Voters are telling their political bosses that they themselves must determine the leaders who will receive their votes. Unfortunately, their choices have made things worse for the country and not a whit of difference for them. They are still dirt poor and their only salvation now is a one-way ticket out of the country. People do not understand why.

People are conflicted over the presidential election of 2004, when the clearly superior candidate Gloria Arroyo may have lost to the clearly inferior but supremely popular candidate, Fernando Poe, Jr., but allegedly resorted to widespread cheating to emerge the "victor."

Mrs. Arroyo, apparently stung by accusations of electoral fraud, seemingly lost all interest in appearing virtuous and is allegedly ruling as a corrupt and ruthless tyrant whose political moves consist of laying the groundwork for escaping prosecution once out of office.

First there was complete surrender of their democracy to the whims and caprices of their masters. Now, Filipino voters are beginning to break loose from their masters' hold and asserting their right to choose their destiny. Unfortunately, they are exercising this right by choosing the most inept, corrupt and unqualified candidates.

Philippine elections have become, for the most part, a joke. So why do I assume that it is possible to convince Filipinos to suddenly adopt a concept that is completely foreign to them: the idea that the public officials they elect are responsible to them, and that if those public officials do not do a good job, they - the people - must fire those officials?

I do not know that the coming Revolution in the Ballot Box is real or an illusion. I do not know that any efforts on my part to help this coming revolution along would yield any actual benefits. What I do know is that if not enough people pool their energies to help it along and focus that energy, it could fizzle, die on the vine.

Over the years a lot of Filipinos in the intellectual and elite classes have tried to educate Filipino voters to vote for the most qualified, not the most popular or the most generous with their ill-gotten wealth.

Most have failed. There is a very strong possibility that I will fail and others will fail. I'm in the bettors' paradise of Las Vegas, and I know that the odds for this coming Revolution in the Ballot Box that I'm talking about are in million to one territory.

But what if the idea of the Revolution in the Ballot Box catches fire on the Internet? What if enough people forward it and it makes the rounds in the Philippines and in the diaspora several times over? What if people actually take this call to arms seriously?

It is a simple concept. Do not vote for a re-electionist candidate. Vote for the most qualified opponent. Do it in protest. Scream from the rooftops that you are tired of incompetent and corrupt officials. You want justice, you want a future for your children. You want to live in the Philippines and not have to work as a maid or day laborer in some foreign land. You want to be safe from floods, from mudslides, from the rubble of buildings that collapse because they are not built to withstand medium-strength earthquakes.

You don't have to go through hoops or take extraordinary measures. Just don't vote for the incumbent public officials in your town, in your province, in the national government. Vote for their opponents.

And keep doing it until a new class of politicians emerge that serve you and serve you well, and do not have their hand in the collection box.

If the corrupt and incompetent politicians offer you money, take it but do not vote for them. They have been deceiving you all this time. Deceive them back. They are mostly Machiavellians; be a Machiavellian yourself. Deceive the deceivers.

If you keep doing this enough times, starting in May, 2010, someday - 20 to 30 years from now - you or your children will wake up and find a new Philippines being run by elected officials who serve their constituents well, who work for the public interest, who do not steal from the government.

That is what Revolution in the Ballot Box means.