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?