"I
miss the old time harana in Tolong, oops, I mean, Santa Barbara. But
I also love the hot tub in suburban Washington, DC."
Without any claim
to being correct (as usual I plead guilty at not being
privy to documented data) there was a time in the fifties when, in
my
perception, the Philippines was the only country in Southeast Asia,
excluding Japan and Australia, not governed by dictators.
China was taken over by communinsts; North Korea was, still is, a
non-democracy; South Korea was ruled by strongman Rhee; Vietnam, then
called French Indo-China, was shackled by the French; neighboring
Laos, Cambodia and Burma were at the mercy of their own iron-fisted
leaders; Taiwan was "owned" by Chiang Kai Shek, as was Indonesia
by Sukarno. Singapore was a part of Malaysia at the time but, well,
I am not sure who called the shots there and admittedly I do not know
if Malaysians, including Singaporeans, had the same freedoms as Filipinos...
Anyway, at that
time, this young and ambitious character named Marcos,
has not yet become another Saddam Hussein.
But Filipinos
being free in the fifties does not necessarily mean being
economically situated.
There is always
the cynic and the skeptic in me about whether the major
reason for the Philippine sorry state of affairs is merely political.
At
the risk of creating enemies I think, "puera los buenos,"
of course,
there is a FLAW in the national Filipino character. The "buenos"
-
ordinary idealists, some clergymen, some crusading journalists and
artists, some of the intelligencia, and some expatriates who became
nouveau riches abroad - are a pitiful minority out of 70 million
Filipinos.
My basis for this
perception of a flaw is the observation that there is
no national will to reform. People did the EDSA phenom twice merely
to
topple leaders they didn't like. When it comes to reforms in general
they
throw out the bathwater with the baby.
The conventional
excuse? Go with the flow. That is the Filipino way.
"Makibagay..."
The jeepney driver
will continue to violate traffic laws. The cops will
continue to extort bribes from them. Balikbayans will try to smuggle
taxable goods and bribe their way out. The businessman, Chinese or
Filipino, will break business laws. Regulatory government agents will
extort money from them. People will strive to get ahead by cultivating
connections instead of by thinking productively...
Ad nauseam.
Politicians are
the favorite scapegoats. However, unlike in other
episodes of Philippine history where the rulers are foreigners,
Philippine politicians now are NATIVE-BORN AND NATIVE-RAISED Filipinos.
They come and go but their source is the same: the homegrown population.
Their mentalities are the same.
Ergo, the mentality
of the general population is the same as the leaders
they elect whom they blame for the country's ills.
Former foreign
rulers are the other favorite scapegoats. Filipinos,
again, puera los buenos, like to blame foreigners for the error of
their
ways - ways having been implanted into Filipino cultural ambience.
Heavens, those foreigners are long gone! Filipinos seem to cling
stubbornly to a colonial mentality that prevents them, consciously
or
unconsciously, to reconcile objectively their nationalism with their
colonial mentality.
I miss the old
time harana in Tolong, oops, I mean, Santa Barbara. But I
also love the hot tub in suburban Washington, DC. Filipino crooks
disgust
me as much as American bigots. My point? I love both the land of my
birth and my adopted country without being blind to the ills that
infest both.
I cannot ignore past history of unpleasantness because we learn lessons
from the past.
I may be a cynic
and a skeptic if you will. But who the hell cares - I am
now a wobbling senior citizen. I wish the new generation - of my native
land and of my adopted country - the best of luck.
I mean this sincerely
because I now have two granddaughters in the newest generation and
I may no longer be around by the time their mothers are ready to buy
them gowns for their prom...
