Inspired by
Boo Chanco
Over the
past few days, social media had a lot of commentary about how noble, patriotic,
and honorable of the Japanese Prime Minister to resign from office just because
he has a medical condition that prevents him from giving his position his all.
That will never happen here, many commentators said.
Of course,
it won’t. Japanese officials resign at the mere whiff of something gone wrong
under their wing. Some even do the extremely honorable act of seppuku or hara
kiri after being accused of corruption.
Honor and
country above all. But the nature of our politics and culture is vastly
different from Japan. Politics here is a personal blood sport, a zero-sum game
where showing any sign of weakness is suicidal.
Here, public
office is too good to be relinquished. It is the family business. It is as an
opportunity not so much to render public service, as a chance to amass power
and wealth. A leader’s primary responsibility is not to the nation (an abstract
concept for many), as it is to those around him.
Parochialism
is why presidents do not choose the best and the brightest as members of his
Cabinet. We have many capable Filipinos who can help manage some of our most
chronic problems, but have no political connections.
Very rarely
do we get leaders like the late Jesse Robredo and the current mayor of Pasig,
Vico Sotto, whose primary reason for seeking public office is to render public
service.
We elect
officials whose values are known to be rotten to the core. It is fair to say
that the officials we elect reflect the nature of our electorate. And yet we
complain and wonder why we are being left behind.
What is our
problem? Is it our damaged culture?
I decided to
torture myself and re-read the James Fallows article on our damaged culture.
Well... very little has changed since that article was written in 1987. Many
Filipinos may bristle at the suggestion of our damaged culture, but look what
we have today... 33 years after... we only got worse.
Our
political history is horribly personal. In the midst of a war for independence
against the Spaniards and then the Americans, our political leaders were
liquidating rivals. Look at what happened to Andres Bonifacio. Look at what happened
to Antonio Luna.
And since we
were just a collection of independent tribes living in dispersed islands
bundled together by the Spaniards and called them the Philippine Islands, we
never really developed a sense of national identity or national loyalty. Even
in the main island of Luzon, our identities are wildly dispersed into Ilocanos,
Ibanags, Kapampangans, Tagalogs, and Bicolanos. I remember my late grandmother
in the 1940’s refer to us in Bulacan as “Tagalogs” instead of Filipinos. Because
we were forced to be a country, we have failed to accept the concept of
national interest that is above everything else.
To me, that
explains why we fell behind in the region. As Fallows observed: “The countries
that surround the Philippines have become the world’s most famous showcases for
the impact of culture on economic development.
“Japan,
Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore — all are short on natural resources, but each
of them through hard study and hard work had been forced to unify and defend themselves against war-mongering aggressive
neighbors. Unfortunately for our people, because of over 350 years of colonization,
the Philippines illustrates the contrary: that culture can make a naturally
rich country poor…
“I’ve never
before been in a country where my initial impressions were so totally at odds
with the standard, comforting, let’s-all-pull-together view. It seems to me
that the prospects for the Philippines are about as dismal as those for, say, Vietnam
are bright.
“In each
case the basic explanation seems to be culture: in the one case a culture that
brings out the productive best in the Vietnamese (or Koreans, the Japanese, or
now even the Thais), and in the other a culture that pulls many Filipinos
toward their most self-destructive, self-defeating worst.
“Officials
in both South Korea and the Philippines have pointed out to me that in the
mid-1960s, the two countries were economically even with each other, with
similar per capita incomes of a few hundred dollars a year.
“The
officials used this fact to make very different points. The Koreans said it
dramatized how utterly poor they used to be (“We were like the Philippines!”
said one somber Korean bureaucrat), while to the Filipinos it was a reminder of
a golden, hopeful age… Since the 1960s, of course, the Philippines has moved in
the opposite direction from many other East Asian countries.”
But Fallows
believes “It can’t be any inherent defect in the people: Outside this culture
they thrive. Filipino immigrants to the United States are more successful than
immigrants from many other countries. Filipino contract laborers, working for
Japanese and Korean construction companies, built many of the hotels, ports,
and pipelines in the Middle East.
“’These are
the same people who shined under the Japanese managers,’ Blas Ople, a veteran
politician, told me. ‘But when they work for Filipino contractors, the schedule
lags.’”
Fallows
makes his diagnosis: “I think it is cultural, and that it should be thought of
as a failure of nationalism… a feeble sense of nationalism and a contempt for
the public good. Practically everything that is public in the Philippines seems
neglected or abused.”
We are “a
country where the national ambition is to change your nationality,” an American
who volunteers at Smoky Mountain told Fallows.
“The US Navy
accepts 400 Filipino recruits each year; last year 100,000 people applied. In
1982, in a survey, 207 grade-school students were asked what nationality they would
prefer to be. Exactly 10 replied ‘Filipino.’
“’You are
dealing here with a damaged culture,’ four people told me, in more or less the
same words, in different interviews.
“It may be
too pessimistic to think of culture as a kind of large-scale genetics,
channeling whole societies toward progress or stagnation…”
But how can
we explain what we have become… unable to keep the pace of our Asean neighbors?
Until we are
able to elect a nationalist leader who is neither Cebuano, Visayan nor Tagalog
but who can unite us and inspire us as never before, we will always scratch our
heads with admiration every time some Japanese leader does something that puts
national interest ahead of everything else, unheard of in our country.