The Philippines’ Unholy Trinity

The following is Mariano Patalinjug’s commentary in response to the article,“Dynastic rule tightens its grip on Philippines.”

Commentary
By Mariano Patalinjug

True: Rather than diminishing, dynastic rule will probably “tighten its grip” on the Philippines.

At the risk of being repetitious, my Distilled Diagnosis of why the Philippines continues to be left in the backwaters is that it is caught in the vise-like grip of a PLUTOCRATIC-POLITICO-CLERICO CONSPIRACY, whose overarching Agenda is to perpetuate itself in wealth and power, the better to manipulate and exploit the Filipino people.

[A good analogy is France of centuries ago which, till that fateful day in 1789, was also caught in the vise-like grip of a ROYAL-ARISTOCRATIC-CLERICO CONSPIRACY, in the process reducing the French people to the status of serfs.]

The first leg of this sinister Philippine “Unholy Trinity” are the Plutocrats, who are in bed with the second leg, the Politicos. The third leg is the Roman Church, acting through its political arm The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines.

It is this Unholy Trinity which, at bottom, is responsible for the country having deservedly earned the sobriquet “The Sick Man of Asia.” As if that were not unflattering enough, it is also notorious as “The Most Corrupt Nation in the World!”

President Benigo Aquino rode to presidential victory on a platform to fight Corruption and Poverty. Several high-profile people have been charged, including former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo,charged with “rigging the 2007 elections” [a non-bailable offense] before the Pasig Regional Court. She is also charged with Plunder before the Sandiganbayan. So far, sadly, I do not see any one of these “big fish” going to the National Penitentiary. So, it is not an exaggeration to conclude that Aquino’s anti-Corruption fight has bogged down.

His fight against Poverty is not doing much better, either. His Conditional Cash Transfer Program [CCT] doles cash to “poor Filipino families” at the rate of P1,400 a month; there are a few conditions, one of which is for these families to send their children to school. A year or two ago, he allocated the huge sum of P39 billion for this CCT program. There is as yet no good evidence that the incidence of Poverty is going down. The evidence is to the contrary: A recent report asserted that the incidence of poverty has not gone down in the last six years! There is the other disturbing recent report that the number of unemployed Filipinos is going up, up and up!

Why so? At bottom is the stark fact that the population of the Philippines is exploding at a rate which doubles it every 35 years. The economy, which is mainly NON-INDUSTRIALIZED, simply cannot absorb the number of people who enter the labor force year after year! And so the backlog of unemployed Filipinos continues to grow. Providentially, around a million Filipinos are able to join the massive Diaspora to some 191 countries all over the globe, as expats and OFWs. If not, the country, veritably a Social Volcano, would have exploded years ago. There is an estimated total of 11 million Filipinos now scattered all over the globe.

(MarPatalinjug@aol.com)