Obama’s phone call shows Filipinos in the age of stupid

AS I WRECK THIS CHAIR
by William M. Esposo
from Philstar

Described as an Eco-film, “The age of stupid” premiered in London last March 14. Set in the year 2025, the docu-drama expounds on the damage our planet faces if we, the generation that can do something about Climate Change, opt to remain stupid and do nothing.

“The age of stupid” is referred to by its producers as more of a crusade rather than just a film. Technically-speaking, it can be considered fiction but the projected 2025 ecological scenarios of planet devastation are based on scientific facts, the film producers claimed.

“The age of stupid” is an independent production that’s said to have been funded by donations from eco-supporters. The art dealer, Frederick Mulder, was one of the mentioned donors of the film project, said to have given 12,000 British Pounds. The film is directed by Franny Armstrong and stars Oscar-nominated British actor Peter Postlethwaite.

In its website (www.theageofstupid.net/premiere), the producers claimed that their premiere will be the world’s first-ever, 100% eco-friendly film launch. Among its eco-friendly features are a full eco audit of emissions, use of a solar-powered projector, use of a pedal powered popcorn machine, use of a re-used and reusable green carpet, use of bicycles and electric powered vehicles charged with renewable energy for the film celebrities, use of bio-diesel for the other vehicles and the sale of organic chocolate, beer and soft drinks.

In a recent televised debate on climate change staged by the BBC, one professor defending the position that there is no real danger faced — advanced the reasoning that climate change is a scientific hoax, a fallacy.
His basis for stating that climate change is a hoax is that the world spans a wide variance of climactic conditions, from minus 40 degrees in the colder north to plus 40 degrees (and hotter) in the warmer south of our planet. He concluded that a few degrees of climate warming cannot be as devastating as climate change advocates are warning.

Now, only the stupid will buy that rather idiotic remark. Obviously, that professor does not know what he is talking about. Place the North Pole and Antarctica under plus 40 degrees of warmth and we’ll all be deluged by 100-foot tidal waves that will make the great East Asian tsunami a few years ago look like a bathtub ripple.

In the case of that professor that was a participant in the BBC climate change debate, the stupidity is easily detected. In many other cases of mass stupidity, it goes undetected for many years and can even be passed on to several generations.

A good example is us Filipinos — how we are proceeding with our daily lives as if we do not have a serious danger facing our nation. How else do we call it but mass stupidity when our nation wastes its energies on the most worthless of issues while totally oblivious to the real threat to its very existence?
Here are our so-called leaders wasting their energies over that telephone call last weekend that US President Barack Obama made to Madame Gloria Macapagal Arroyo — FINALLY! Madame Arroyo’s Office of the Panegyric Secretary, oops, we mean Office of the Press Secretary, makes a mountain out of a simple phone call, as if trying to erase the three previous snubs Obama gave the current Malacanang Palace occupant.

Not to be outdone in stupidity, the members of the Opposition try to downplay the Obama phone call as if that call was the all-important historic event that could save the long despised administration from imminent collapse.

Both the administration and the Opposition are oblivious of the fact that Obama’s phone call comes at a time when there is a developing tension in the South China Sea between the US and China. Now, that is stupid.

Both the administration and the Opposition are oblivious of the fact that this escalating tension between the 20th century superpower (the US) and looming 21st century superpower (China) are converging on the Philippines over the control of the sea lanes of the South China Sea and the vast reserves of oil in the Spratlys. Now, that is really very stupid.

According to the CIA Fact Book, the US can mobilize a total military personnel force of 118 million while China can mobilize a total of 720 million. Both military forces are capable of waging wide scale nuclear warfare.
Both are desperately running out of oil. The US runs out of its oil reserves in 11 years while China runs out in 14 years (Source: Oil and Gas Journal, December 2006). Both will need the oil reserves in the South China Sea — believed to equal the reserves of Iran or Iraq, the third and fourth biggest oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia and Canada.

It so happens that the Philippines is strategic to the future of both the US and China and this developing tension in the South China Sea between the two superpowers places us, like ants, in the middle of the two dueling elephants.
Caught in the vortex of a fast developing US-China confrontation and all we can focus on is the social aspect of Barack Obama’s telephone call. Now, that is really very stupid, don’t you agree?

* * *

Chair Wrecker website: www.chairwrecker.com

Dark Horse?

by Antonio C. Abaya
from Standard Today

Frankly, I do not know what the derivation of the term ‘dark horse’ is in a political race. Presumably, all the other contenders in that hypothetical race are of white or fair-colored mane, and a challenger of a black or darker mane would stand out because he is different from the others.

It is therefore incorrect to say that Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro, who has recently announced that he is seeking the presidency in 2010, is a dark horse challenger.

He is not a dark horse. He has more or less the same mane as all the others, meaning he comes from the same political elite as all the others. And he does not represent any point of view or program of governance different or distinct from all the others.

The fact that Teodoro graduated from the Harvard Law School does not make him a dark horse. Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile also graduated from the same school, but he never claimed to be a dark horse when he ran for the Senate x number of times. The late vice-president Doy Laurel was a graduate of the rival Yale Law School, but he did not project himself as a dark horse when he ran for president in 1992. Both Enrile and Laurel knew they came from the power elite and did not try to sell themselves as anything but.

And the fact that Teodoro is a favored nephew of Danding Cojuangco does not make him a dark horse either. On the contrary, it all the more makes him ‘one of the boys’ in the fraternity of trapos jostling for positions of power in this accursed country.

What could possibly make Teodoro a dark horse is if he were to espouse positions contrary, even inimical, to the conventional wisdom of the trapo culture from which he comes.

Such as batting for the dismantling of political dynasties, as called for by the 1987 Constitution. But he is not likely to do that since he himself comes from a prominent political dynasty in his home province of Tarlac.

His own wife Nikki succeeded him in the Lower House after he was appointed secretary of national defense by President Arroyo in 2007. And he is surrounded by uncles, cousins and other direct relatives prominent in local and national politics. Dark horse? Of course not. He is just one of the boys (and girls).

And what exactly has Teodoro done as secretary of national defense to merit the presidency? I honestly do not know.

Did National Defense Secretary Teodoro manage to suppress, cripple or defeat the Communist insurgency? No way. President Arroyo is still talking of crushing the Communists by 2010. Why wasn’t she, through him, able to crush it in 2008 or 2009?

Did National Defense Secretary Teodoro snuff out the separatist rebellion of the MILF and the Abu Sayyaf in Mindanao? Negative. The separatists almost conned the Arroyo government into giving them virtual independence last year, and were stopped only by local government officials who went to the Supreme Court to protest the sleight-of-hand. What was the role of Teodoro in all this drama? Innocent bystander? That is just not good enough for a presidential contender.

Did National Defense Secretary Teodoro do anything to expedite the trials for plunder or unexplained wealth of Maj. Gen. Carlos F. Garcia, Lt..Gen. Jacinto Ligot and Lt. Col. George Rabusa, all of whom stand accused before the Ombudsman since 2005 of accumulating wealth that cannot be explained by their modest salaries? Again, negative.
This is his area of jurisdiction. There is no excuse for not having done anything.

And what about the military officers accused of participating in the electoral fraud of 2004, or the military officers accused of violation of human rights before and during his watch? What has he done to resolve these issues?

Gilbert Teodoro suffers from comparison with Ramon Magsaysay who, as secretary of national defense under President Elpidio Quirino, crushed the Huk rebellion, convinced thousands of rebels to surrender and return to the mainstream, and restored people’s confidence in the government. And Magsaysay was justly rewarded with the presidency in 1953 when the opposition Nacionalista Party made him their candidate against the vastly unpopular incumbent Quirino.

Teodoro is no Magsaysay. He has not done anything to merit a reward like the presidency, and his role in 2010, if he persists in his ambition, would be to sing hosannas to the vastly unpopular Gloria Arroyo, his uncle’s new business partner in San Miguel.

(What people may remember of Teodoro as member of the Lower House is that he led a movement for the impeachment of then Supreme Court Chief Justice Hilarion Davide, a move seen as an effort to influence pending cases in the Supreme Court involving Danding or his corporations.)

Over and above having done nothing significant or momentous as secretary of national defense for two years, there is also the problem of not having said anything significant or momentous during his entire career as a public official..

Like his uncle Danding – my classmate in the Ateneo during freshman high school, until he moved to The Other School because he could not do Latin – Teodoro is not an inspired or inspiring public speaker. How does he expect to compete, toe to toe, with such seasoned orators as Manny Villar, Mar Roxas, Chiz Escudero, Ping Lacson, and Dick Gordon, and veteran TV anchors Noli de Castro and Loren Legarda?

(Danding at least proved that one does not need Latin to become a billionaire and a pre-eminent presidential crony.)

So aside from having nothing to say, he also does not know how to say it. An infirmity akin to that of FPJ. But FPJ in 2004 was already a household word and an established icon in millions of star-struck Filipino homes, which Teodoro is not in 2009. FPJ did not have to open his mouth – and he pointedly didn’t – to win over millions of masa voters who had absolutely no idea what he would do if he became president..

But Teodoro has to open his mouth. With Danding’s billions, Teodoro can employ the best elocution tutors, image-builders, PR strategists, media-for-hire, spin doctors, mercenary opinion-makers and political technicians that money can buy. But there is only so much that they can do. Ultimately, it has to be Teodoro himself who has to sell himself on his own merits, on his own two feet. And the best that can be said for him at this stage is that it will be a hard slog.

The authentic dark horses in 2010, if they should decide to run, would be people like Tony Meloto, Jun Lozada, Gov. Among Ed Panlilio, Gov. Grace Padaca, Nandy Pacheco and Chief Justice Reynato Puno. But their chances of winning are low. That’s why I do not see any future for this country except through a revolutionary transition government.

****
Reactions to tonyabaya@gmail.com. Other articles in www.tapatt.org and in acabaya.blogspot.com.

Tribal groups seek congressional inquiry on unsolved lumad problems in Caraga Region

by Ben Serrano

BUTUAN CITY - The Manobo-Mamanwa Joint Tribal Council Conference Association today have requested the Congress particularly the House Committees on People’s Participation and the Indigenous Peoples to conduct congressional inquiry on alleged wanton neglect and violation of the indigenous people’s rights.

The group is the same group who unanimously passed a resolution in last November 21, 2008 general meeting in the presence of NCIP legal officer Atty. Gabriel Mapalo declaring NCIP-Caraga Regional Director Jose Dumagan, Jr. “persona nan grata”. They also called for Dumagan’s ouster or transfer.

They reasoned, Dumagan is not sincere on his duties and responsibilities to protect the interests and welfare of the depressed Mamanwa and Manobo tribesmen but only after his personal interest, irresponsible and violates or fails with his duties and responsibilities in applying customary laws and imposition of sanctions.

The tribes for years now they claimed have not been paid in their royalty fees by mining companies operating in their ancestral lands. They specifically pointed out the plight of the tribes in Tubay and Santiago town areas by which until now, the complained mining firm S.R. Metals Inc. have not yet paid them on their royalty fees.

But Dumagan denied the accusations saying he is trying hard to patch up problems affecting the indigenous people and unite the indigenous people in Caraga.

In their letter to Congress dated February 21, 2009 specifically to Rep. Guillermo Romarate, Jr. who is vice chair of the Congressional Committee on People’s Participation and member of the House Committee on Indigenous People, the group requested the solon to personally initiate a house inquiry.

The group which is an umbrella of all tribal associations of the Manobo and Mamanwa tribes claimed in their letter that they have issued several appeals in the past to different concerned government agencies and fast track their long over due complaints against S.R. Metals Inc. to fulfill the mining firm’s corporate social responsibility to the lumads after using their ancestral lands for their nickel mining operations.

But Datu Ebanta and Datu Mansusulog who are signatories of the letter request for house inquiry alleged S.R Metals Inc and a some mining firms operating within ancestral lands of indigenous people in Caraga Region have not fulfilled the promise until now.

The group challenged Romarate who is also a tribal Datu himself having been baptized as Higaonon Datu to look for the helpless plight of tribesmen in the region long suffering from dire poverty, illness and uneducated because of the alleged neglect.

Last December 22, 2008, more than one hundred New People’s Army rebels raided the S.R. Metals Inc office compound in Barangay La Fraternidad, Tubay, Agusan del Norte after they attacked the town’s police office carting a total of twenty one long and short firearms.

NPA spokesperson Maria Malaya in press statement claimed they raided S.R Metals Inc. office compound because of the alleged sins allegedly committed by the mining firm against the indigenous people.

But sources of the police, military, the mining firm itself and the local government unit claimed otherwise saying the rebels got irked when S.R. Metals Inc. allegedly gave only P100,000 or P50,000 cash representing revolutionary tax to the rebels days before the raid. The exact figure was not known until now.

The raiding rebels hogtied security personnel of the mining firm then ordered the Security Chief to accompany them in the mining area where expensive equipment are parked and there they torched Volvo Cargo trucks of the firm aside from burning earlier a Globe cell site.

In August 2006, 13 tribal leaders of the Manobo and Mananwa tribes who occupy the ancestral lands operated by S.R Metals for nickel mining signed a MOA with S.R. Metals Inc. President Francis Enrico Guttierez in the presence of local government officials.

But Tubay Mayor Fidel Garcia, Jr.. questioned the accord saying Datu Ebanta himself is not a tribe but is a Boholano himself whose family migrated to Santiago town. Garcia said Datu Ebanta was never a resident of Tubay.

The Catholic-led CCPD or Caraga Conference for Peace and Development brokered a talk last October 2008 to settle the issue and have caused S.R. Metals Inc to promise to pay before Christmas of 2008. The talks bogged down and until now no payment have been made.

The National Imperative

by Renato Redentor Constantino
from Business Mirror

So, what do we do now?

For decades we were told not to mind the stink behind the altar, where pale clerics of the market faith congregated and preached the good word.

Year after year, behind the burnished marble slab, beneath the old wood cross beams of consumption, black coat and black tie delivered the liturgy of bling and the brass cross, and the sanctity of the system was upheld.

Year after year leaders chased away the phantoms of looming crises with ritual new liberalism and the prescribed brand of amen: our economic fundamentals are strong, our fundamentals are strong. Open the gates of the economy, open your heart. Peace be with you; everything is okay.

Year after year we believed, happy in our blinkered place in the constellation of dependencies.

Then came 2008, the year the valves that had been holding back the stench finally broke down, when venom too long contained rushed through the veins.

By 2009, the empire of belief had fallen apart and its pallid high priests were issuing regular missals that years ago would have been denounced by the bishops of Washington as satanic edicts.

Nationalization — not as a question of ‘if’ but of ‘when’ and ‘where’ and how much control, how much ownership, and how long the long-term intent. Re-regulation. Conservation instead of blind extraction. The cosseting of strategic domestic industries. Massive state spending to generate jobs. A green economy.

From his prison cell in 1977 the Filipino martyr Ninoy Aquino issued a national call of comparable subversion and pragmatism, but who remembers? “I believe,” wrote Aquino, “that basic and strategic industries must be nationalized because it is too dangerous to leave the determination of national needs and priorities in the hands of a few. My primary concern is national interest and the general welfare, not nationalization.”

How interesting the turn of events.

In 1988 in her book Unequal Alliance, Robin Broad observed the stagnation of world trade and the glut of international markets. Transnational capital was “no longer moving to the Third World,” Broad wrote; it had “already turned toward new arenas for short-term rewards at home — consumer credit, corporate mergers, and the get-rich-quick gimmicks of financial speculation.”

“As the world economy has become more integrated,” Broad remarked, “effective sovereignty across the developing world has waned” while vulnerabilities have multiplied exponentially.

Yet everyone continued to be sold the idea of export-fueled growth, hinged on the magical power of the global bazaar where economic integration was the goal and the idea of “self-reliance” was considered an anachronism.

India bought and paid dearly.

Between 1997 and 2007, the journalist and Magsaysay awardee P. Sainath tells us, India recorded the “largest wave of suicides in history”, which today “stands at a staggering 182,936″ — all of them ruined farmers.

“In the next five years after 2001,” by the “time India was well down the WTO garden path in agriculture….” wrote Sainath, “one farmer [was taking] his or her life every 30 minutes on average.” The horrific figure is probably underestimated, said Sainath, because the countless women farmers who took their own lives are recorded as mere suicide deaths because, though they do the bulk of work in agriculture, they are mere “farmers’ wives.” According to Sainath, “Those who killed themselves were overwhelmingly cash crop farmers – growers of cotton, coffee, sugarcane, groundnut, pepper, vanilla” while the “largest number of farm suicides [took place] in the state of Maharashtra, home to the Mumbai Stock Exchange and … to 21 of India’s 51 dollar billionaires.” The same Mumbai of the movie Slumdog Millionaire.

All too many bought the theology of the holy market and all too readily traded away the rights of their citizens, the fields that once fed their children and the ecosystems that once sustained their very cultures.

In October 1979, a World Bank report counseled the Philippines “to take advantage of the fact that its wages had ‘declined significantly relative to those in competing … countries’ such as Hong Kong and South Korea.” And of course the Philippine government took advantage, not recognizing that beneath the basement is a cellar, and underneath that is another basement. An ad in the October 16, 1981 issue of Far Eastern Economic Review talked about such architecture: “Sri Lanka challenges you to match the advantages of its Free Trade Zone, against those being offered elsewhere…. Sri Lanka has the lowest labor rates in Asia.”

In the midst of a global economic conflagration, autarky cannot be a solution. But neither can it be protracted national suicide based on the notion that we can only follow others because we have always had so little, and based on the childish hope that other countries will act in our interest.

Almost 47 years ago the revered senator Lorenzo Tañada reminded us of the wealth that we had always possessed but which we all too often ignored in our mad pursuit of alien promises.

“We have accepted without too much thought the oft-repeated characterization of the Philippines as a capital-poor country,” said Tañada on March 10, 1962, “and that therefore we must vigorously attract foreign capital if we are to develop our country.”

We paid him no attention and over the years we kept exporting what we already had. Our capital. The fruits of our soil. Our minerals. Our best and our brightest. Our dignity.

And the hemorrhage continues still.

Justice in SloMo

by Antonio C. Abaya
from Standard Today

Some readers of the March 7 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer may have been genuinely puzzled by its banner headline: 4 Garcias held in US jails, with the following sub-headline: Ex-general’s wife, 3 sons all US citizens.

Some clarification is in order. The four Garcias are the wife and three sons of Maj. Gen. Carlos F. Garcia, former comptroller of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. They are Mrs. Clarita Depakakibo Garcia, Timothy Mark Garcia, Juan Paolo Garcia, and Ian Carl Garcia. All four are US citizens.

Clarita and Timothy Mark were arrested by US authorities on March 5 in Detroit, Michigan, according to the Inquirer, on the basis of an extradition request from the Philippine government for the crime of plunder committed in Quezon City between 1993 and 2004.

Juan Paolo and Ian Carl were arrested separately on February 25 by US authorities, the former in Pontiac, Michigan, the latter in Las Vegas, Nevada. They were arrested following their indictment last December 2008 by a federal grand jury and charged with conspiracy to commit bulk cash smuggling of $100,000 in December 2003 in San Francisco International Airport.

In my article titled Plunder and Gen. Garcia (March 22, 2005), I wrote: “The story got bigger because their mother, Clarita D. Garcia, trying to wiggle her sons out of their mess as well as trying to retrieve the confiscated $100,000, signed a sworn statement in April 2004 before US authorities admitting that ‘I always declare the money when I bring it into the US. I declared the money in 1993, in 1995 when I had a medical operation. I declared $100,000 on December 17, 2003. I also declared $200,000 in January 2003….’

“Apparently asked to explain their sources of income, Mrs. Garcia wrote in the sworn statement that their money comes from two corporations, a daycare school, and her husband’s job as a two-star general in the Philippine military. In addition, she said, ‘(husband) Carlos receives travel money and expenses in excess of several thousand dollars. I often travel with my husband on business and my travel expenses and shopping money in excess of US$10,000 to $20,000 is provided to me. He also receives cash for travel and expenses from the businesses that are awarded contracts for military hardware. These businesses are in Europe and Asia. He also receives gifts and gratitude money from several Philippine companies that are awarded military contracts to build roads, bridges and military housing….The expense money, gratitude money and shopping money is not declared as income…..’

“Although the military high command apparently heard of the San Francisco incident soon after it happened, its ‘investigation’ was discontinued ‘for lack of evidence,’ and then AFP Chief-of-Staff Gen. Narciso Abaya (no relation) did not remove Gen. Garcia from the office of comptrollership until February 2004.

“Military court-martial proceedings against Gen. Garcia were not started until January 2005, or 13 months after the San Francisco incident, and the charges were only for the minor offenses of perjury and falsification of public documents, not for unexplained wealth…” Gen. Garcia was convicted of the perjury charge only last month., four years after the charge were filed.

Again, from my article Plunder and Gen. Garcia: “It was subsequently revealed in media, after August 2004, that the Garcias own real estate in the US: a $765,000 (Trump Tower) condo on 502 Park Avenue and a $750,000 apartment at 222 East 34th Street, both in New York City, and a house in the town of Westerville, Ohio, of undisclosed value. It was further revealed in media that there are at least eight luxury vehicles registered in their names at the Land Transportation Office, and that Gen. Garcia maintained 40 bank accounts in several Philippine banks. All this from a monthly salary of P37,000 as AFP deputy comptroller…..”
..
“…..In their complaint for plunder, (Lawyers Frank) Chavez, (Mario) Ongkiko et al submitted eleven annexes to support their case, including US Customs reports evidencing transfers of dollars to the US by the Garcias and declared by them: $15,000 in 1993, $10,400 in 1995, $100,000 in 2003, and $204,230 in 2004; foreign currency certificates of time deposits in 2002 with Allied Bank for $75,000 and $30,000; the report of US Customs regarding the $100,000 seized in San Francisco in December 2003; a purchase agreement with Trump Park Ave. Condominium for one unit worth $765,000; and Clarita D. Garcia’s sworn statement to US authorities trying to explain a) why sons Juan Paulo and Ian Carl did not declare the $100,000 in December 2003; and b) how and where the Garcias earn their money.

“Also submitted in the complaint as Annex B and Annex G were two articles written by me for the Manila Standard: “Corruption and Taxes” (Feb. 02, 2005) and “GMA and Garcia”(Oct.28, 2004).

“In ‘Corruption and Taxes’, I had written, among other things, “Why would anyone need 40 personal bank accounts in his name, for chrissakes? It can only mean that each account is likely a parking space for somebody else who does not want his or her name to appear in the bank documents but who is actually the beneficial owner of the money stashed in it as his or her share of the money accumulated by Gen. Garcia by whatever means….” Hence, the Jane Doe, John Doe, James Doe and Joel Doe in the complaint.

In April 2005, the outgoing US Ambassador, Francis Ricciardone, speaking before the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines, urged the government of President Arroyo to adopt a continuous trial for Gen. Garcia and offered to turn over to it the voluminous documents in the US government’s possession. His offer and suggestion were ignored, and Gen. Garcia remained in limbo.

But the recent flurry of developments in this case raises the question of: Why, all of a sudden? Does this mean that those 40 bank accounts have now been obliterated from bank records and their beneficial owners now safely hidden in total anonymity? We shall see what we shall see.

The key question in all this is: Why do we have Justice in Slow Motion in this country? I am not a lawyer, but isn’t this Garcia case what lawyers call an Open and Shut Case? In a case of Plunder or Unexplained Wealth, I have been told by lawyer-friends, the burden of proof is with the accused. The accused must prove that the wealth in his or her name was legally acquired. The prosecution does not have to prove that the wealth was illegally acquired.

How can Gen. Garcia and his wife and sons show that their alleged illegal wealth (valued at P303,272,005.99) can be explained by his salary of P36,015 a month?

And, while we’re at it, why are some of the cases against Imelda Marcos still pending even after 20 years?

It seems to me that the remedy lies in continuous daily trials lasting 90 days for high-profile corruption cases, not in adopting the jury system, as advocated by some groups. If we had trial by jury, the cases against Imelda Marcos would still have languished for 20 years or more, many members of the jury would have died by now – causing more delays as replacement jurors are selected and screened - and the legal system would have been bankrupted since it would have been required to pay the salaries of the sequestered jurors – whatever their means of livelihood - while they were serving in the jury.

Justice delayed is justice denied. But in a land dominated by 50,000 lawyers, that truism does not seem to infuriate anyone. *****

How others view our shameless Filipino elite

AS I WRECK THIS CHAIR
by William M. Esposo
from Philstar

Your Chair Wrecker’s February 15 column (“The shameless Filipino elite”) elicited some very interesting reactions from foreigners and Filipinos alike.

Your Chair Wrecker now shares with you two of the most noteworthy of these reactions.

From Julio Rey Hidalgo, a well-informed political watcher and occasional STAR contributor:

“The elite’s preoccupation is how to protect, if not enlarge, their base of political/economic power and continue the entitlements, prestige, and privilege to which they and generations of their kind have been accustomed to. The middle class, for the most part, would prefer to be left alone to live their separate lives in relative peace, minus interference from others and from government, so long as the situation does not threaten or affect them. The masses are chained to the necessities of daily physical survival and pragmatism. It’s not that they do not understand the higher ideals, the lack of which you are lamenting. It’s just that there are more urgent and basic needs they have to attend to first. Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy applies.

I don’t think it is possible to shame the elite anymore than it is useful to hector the masses about their lack of civic responsibility. Each of us has our own — individually and collectively — flawed traits. And these have been so deeply buried in our habits and consciousness that we no longer see them, much less their dangerous implications. Again, the image of Filipinos acting like fish in the ocean — aware of everything around them, except the water in which they live.

The crux of the problem is precisely that we pay lip service to the need for change, but are unwilling to personally take action to bring it about. Behavioral science says that to change behavior, it is first necessary to “unfreeze” the old sets, introduce the new, and then “re-freeze” or institutionalize these into the perceptual, attitudinal, and behavioral systems.

Yes, but exactly how to do this? Looking at the trajectory of events and the incredible nonchalance among our three segments of society, it may not be long before the top of the dam is reached. When, not if,?that happens, I hope those with a clear perspective of the errors and wrong decisions of our national past will come forward and help provide the guidance to constructively channel the tidal force that will ensue.”

From Cris Villahermosa, a nationalist forced by economic circumstance to work abroad:

“Although the vast majority of Filipinos are homogeneous (and this is important as homogeneity facilitates integration and unity as in Japan where as in the last war it seemed that the Japanese were ready to die for Yamato Dama-shii to the last man, woman and child) our ruling classes share little common ground with the rest of the population.

By ancestry, members of our elite claim and are proud of their Spanish, American and Chinese ancestry. A rich educated Filipino though he may be as dark as his obvious aboriginal ancestors, the Agta, would still claim no matter how distant, a drop of say Castilian blood although that drop may only be in between his toenails.

Or, just like the British ruling class of the previous centuries, he may fancy himself/herself as genteel with almost nothing in common with the rest of what he considers hoi polloi. But there is a significant difference in that the British poms were at least united within their class and in their loyalty to “King and country” which was why there was a British Empire. The members of the Filipino ruling elite, on the other hand, are not even united among themselves and have little or no sense of loyalty to their class, institutions, religion or ideology. They act like Pacmen motivated only by greed and self-aggrandizement.

How about ethnic regionalism? Although some accused Marcos of Ilocanizing the government and the Armed Forces, it is curious to note that his closest cronies who helped him maintain power and amass wealth were not even Ilocanos. They were of all other ethnic groups, mestizo Pampangos, Visayans, Tagalogs, etc.

You know who they were. As a matter of fact, and I have personal knowledge of this, the worst victims of torture and rape were social and religious activists in the Ilocos Region. You may remember our two women poll watchers in Ilocos Sur who were raped, tortured and beheaded during the 1985 Snap Election. There were more Ilocano victims well before that during the Marcos regime. So unity through ethnic regionalism is also a myth.” (End of quoted reactions)

As the Information, Education, Opportunity and Wealth Gaps worsen, the country comes closer to the edge. A student of history knows that under the prevailing Philippine social conditions, it is just a question of WHEN (not IF) the long feared social explosion will happen.

What should worry the elite and the middle class here is that the apathy and cynicism of the masses insinuate total loss of confidence on the right leader emerging from the current crop. If so, then that opens the door for adventurers to grab power.

How much time do we have before the desperate, the hungry, the disillusioned and the hopeless start thinking that revolution is the only means left for attaining economic relief?

Do we, who can initiate reform and improve their lot, just sit and wait for the bloodbath to happen?

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Chair Wrecker website: www.chairwrecker.com

Filipino - a bundle of many identities

by Reginald Tamayo

Is there such a thing as a Filipino identity? I remember 18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume saying that there is no such thing as self but only a bundle of selves. Using Hume’s argument, there is no such thing as a Filipino identity- only a bundle of many Filipino identities.

By asserting that the Filipino is just a bundle of many identities it means that there is no sense of Filipinohood in us that should bind us as one people. The bundle theory of Hume sidesteps our sense of unity and interconnectedness within our country and in the larger sense among all Filipinos worldwide. There may be a point in arguing about the continuity of the physical attributes of Filipinos like having small flat nose, brown in complexion, and with small physical structure, and the like. There may be physical regeneration of our physical attributes like some of us today are mestizos and mestizas but they are not that substantial to miss our traditional looks and posturing. There may also be psychological continuity that we persist as Filipinos because we can remember our past. In other words, our Filipino psyche is long-term. However, if I were to put words into the mouth of Hume, these ongoing identities in terms of physical and psychological identities do not make up the Filipino identity. The continuity of physical and psychological identities is not a ground for making out a genuine Filipino identity.

In the world of Hume, we have many Filipino identities. These identities are our subjective experiences. We experience Filipinohood or simply a sense of being united as Filipinos when we are in a foreign land. For instance, we are proud as being Filipinos by speaking Filipino or eating our own food in a different country, meeting regularly with our kababayans, working long and hard because it is the mark of being a Filipino toiling abroad, etc. But there are also some of us who after staying for sometime in a foreign land would willfully forget our sense of Filipinohood – we talk the way foreigners do as if our native tongue is a social taboo, or we eat and live like our foreign counterparts. On a different vein, we likewise feel this closeness and solidarity as a nation within ourselves when we pool our resources to help victims of man-made and natural calamities. But we feel indifferent about the untold social calamities in our midst caused by power-hungry politicians. Simply put, the Filipino identity is erratic. We seem not to get the real picture of the Filipino identity.. Hume explains that it is nonsensical to grasp the self because there is no such thing as self. Just like us Filipinos it is without any sense to talk about unity of the Filipino people when there is no clear cut and definitive Filipino identity.

This Filipino identity crisis undeniably has been a perennial problem. To date we are unable to comprehend what it takes to be a Filipino. From all indications, it appears that we are still grappling for our Filipino identity, a Filipino being whose self is unified. The Filipino today is no more than a collection of his many and varied subjective experiences. Hume’s bundle theory asserts that a unified self does not even own these experiences because the self has no peculiar identity among the many and confusing selves almost leading to a Shakespearean comedy of errors. Our physical continuity and remembered experiences as Filipinos do not guarantee our Filipino identity.

Thus in conclusion, we still have much to discern what is meant and what it is to be a Filipino. The bundle theory of Hume is compelling and very telling yet I am hopeful that the necessity to have a Filipino identity will dawn upon us soonest.