Shameful politics

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.

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 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 Bonifacio. Look at what happened to Antonio Luna.

And since we were just a collection of tribes and communities bundled together by the Spaniards and called the Philippines, we never really developed a sense of national identity or national loyalty. 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 all (as their officials never stop telling you) have clawed their way up through hard study and hard work. Unfortunately for its people, 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, South Korea 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 Koreans (or 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 leader 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.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco