The business of squatting: When Bush comes to shove
October 20, 2003 | 12:00am
Part of the overzealous preparations for the recent arrival of the most distinguished Philippine visitor since F4 and Pope John Paul II, His Excellency President George "Dubya" Bush, misguided bureaucrats and slick propagandists in government seemed to have conspired in a project to hide and cover up so-called "eyesores" of our metropolis by blocking slum dwellings in Manila and demolishing urban poor squatter homes in Quezon City on the way to the Batasan complex of Congress.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo cannot be faulted for wishing to put the nation’s best foot forward. This is a time-honored Philippine tradition of hospitality, but her officials were ill advised in their cover-up attempts. Their cosmetic solutions to obfuscate the harsh reality of mass poverty and urban squalor will not be able to erase the badly-battered international reputation of the Philippines in the eyes of Uncle Sam, the American media, international investors and the world.
This writer is adamantly against the urban blight of squatters, this anomaly of people illegally taking over privately-owned lands, and cannot forget the insidious role of now Department of Interior and Local Governnment (DILG) Secretary Joey Lina in institutionalizing this problem with his populist legislation. However, we are even more incensed by the government’s insensitive and myopic attempts to cover up their existence as part of grand preparations for the Dubya’s eight-hour stopover in our archipelago.
Why? First, government must not be ashamed by mass poverty, but should be outraged enough to implement reformist and pro-business policies which shall enrich the whole nation.
What is so shameful about squatter shanties and slum colonies? Wouldn’t that reality of Metro Manila’s urban poverty help open the eyes of Dubya and America to the crying need of developing nations like the Philippines for truly fair trade and other equitable economic arrangements in this era of rapid globalization, not just lopsided free trade and other policies unjustly favoring only the economic, strategic and big business interests of the powerful, wealthy and sometimes overbearing West?
"They also won’t see the shantytowns recently flattened by bulldozers or suddenly obscured by billboards welcoming Bush. The presidential palace and the area around the House of Representatives, where the US President will give an address, have been spruced up as part of Manila’s $180,000 makeover. That may not seem much of a price to impress a leader of Bush’s stature, but it’s a considerable sum in a nation where a third of the 82 million people live on a few dollars a day and the government must forgo development projects to repay debt… But Bush may not even see much of the selective improvements – or the protests – if a plan comes through for him to rise above the congested, polluted capital in a helicopter."
GMA should not fall into the Potemkin Village trap which had afflicted two other world-famous lady political leaders of the past – our very own former First Lady and Metro Manila governor Imelda Romualdez Marcos and the 17th century Catherine the Great of Russia. In her overzealous attempts to beautify our metropolis for huge international fiestas such as the 1970s World Bank-IMF Conference and other events, Imelda reportedly undertook almost similar cover-ups of our various squatter colonies in order to hide such "eyesores."
According to the American Heritage Dictionary, the term "Potemkin Village" is a noun with the following definition: "Something that appears elaborate and impressive but in actual fact lacks substance, such as this sentence by Lewis H. Lapham – the Potemkin village of this country’s borrowed prosperity."
What is the etymology of "Potemkin Village"? This phrase was inspired by Catherine the Great’s favorite and most well-connected government functionary Prince Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin who had elaborate fake villages constructed for Catherine the Great’s tours of the Ukraine and the Crimea. Potemkin was the paper tiger who tried to fool his boss – and perhaps the rest of the country – by erecting cardboard villages along the banks of Dnieper to convince Catherine that the colonization of the Ukraine was proceeding very well.
Potemkin’s name, even today, denotes sham fronts. Luckily, for Catherine the Great, she was strong-willed, decisive and wise enough to overcome the inanities of her sycophants in the bureaucracy and her lousy propagandists, and she had succeeded in providing stability and economic progress for Russia.
A Filipino billionaire fears that he might soon completely close his huge bus company, due to his exasperation with the inability of the government, military and police to protect his provincial buses from shameless revolutionary taxes being demanded by the New People’s Army. He revealed that the Communist rebels had even burned several of his buses, and he appeals to the government for protection, or else he has no choice but to pay the Communist rebels for "protection."
Recently, Zsa Zsa Padilla told this writer that she is very concerned that a growing segment of our population is subsisting daily on instant noodles, which do not have enough nutrients. Once, when she commented to her Dolphy about the sudden proliferation of corned beef TV commercials, the King of Comedy explained to her that corned beef is cheap and salty, and has become another favorite of the poor to eat daily with plain rice. Even a comedian like Dolphy considers the massive poverty in our republic as no laughing matter to hide or to cover up.
In ancient times, some well-meaning emperors of China had failed due to the bad advice and false reports of eunuchs and other lousy bureaucrats who shielded the ruler from the harsh problems plaguing the nation. Is the highly-educated and workaholic former economics professor GMA being lied to by her own bureaucrats and spin doctors into actually believing that businesses are flourishing and international investor confidence on our economy is great?
How could GMA be made to proclaim that the Philippines has Asia’s third best economic performance, when our small economic base requires double digit annual economic growth to triumph against mass poverty and not our snail’s pace of four percent growth? How could the Philippine economy be Asia’s third best, when the economies of China, Thailand, South Korea, Vietnam and others are roaring past us in terms of multi-billion exports, declining unemployment, floods of foreign investments, robust industrial expansions, successful family planning programs, booming agricultural sectors and high tourist arrivals?
Our unsolicited advice to GMA: Please ignore the sycophants, the daydreaming technocrats, the unrealistic economists, the corrupt self-serving politicians and dim-witted eunuchs around you in the Malacañang Palace whose sense of reality may have already been adversely been affected by the pollution of the nearby Pasig River. Businesses are hurting yet trying to survive. Unemployment is up, but the statistics do not show the true extent of underemployment. Foreign and domestic investments are down. The Philippine economy is not hopeless, the country’s future can still be very bright, but our leaders and GMA must tell the nation the unvarnished truth, in order for all of us to take the bitter medicine and difficult reforms necessary to save this nation from crisis.
Dear President GMA, please immediately demolish the Potemkin Villages in your speeches, in the minds of your officials, and possibly even in your own mind. Instead of covering up our massive poverty and social injustices with cosmetic measures and other superficial beautification efforts, let us initiate drastic, bold and far-reaching reforms to make the Philippine economy and our whole society truly globally competitive.
Instead of peddling to the public such laughable concepts such as "Strong Republic" built on sand, let us ensure a truly efficient republic with decisive political statesmanship and wisdom, with steadfast pro-business and pro-investment economic policies. In your campaign for the 2004 presidential election, please present to the Filipino people and to the international business community a bold and inspirational blueprint for reforms, so that the other presidential candidates will be challenged to do the same and elevate the level and quality of national debate.
Let us bulldoze and crush any attempts to fool the people into false illusions and complacency with Potemkin Villages about the Philippines having Asia’s third best economy and a mighty super-duper republic. Let us allow the harsh reality and embarrassing truths about our nation’s chronic lack of foreign investments, weak business conditions, high unemployment, massive poverty and horrible social inequities shock us all into immediate actions and decisive reforms, so that our resource-rich Philippines will no longer suffer continuous economic obsolescence, gross inefficiencies and the nightmare of a scandalously weak republic.
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