What is wrong with Filipinos?

Shock helps people to reassess. So while we’re smarting from slaps by Australia and Canada in shutting their embassies without notice, we might as well ponder why they think we deserve such treatment. Your intelligence sucks, envoys said. They had informed the AFP as far back as July about terrorist threats to their lives, but nothing was done. Says who, the PNP stood up for the military; after all it’s the agency in charge of Metro Manila security. The police had dispatched round-the-clock patrols to all embassies. That nothing untoward has happened shows the effectiveness of the arrangement.

The Australians and Canadians are unconvinced. So are envoys from other countries. Sadly, so are Filipinos. The police cannot be trusted. And it’s not just a matter of bad PR. Everyday we read about cops involved in kidnapping, rape, drugs, gambling protection, robbery. The stories only reinforce personal experiences with the police: a drunk in uniform picking a fight with passersby, an investigator insinuating that a complainant put up cash to get a case moving, a cigarette vendor collecting "toll" from every jeepney driver in behalf of the chief.

The police are not the only perennial complaint of foreigners and Filipinos. There’s the trash that litters every street, the sidewalks that long went to vendors and parked cars, the parks that have become slums. Not that there are no laws against them. Just that there’s no enforcement. Doing wrong has thus become a habit.

Expatriates had complained three years ago that nothing works in the Philippines. Traffic and pollution was getting worse. Electricity was often down. Phones can’t connect. Roads are rutty. Flights are never on time. Tourist spots have become fronts for prostitution and mulcting. The expats would live elsewhere once they get the chance. So do millions of Filipinos.

Foreigners openly see the seamier side of Filipino life. That shouldn’t make them think we deserve to be slapped around. That shouldn’t make us think either that we need not change what’s wrong.

"What is wrong" has been the subject of innumerable tracts. There are those who say we never truly industrialized because we don’t have the ethic nor the taste for it. Filipinos, once they come upon extra cash to invest in business, would instead buy a gold necklace or bracelet. And I’m talking of men. Or, they’d call the neighbors to a round of drinks at 10 a.m. when they should be at work. We have this notion that we don’t have to make our own tools and tractors because imports are sturdier and cheaper anyway. Had we built our industries, they say, we would have built too the individual and national discipline that comes with it.

There are those who go by James Fallows – that ours is a damaged culture. Our standards of public morals are low because we never shook off the bad teachings of former colonizers. We deride manual labor and assign the lowest pay scales to it. We deride corruption, yet we invite grafters to grace our weddings. We deride political patronage, but only if we’re not the beneficiaries in terms of placement or promotion. We have come to define morals by our individual preferences. Makati businessmen were the first to cry for reforms when the latest Corruption Index came out with RP as No. 11. But when the President denounces a public contract as onerous because officials from three administrations probably were bribed, they were also the first to cry foul.

And there are those who think we need a revolution. Such bloodshed will cleanse the national soul, they say. It would be a fresh start on a clean slate – of form of government, of rules of public conduct, of individual duty to the country. It would upturn the economic elite and bring forth a redistribution of wealth on which society can play, like a new deck of cards. Then again, we’ve had two recent revolutions, if you may, bloodless though. Those two events at EDSA, 15 years apart, could have been enough to ignite a process of review and rebuilding. But we’ve fallen back to the old ways. Everybody now fears that a third bout at EDSA would only tear the nation apart.

With a Presidency – the center – buffetted every which way by courtiers and contenders, we look for other institutions to turn to. No, not the military, never. The generals had had their chance, and they blew it by letting a conjugal dictatorship run wild while they scrambled for crumbs. Certainly not the legislature, too, where senators and congressmen are proving themselves adept only at promoting self-interest. Filipinos have come to despise them, and regard them only as occasional sources of alms. And certainly not the media. You must be joking. Print, radio, television and cinema may be lofty endeavors, but they’re also businesses for profit. Thus, their propensity to sensationalize rather than inform, to entertain rather than enlighten.

The Church, perhaps, can serve as catalyst for change. It has the moral moorings for it. But then, the Church is not monolithic. It is composed of bishops, priests and nuns who each have their own pet projects, missions, they call it, be it prayer or charity or education. Besides, the Church is showing itself to be impractical. It preaches Filipinos to go forth and multiply, then turns around to reproach government for not creating enough jobs or gross domestic products to feed everyone.

How about the courts? Activist Supreme Courts can govern, as proven in other countries. But can it in the Philippines, where its hands are full chastising lower courts that have caught the contagion of corruption?

Education can be the answer – to prepare us to industrialize, to upgrade moral standards, to avert revolution. But our once great institution of public schools has deteriorated. Tests every five years show that elementary and high school graduates cannot comprehend what they read, much less count and think science. Private schools cannot accommodate the poor; they’re busy training the rich for jobs abroad.

In the end we can turn only to ourselves. Filipinos know of enough virtues to set communities and the country on track: pagkakawang-gawa or sharing, bayanihan or civic-mindedness, pagka-makabansa or patriotism. If only we’d all practise the virtues instead of waiting for others to do so first.

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