Euphoria – again?

When we look back – as we often do – post-World War II history tells us Filipinos enjoyed moments of euphoria that all was well and would become much better. It was thus when "liberation" came in 1944-45 and Gen. Douglas MacArthur swept into the arms of the country like a demigod. The second wave of euphoria came in 1986 when "People Power" smashed the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos and sent him fleeing pell-mell to Honolulu. The third wave was when a renewed surge of "People Power" removed the fun-loving, itchy-fingered Joseph Estrada from Malacañang.

In both cases, two women, Corazon Aquino and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, succeeded to power. Unlike Golda Meir or Empress Catherine, both were unable to scrape off, or help scape off the century-old barnacles that made the Philippines poor and destitute. Even worse, those barnacles bound the Filipino into a stagnant culture that held national progress into a standstill. And so the men who became presidents failed, as did the two women. So we were neither a progressive patriarchal nor matriarchal society.

But maybe we need another infusion of euphoria.

I see it coming. Already its drumbeaters are abroad in the land. They tell us the United States and the Philippines are now engaged in a formidable "new partnership" to dispel and destroy international terror in Asia. They also tell us that in this partnership, President George W. Bush and President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo are as "lips and teeth", not just friends but "family". And the Philippines has been promoted into a "major non-NATO ally". Ergo, the big bundle of military and economic aid is on the way. It’s what we have been waiting for, fellas. Now, we can get out of our misery, our poverty, our millennial slump. Hooray if that happens.

But this old traveller isn’t easily persuaded.

Maybe I’ve lived too long, seen and experienced too much, rode in my time on those euphorias only be rudely bounced back to harsh reality. And then again, maybe I’ve read too much, and the lessons of history have a way of pouring a cold shower everytime. I start walking through a primrose path. Anyway, I was rummaging through some books in my library yesterday, and came upon a not-so-old tome. It was titled Looking at the Sun by James Fallows published in 1996, just seven years ago.

Remember the guy? It was Fallows who provoked a national uproar when he wrote in the Atlantic Monthly in the late 80s that the Philippines had a "damaged culture". I fully agreed with him. But many other educated and upper-class Filipinos raged, threatened to tear him limb from limb if ever he returned to the Philippines. He did, but by that time the "damaged culture" controversy had died down. Now everybody agrees our culture is damaged.

Nothing has really changed since Fallows wrote this book. In fact, things have become worse. Let’s pick up some juicy morsels:

"Except for Burma, the Philippines is the only country in the region where life seems to be moving backward . . . In the early 1990s, Malaysia’s per capita income was nearly $2,500, Singapore’s more than $10,000, Thailand’s more than $1,500. The per capita income in the Philippines has been stagnant at about $750 for several years. By government estimate, roughly two-thirds of the people in the country live below the poverty line."

Here’s the 1945 pro-US euphoria:

"At the end of World War II, Manila prided itself as having been on the winning side, while Tokyo and Seoul tried to size up the conquering Americans. Today, Manila is sad in the same way Rangoon is…Each has become a melancholy monument to unnecessary, self-induced decline." Today, the Philippine government also prides itself as having been on the side of George W. Bush when he declared war on Iraq and earlier supported Washington’s war on international terror. That euphoria in 1945 didn’t get us anywhere. Will today’s euphoria lead anywhere?

Fallows continues:

"It is obvious that most Filipinos lack decent houses, can’t afford education, in some areas are short of food and in general are very poor. The official unemployment rate is about 15 percent, but if all the cigarette vendors, surplus bar girls, and other unemployed people were taken into account something like half the human talent in the country must be unused." Fallows must come back to witness how squatter areas have proliferated in Metro Manila, how the urban blight has become worse because millions in the provinces have migrated to the metropolis in the last seven years.

Also strikingly familiar is Fallows’ recall that, so long as President Marcos served America faithfully and well, Washington described him as the "most important man" in Asia. Ring a bell? George W. Bush now extols GMA to the high heavens for fully supporting the terror mode of the US. Fallows follows up with Cory Aquino who was Time’s "Woman of the Year" and was portrayed by the magazine "as a vessel of redemption, hope and reform." Well, Mrs. Aquino was not such a vessel, Cory meant well but the system was just too much for her. At the end of her term, the Philippines was worse off economically.

Here’s more of Fallows going into high gear:

"Beyond Manila, the government’s writ has never run very far. For instance, the combined readership of all twenty-plus daily papers is about five million. The educational system has run down terribly. The Philippines spends about one-eighth as much money per students as Malaysia does. The $15 billion to $20 billion that Marcos creamed off has had a big effect. There is a kind of corruption that just recycles the money, but all this was taken out."

Now let’s get into that part that American drumbeaters here want to erase from the history books:

"When Philippine nationalists forces under Emilio Aguinaldo were fighting for independence against Spain in 1898, the US military lured him into a bogus alliance. Once the Spanish were out of the way, the United States turned on Aguinaldo and conquered the country. The US belatedly agreed to Philippine independence after World War II. Yet the US ambassador, working from his huge office on Roxas Boulevard, has been a kind of president for many years." Could this be, as many believe – more than half a century later – the shades of the present US envoy, Francis Ricciardone?

Fallows cuts closer to the truth when he paints a portrait of the Philippines in the image of America:

"What Americans have liked best about the Philippines has been its structural resemblance to the United States. It has a president and a congress. It has a supreme court building that would fit nicely into the architecture of Washington. Its school system was designed by Americans. Its favorite sport is basketball. The news, talk, and soap opera programs on Philippine TV are closely copied from American models. The Philippine constitution guarantees free expression and individual rights.

"These very traits… are precisely the problem. The Philippines, as Lee Kuan Yew and others contend, has taken on the ‘luxury’ of a rights-based political system that its economic base cannot yet support.

"The issue seems less complicated from the East Asian perspective. In almost every country in East Asia except the Philippines, the choice has been very clear: Economic progress, and the resulting national strength, come first. Full political liberties may or may not ever come, at least not in the individually- oriented Western style. If there do come, it is only after the main economic problems have been solved.. . . Every successful East Asian economy has clearly decided to put political liberty second to economic development and sometimes even farther down the priority list.

"The exception to this mixed political formula is the Philippines. There the guiding theory, imported from America, has been: Rights and liberties first. Whatever follows, second. The chaos and decay of Manila increasingly fortifies. Asian governments in the view that a rights-based society represents a failed approach."

Fallows reaches a crescendo with the following and this concords with endless columns I have written on the subject.

"Because the boundaries (of Filipino culture) are limited to the family or tribe, they exclude at any given moment 99 percent of the other people in the country. Because of this fragmentation, this lack of useful nationalism, people treat each other worse in the Philippines than any other Asian country I have seen."

These are words of wisdom before we go into another euphoria.