Failing state of the nation

What’s the true state of our nation?

If Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is to be believed, RP is on the verge of First World status. That’s what she boasted delivering us to, as she toasted diplomats on Independence Day, June 12, two weeks before bowing out. Arroyo wasn’t drunk blathering her presidential legacy during the vin d’honneur. She wasn’t truthful either.

The Philippines didn’t become freer from want and injustice than it was when Arroyo took power in Jan. 2001. Going strictly by statistics, there are now more hungry families, more street children, more homeless. The national budget hit the trillion-peso mark, but so did the public debt. More tax money was stolen under her watch, in cruder ways, by more politicos, bureaucrats, and kinsmen. More democratic institutions weakened from bribery. More Filipinos took temporary jobs abroad or uprooted for good. More journalists and jurists were killed during nine years of Arroyo than 13 years of Marcos’s martial law. Vice and drugs spread to more communities. That’s why Arroyo became the most despised President, with 69 percent of Filipinos distrusting her moves.

A week later, in fact, Arroyo was set aright. On June 21 the esteemed Foreign Policy magazine came out with its sixth annual listing of failed and falling states. And the Philippines is in it — as usual.

Among the worst ten countries are the familiar: pirate-ruled Somalia, war-torn Afghanistan and Iraq, and ravaged Sudan and Congo. The next unhappiest ten include earth-quaked Haiti, starving Nigeria, terrorized Yemen, and self-cutoff Burma and North Korea. From public sources FP zeroed in on the 60 most vulnerable lands. “Unfortunately for the 60 most troubled, the news from 2009 is grave,” it noted. “State failure, it seems, is a chronic condition.” RP is No. 51, worse than before. Only slightly inferior are drug-ruled Colombia (46), and riot-bound Syria (48). Better off are race-torn West Bank (54) and Bosnia-Herzegovina (60). So is Angola (59), which we Filipinos hear about only when rebels there kidnap our compatriots.

FP used 12 indicators of failed statehood: demographic erosion, like high rates of child mortality and infectious disease; refugees; illegitimate governments; brain drain; public service deterioration, chiefly education and health; inequality; group grievances, like persecution and neglect; human rights violations; economic decline; warlordism; factionalized elites; and external intervention.

The Philippines appears afflicted by all 12. And that’s the failing state of the nation from which President Noynoy Aquino must pull us out.

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At first Gloria Arroyo’s midnight appointee Al Cusi promised to give up the headship of the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines. The next day he brazened out to new Transportation Sec. Jose de Jesus that he’d use up a four-year term. Then on July 21 he issued a First 100 Days Report that shows ... nothing.

Cusi brags to have fired 170 consultants and hired 50 inspectors. Still, RP remains under Category-2 of the US Federal Aviation Administration, with its carriers barred from adding routes or frequencies in America. This is through no fault of RP airlines, but the CAAP’s, which during the Arroyo admin (of which Cusi was a part) failed to maintain navigational facilities. RP’s premiere Manila International Airport in recent weeks thrice diverted arriving flights because of faulty landing aids. It turns out that the MIA’s two instrument landing systems conked out from floods in 2009, when Cusi was its chief, and CAAP did not fix them. RP remains in the International Civil Aviation Organization blacklist too for serious safety concerns. Cusi spent two weeks trying to avert, in vain, a third downgrade, this time from the European Union.

Aviation stakeholders are restive, meanwhile. They moan that Cusi, a shipping exec before Arroyo took him into her admin, has no qualifications to head the CAAP. His closeness to Arroyo’s spouse Mike is well written about. First posted to head the Philippine Ports Authority, Cusi met with resistance from an industry that saw conflict of interest. He was moved to the MIA, where senators implicated him in the abduction of whistleblower Jun Lozada. As MIA boss he was tasked to build a new Bohol airport, but has stalled since 2007 despite millions of pesos spent. Transport authorities are investigating how he was able to buy a four-seat helicopter with his meager government pay, but in his son’s name.

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Congratulations to Lt. Gen. Arturo Ortiz, new commanding general of the Philippine Army. He is the first Medalist of Valor to hold the position. Ortiz was awarded the highest military honor, for gallantry and intrepidity in battle, when he was but an infantry captain in 1990. His patrol had stumbled upon a rebel camp, which he daringly decided to interdict. Although outnumbered, Ortiz and men overran the base after two hours of fighting.

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”Too many who want costly rebellions make others pay the price for it.” Shafts of Light, Fr. Guido Arguelles, SJ

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