Soap opera

HONOLULU – Not too long ago, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos landed in this city, having lost their way to Paoay in Ilocos Norte, both of them looking dazed by their dramatic fall from absolute power.

On a “half-island tour” of Honolulu last Sunday, the guide pointed out the residence where the Marcoses spent life in exile. It’s a sprawling compound in an expensive neighborhood on an island where real estate prices have traditionally been high, but it’s still no Malacañang Palace.

A genuine royal palace has been preserved here – the home of the last queen of the Kingdom of Hawai‘i. The palace is one of the places of interest on the half-island tour, which also includes trivia on another president, Barack Obama: the hospital where he was born (now backed by authentic birth documents, according to the guide), the high school he attended, the home where he stayed with his white grandparents, even the route he took as he walked to school.

The Obama trivia is probably more interesting to Pinoy tourists these days than the stuff about the Marcoses.

While the dictator died in exile on this island of rainbows and tradewinds, his heirs are back in the Philippines, rehabilitated, with his only son and namesake making no secret of the family’s dream of full vindication through a return to Malacañang.

In the face of such developments in our country, it isn’t easy to refute foreigners who are long-time observers of Philippine affairs when they say that “very little seems to change” in our country.

That’s coming from Charles Salmon, foreign policy adviser at the Asia-Pacific Center for Strategic Studies.

Salmon, a former US ambassador to Vientiane, served as political officer at the US embassy in Manila from 1974 to 1977, and as director of the Office of Philippine Affairs at the State Department. As far as I can tell, he has fond memories of the Philippines and has made many friends here. If he carps like a Pinoy about the sorry state of our nation, it’s probably out of sheer frustration.

* * *

Last Tuesday, on the invitation of the East-West Center here, Salmon briefed participants in the Senior Journalists Seminar on the state of the Filipino nation.

“Why can’t the Philippines realize its potential? What does it have to do?” he told our group, which includes Asian and American journalists.

Filipinos have been asking the same questions for decades. I heard that observation from a foreigner for the first time several years ago during a visit to Washington. I was introduced to an American woman of some prominence who, upon learning where I was from, said, “Oh, the Philippines! The land that can never seem to realize its potential!”

What polite response can you make other than that we keep trying?

Since then I’ve heard that observation a few more times, with the statement often followed by some praise for the Philippines, I guess to soften the impact.

Echoing other American diplomats who have been assigned in Manila, Salmon said the Philippines “is a very important country for the United States.”

He also said that the new government under President Aquino is perceived to be good and honest and generally getting a clean bill of health.

P-Noy, of course, is a part of the “dynastic features” that Salmon noted in Philippine society – features that he said have slowed down the pace of change in the country.

Following Philippine politics, Salmon said, is a bit like watching a soap opera: it’s always the same story and you get the drift right away.

During Salmon’s first tour of duty in Manila, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos were in power and Juan Ponce Enrile was the martial law enforcer. Today, Enrile is the Senate president, Imelda is again a member of the House of Representatives, and her only son is a senator.

When Salmon checked recent Philippine news reports, images of Imelda popped up. There she was, at the controversial art exhibit at the Cultural Center of the Philippines – a building she had ordered constructed at the height of the conjugal dictatorship.

Even P-Noy’s meeting with Moro Islamic Liberation Front chieftain al-Haj Murad Ebrahim in Tokyo, which Salmon described as “encouraging” for peace, also gave him déjà vu.

“We’ve seen this before, to be honest – a little soap opera,” he told us. “Unfortunately, very little seems to change in the Philippines.”

His briefing, by his own admission, contained “a catalogue of bad news” about the country. Percentage-wise, the poverty level has not changed since the people power revolt in 1986. Political dynasties dominate Congress. “Fictive kinship” and utang na loob or debt of gratitude, while imbued with positive aspects, tend to promote corruption.

He said the consul general in Hawaii always gets a headache from dealing with too many Filipino organizations, each one claiming to be the true representative of the community.

The Philippines, he observed, is a litigious society, with more lawyers per capita than the US. There is “an enormous amount” of red tape, big fish are never caught (actually, a president was caught once, but we know what happened to him), infrastructure is “very stressed,” foreign direct investments are low, and competitiveness is declining.

Even the massive remittances from overseas Filipino workers, he said, gave the oligarchy, the ruling classes, little impetus for reforms. The OFW phenomenon, he added, is “going to have a very deleterious impact” on family life.

“The Philippines has great economic potential but it has underperformed for decades,” he told our group.

Filipinos have railed against those problems, and have been trying to address them. The US also has its own catalogue of serious bad news these days. But I’m writing down Salmon’s observations to give you an idea of how foreigners view our country. The observations sound more painful coming from non-Filipinos.

These days I hear better assessments of Bangladesh. There’s no reason why we can’t do better.