Neither free nor independent

Is the Philippines really independent? How can we claim independence when we rely on foreign and domestic borrowings to fund our government operations and its ambitious projects? How can we call ourselves independent when we cannot even produce our own rice, we need to import sugar, onions, and salt, and we cannot even provide our people with the basic needs of food and shelter? Are we free from poverty, social injustice, crime, and corruption? No.

We are supposed to be an agricultural country but we are importing rice, chicken, and meat from other countries. We cannot stand on our own. We need the cooperation of our neighbors to assure that our 111 million people won’t go hungry. How can the Philippines be truly independent when we need to send our doctors, nurses, engineers, technicians to work abroad because our economy cannot provide enough jobs for our people? We even send away our mothers and wives to work as domestic helpers. How can we truly become independent when we depend largely on foreign investment and we even need to amend our Constitution just to entice foreign businessmen and investors? We cannot create enough jobs and look up to foreign wealth to infuse our economy with capital?

Our people don’t even know the difference between freedom and independence. My son used to ask me to give him freedom to decide what course to take and career to pursue. I gave him what he demanded. I even told him that he could also have independence as well. That means he should rent his own apartment, buy his own car, and live by his own means. But then he opted to remain because he didn’t have the wherewithal. No person or country can have genuine freedom if there’s no authentic independence. Freedom is political and legal. Independence is economic and financial. That’s the destiny of our country. Our people have political freedom, legal liberty. But we don’t have economic independence. We needed to borrow almost ?14 trillion just to survive. That doesn’t look like genuine independence to me.

Economic independence and political freedom aren’t the same but they’re interrelated. After the worldwide triumph of democracy in the 1980s and 1990s, one can observe its partial reversal in the new millennium. This is the conclusion of two leading global political surveys --the Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2018 (Abramowitz, 2018) and the Bertelsmann Foundation’s Transformation Index 2018 (Bertelsmann, 2018). Countries that are poor and very poor tend to lose their political freedoms easily because these political concepts and theories are prone to easy collapse when their economic and financial foundations are loose and shaky. In the Philippines, even political rights and legal rights are easily manipulated by money and influence of the financially strong and economically mighty.

The Philippines cannot venture into economic development without borrowing money. We already have a whooping national debt of ?13.9 trillion. The government even needs to borrow money to pay for the amortization of our current debt. Our debt to GDP ratio is dismal. We have an acute trade imbalance since our massive imports are too gargantuan while our exports are shrinking. Our current wages are much lower than the poverty line. Our unemployment and underemployment rates are rising like crazy. Poverty incidence is upward. We cannot fund our capital expenditures and the bureaucracy's maintenance and operating expenses because our tax collections cannot cope with our annual expenditures.

We have our political rights of suffrage but even the votes of the poor are sold. Our freedoms and liberties are illusory. Our independence is fictional. The Filipinos aren’t truly free. The millions who are poor are slaves to usurers, scammers, illegal recruiters, and traffickers. The people cannot eat free speech and free press for breakfast. When people are jobless, homeless, and hopeless, they aren’t free, much less independent.

And so, today, we are celebrating a fictional independence, an illusion of freedom and an artificial human right that exists only in the mind. When another global pandemic strikes us or when worldwide famine ensues, our freedom collapses like a house of cards. When war rages like what happened in Ukraine or if China attacks us, our country might disintegrate like sand castles.

We don’t have a reason to celebrate today. We are neither free nor independent. Our independence is a mere state of mind. Our freedom is an illusion. I'm sorry, I cannot celebrate with you today. I am giving a free online Bar review tonight. That is definitely free.