A nation based on families

Two weeks ago, the prestigious British newsmagazine The Economist had an article about the Philippines which said, “Without fanfare, the Philippines is getting richer.”

In the same magazine, there was a column about the Philippines which was more interesting to many people. This was entitled “Rule by Montagues and Capulets” with the subtitle, “The family feud that holds the Philippines back.”

This refers to the Shakespearean play about two feuding families in Verona, Italy where two lovers, Romeo and Juliet, who came from the two opposing families ended up in a tragic death.

The column discusses the feud between the families of President Marcos and the former president Duterte whose daughter Sara is now Vice President. Bongbong and Sara ran as a team in the 2022 elections and won. Today, the two families are openly attacking each other verbally.

The First Lady had a public interview where she said that her anger was caused by the Dutertes openly and publicly calling her husband “bangag,” which is the local term for being high on drugs.

I have no intention of analyzing this rivalry because political rivalries between families is nothing new in the Philippines. Like previous rivalries, this specific competition is not based on ideology or policy differences. The attacks are purely personal and the feud is based on opposing family interests.

According to The Economist, the feud has negative consequences for the Philippines. First, it makes foreign policy less predictable because the Dutertes have a pro-China policy while President Marcos has pivoted back to the United States.

Second, although the country is better run under Marcos than it was under Duterte, the feud is a serious distraction and presents an image of political instability.

Third, according to The Economist, the feud “could make the next election campaign even dirtier and nastier than previous ones. Both families have much to lose.”

I remember in 1987, a year after EDSA and five days after the ratification of the 1987 Constitution, the noted Filipino author F. Sionil Jose convened around a hundred of the country’s scholars, writers, artists, politicians, economists, social scientists and other leaders in a series of seminars culminating in a Solidarity Conference. According to Sionil Jose, “From the very start, the hope was expressed that the unprecedented Solidarity Conference could provide a starting point for building a national consensus.” The message was that our country lacked a national consensus and its people did not have a sense of nationhood. The basic reason is that it is loyalty to the family that is pervasive in all aspects of our society. It is the primary reason why we have a Filipino diaspora. The domestic helper in Hong Kong, the office worker in the Middle East, the lonely seaman in a tanker and the middle-class migrant to the United States are all driven by the same motivation to provide a better future for their families.

Even in our social life, we see the predominance of family obligations. In any major social event – baptism, debuts, weddings – the priority in terms of invitations are always family members. The political life in this country has always been dominated by political clans who hold power based on loyalty from and to other families.

Businessmen have always criticized this dominance of family dynasties in the political spectrum. However, in Philippine business, more than 95 percent of business enterprises are family-owned or -controlled businesses. These entities range from small sari-sari stores to conglomerates like the Villar, Razon, Ayala, Gokongwei, Lucio Tan, Ramon Ang, Yuchengco and Aboitiz.

We often hear and read that the Filipinos’ loyalty to family is a deterrent to national unity. This family loyalty, according to many people, must be substituted by a different form of loyalty. The Marxists have tried to preach that loyalty to a social class should be paramount.

The thesis is that we have never developed a sense of nation because the Filipino does not even a sense of community with obligations to neighbors or neighborhoods. This dominant loyalty is to a family. He or she may not even know a neighbor but will keep in touch with a relative living even in a different country.

The Filipino has no sense of obligation to a neighbor he sees every day. However, he will feel obliged to help a relative he rarely sees and may not even like.

In my Strategic Management classes, I used to teach my students that culture is neutral – neither good nor bad. I say that professionalizing a family business must begin by accepting the fact that a family business will remain with the family. Therefore, we must learn to professionalize its management and develop sustainable competitive advantage without trying to change the ownership of the family.

Perhaps it is time we see ourselves as a nation of families, rather than as a nation of individuals bound by a sense of community. Perhaps the Philippines can only truly become a nation when we accept the family rather than the individual as the fundamental unit. Instead of condemning family loyalty as the source of evil in the social, political and economic life of our country, it may be time to determine how to harness the family as a basis for forging a national consensus. Then finally we may be able to realize a truly Filipino agenda for the 21st century.