Online: No holds barred

That was quite a yearend interview I experienced on Gene Orejana’s OnLine, no lines drawn in the ground, all barrels blazing. In previous interviews with other TV hosts, I was kept to my side of the program’s format – no sally into highly controversial issues. Well, Gene Orejana emptied his bomb bay of queries, and so did this author his answers. And we greeted the year 2004 perched atop a booting journalistic tank. We did away with the froth and frippery of the New Year with all the hopes in the world, all the smiles, all the optimism that we Filipinos are heir to.

First question on the line was the SWS yearend survey. It revealed that 90 per cent of Filipinos greeted the year 2004 with hope – great hope I think, and not with fear. Hope, despite all those huge black clouds looming over the country?

I had mulled the SWS survey earlier. And I knew what to say. My answer was that the Filipino thought and stirred on two levels. The first was spiritual. On this level, the Pinoy, however much he suffered, never lost hope. He always presumed the good Lord would take care of him, and so the morrow was never too bleary or too bleak. Hope springs eternal in the Filipino breast. The second level was ground level. Here most Filipinos thought and decided with their feet. Millions had left the country for sanctuary and jobs abroad and possibly millions more would migrate in the years to come.

The Filipino culture was like that. Unlike the Chinese, there could be no journey of a thousand miles starting with the first step. We prefer to skedaddle abroad, rather than sweat it out here, and apply our mind, our soul, our strength to building a nation no matter how much it takes, how long it takes. It is a culture, I added, that deters economic progress. We love life too much, our fiestas too much, our addiction to good time too much to hunker down to the blood, tears and sweat required by nation-building.

And so when we can, we hotfoot it for other lands, other climes. And as a Filipino residing in Pisa, Italy wrote me Filipinos there didn’t really much care how they scrubbed and wiped the stinking behinds of aging Segnores and Segnoras. So what, if they were care-givers? They were earning good money. There was nothing for them in the Philippines.

And so Gene lit on the elections.

Among the presidential candidates, was there anybody who could succeed in saving the Philippines? That was what they call a rhetorical question. I know and I think Gene also knew there was nobody. Save the Philippines? Could President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo? Could Fernando Poe Jr,? Could Ping Lacson? Could Raul Roco? Could Brother Eddie Villanueva?

No, not any of them could. Besides, the Philippines was too far gone for a single leader to perform this colossal task. Largely, it was the system that was at fault – a deranged democracy that had long lost its way, an economic structure benefitting only the elite, the rich and powerful, a social setup that barred the poor and the oppressed from any meaningful access to advanced education, property ownership and a decent sharing of the national wealth.

That was another bid hole in our culture. Filipinos never or hardly learn from history’s lessons. They keep repeating the same mistakes, the same blunders, the same follies, the same plunge into shallow waters. The elections since 1946 never really helped. Ditto the system of government. Ditto an economy ossified into free trade, a democracy that bawled like a circus and achieved little else. Now we were getting warm.

Now Gene Orejana knit his brows. But how could the Philippines get out of this big hole? I somehow suspected he was leading me on, that he knew what I was going to say. And I did. They system was bankrupt, I answered, was now in its death throes and had to be changed. But how? That was a high, hard one and I shallowed the bait. All of history, I said, was an endless convulsion of revolts and revolutions, the old disintegrating, the new emerging. New ideas, new concepts, new ways of thinking had to bolt to the surface, if the world was to breathe easier.

History was dynamic. Science and technology – always in motion – remained the twin sinews of economic progress. New, or reformed political systems had to be built around them. Expanding markets traced the new route of international relations. You absorbed Western science and technology, or you died. You improved productivity, or you died. You had to transform, enrich your culture. or you died. You educate your citizenry to new knowledge, new skills, new ways of doing things, or you died.

This is where 83 million Filipinos find themselves today.

So whither? Could there be a peaceful, non-violent passage to a new system? Gene Orejana knew his questions, when to pop them. I mulled that one with some agony. I knew I was on nationwide TV, with a nationwide audience. And both Gene and I were now fording deep waters where ordinarily the bulk of TV hosts dare not navigate. Again, I had history to bear me out. Bloodshed, I said, was often the catharsis or the handmaiden of great and unbearable national and international crises.

Bloodshed, I continued, may not spare the Philippines in this the coming hour of its historical moulting. Especially if the May 2004 elections should be characterized with massive cheating and a torrent of street upheavals. Raul Roco had already threatened to marshal his supporters into a protest march on Malacañang. And so with the others, Gene Orejana said. If cheated, the storm troopers of FPJ, and many of them were Marcos dictatorship veterans, would slam at the gates of power.

Now, we were getting really hot.

Would America intervene? Or would America just move out of the Philippines? The answer to that needed a verbal tightrope. America was the world’s only superpower, had spread Pax Americana almost to all four corners of the globe. It was almost certain that in a matter of months, the US would let go of Iraq. Iraq had turned out to be another Vietnam – a quagmire. The continuing death of US and coalition troops, not to mention UN and Allied personnel in the face of Iraqi guerrilla attacks, had become unbearable. Move out before it was too late.

So if the US would indeed move out of Iraq sometime next year, the awesome US military juggernaut would head for Asia. Here the terror of international terrorism was uppermost. Here a defiant North Korea with nuclear weapons lurked. And so did Kashmir, engaging the deadly confrontation of India and Pakistan. And so did the endless duel between China and Taiwan. These were flashpoints for war.

Ergo? Ergo, the Philippines would become a major staging area again of American troops, a program delayed because of America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq. Ergo, the only Filipino leader America trusts for the nonce is President Arroyo. Not FPJ, not Ping Lacson, not Raul Roco, not Brother Eddie. GMA has long been in the American loop, has long earned the trust of Uncle Sam who couldn’t care less about an ex-movie actor, an ex-policeman, a Born Again preacher, not even Raul Roco, who is not too happy about America’s increasing military presence.

In the end? America might interfere. Our military too. Martial law? We do not really know. All we know is that the Philippines figures critically on the America’s strategic chessboard for Asia.

But, despite the tramp of hooves of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, was there hope? Yes, in the wider historic sense, there was hope. There is always hope. China was the sleeping giant that woke up. And now China bids fair to become within 20-30 years the world’s economic superpower. South Korea rose from the ashes and wreckage of the Korean War in the 50s and its economy is now a wonder of the world. Singapore, a brackish backwater when Great Britain abandoned the island, tiny and puny, has built up a service industry that has few rivals elsewhere. Malaysia, once boasting only of rubber and tin, now has the kind of economic and political muscle that can stand up in defiance of the US.

I added that it just takes a few gifted individuals who start with a dream. Mahathir Mohamad in Malaysia, Park Chung Hee in South Korea, Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore, Chiang Ching- kuo in Taiwan, earlier the rebirth of the Meijis in Japan. They fleshed out their dreams. Theirs was a burning love of country, a reaching for the stars. Theirs was the indomitable courage, the willingness to go through hoops of fire. The masses were eventually unchained and emancipated.

But it couldn’t be done without bloodshed, in the case of many big bloodshed, in some not so much bloodletting. But, I concluded, that is how a new nation is born. The old has to perish and bleed to death for the new to sprout, grow and gladden the sky.

Thanks, Gene, for that interview. It was a whopper.