What’s right and wrong with Phl?

The Philippines is still the home of the happiest people in the world, still the producer of the prettiest international beauty winners, the top call center and BPO location and the supplier of the most seamen and domestic helpers. And yet, in ASEAN, it has the slowest internet and the worst rating on safety index, as well as second to the worst in corruption, health care, wage and salary levels, worst quality of transport and roads, extreme difficulty in doing business and in opening new enterprises, as well as the costliest price of petrol and power. It’s the most disaster and calamity-prone country. More urgently, the Philippines is becoming the worst affected by COVID-19 pandemic and has proven to have shown the least effective response to the virus.

In fairness to ourselves, we have so much to be proud of. The Philippines is the first Asian country to declare independence in 1898. We were second to Japan in 1950 when it comes to economic development. Our country was the envy of many of our neighboring countries because for the longest time, our democracy was strong, under the administrations of Presidents Quezon, Osmeña, Roxas, Quirino, Magsaysay, Garcia, and Macapagal. The administration of Marcos started strong, until he entertained the temptations of extending his tenure beyond the constitutional limits. The destruction of our political institutions, the collapse of our economic development and our social and cultural lives started during Martial Law and thereafter. To me, the Martial Law dictatorship was the deepest wound inflicted on our nation, perhaps worse than the Second World War, and all the calamities and disasters combined.

The Marcos regime destroyed the two-party system and created a behemoth, the KBL, Kilusang Bagong Lipunan. He took over the control of many vital business enterprises and entrusted it to his cronies, dummies, underlings, and subalterns. He jailed all his major political opponents, and his military committed multiple and repeated human rights violations. Many of our leading opposition stalwarts fled to the US and elsewhere. He closed all media outlets and his cohorts took over control of all print and broadcast media. Marcos damaged the soul and the spirit of the people, brainwashed them into submission and blind obedience. In addition to all the Marcos-inflicted injuries to our social, political and cultural development, the Philippines continue to suffer due to overpopulation, too much reliance on service sectors and withdrawal from industrial and agricultural development, neglect of infrastructures, except Duterte's Build, Build, Build. But it is too late, and too little.

One of our most vulnerable Achilles heels is our neglect of the defense budget. In ASEAN, the Philippines has the lowest percentage of defense budget in relation to GDP. Ours is only one per cent, while the rest of ASEAN, including the poorest -- Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos PDR, have defense budgets ranging from 15 to 35 percent of GDP. This is known to China. That is why Beijing is bullying us left and right because we are a member of another NATO -- No Action, Talk Only. We cannot win back our territories by issuing a diplomatic protest every day, which is all saliva and no bullet, as practiced by DFA Secretary Teddy Boy Locsin. We should follow US president Theodore Roosevelt's credo of “Carry a big stick and keep your mouth shut.” Locsin is behaving as if he is still a presidential spokesman or speech writer. Of course, we cannot blame him for our lack of military might. The only right thing for him to do then is do his diplomatic job silently and, well, not telegraph his punches each time he makes a move.

The most problematic part of our culture, politics, and even economy is that Filipinos talk too much and do too little. We have too many commentators, columnists, and radio broadcasters. They have brilliant ideas, but nobody is implementing them. The politicians talk too much and do too little. The worst are those who do not talk at all, do not promise at all, and so they have nothing to fulfill. All they do is to buy votes and the people support them for lack of any other viable choice. The really good ones consider politics too dirty and too expensive for them. And that is the greatest tragedy of the Philippines.