Ask yourself what’s your tolerance level

With the nation still mired in this stupid constitutional crisis, perhaps now is the time to reflect and ponder, then ask yourself this very important question about your life, "what is your tolerance level?" For instance, when you’re stuck in traffic going from Makati to say Quezon City, a trip that normally would take 30 minutes, when this trip takes you more than an hour that’s the time you get fidgety and restless. When finally, it is taking you two hours, you get out into the streets to find out what’s wrong and do something about the problem.

I guess life in this sick nation of ours is very much similar to a bad traffic situation. When you see that the traffic mess is due to a road accident, motorists quietly suffer through the traffic jam that follows, until he runs out of patience and then decides to get down from his vehicle and see if he can do something to improve a hapless situation. Again, we ask you, what’s your tolerance level, for instance on how low would our peso to the dollar go before you do something about it? When the peso dips down to P200 to one US dollar?

If you didn’t know, eight million Filipinos have already reached their tolerance levels and have left this country in total disgust because yes, our leaders cannot produce jobs for them in their own country. They are called the overseas contract workers (OCWs). In other countries, people who flee for a better life are often called traitors to the motherland, much like a soldier deserting his post to run away from the battle.

But in the Philippines, these Filipinos who found jobs in other countries are not considered traitors, but our new-found heroes, after all, they earn dollars abroad and send them back home thus helping stabilize our peso to the dollar rate. But despite the remittances of the eight million Filipinos working abroad our peso is deteriorating more than it should. Well, I just got this text message from my sister Adela Kono, which goes, "Our country is not poor. Our money is just in the wrong hands. The poor and the needy just do not know how to access the money. Not enough money is spent in the right places. Yet, there is so much money for corruption to go around!"

Well, we just held a mammoth rally at the Fuente Osmena in Cebu City last Wednesday attended by some 100,000 indignant Cebuanos. It is by far the biggest rally ever held in Cebu City, bigger than the Erap impeachment rally, bigger than that fateful, albeit historic February day when Cory Aquino came and triggered what is now known as the People Power revolt.

That rally is our clearest proof that the patience of the Cebuanos is wearing thin as far as the way this country is being governed. Don’t get me wrong, we are not supporting the beleaguered Supreme Court Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. because he is a fellow Cebuano, far from that. Davide is merely the spark plug that ignited the passions within the Cebuano folk that this nation has been utterly mismanaged by our political leaders.

Again, just as a reminder, when we were granted our independence on July 4,1946, we were second to Japan in terms of our economy. Decades later, our neighbors even those that were ravaged by war, like South Korea or Vietnam, are overtaking us. Yet, our preoccupation as a nation has remained the same, who is going to be the next President? Why don’t we peek into the future and ask ourselves, will this country really change if we have a Fernando Poe Jr., Sen. Panfilo "Ping" Lacson, Sen. Raul Roco or President Gloria Arroyo as the elected President for 2004? The answer of course is a big fat no!

The problem clearly is this nation has become ungovernable and we must address this before we splinter into mini-states like what happened to Yugoslavia, where they have broken into Bosnia Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia and Macedonia. I’m not sure if Slovenia is part of what used to be Yugoslavia. But clearly, if a country cannot hold itself together, it breaks apart and if you didn’t know, Yugoslavia broke apart into tiny nations for three simple reasons – politics, language and religion! Mind you, what used to be Czechoslovakia also split into two nations on Jan.1, 1993. They are now called the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

History tells us that China itself isn’t whole even if they want to be one China because of what they call their renegade Province of Taiwan. That Hongkong and Macau are under what is known as a Special Autonomous Region (SAR) shows that indeed, China has to live with the reality that there are more than one system of government operating in China. What about the Philippines? We ask again, what’s your tolerance level? When will we say enough already? Are we to expect a massive exodus of disgruntled Filipinos leaving our country for greener pastures?