What was she thinking?

Call it Robin Hood’s approach to development. I am not sure it really worked in Mr. Hood’s day beyond getting a few peasants happy for a drunken moment. I am certain it isn’t going to work today. When Ate Glo said she "will be tougher on those who have it easy than on those who have it tough already," I dismissed that as plain political populist talk. Ate Glo had been talking like this lately.

But how could she invoke the Robin Hood principle one minute and shortly thereafter, challenge the rich to help her create jobs? "I challenge our business community to rise to the occasion and embrace selfless nationalism. Invest in our people and our country instead of giving excuses for keeping your money abroad where it cannot put our people to work."

On face value, the challenge is valid. But she can’t threaten to be tough on those who have it easy, and still expect them to hang around. I mean, if I felt alluded to when she enunciated her Robin Hood development approach, I am not about to heed her call to bring back my money for any reason, much less to help her get off the hook with her promises.

Of course she wasn’t talking to me or about me. My paltry retirement money is in pesos rather than dollars, a pretty stupid posture to maintain, specially after Ate Glo enunciated her Robin Hood principle. If I had serious money, I would take her inaugural as a signal for accelerated capital flight and consequently, a further depreciation of the peso.

Local or foreign, those with access to capital have to be convinced it makes sense to hang around any country. I doubt they like being threatened in a presidential inaugural address as potential targets for tough measures. Appeal to their social conscience perhaps, to do something about the poor, in addition to paying the right taxes, but don’t threaten them.

The 10 promises of Ate Glo all cost money, money the Treasury does not have. Given that common knowledge, those in the upper classes know exactly what Ate Glo means when she said she would be tough on them. The money she needs would come from them somehow.

In a sense, Ate Glo was contradictory in her inaugural. She played on class differences and animosities as badly as Erap and the FPJ camp did in the past. She was obviously trying to impress the masa but at the cost of scaring those who can help her bring life to the economy. What was she thinking?

The first order of business if Ate Glo wants those 10 million jobs is to create a business climate that will enhance business confidence, not class warfare. She needs to convince the locals who have long ago evacuated their capital to more business friendly countries to return. Appeals to nationalism and patriotism ring hallow these days.

The same is true in trying to plug the brain drain. It is not enough to "challenge our young men and women; there is a role to play in the re-creation of our nation, some in honest public service, most in productive private endeavor." An appeal to patriotism is no longer enough.

Only someone who has not experienced what our OFWs have to grapple with can say as Ate Glo did that "It is personal patriotism not impersonal free markets that makes nation strong and great." Easy for her to say that! She’s had it easy. She had the luxury to be patriotic, at least as she understands the meaning of the word.

I am one of the older ones who believe in patriotism but in my 50 years or so in this earth, I have come to realize that patriotism is also a two-way street. The country must also earn that patriotism by assuring its citizens the ability to live in peace and prosperity. No one wants to work abroad and be separated from family and friends. People do it because their country miserably failed them.

Based on her inaugural, she has to be tough on herself too. She has always had it easy.

Singapore High School

A Filpino expat in the United States pointed out to me a recent article in the Wall Street Journal about a top high school in Singapore that gears its graduates to successfully enter prestigious universities in the US and England. It’s amazing, this Pinoy observed, how much resources Singapore invests in the education of its young people. While Filipino HS students are thinking of taking up nursing to go abroad, Singaporean high school students are targeting Harvard and Yale.

The school is Raffles Junior College, established in 1982, has its roots in Raffles Institution, a secondary school for boys established in 1823 by Sir Stamford Raffles, the colonial Briton who founded the city-state of Singapore. The WSJ reports that Raffles Institution, which still exists, built its reputation as a bastion of meritocracy, accepting gifted children from all socioeconomic classes and producing dozens of leaders over the years – among them, Lee Kuan Yew, the patriarch of modern Singapore.

The amazing thing is, Raffles charges students just $15 a month in fees. It is a product of Singapore’s highly competitive approach to education, designed to fuel the national economy. To attract top talent to its island economy, Singapore also offers scholarships to bright teens from across Asia. There are some 100 foreign students at the school. Most are from China, Malaysia and India and attend Raffles on full scholarship.

Raffles, the WSJ reports, is the peak of a government-controlled pyramid-style school structure that unabashedly pushes the cream to the top. Starting with a "primary-school leaving exam" that helps determine what secondary school a child gets into, Singapore’s system includes four years of basic secondary school followed by an exam that determines what junior college one attends for two years of pre-university schooling. By the time they graduate, Raffles students have an extra year of schooling compared with US teens. Back here, we complain about a one-year remedial bridge program!

WSJ reports that at Raffles, as at most schools in Singapore, math and science are stressed. Just eight percent of Raffles students major in humanities, and almost all of them still take advanced math courses as one of their four subjects. But the students are encouraged to join at least three clubs or teams, ranging from water polo to the economic and current affairs society, and do charity work. Last year, a group of students raised money and went to Cambodia to help refurbish a drop-in center for street kids.

A big number of Raffles graduates get to study abroad because they are also, again financed by government scholarships. WSJ reports that government underwrites the college education of hundreds of top Singaporean junior-college graduates to produce leaders for agencies and corporations under government control. Students seeking such aid must sign a contract, or a bond, to come back and work for a government agency or corporation for six years.

With Singapore and Malaysia investing heavily on the education of their future leaders, and with the quality of our own educational system deteriorating before our eyes, the future will no doubt, firmly belong to our neighbors. The irony is, our politicians don’t seem the least concerned.

Yeah… Right!!!

Here’s Dr. Ernie E.

While ferrying workers back and forth from an offshore oil rig, the helicopter lost power and went down. Fortunately, it landed safely in a lake. Struggling to get out, one man tore off his seat belt, inflated his life vest and jerked open the exit door.

"Don’t jump!" the pilot called out. "This thing is supposed to float!"

As the man leapt from the helicopter into the lake, he yelled back, "Yeah, and it’s supposed to fly too!"

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]