A blast from P-Noy’s dad

“Purveyors of the rosy picture continue to roll out endless statistics and charts to depict a growing economy, a country on the move… Beneath the outpourings of self-serving government data, hidden underneath the trappings of the good life in the big cities, there remains a depressed and dispirited people.

“Against the yardstick not of statistics but of the quality of life, the Filipino people as a whole are a melancholy-if patient-mass. Their daily diet is monotonous (rice, fish, vegetables), their clothes are threadbare and their homes primitive and crowded… In sum, the blessings of liberty have not included liberation from poverty.

“Foreign gadgetry and other luxury goods continue to flood the cities, and more people travel… But this only serves to dramatize the great disparities and chronic inequities of Filipino society.

“Indeed, the Philippines is a land of traumatic contrasts. Here is a land in which a few are spectacularly rich while the masses remain abjectly poor. Gleaming suburbia clashes with the squalor of slums.

“Here is a land where freedom and its blessings are a reality for a minority and an illusion for the many. Here is a land consecrated to democracy but run by an entrenched plutocracy.

“Here, too, are a people whose ambitions run high, but whose fulfillment is low and mainly restricted to the self- perpetuating élite. Here is a land of privilege and rank-a republic dedicated to equality but mired in an archaic system of caste.”

Guess who wrote those paragraphs? No, not Chit Pedrosa. No, it was not Ben Diokno either.

Those are paragraphs in an essay written in 1968 and published by the prestigious international journal, FOREIGN AFFAIRS. The author is none other than Benigno Aquino, Jr., the father of the current tenant at Malacañang. Here is the link: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/24006/benigno-s-aquino-jr/whats-wrong-with-the-philippines

I am not sure P-Noy is even aware of the essay. But I sure wish he takes time to read it… just ten minutes or so of his time. Entitled “What’s wrong with the Philippines” the essay is vintage Ninoy at his best, perceptive, eloquent… a master communicator of ideas… able to appreciate the big picture. During my early days as a journalist, interviewing Senator Ninoy in his house at Times street was always memorable.

 It is a fantastic essay and if P-Noy internalizes the points his father made in it, the essay could provide a good social and political perspective needed to formulate a vision for the country his administration sorely lacks. Ninoy’s essay sets the obvious agenda any administration dedicated to the welfare of our people should pursue.

Here are some more of Ninoy’s observations:

“Unemployment runs up to a million, while the under-employed represent 20 to 25 percent of the population, largely in the rural areas…  Another is the recent wave of crime which has converted the country into a land of terror in time of peace.

“Add to this a government which is financially almost bankrupt, state agencies ridden by debts and honeycombed with graft, industries in pathetic distress, prices in a continuing spiral, and there is good reason for the Filipino to feel sapped of confidence, hope and will. The new, young Filipino leaders who exhort their peers to be activists, and not to give up, are greeted with apathy and indifference.

“In the early thirties, Manuel L. Quezon, as he led the fight for independence, once raged: “I would rather have a country run like hell by Filipinos than one run like heaven by the Americans.” The father of his country did not live to see this preference realized, but his political heirs have.

“Since independence, Philippine presidents have logged a grand total of fourteen national plans and all they have to show for them is a nation that looks, sounds and feels discouraged. It is confused by the multiplicity of its cravings and concerns, floundering in haphazard attempts to modernize and innovate.”

The horrifying thing about everything Ninoy said in 1968 is that if he were alive today, he could have written the same essay and with a minimum of statistical updating still sound like a disappointingly true description of our country today.

In other words, nothing happened to move the country since 1968, when I was a college sophomore at UP. Today, four years after I have retired from my day job, the same problems prevail, only worse.

Hangang dito na lang ba tayo? Of course we should never lose hope. But we ought to recognize what seems like the hopelessness of our situation if we go on being business as usual mode.

Think about it… P-Noy was probably just six years old when his father wrote this essay. I hope P-Noy not only reads this essay but contemplates on the points his father raised.

What is wrong with the Philippines then is still what’s wrong with the Philippines now. Hopefully, P-Noy gets inspired by his father’s words and gets a sense of mission, so lacking in his tenure so far.

Is it too late for P-Noy with just two and half years to go? Probably, if we go by what we see now. But hopefully, not.

A sense of mission can do wonders. It shouldn’t be outside the realm of possibilities for 3-pointers to be scored in the last two minutes of P-Noy’s watch. If that happens, he will do his father proud and the Filipino nation, grateful.

Rumor grapevine

Never a dull moment in this town! The rumor grapevine had been pretty active the past few weeks. Of course many of these rumors are to be taken with a grain of salt but then again, others have more than a morsel of truth that cannot be openly talked about. Here are a few…

I wonder if you have heard that one of the senators tagged in the Napoles scam is said to have sold his house in one of Metro Manila’s plush heavily gated communities. The buyer is supposedly a Chinoy retail upstart who is challenging the dominance of the country’s richest Forbes billionaire.

It is hard to believe the senator has run out of money so selling his house is probably a strategy to liquefy before any court freezes disposition of all his assets. But where do you keep all that cold cash?

There must be a strong demand for large safety deposit boxes in the banks where presumably, it is safer to keep illicit cash. Maybe AMLAC should cover safety deposit boxes too.

Then there had been a lot of persistent talk about how Pagcor had been making it tough for one of the investors in its so called Entertainment City. But this investor happens to be the son of one of Asia’s top gambling mogul.

From what I have heard, the investor’s dream is turning into a City of Nightmares. He didn’t expect such problems from a government that talks of Daang Matuwid… At the rate he is being supposedly screwed, it is more like Daang Tumuwad.

I wonder if his holiness, the ever honest and most matuwid P-Noy has heard about it or wants to hear about it.

And speaking of investors in Entertainment City, I heard that the NBI has filed a very serious case with the DOJ against the lawyers of one of the more controversial investors now building a casino there. They initially investigated how the foreign investor managed to buy the land and found out the law firm incorporated a number of dummy corporations with the senior partners as incorporators.

The foreign investor told the NBI he was given a clean bill of compliance by his lawyers and in good faith, he believed them since the law firm is a de campanilla one and is a favorite of foreign investors here. The NBI supposedly hired a forensic accountant who found out the dummy corporations were not in the law firm’s books of accounts.

Oh well… forming those dummy corporations is the usual strategy of most law firms to enable their foreign investor clients to go around the restrictive provisions of our Constitution. It is so normal and maybe the law firm in this case got careless.

A month ago, PhilStar reported that during a hearing at the House of Representatives, the legislators were informed that “DOJ earlier recommended the filing of charges against 16 Filipino lawyers and businessmen and eight Japanese casino executives for alleged violations of the anti-dummy law that requires a 60-40 ownership in favor of Filipino investors when the firm acquired land in the entertainment complex…”

The case bears watching because the DOJ can succumb to the companero mentality and go softly on their companeros. Cleaning the judicial system should also involve cleaning the ranks of the Philippine Bar.

 Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is[email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco