I am filled with hope and optimism about the great long-term future of the Philippine economy, especially after a weekend trip to Zamboanga City. I had the opportunity to meet top business and political leaders, Mayor Maria Clara Lobregat, Congressman Celso Lobregat and Muslim minority leaders.
Even in Zamboanga, which has unfairly gained a notorious reputation worldwide in the past few months because of terrorist violence, including the latest bombing at the historic Fort Pilar, the leaders and the people are still planning for the future with their dream projects. On the night of October 20, when the bomb exploded in Fort Pilar, I was having dinner with businessman Wee Dee Ping at his unique mountain resort 1,000 feet above sea level. He was explaining this project that he dreams of completing in the next few years. He said that in two or three years, Zamboanga City will totally overcome these latest tragedies and his dream project would then be ready to help Zamboanga City impress the rest of the world.
Next year, 2003, has been declared "Visit Philippines Year" by the World Tourism Organization (WTO). Tourism Secretary Richard Gordon, despite the noisy bickering of pessimists, is dreaming of between three and five million tourist arrivals compared to 1.8 million last year. Ignoring the shenanigans of our politicians and the murderous rampage of Abu Sayyaf bandits, rival tycoons John Gokongwei Jr. and Henry Sy are among the entrepreneurs taking big risks by building new shopping malls in rural regions and provinces nationwide, thanks to their indomitable faith in the long-term Philippine future. (Gokongwei was originally willing to risk over US$600 million in his foiled bid for control of PLDT and Fort Bonifacio.)
The Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) led by president Sergio R. Luis Jr. and the Philippines Inc. group led by president Miguel B. Varela are taking courageous risks in defying the national government’s neglect of the overpopulation crisis and risking the ire of the Catholic Church with their dream of propagating family planning to reverse the country’s socio-economic decline.
The Federation of Filipino Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Inc. (FFCCCII), led by president John K. C. Ng, is committed to invest in new enterprises. They’re also constructing and donating thousands of public school buildings in the poorest rural barrios as part of their 40-year-old "Operation Barrio Schools" to help alleviate mass poverty and social injustice.
We should not allow the triumph of cowardly terrorists – such as Osama bin Laden, the Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah – who kidnap and kill civilians. We should defy their diabolical goal of sowing terror in our hearts. We should not allow these terrorists to paralyze the country’s capacity to take entrepreneurial risks. We should fight back not with bombs or military assaults, but with hope in the future and by ensuring that tourism will flourish, investments will continue and the economy will sustain growth. We should make the Philippines the harbinger of hope and economic progress in Southeast Asia.
Instead of endlessly complaining, how are we contributing to nation-building and to ensuring Philippine progress? How are we in our own small ways helping fix the problems, instead of parroting our politicians who enjoy fixing the blame? How are we helping the country overcome the age-old culture of pessimism and encouraging the dreamers among us to take risks? In the corporate headquarters of a Makati businessman, there is a framed poster inside his office with words, whose author is unknown, that should be our guide:
To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach out for another is to risk involvement.
To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true self.
To place your ideas, your dreams, before a crowd is to risk their loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To live is to risk dying,
To hope is to risk despair
To try is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing.
They may avoid suffering and sorrow, but they cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, live.
Only a person who risks is free.
Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) president Sergio R. Ortiz-Luiz Jr. and Philippines Inc. president Miguel B. Varela recently wrote a letter inviting this writer to attend their October 29 "Forum on Population Management" at 12 noon at the Ballroom of Dusit Hotel Nikko in Makati. Is this the start of the exasperated business community’s activism and lobbying for decisive actions that will slow down the country’s runaway population growth, which has worsened social injustice, mass poverty and economic ills? Will this forum finally encourage President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to abandon her past ambivalence on the family planning issue and embolden her to take decisive action?
Invited as guest speaker is the courageous dreamer who successfully campaigned for Thailand’s family planning cause, the activist Thai Senator Mechai Viravaivya who is founder and chairman of the privately-funded Population and Community Development Association based in Bangkok.
Mechai is an iconoclast, personifyingthe impact of an individual on the life of a nation by almost single-handedly helping slow down Thailand’s runaway population growth. Recipient of numerous honorary doctorate degrees and awards including the UN Gold Peace Medal, Mechai used humor and public information campaign to help slow down Thailand’s population growth rate of 3.2 percent per year in 1970 to only 1.6 percent in 1986. It is one of the most dramatically successful family planning programs in world history, helping alleviate rural mass poverty and making Thailand a progressive economic power in ASEAN.
Mechai once compared the rural poor "like a dog watching an airplane fly overhead." In the Philippines, one courageous activist who has never lost hope in his dream of family planning and responsible parenthood to be promoted nationwide is former rural doctor Senator Juan Flavier. Will there be more courageous individuals like Mechai and Flavier who will risk backlash from powerful groups in order to champion the cause of family planning and other progressive endeavors?
Lim told The Philippine STAR: "If we can popularize China’s hybrid rice technology for all our rural farmers nationwide, even if we add only one additional ton of rice per hectare, then we can already eliminate our need to import around 600,000 metric tons of rice per year. The Philippines has 900,000 hectares of irrigated rice lands on which to invest in this new technology and free the country of import dependence. If China can feed 1.3 billion people with this technology, why don’t we try to grow more rice and feed our 80 million population?"
The eldest son of the late entrepreneur Lim She Leng who died early and his late strong-willed mother Maria Co, Henry Lim Bon Liong nurtured the growth of Sterling Paper Group into a major manufacturer of paper products, notebooks and other office and school supplies. The group is now also into greeting cards, Expressions Stationery Shops, furniture, toys, five industrial estates in provinces outside of Metro Manila, and diversification into agriculture since 1998.
The inspiration for Lim’s hybrid rice project is Professor Yuan Long Ping, world-famous as China’s "Father of Hybrid Rice." Today, Lim has a 40-hectare experimental rice farm in Sta. Cruz, Laguna and a farm in Davao consisting of 500 hectares. Supporting Lim in his quest for Philippine rice self-sufficiency is billionaire Luis "Cito" Lorenzo Jr., the Secretary for the Creation of One Million Jobs and proponent of agricultural modernization.
Lim told the The Philippine STAR: "What is the best way to stop the pernicious smuggling of rice? How do we save P12 billion a year from rice imports? We should all work to help our poor rural farmers to increase their rice production per hectare. With rice self-sufficiency, we can also help eradicate rural mass poverty. We entrepreneurs of the Filipino Chinese community are concerned about the lack of a middle-class in the Philippines, we are concerned about the crisis in mass poverty and social inequalities, and we hope to help by pushing agricultural modernization following the inspiring example of China and Taiwan."
Furniture tycoon Leandro "Dinky" Lopez-Rizal Bantug on September 20 invited this writer to lunch at Dulcinea Greenhills with his friends Dave Froelich and his Filipina wife Joyce Limjoco Tioseco. Dave established the Manila office of the world-famous Skimore, Owings & Merrill architectural firm in the early 1980s for design work of the US$100 million Asian Development Bank (ADB) project in Ortigas Center. He was also director of architecture and engineering for the Universal Studios projects in Osaka, Japan, also those in Orlando, Florida and California. When I half-jokingly suggested to Dave to design a resort project for Basilan province which will surely become world-famous, he said: "I already have made such plans. In fact, I’ve already written President Gloria Arroyo about my plans on November 12, 2001. I will also be meeting Secretary Gordon to ask his support in making Basilan a tourist destination."
In his letter to President Gloria Arroyo, the American architect said: "I am pleased that your plan to eradicate the Abu Sayyaf includes socio-economic development. Highly visible development and new jobs on their home turf of Basilan will eliminate such extremists... The beauty of Basilan is yet untapped for the tourist market... Here is what we propose be built by November 2004: a 450-room beach and golf resort that will create 900 permanent jobs, a regional airport that will create 250 permanent jobs, a hotel management school that will create 100 permanent jobs…roads and bridges. This development will be built as a self-contained, defensible village..."
Froelich was very glad that unlike most Filipinos who dismissed him as crazy or were shocked to hear of resort plans for Basilan, Secretary Gordon pledged all-out support and later announced to the mass media such plans. The landowner of the proposed Basilan project is the Alano family, whom Froelich got to know through the introduction of his friend Conrado Benitez II of Philippine Women’s University. His proposed name for the resort is "Kireihama," which is Japanese for "Beautiful Beach." Froelich can read and written Chinese and Japanese characters.
When almost all of his prominent Filipino friends expressed skepticism, pointing to the country’s terrible peace and order conditions, and saying his Basilan dream is too ambitious, Froelich would reply: "People always ask me if I would be successful in this dream project. What’s unacceptable to me is not trying to do this exciting and feasible project."
What budget does Froelich need to accomplish this resort project and who will fund it? He said US$150 million, and he wants to solicit a consortium of international investors, including wealthy Muslim nations in the Middle East and perhaps overseas Chinese business groups in Asia. When this writer commented that perhaps the capital needed was too high, the gray-haired Dinky Bantug gave an impish smile and replied: "If our politicians and military leaders are spending so many billions of pesos and wasting so many young Filipino lives in their long and unsuccessful war against the Moro rebels, why don’t we get private investors to fund this resort and help seek a permanent solution to the socio-economic crises in these islands of Basilan, Sulu and other places? I believe in the future of Philippine tourism."