Yes, Pinoys are hungry - for change and justice!

As US President-elect Barack Obama said, “Change has come to America!” Again we can only sigh with envy that after a long and arduous presidential campaign, Americans have chosen a leader that would lead them out of the financial precipice they are in and bring back the glory days of the good ol’ US of A! This brings us to ask… what about the Philippines? When can we fix ourselves and usher in a new beginning for our country? Because America is already a federalized nation, what they needed was a new president who would steer them from the bad policies of Pres. George W. Bush and bring them back to the path of peace and that American dream called prosperity.

But in the Philippines, we have already seen that replacing the conjugal Marcos dictatorship with the opposition leaders then led by Cory Aquino, through the EDSA Revolt, only brought a new promise for change for this country. Yet four presidents after Marcos, the Philippines hasn’t gone anywhere forward… we’re still a Third World country and I guess we are doomed to always be such unless we start changing our ways.

As we wrote a week ago, when we were listed as one of founding members of the United Nations (UN) we were then a Third World country. Sixty-one years after the founding of the UN, the Philippines is still a Third World country. That only means that there is something terribly wrong with our past and current political system and changing presidents isn’t the solution to our problems. But changing our system of politics might do the trick!

What did we have before President Ferdinand Marcos threw out the best Constitution in this country? We had a two-party system just like what the Americans had with their Republican and Democratic parties. But Marcos threw out that system in favor of personality politics, creating the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL) that became a political monolith. But as always in the case of personality politics, when the leader dies or loses power, his political party dies or disappears with him.

Therefore what we need to do is fix our political system, adopt the two-party system and do a paradigm shift toward a federal system of governance where political power isn’t concentrated on the President alone. But this means Charter changes. Unfortunately, the rabid and loyal followers of Tita Cory Aquino refuse to change, even if they know too well that such a change would do this country more good than bad.

Last Wednesday, The Philippine STAR came up with a front-page report dubbed, “World Hunger Survey: RP 5th.” This was a World Food Day survey by Gallup International-Voice of the People 2008 that showed that four out of every 10 Filipinos reported having little or no food at all on their tables in the last 12 months. Of course we can dispute this survey, as many Filipinos would rather scrimp on food so they could buy a Globe SIM card.

I have been around the countryside and I know that for as long as people work on the land, they would never grow hungry. So it is possible that this survey was done in the blighted districts of Metro Manila where poverty is so prevalent. This report is quite embarrassing to Filipinos, the majority of whom regard a Jollibee or McDo hamburger as a snack… where a lot of Filipinos eat five or even six meals a day! Like what I said, we can dispute this Gallup survey. I know for a fact that certain students would give up their snacks just to save on their cell phone load.

However there is no dispute about another hunger that Filipinos are all experiencing… the hunger for change… to have a government that is run like heaven by Filipinos… which is one of our people’s most elusive dreams. What about our hunger for justice? Twenty-two years after the EDSA Revolt, we have seen scandals plaguing the judiciary, where the so-called “rogues in robes” have become as common as street thugs or crooks! Yes, sir, we are all hungry for that change for a better country. But as we all know, our politicians are part of this problem. The question is, do they want to be a part in fixing this problem or should we fix this nation without those politicians? Well, that was what happened to the Marcos dictatorship, but I hope it won’t happen again.

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Guess who’s back in Cebu City after a month-long absence? Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña, who arrived from the United States after his bladder was removed due to cancer. However he is back in Cebu City only for the weekend to visit his ailing mother in Bacolod and give his State of the City Address (SOCA), after that he goes back to the US for more tests. We’ll report on this in Wednesday’s column. At this point, we can only wish him good health!

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.philstar.com. He also hosts a weekly talkshow, “Straight from the Sky,” shown every Monday, 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.