Get rid of the Filipino's false sense of pride

Pres. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III’s visit to Vietnam for the ASEAN Summit has taught us one important lesson that we are not only far behind our ASEAN neighbors, but we even have to learn from the Vietnamese how to grow rice. Indeed it was the first time in three decades that finally a Filipino President accepted the reality that we Filipinos have much to learn from our Vietnamese neighbors about the efficient use of their arable land.

For too long, the Filipino’s false sense of pride did more badly for our country than good. How many pundits wrote volumes of articles about how we Filipinos proudly taught our ASEAN neighbors how to produce rice. But now that they’re very good in rice production and we have failed very badly in this endeavor, our false sense of pride says that we cannot learn anything from those whom we taught. But if we swallow our pride, like what P-Noy just did, then there is hope in this country that we can improve rice production learning from Vietnam.

Three decades ago, the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) was established in the Philippines, and countries like Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam came here to learn how to produce rice. However our ASEAN neighbors just did not plant the variety of rice that they learned from the IRRI, they made their own research and in the end, they came up with rice with a much higher yield on a per hectare basis. This is not to mention that they used mechanical equipment in order to speed up production.

Apparently P-Noy could not help but notice how the Vietnamese used all their arable land when he flew to the Vietnamese capital Hanoi. During the Vietnam war, the US forces defoliated much of the Vietnamese countryside with Agent “Orange” to deny the Vietcong forest cover, hence, the Vietnamese had to plant rice which wasn’t affected by this herbicide.

Perhaps P-Noy ought to fly in a small plane and also look at how much arable land we are using for food production. One major problem we are experiencing in this country is that many people opt to become squatters in urban areas rather than till the farms. This is why people believe that the Philippines is over populated! But the reality is, there are very few people working in the countryside. Thanks also to the ill-fated CARP law!

In some areas, it is quite understandable why people flee from their homes in the countryside… because of the insurgency. So if P-Noy wants to solve the mess in this country, he ought to tap the jobless in the squatter areas and send them to till the fields in the countryside, which he of course must clear of communist insurgents.

Meanwhile, Vietnam a country that we regarded as behind us in the ’70s due to the Vietnam war recently signed with Japan to supply them its second nuclear plant, as soon as the Parliament in Tokyo approves this deal on Atomic Cooperation. Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung announced this only last Monday during his meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan in Hanoi. This nuclear plant is expected to be completed by the year 2021.

What can we say but that in 1986, the mother of Pres. P-Noy scrapped our Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) as it was suspected to be a corrupt, rotten deal hatched by then Pres. Ferdinand Marcos. Worse of all, because of our false sense of Filipino pride, Tita Cory made sure that we paid the United States for the nuclear plant. It’s akin to buying a brand new car, but we didn’t use it because we didn’t like the seller… but we paid it anyway! Today the Philippines is suffering from brownouts because of our politicians’ lack of foresight. Vietnam’s nuclear plant will operate by the year 2021, but in this country, no politician would dare make plans that far away.

So in the end, the Philippine President went to Vietnam to realize that we must learn from the Vietnamese how to plant or produce rice; and while Vietnam lurches forward by getting another nuclear plant, the Philippines stagnates in neutral waiting for a political messiah to move our nation forward.

If we can learn from the Vietnamese how to plant rice, perhaps a minor functionary of the Aquino government, Assistant Secretary for Communications Mai Mislang should also learn from the Vietnamese how to act with good manners and right conduct when having an official function in a foreign country. Granted that Ms. Mislang found out that the Vietnamese served wine that “sucks”, she should have kept this information to herself.

Her faux pas had her boss Ricky Carandang saying that she is trusted by the President even if she tweeted that Vietnamese men lack sex appeal and if you want to die, just cross the streets of Hanoi? But Carandang obviously shouldn’t have defended her. When will they learn to run this country? Better still, when will our government officials stop embarrassing our country?

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