Even if Erap quit, the problem would still be ourselves - BY THE WAY by Max V. Soliven

The simplistic battle cry of the "united opposition", many churchmen and citizens these days is: "Erap out!" or "Erap resign!" or "Oust Erap!"

It is being made to appear that if Joseph Ejercito Estrada were booted out of Malacañang by a People Power Part II, shouted out of office by angry demonstrators, or "impeached," or forced to flee with his tail between his legs, or were simply to collapse – or, in an extreme case, vanished into thin air, then the sun would begin to shine, business would rebound from bust to boom, the peso would soar, and foreign investments would start flooding into the country.

The next imagined step on the way to salvation – to hear her drumbeaters and bugle-blowers trumpet it – would be for La Gloria to come into excelsis and be proclaimed the "new" President, transforming the government into one of shining virtue "within 100 days" with her magic wand. And among her leading, "chosen" Apostles, naturally, is Lito Osmeña.

Or some other "redeemer" might, like a volcanic eruption, emerge from the void, say through a kudeta (coup) or through another People Power Part III. The possible scenarios at this frenetic stage are almost limitless, with Sin (The Cardinal) giving all oppositionists his holy benediction, and the Makati Business Club and other business and financial groups (disheartened by Standard and Poor’s downgrading, and wailing that we’re on the way to the Poorhouse) belting out a chorus of "Boo! Boo! Boo! Resign! Resign! Resign!"

And, don’t forget Saint Cory Aquino (during whose regime jueteng, cronyism, kamag-anakism, corruption, etc., were non-existent) is out there, leading a "people’s congress", devising ways and means of non-violently evicting Estrada. Or moving him to depart, by beseeching him to "find it in your heart to go" and intoning, "it is a fight between right and wrong . . ."

Poor Erap. Is he to be banished from Paradise, a.k.a. as Serpent Land, by an Angel with a Flaming Sword? If he is "Mr. Wrong," who then is "Mrs. Right" or "Mr. Right"?

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I’m afraid that with or without Erap, we’d still have jueteng, payola, bribery, extortion, corruption, graft, blackmail, hoodlums in robes, hoodlums in barong Tagalog, smugglers, kidnappers – and an inhospitable climate not just for foreign investment but for local businessmen.

C’mon, let’s face it. The hidebound bureaucracy would still be there, as it existed during the time of Marcos and was never dismantled. Even the EDSA People Power’s "one bright shining moment" soon faltered, became dissipated and, to paraphrase a wellknown saying, the glorious Revolution faded and was replaced with the slime of a new bureaucracy.

And the pity of it was that the "new bureaucracy" on top did not supplant the old, crooked kleptocracy-network of the Marcos dictatorship but, instead, coopted, absorbed, and utilized its experienced minions for the benefit of a bunch of new overlords.

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We haven’t changed. In this land, we’re still calling for "instant salvation" in the same manner we used to make "instant coffee", just add water and stir. How many self-proclaimed redeemers and messiahs have come and gone, only to become disappointments and blaggards? Why have we not succeeded in attaining the summum bonum of nationhood and our manifest destiny?

Because, to paraphrase Shakespeare, the problem, Dear Cassius, "lies not in our stars", it’s in ourselves. Or, as one of the favorite cartoon characters of my youth (Walt Kelly draws no more), Pogo, used to say: "We have met the enemy, and they are us."

In the end, the failed leadership we persist in electing to office, including our squabbling and querulous local officials and congressmen, and, okay, Presidents, are, alas, a mirror image of ourselves. Abe Lincoln said it: "A people get only the kind of government that they deserve."

Long before Erap Estrada became President, or juetengate became the burning issue of the day (or corruption, graft and sleaze became the bane of the crusaders of morality), foreign investors, industrialists, bankers and businessmen were complaining of bureaucratic red-tape, governmental blackmail and extortion, the "instant TRO" mentality and meddling of our courts, the injustice and slowpoke ways of our justice system, the awful infrastructure (roads that crumbled, non-existent telephone connections, bridges and public works in disrepair, power outages and shortages), and the bullying of politicians big and small.

How many "clearances" and signatures does an investor or foreign entrepreneur need to set up in business? If a government contract is bidded for, won, then implemented, how many months (or years) or approvals, or signatures are needed before the contractor is paid by the government, not to mention the strictures of the Commission on Audit (COA)?

How many times has the Board of Investments been called, in disgust, the Board to Prevent Investments?

Yes, President Estrada can be faulted. He can be condemned. But we, too, have to bear our share of the blame for the failure to build a fair and just society, and instill a "welcoming" climate for citizen and visitor alike.

When all is said and done, a nation’s strength of character and its vision are gauged by the manner in which its people honor and revere the heroes and heroines, and the significant moments and engagements of their past. As our epic poet Balagtas remarked, and I loosely translate, "You cannot get to where you’re going unless you remember from whence you’ve come."

True, we’ve erected statues of our national hero, Dr. Jose Rizal, in every town plaza and city park. Yet, Rizal remains to many of us some figure of plaster, cement, or bronze, not a living reality. We remember his name, even his pursuit of women (how typical), yet very little of what he wrote and stood for – except, thanks to the movie, that his role was played so well by Cesar Montano now happily married (in a "wow" P6-million wedding) to the beautiful "Sunshine" Cruz.

Sure, we’ve named streets and plazas after various heroes, some of them repetitiously after the same heroes, but when we really look around, particularly in Metro Manila, the heartland, so to speak, of the nation (even in the nightmare of its diversity), what do we see? We’ve erased our past, frivolously renaming streets, boulevards and avenues(discarding their revered historical names) and confusing motorists and taxi-drivers after politicians – here the patronym of a congressman, there that of a senator, in another spot that of a councilor, etc. (The common denominator is that an offspring or descendant of each politico "immortalized" in this manner who gets elected a congressman or senator immediately seeks to "honor" his or her ancestor, and, indirectly, their own lineage).

Singapore, that prosperous city-state which has almost no history, clings to the names and relics of its colonial past as though clutching the crown jewels. In the capitals of Europe, in districts obliterated by wartime bombing, rocketing and shelling, they have painstakingly rebuilt each destroyed block into what used to stand there before, zealously striving to preserve the name of ancient squares, and festungs, or palazzi.

Here, where Japanese arson, dynamite and artillery combined with merciless American shelling and bombing during the "Liberation" battle for Manila reduced to broken stone and charred rubble our Spanish "history" flattening Intramuros with its wonderful and ancient churches and elegant colonial homes, and wiping out gracious neighborhoods like Ermita, Malate, and, yes, Paco, we completed the process of pounding our past into dust by our own postwar vandalism.

All over the United States and Europe, you cannot move around without going over avenues and boulevards bearing the proud names of battlefields and mementos of national sacrifice and heroism. In Paris and all over France, you find place names and streets like Marengo, Austerlitz, etc., echoes of Napoleon’s victories. In London you have Waterloo Station and even Elephant & Castle (a district named after Britain’s incursion into Spain during the Napoleonic Wars, and so spelled because returning veterans fancied the title, Infanta de Castille), or the bridle path called "Rotten Row", a crude transliteration of Route du Roi, or Passage of the King. In the US, you cannot miss "Bull Run" (just outside Washington, DC) where the first and second battles of Bull Run in the Civil War were fought, or Gettysburg, or in Boston, historic Bunker Hill, or in Texas, the Alamo.

Here, how many streets have we bothered to name "Bataan" or "Corregidor"? (They have two such streets in Washington, DC, and even a "Mindanao Ave." in Los Angeles). Except for that poor monument to the Death March in Tarlac, and one pathetic frieze of a monument in the middle of a rotunda on the way to Bataan and Zambales, or the Dambana ng Kagitingan (now forgotten, even on Bataan Day – which is also forgotten), how are the heroes of Bataan and Corregidor venerated? We don’t even compensate our World War II veterans sufficiently (which is why the US, too, ignores them) and they are a breed who are dying out.

And where’s that forgotten alley named "Tirad Pass"? Or a boulevard to remind us of the victory of "Bessang Pass"?

Apolinario Mabini, the "Thinker" of our 1896 Revolution against Spain and the subsequent fight against American invasion, desperately warned his compatriots who had originally believed the Americans had come as our allies: "Let us not fool ourselves. The Americans, like the Spaniards and other European powers, covet this beautiful pearl of the Orient Seas."

Later, he issued a circular as Chief of the Revolutionary Cabinet to all "revolutionary chiefs" to stand united, rather than quarrel among themselves, declaring: "When these giants of ambition and power (the foreigners) become convinced that here we have a strong and organized people that know how to defend their honor and what is just, they will be led to restrain themselves and compromise with us in order to secure the best possible concessions."

Unlike Andres Bonifacio, my own idol, who met his downfall because he was a dreamer, and Emilio Aguinaldo who bested Bonifacio in that fateful rivalry, because he was a politician, Mabini was a pragmatist. He knew, even then, that honor and a sense of justice were the essential ingredient for proud nationhood.

Do we still prize these qualities today?

Our 5-star hotels, in a period of almost zero-tourism, boast that they are almost fully booked. Why? Because from all over the world, journalists and the "curious" have been flocking into Manila to join the "Death Watch", or what they expect to be an upsurge of "People Power II", or at least the dramatic "resignation" of the President. What they may be witnessing is a state of widespread mourning, but it seems to be mostly mourning for the Death of the Stock Exchange and the Convulsions and Delirium of the Philippine Peso in the intensive care unit.

I think it’s time to remind ourselves that the Filipino nation has already endured even graver crises and overcome many more terrible obstacles in our march, however slow, to progress. But we can’t do so unless we remember our history.

What’s happening today is, to a large extent, hysteria and hype. It’s perhaps owing to the "doomsday" nature of our character. In this period of adversity, as has happened before, we’ll find that we have more backbone and spunk that we ourselves imagine. That, too, is the Filipino way.