‘Educated Filipinos pack up’/ That Pierantoni boo-boo

It was a razor’s edge subject I hesitated to write about. Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t. But Tuesday’s issue of the International Herald Tribune banged it out on the front page with the title "Educated Filipinos pack up" and the subtitle "Disillusioned, they seek a better life abroad." This of course knocked into a cocked hat our government’s repeated claim the Philippines’ economy is out of the dark tunnel into the light. The article bylined Jane Perez is actually a New York Times original, which gives it even more breath, more body, more bulge. The Times is the grand duchess of American - even international - journalism.

The story with a Manila dateline is devastating. Vide: "Fifteen years after the dictator Ferdinand Marcos was brought down by the power of the people who took to the streets, millions of Filipinos remain unconvinced that their country is worth the long-term sacrifice of staying here. Their onetime dreams of democracy and prosperity have faded before the dreary reality of a persistently weak economy, some of the world’s worst pollution, rampant urban crime and corruption at every level of government."

Voila. That rips out the guts of our society. It states with grim and knuckled candor that our democracy remains a dream - a forlorn dream. It admits that our economy remains in the Intensive Care Unit, unable to provide for a rapidly growing population. It gives currency to growing Filipino fears that Metro Manila and other urban areas are cities with criminals’ guns jabbed at their temples, not just guns but graft and corruption gone wild. And yes, air pollution is one of the worst in the world. So who wants to stay? Those who are educated, can afford the costs of migrating, and price the future of their children uppermost join the beeline to the US embassy. Those who stay are mostly the accursed, the wretched. And of course the rich who reside in guarded, gated communities and can afford "the good life" here.

I have said all these time and again in this space. But it takes the New York Times to jerk it up for an international audience and make the Filipino leadership realize they are walking on bullet shells of the past.

Listen again: "Educated families and young professionals - nurses, doctors, computer analysts - continue to leave the Philippines in droves. Before the downfall of Marcos, blue-collar workers sought work around the world mainly as seamen and construction workers. But since then, it is the better educated who have been leaving, despite the promises of successive governments to improve the economy...Their departure deprives the homeland of the chance to build a stable middle class and to crack a political system still encrusted with the oligarchs of the past."

Educated Filipinos "are convinced," The New York Times piece says, "that their children will be doomed to struggle amid poverty when they become adults in 10 to 15 years." And so whenever I am asked by young couples with kids if they should migrate abroad – and they look at me as though my answer would matter a lot – my reply is hedged. "Hold on some more if you still can, this is after all your only country. But if things don’t get better and your priority is the children – then leave. The kids deserve to grow up in a better climate." They leave pronto.

Readers of this column will be surprised when I say this is of a piece with two previous columns I wrote which touched on the death of showbiz personality Rico Yan. I am glad these two columns eventually ignited the same reaction from some sectors of print media. Historian Ambeth R. Ocampo is the latest to react: "A historian a century from now, using the newspapers of today, will probably wonder why Yan’s death eclipsed that of Elizabeth the Queen Mother and two National Artists for Music – Lucio San Pedro and Levi Celerio." The whole thing was a media circus, Ambeth indicates, much ado about nothing really. More specifically TV media, ABS-CBN and GMA-7. They fiddled sweet, syrupy, simpering inanities about Rico Yan while the Philippines as a nation groveled in poverty and near extinction as a republic.

Ambeth Ocampo doesn’t have to wait for a century for that historian to wonder why.

Many of those who were lulled, gulled, duped, suckered and rolled by media are now waking up as from a dream, realizing perhaps they slept with Nefertiti and not with Snowhite. And so it is. And it is also not surprising that Wednesday’s anniversary of Araw ng Kagitingan (Day of Valor) merited just a little bit more than passing mention. World War II veterans came galore to the rites at Mount Samat in Pilar, Bataan. And so did President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and US Ambassador Francis Ricciardone. But in truth, the poor, grizzled, stooped and aging veterans had already been forgotten and forsaken. This nation, this government has yet to give them their rightful due in veterans benefits and payments. Billions in such benefits are owed them. Billions disappear in government graft and corruption.

They, instead of Rico Yan, should have been copiously honored by media. Their heroism in the battlefields of Bataan and Corregidor and the guerilla movement should have been elevated to Gothic prose. They were the Battling Bastards of Bataan, the thousands who stormed Besang Pass to bring the dreaded Tiger of Malaya, Gen. Tomoyuke Yamashita to his knees, the many thousands more who died during the Death March and internment at Capas. I still bear the wounds and scars of World War II, for I am a war veteran and I have all the credentials and documents to prove it.

We Filipinos have severed our ligaments with that past and we are the poorer for it. In other countries, war veterans are accorded pride of place, pride of prestige, pride of honor, pride of purse. Their deeds, their patriotism are writ in stone. Their blood soaked and hallowed the ground upon which we all now tread. But we have forgotten. And so now the present is barren. The winds whistle as through a desert of thorns and thistles. And the media are now a chamber nautilus filled with the sound of ocean wind. And it rhapsodizes about a showbiz performer with a million dollar smile. And oh, how it rhapsodized!

We are far gone, aren’t we?

* * *

I would have wished DILG Secretary Joey Lina and PNP chief Gen. Leandro Mendoza stayed out of the Malacañang ritual that welcomed back the Reverend Giuseppe Pierantoni. The two, in the presence of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, didn’t waste any time claiming the credit for the priest’s freedom after six months as hostage of kidnap bandits, oddly named the Pentagon gang.

Joey Lina drew circles to explain how his police had long cased the area where Fr. Pierantoni was "rescued." He and General Mendoza insisted no ransom at all was paid. Mr. Lina was quoted as saying "I will stake my neck on it." These two officials – so it looks now – talked too soon, too fast, too far afield. Their rescue claims were thrown back at them by no less than Fr. Pierantoni who said he was released by his captors and "I was handed over to the authorities." The good father indicated there were negotiations for his release three days before he was set free.

If ever there was what they call in the vernacular a super supalpal, this was it.

Everybody believes the priest. Nobody believes Secretary Lina and General Mendoza. Was ransom paid? As yet, we do not know. In the past, priests and nuns had also been kidnaped. Money of course exchanged hands. But they did not call this ransom but "livelihood assistance." At the very least, the attitude and conduct of Messrs. Lina and Mendoza prove there is something very wrong with our police force, not to mention the Department of the Interior and Local Governments. The police force was shown up for what it was during the Senate hearings on drugs and narco-politics.

Star witness Mary ‘Rosebud’ Ong conclusively proved top police officers were involved up to their necks. It was one of the biggest if not the biggest scandal to hit the PNP. Everybody expected a purge, heads falling by the baker’s dozen, at the very least a thorough top-to-bottom investigation. Nothing happened. General Mendoza remained in place. Secretary Lina didn’t move one whit. President Arroyo remained busy with her photo-ops.

In the earlier days, at the whiff of scandal, then DILG secretary Rafael Alunan really blew the whistle. He launched a purge of the police, and would have booted out many more and charged them criminally were it not for President Fidel Ramos who said, "If you go any further, you will have a revolution on your hands." Raffy Alunan was fearless. He staged a series of seminars on how to clean up a rotten police force, which is even more rotten today. Speakers from civil society were invited to speak their mind, including this columnist who desisted. I told Raffy: "Okay, so I will read them the riot act, and tell them what lousy and corrupt law enforcers they are. Then what?"

Poor Raffy. He was too idealistic, too gutsy. Eventually he had to go.