‘Federalism’ will break up our country, not magically ‘save’ it

All this talk about switching to a "federalist" form of government as the means of saving our country is becoming absurd. It is disquieting, too, since supposedly learned people are promoting the idea and espousing it with such enthusiasm. To be sure, most of the Filipino people themselves probably don’t understand the debate – nor even deign to listen to it. They’re busy with their lives, such as making a living, and even trying to be happy even in less prosperous times.

Just look around you.

Here in the metropolis, for all the gloom and doom being trumpeted from the rooftops by certain preachers and the usual politicians, for all the sour surveys both domestic and foreign (Sus, as has become almost habitual, we’re being dunned by one foreign risk survey as being the third most corrupt in Asia, eclipsed in the corruption rat-race by only Indonesia and Vietnam) – are our people glum and in the dumps? They’re in the malls, and in the streets, and in the churches, and other places of worship – even the poorest of the poor seem to find both hope and consolation.

True, there are cases of absolute misery. Children starved to the bone, skeletal, their families helpless, despairing, and pathetic. This is the human condition everywhere, even in the so-called "richest" societies. It is more miserable to be poor in a wealthy country than in a poverty-stricken one. (I’ve seen white people digging desperately into smelly garbage bins for a crust of bread, mouldy half-eaten pizzas in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City; people begging for alms in downtown London, or even on the boulevards of the French Riviera. Or shivering to death in the snow in Europe, east, central and the old Soviet Union. I won’t even talk about Asia, like the lepers tugging at your sleeve in Varanasi (Benares) where the burning Ghats are found, and the faithful, surrounded by half-burnt you-know-what plunge into the sacred Ganges to be purified – by drinking, washing, and praying in the holy, healing water. Areas of blight are everywhere, penury, malnutrition, conflict, disease, injustice, exploitation and cruelty).

In the Philippines we are both cursed – and blest. By selfishness, yes, corruption and graft, the boorishness of the powerful, the gimme-gimme dependence of the poor (some are poor professionally), the ululations and shrill outcries of the activists – who condemn everyone who chooses not to be an activist or a radical. (In the latter case, only they are virtuous).

Our blessing is that, despite all, our people.. are happy. Go out into the countryside, and you’ll see much of the same thing. The boundless optimism. The joy in simple things. These phenomena, certainly, must have gotten the dour statisticians and analysts worried.

Naaah. I can already hear the resentful or the sarcastic scoffing. That old fake MVS, working and moving in air-conditioned circles, preening himself as among the movers and shakers, doesn’t understand and cannot fathom the despair and the travails of the poor. The fact is that’s where we came from in our family. Worst of all, we were torn down as kids from a life of comparative ease and comfort, to utter poverty – to life in the hills on a handful of rice a day, or later to living in a barong-barong, a shanty, in a wiped-out Manila. But that’s ancient history. Suffering and the pangs of hunger are no strangers to me, or my brothers and sisters.

Lately, as he truly deserves, my classmate Onofre Pagsanghan is being honored for his unselfish and brilliant achievements as a professor, a teacher the noblest of professions, and his founding of Dulaang Sibol. I remember when Pagsi and I didn’t have a penny in our pockets – okay, that’s an exaggeration, we had a few coins. In any event, we couldn’t afford to take a jeepney or a bus. So we walked to school together.

In those postwar days, the Ateneo high school had reopened in Plaza Guipit, just off Legarda street in Sampaloc. (The first postwar Third Year class, and Fourth Year class occupied two rooms converted into classrooms in a nuns’ wooden convent which somehow had escaped the arson, bombing and shelling of "Liberation."

We were living as "refugees" for that year in the house of my late grandfather on Calle Cavite, near Blumentritt. Pagsi lived off Tayuman street, on the route to Governor Forbes, crossing España, then down Isabel street to Plaza Guipit. (Most of Manila’s street names have changed, renamed by their children or relatives in Congress to honor their political parents or relations, in an orgy of familial self-glorification, even if some of those so honored were stupid or felonious. Our politicos – tradpols is too good a name for them – apparently have no respect for history, only a tribal hunger for recognition).

In any event, I trudged daily from the railroad tracks off Blumentritt down old Avenida Rizal to Tayuman to pick up Pagsi, then we walked together to Guipit, rain or shine, storm or flood. Then back again, reversing the process – perhaps a total of seven kilometers a day. We didn’t feel "poor," or underprivileged. By gosh, we were enrolled in the Ateneo, "The Builder of Men." (That’s the slogan we Atenistas clung to, until girls were admitted to ADMU and humiliated the men by beating them in academics, and sometimes even in athletics).

Pagsi was one of the most eloquent in our class, all the way from Third Year high to college (he even played "Portia" in Shakespeare’s "Hamlet" for our dramatic icon and beloved professor in speech and drama, the late Father Henry Lee Irwin, S.J., while erstwhile Vice-President Tito Guingona performed the role of "Hamlet") Pagsi was fluent in both English and Tagalog. I guess he can speak for himself. As for me, those days of what might be called "hardship" were for us happy. (In the second semester, I luckily got a job as a messenger which got me – by gum – a bicycle!)

Looking back, I can repeat: we Filipinos are blessed by God, even if often we don’t deserve it.

So, enough for our believing ourselves trapped in the depths of misery and disappointment.

Last Friday morning, speaking in the Oakwood hotel at the Champagne Breakfast of the Philippine Business Leaders Forum, headed by Mike Clancy of the prestigious "Economist Intelligence Unit", I was asked what was my forecast for the Filipinos.

Mind you, Mike’s unit, affiliated with "The Economist" of London, is the group which issues the confidentially circulated and much-trusted "Regional Strategic Forecast" for Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore and Tokyo. In the audience were such individuals of note and achievement as Tony M.W. Kwok, the man who’d spearheaded the anti-corruption "clear-up" of Hong Kong and is now, affiliated with the British Council, a Chief Adviser to the Office of the Ombudsman here; fellows like David King of the Institute of International Development, and other no-nonsense executives.

I fell back, of course, on my mantra which may sound facetious, but is not, at least in my earnest estimation. I said, as I’ve already said in some other forums, that the Filipino will not only survive, but win through, because "like IVORY soap, he floats."

I’m a collector of a number of things. One of my passions is to collect old issues of "The National Geographic Magazine." Thus far, I’ve managed to get, by persistence and networking, almost every issue down to the complete Year 1920, long before I was born – and long before World War II as well. In the March 1920 issue is a full page advertisement of IVORY Soap, with the slogan, "It Floats." (It even adds the blurb, 99.44 percent "Pure.") The Filipino has been floating long before that. And, call me nutty, but I can feel in my bones that – GMA or Garci, or their noisy attackers and spoofers – our Day is coming.

* * *

Now, back to the Federalism mirage – and danger.

I respect the views of those who honestly think that a "federal" system will make each region self-reliant, and free it from the impositions of "Imperial Manila," etc. But this won’t be what happens, and deep down even the most dedicated to that idea suspect it.

Mayor Ed Hagedorn, who’s done wonderfully for Puerto Princesa, Palawan, and indeed for his entire province; our friend Mayor Rody Duterte, kingpin of Davao, already has a city (state) coat of arms, etc. may flirt with "Federalism." It may be a fine idea for such gentlemen. But what about the warlords and armed dynasties who’d love nothing better than to be legalized in their fiefdoms and slave empires? No wonder the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the Moro National Liberation Front, and other Islamic militants, mouth-water at the prospect of a Federal system. If Mindanao detaches itself from a strongly-centralized Philippines, bound together by a strong central government, that huge island and its satellite isles will be ripe for the picking by the well-armed and well-funded. We may wake up to see Mindanao under the control of an Islamic Caliphate – imposed by the gun, and too far from rescue from either the Visayas or Luzon.

In sum, in an archipelago of 7,100 islands, what is the "glue" which would bind our nation together if we split up into "Federal" units? Like the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao? Will there be an Autonomous Region of Christian, or of Lumad Mindanao? Or an Autonomous Region of Eastern Visayas? Or a State of Iloilo? The permutations are endless. The Marcoses will have their Kingdom of the Far North. Chavit Singson and this writer once joked about Ilocoslovakia, or the Autonomous Region of the North (ARN). Would it include Pangasinan, La Union, Ilocos Sur, Ilocos Norte, Cagayan, Isabela, etc.?

Pre-Hispanic times were just like that. There was no Philippines named after Felipe II. Ferdinand Magellan died trying to attack Chieftain Lapu Lapu of Mactan on behalf of his ally, the King of Cebu. The other sea captains in his doomed expedition, Spaniards, reportedly refused, when poor Magellan was encircled and on the point of going down, to go to the succor of that crazy foreigner, the "boastful" Portuguese sea captain, Magellan.

What we call Filipinas, Pilipinas, or The Philippines today had only tribes, little kingdoms, sultanates, collections of villages, or islanders, resentful, hostile or at-odds with each other, or ignorant of each other.

And to "save" our country they’re proposing to go back to that?

Adopt Federalism, and soon enough there will be no more Philippines. (Not even a Senate – which is not an altogether bad thing.) That’s what "Federalism" means for us if we foolishly adopt the idea. The proponents of that awful placebo make it sound slick, but it would be the death sentence of a unity we still have for that matter, fallen far short of achieving.