How to fix the Philippines?

STAMFORD, Connecticut — Last Saturday was the birthday of our host, John Gage. His wife, Inda the cousin of my wife Jessica and my daughter Katrina prepared dinner to celebrate his birthday in their house where he only invited a close family friend, Mr. Romy and Belle Encarnacion. I gathered that Romy is a Filipino Global Business Consultant who worked with Colgate for many years where he was sent abroad and eventually settled in Stamford.

Like most Filipinos who works abroad and have become very successful, they always have one eye on the Philippines. Romy is no different. But what Romy did was to write a book entitled, "Learning to Reinvent Ourselves: How to make the Philippines a winner in the 21st Century." Romy was kind enough to give me my signed autographed copy of this book, which I intend to read if I can find the time to do so while I am here in the US.

However I did browse the pages of this book where he wrote chapters like the first chapter, "The Philippine Economy Today" followed by "Where the Philippine Economy should be." Then on Chapter three "How the Philippine Economy will get there. There's even a chapter where he wrote an open letter to Pres. Benigno "PNoy" Aquino III but we missed talking about that during dinner. Now whether Pres. PNoy answered him, I have to find out. Then there is one chapter that goes, "A pragmatic approach to our Economic Development." Indeed we can fix ourselves... if we really want to.

Of course this book is Romy's approach on how to fix the Philippines. This was the subject of our dinner conversation and it is right smack up my alley. Romy has a blog and since he lives near where my cousin lives in Stamford, when he heard that I was around, they arranged for us to meet. By the time we met, I already browsed a few pages from his book and since it was published on August 2012, I was curious as to find out if Romy was an Aquino admirer; because many Filipinos who live abroad only get the full brunt of the Yellow Propaganda that even foreign magazines write about.

Mr. Encarnacion apparently reads at least 50 columnists in the Philippines, so in a sense he already knew me because I am one of the 50 columnists in his reading list. Romy was straightforward enough to admit to me that he was one of those who were once mesmerized with the Aquino mystic. He frankly admitted to me that two years ago, just as his book came out, the majority of the columnists he was reading were very much supportive of the Aquino regime and he already knew that I was in the minority.

However today he admits that those supporting Pres. Aquino are now a very small minority. So he asked me where did things go so wrong for Mr. Aquino? My answer to him was simply, "Most people took the propaganda of the yellow machinery hook, line and sinker."

Today a great majority of the Filipino thinkers are left totally disappointed and devastated that Mr. Aquino wasted his first three years seeking revenge on his predecessor former Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and used public funds taken from the Disbursement Acceleration Program to bribe the senators with P100 million in pork barrel funds so that they would convict Renato Corona, a sitting chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Romy wanted to know why was Pres. PNoy so vengeful? Of course I had to give him and my host John Gage the root cause why this was happening in the Philippines and it all boils down to the Hacienda Luisita issue. I suggested to both of my friends to read the book "Greed and Betrayal" by Cecilio Arillo so they could get the gruesome, but juicy details how the Cojuangco family (only the Cojuangco side to Peping and Cory Aquino) was able to get the 6,000 hectare Hacienda Luisita. It was all greed and betrayal.

So they asked me a direct question: who can we fix the Philippines? At this point, after all the analysis that we have done and for as long as the country maintains the same 1987 Constitution, I strongly doubt if we can fix ourselves because the political elite never had it so good in the last 28-years since the EDSA Revolution removed Ali-Baba who ruled for 14-years. The only way to break our vicious cycle of poverty, greed and corruption is for Filipinos to stage another revolution along the lines of the EDSA Revolt.

My mentor and dearly departed friend, Sir Max Soliven used to write that the EDSA Revolution was an unfinished revolution because when we removed the conjugal Marcos dictatorship, we wrongly thought that the Philippines would simply and automatically fix itself. But then even the mention of another revolution scared the ladies in our dinner table and I am sure that is the reaction of most Filipinos who apparently live in their own comfort zones, while the majority of our people live abject misery.

In short, no one wants to rock the boat, even if Mr. Aquino has bungled our political system and has become so hypocritical, he does not deserve the title of President! If we Filipinos keep the status quo, your next president is Jejomar Binay, whom many Filipinos believe that he would do even worse.

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