My wife, a travel agent, got fuming mad at a “friend” last weekend. Her “friend” inquired regarding passport renewal application with a caveat: “friend’s” birth certificate has some problems, preventing her from obtaining one from the NSO. My wife asked if she had consulted her local civil registrar or a lawyer to fix whatever her problems are. The reply (this was going on in SMS, if I recall correctly) made my wife hurl:

Nagpagawa na ako ng birth certificate sa Recto. Nakaprint naman sa NSO paper.

The “friend’s” excuse for taking desperate measures is the fact that she wants to become an OFW — our latest breed of national hero. And doubtless, nothing will stop her — if she has resorted to Recto to rectify (pun intended) her birth certificate issues and the DFA refuses to issue her a legit passport, she would doubtless return to those run-down shanties alongside the LRT Line 2 terminal at that avenue to obtain a fake one.

In a post 9-11 world, anybody with a fake passport can and will be treated as a terror suspect. But that hasn’t stopped Filipinos from faking passports anyway, or working in Iraq despite a ban, for that matter. What infuriates me and my wife, however, is that not only is she willing to commit (or technically, has already committed) a crime, she also has the gall to assume that my wife will willingly be complicit to the act without a batting an eyelash.

Tough luck. My wife just told her to consult a lawyer. Or approach a more desperate travel agent.

The irony, of course, is that the “friend” is just one of many Filipinos who, when asked why they’d choose to work abroad, will spit out the same standard complaints stating that there are simply “no opportunities” in this country because “the government is corrupt” and “the economy is bad” so on and so forth. In fact, there are many Filipinos who would complain about how corrupt, say, traffic enforcers are — all while driving a luxury SUV ignoring red lights, at twice the speed limit, without a fastened seatbelt and on coding day within coding hours to boot.

Meanwhile, two protests came up against them “big oil companies” the past few days, with very different results. The first one occurred last Friday, where militants threw bags of used diesel on the offices of Petron. The second, more successful attempt was at Shell last Monday, where they were able to hurl paint bombs and spray paint at the Shell main building.

Where’s the punchline, you might ask? When, at the first incident, security guards tried to beat off the militants who were hurling used diesel with their batons, the protesters had the gall to plead not to be hurt:

But the students suddenly began throwing plastic bags filled with used diesel on the walls of the building, prompting some security guards to beat them with sticks.

“Huwag kayong manakit, hindi niyo kailangang manakit [Do not hurt us. You don’t have to hurt us],” said Zarate. [Inquirer.net]

Emphasis mine. So, did they expect the guards to give them hugs and kisses?

It frustrates me when it is obvious that the very people who are supposedly moving towards “the betterment of the country”, being considered as “heroes” and “forces of change” and, belonging to the youth demographic, considered as “the hope of the nation”, will demand that establishments, institutions, and the system per se hear and respect their opinions while they do not display any modicum of decency towards them, and in fact commit the same crimes they accuse the elite of committing. It frustrates me when, while these militants expect the middle class (us, essentially) to rally behind their cause (lest you will be branded as “apathetic”), they display brash, ill-considered behavior more akin to acts of juvenile mischief than anything else.

What way too many Filipinos apparently miss is that, in order to defeat one’s enemy (in this case, the system, or at least the widespread corruption and decadence that characterizes it) one has to treat that enemy with respect. Not because it deserves respect, but because treating it with respect is a safeguard — to remind one’s self NOT to underestimate one’s enemies, and also because by treating it with respect one will remember not to become that which we hate — as in the case of passport-faking “heroes” or paint-bombing radicals.

It’s not just about anger. In fact it should never be about naked aggression. It should all be about respect.

I will leave you with a quote from Stan Tyminski, who ran for the Polish presidency (and lost by a narrow margin) in 1990, from a commentary he published regarding respect for one’s enemies [PDF]. Needless to say, you only need to replace “Poles” with “Filipinos”:

As much as I respect and even admire our enemies, I perceive the real problem with my countrymen. Having a strong, intelligent and deceitful enemy among us requires even more strength, intelligence and conceit. There is a saying that the value of the man (sic) is measured by the quality of his enemies… Unless we respect them and try to best them, we Poles will never win. We will always be slaves. [Stan Tyminski]

Let’s start treating our enemy with respect. And then, we could fight back.

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