Take note for example the parallel in how easily the Nazis were de-Nazified and returned to business as usual in Germany and in how discretely the Marcos loyalists were de-Marcosified and allowed to restore themselves to their pre-EDSA statuses (think of Danding who fled with the dictator to exile and Marcos crony Lucio Tan who today are both kingmakers again).

There are others, Manolo Quezon reminds us, who have as quietly reinvented (or recycled) themselves: the Aguilars (and Villars), the Estradas, the Teodoros, the Gordons, and the Escuderos, the Angaras, the Punos, the Cayetanos, to name a few more.

By some stretch, the Yellow Revolution was a sequel to the revolutionary narrative of the Filipinos’ long struggle against oppression by foreign tormentors (or its many current forms) except that the focus then was the fight against the abuses of a locally grown tyrant.

On the other hand, it is painful to imagine how by another twist of fortune some heroes of the EDSA uprising (my mentors, Jojo Binay and Rene Saguisag, come to mind) have seemed to have forgotten about (or abandoned?) the project of ’86.

How could we ever gainsay or minimize the evil of the Marcos regime?

Yet, we have seen how an unlikely copycat, at least at her inauguration to power, has sought to revive the specter of the ignominious era in a variety of sinister plots or designs: making a travesty of the check and balance mechanism such as the impeachment process and legislative oversight, militarizing the executive agency, “packing” the Supreme Court and the COMELEC, and, of course, the constant fiddling with the Cha-cha nuclear option. Of late, even without martial law being declared, we have witnessed the case of 43 “health workers” arrested en masse, held incommunicado and possibly tortured.

Thus, trust in the legitimacy of our fundamental institutions is at a dangerously low point. Our society is in a crisis of trust.

How can the people’s faith be regained? How can we reclaim our basic decency? How can Filipinos be motivated to comply with the minimum prerequisites of a good society?

We have seen repeated accounts of how money and votes are interwoven into the numbers game and technical legalisms; whoever has the most of them is set to gain power. But how can the winner command fealty from the governed based on principles if he or she embodies the absence of moral compass by which to lead? Without value-commitments, such a leader will only recreate the vicious cycle of a dysfunctional society. Yet, the inviolate principles are too universal, too commonsensical, too motherhood to be overlooked: integrity, honesty, fairness and, again, trust.

Truly, we can surmise that one possible route out of this rot is by way of example of authentic leaders, not the exceedingly clever, the most photogenic or the greatest in forensics.

On the other hand, there are various democratic avenues that may be taken to address our dilemma. The formal exercise of sovereign will is one. But if this too turns awry as when the steering media debauches it and deepens the crisis of trust, going back to old-fashioned democracy is a coterminous option. Geography is not even a valid excuse for those who have access to the magic of modern technology. Yes, reasoned discourse among the various sectors of our community with a view to reaching a common understanding offers one of the best hopes for our democracy – at least for now.

In such regard, disagreements and differing views even on core issues are to be expected in the dialogue but we must guard the process against sheer pettiness and corruption at all cost.

As part of this discourse, we ask one question of relevance: Is there an earnest effort from those in position of power to grow the economy so that ordinary people are afforded the opportunity for self-fulfillment or make the state respond to the people’s interests rather than the usual suspect, the special and vested interests?

Concerning now the presidential elections scheduled for the May 2010, we likewise ask these questions: Who among the candidates is the fair personification of the vision being suggested: inclusion, consultation, transparency, participation? Who is promising to exact accountability instead of impunity? Who demands almost innocently that we follow the True North of the moral compass – kung ano ang tama?

Lest we forget, it’s well to note that the political exercise is not just about those who aspire to lead. It is also about the community writ large, us.

Are we up to the challenge of self-empowerment? Or are we ready to re-live the spirit of ’86 and say: Never again?

I came across Randy’ David’s opinion piece on  “Warlords in a weak state“.

He articulated the phenomena quite well and pointed out that warlord-ism is not unique to Mindanao alone. He states:

“rido alone cannot explain what happened in Maguindanao. A fuller analysis must take into account the weak state in which it is framed.

Family feuds are certainly not unique to our society. They thrive wherever kinship remains the dominant principle for organizing an individual’s participation in the larger social world. They usually disappear as a society grows in complexity. The individual becomes entangled in the multiple crosscutting ties offered by the modern world. Thus the kinsman becomes a citizen, a university student, a journalist, a member of a political party, a Rotarian, a doctor or a soldier in the army, or falls in love with someone outside the clan.

This is a process that does not always occur smoothly. For many postcolonial societies like ours, the transition to modernity has been very uneven, spawning problems that are not easily solved in either the traditional or strictly modern way. Instead of withering away in obsolescence, clans can often draw new vitality from the modern institutions into which they are grafted. This could give rise to something as benign as a family corporation, or to something fundamentally vicious. The traditional absolutism of these patriarchal clans, when fused with the immense resources of the modern state, can spawn barbarians of the most lethal and abusive kind. This, exactly, is what has happened to varying degrees in our society.

The massacre in Maguindanao may stand out for a long time for its brazenness and heinousness, but the forces that shaped it are by no means isolated or peculiar to Muslim Mindanao. They lurk in many regions of our country, providing support to various activities—political and economic, legal and illegal—and feeding from the institutional structures of modern society. One only needs to take a look at the local leaders and organizers of the party in power in order to produce a map of modern warlordism in the Philippines. In their ranks, any observer will find an assortment of gambling lords, smugglers, drug lords, human traffickers, and leaders of crime syndicates, who, without exception, maintain private armies. Many of them have become big players in the world of business and politics, gaining reputations as benevolent entrepreneurs, displacing the traditional warlords from the landed oligarchy. They operate through networks and layers of patronage, demanding from their followers unconditional loyalty in exchange for economic security and assisted access to the offices of the state. But whereas the feudal lords softened their rule by appeals to culture, the new warlords govern mainly through intimidation and violence.”

This is a continuum of which integrates the perversion of the values known as bayanihan, pakikisama, and utang na loob turning into a cocktail of impunity and dysfunctionality. Philippine society has yet to learn to draw the line between doing the right thing and knowing when the ethnocentric values Filipinos trumpet cross the line.

While it is true that “This situation, so pervasive still in our country today, will not disappear as long as our national politicians choose the path of enlisting outmoded local power systems into their political parties, rather than patiently create modern organs of political aggregation appropriate to a democracy”, we also need to stress that the politicians are products of our choices as a society.

As a representative democracy, these politicans are reflections, that we, the voters have made. The buck does not stop with the politician.

As a representative democracy, we, the people, VOTED these warlords, thieves, bozos into positions of authority. As a government of the people, by the people, and for the people,  the buck stops with us – THE PEOPLE.

It also ties in with the recent Inquirer editorial “Shallow Pool” -

“WHAT does it say about us, and the quality of our politics, when the first senator to file his certificate of candidacy for reelection in May 2010 was the one who should not have been elected to the Senate in the first place? Sen. Lito Lapid has proven himself eminently unqualified for the work of the Senate, not because he is an actor or a celebrity, but because he has done nothing senatorial in his six-year term. Naturally, since this is Philippine politics, Lapid is favored to win reelection.

That, sadly, is where we are. Despite three massive tectonic shifts in the political landscape in a single year, the pool of candidates for the Senate has turned out to be very shallow indeed. “

When we, the VOTERS, elect not just a “a national leadership is strong and rests on a clear popular mandate” but a national leadership with integrity, competence, vision, and a track record of performance , we, as a society are in  “a better position to dismantle the anachronistic local power centers that operate side by side state institutions. It need not tolerate, or worse accommodate, the existence of parallel sultanates and their abusive armies.”

When we select a national leadership that is strong on pedigree but totally devoid of  integrity, competence, vision, and a track record of performance -  “we have an insecure leadership that colludes with a broad range of non-accountable forces to keep itself in power, it is the modern state that withers away”.

It isn’t just that “We have indeed paid a high price for allowing an illegitimate president to take charge of the state”, we have a paid a high price for the flawed choices that WE, THE PEOPLE have made. Even in today’s upcoming political exercise, we dignify winnability and pedigree over ability and integrity. We do the same things and yet expect different results.

Even as the mainstream trumpets Peñaflorida’s victory, we lose sight of the fact that a Peñaflorida had to step up because, we, THE PEOPLE, have not voted for leaders who invest in education – who can put more classrooms, books, and well-paid teachers. We have chosen the path of least resistance – of gaming the system. That when given the opportunity to vote multiple times, we showed that the Filipino can outvote other nationalities. Where one nationality votes 5 times, the Filipino votes 100 times. These other nationalities were blasted away – after all we have had generations of FLYING VOTERS and have raised the practice to an art form. That Efren stepped up is commendable. That an Efren was needed because we, as a  society have failed our schoolchildren, is regrettable and tragic.

When we point one finger at Arroyo and blame our leaders, three other fingers point to us.

As Jose Rizal pointed in “The Indolence of the Filipino” -

“we set forth the causes that proceed from the government in fostering and maintaining the evil we are  discussing. Now it falls to us to analyze those that emanate from the people. Peoples and governments are correlated and complementary: a fatuous government would be an anomaly among righteous people, just as a corrupt people cannot exist under just rulers and wise laws. Like people, like government, we will say in paraphrase of a popular adage.”

If we, THE PEOPLE want positive change in government, we, THE PEOPLE must become the change we desire – we start by treating our votes sacredly – to choose on the basis of ability, consistency, integrity, and vision. Choose as if it were a matter of life and death – ours, our children, our children’s children. Enough with vacuous pedigree and winnability – platforms, please.

The buck stops.. and starts… with US, THE PEOPLE.

Psychiatric test, ito ang panibagong requirement ng DFA para sa mga taong nagnanais maging domestic helper sa ibang bansa. “Domestic helpers should be assessed if they are able to respond to this type of stress” ito ang paliwanag ni Undersecretary Esteban Conejos ng Department of Foreign Affairs, ayon sa kanya dito masusukat ang kakayahan ng kanilang isip at emosyon ang anumang pagsubok sa abroad. Habang taliwas ang pananaw ng mga NGOs na sumesentro sa advocacy ng mga migranteng kababaihan, ayon sa kanila dagdag gastos ito sa mga Pinay na nag nanais mag abroad at walang saysay ang psychiatric test kung aabusuhin lang sila sa abroad. Ngunit naninindigan si Undersecretary Cornejos na sa makikita sa psychiatric test kung maaaring isabak ang isang domestic helpers sa abroad.

Pero aminin natin taliwas ang panukalang ito sa totoong dapat ginagawa ng ating pamahalaan at ng mga embahada natin sa ibang bansa lalo na sa Middle East. Hindi kailangan ng mga domestic helper ang psychiatric test para malaman kung nararapat siyang isabak sa trabaho sa ibang bansa at kung may kakayahan sila sa aspeto ng emosyon at pag-iisip. Ang kailangan ng ating mga kababayang domenstic helpers at iba pang OFW ay isang matatag na security para sa kanila sa mga bansang napili nilang pagtrabahuan, security para sa kanilang karapatan, security nila bilang tao laban sa pang aabuso at pagmamaltrato ng mga amo nila at ito ang kulang sa ating pamahalaan at mga embahada sa ibang bansa.

Walang taong matatag ang kakayahan sa pag iisip at emosyon sa panahong mangibang bansa siya para humanap nang swerte para sa kanya at sa pamilya. Kung tuluyan ipapatupad ng Department of Foreign Affairs marahil wala nang pumasa sa mga nating halo halo ang emosyon dahil sa pag iwan niya sa kanyang pamilya sa bansa, at magulo ang isip dahil nangangamba siya sa panibagong hamon sa kanyang buhay, at kung anong kahihinatnan niya sa bansang pagtratrabahuan. Lahat walang kasiguruhan dahil ang pagtratrabaho sa ibang bansa kahit dito sa Pilipinas ay pawang pagsusugal lamang nang tapang, emosyon at pag iisip. Lumalayo na ang domestic helpersDepartment of Foreign Affairs sa totoong problema at mas lalo pa nitong pinahihirapan ang mga taong nag nanais magkaroon ng swerte sa ibang bansa.

Isang malaking ANG SA WARI KO lang, alam ba nila ang suliranin ng ating mga kababayang domestic helpers at mga OFW sa banyagang lupain? Sana OO alam nila, para saan pa’t nasa pwesto sila, dahil para sa akin hindi Pyschiatric test ang sagot sa matagal nang suliranin ng mga migranteng Pinoy sa ibang bansa kundi isang masasandalang embahadang alam ang karapatan at alam kung paano ipagtanggol ang kapwa Pinoy nitong biktima ng pang aabuso at pagmamaltrato. Ilan pa bang kabaong ang dapat salubungin nang mga pamilyang pinangakuan nang masaganang buhay para kumilos nang tama ang ilang mga embahadang ginagawa nila dapat ang kanilang mga trabaho, sana putulin na natin ang mga suliraning ito at magkaroon nang maayos na panukala para sa ating mga kababayan sa abroad.

Para mapanood ang nasabing segment sa Bandali click here.

For those who occupy positions of leadership and power, their very manner of speaking can define how their audience will receive,  and understand, their message. Indeed sincerity is the virtue of speaking. Sincere expression carries risks to the speaker, since the ordinary screens used in everyday life are opened to the outside world. At the same time, we expect our friends, our lovers, our leaders “to be sincere”.

By ‘sincere’ we understand that the man acts according to his conscience. If he acts according to the dictates of his conscience, we accept his sincerity. In that case, he is sincere to himself. In society this is acceptable as sincerity, but this may be wrong. Suppose an administrator feels that according to his sincere conscience the underling has to be treated as a second-class citizen, he may be sincere but the world outside may not accept it? He may be sincere but his own conscience may be underveloped. It is not enough to act according to the conscience; the conscience must also be cultured and noble.

It is not enough to be sincere, you must also be right. Extending this to the larger national sphere, leaders are rightly expected by the governed to have both conviction and abiding vision to advance the public good instead of being motivated by the need for self preservation and political expediency

History is replete with lessons about leaders whose false view of themselves led to the commission of outrages on the society.

The legacy such leaders harvest is ignominy.

MLQ3 cited Randy David’s view that the real issue is the “crisis of modernity” gripping our society; observing how Pinoy politicians now increasingly resort to voodoo and prayer as a means to ameliorate our society’s fortunes.

Mr. hawaiianguy provides a bit more clarity in his comment by asserting that:

[...] the crisis is brought about by the failure of society to keep up with the gains of modernity (aka “progress”) that is built on science and rationality [...]

Thus society, in an apparent failure to cope with progress built on advances in science, technology, and Western Philosophy, is reverting to mystical approaches to make sense of the rationality that underpins this progress.

I don’t know if this will result in a debate on whether our march to “modernity” on the back of science technology is sustainable. Maybe the collective intellect is already creaking under the weight of the increasing complexity being created by this progress. If global thermonuclear war won’t do the job (as was the thinking during the Cold War), maybe it is this more insiduous complexity creep that will eventually do us in — bomb our minds back to the stoneage.

Rich media is already doing that — making information so seductively visual (and the content riding on it so shallow) as to atrophy an entire generation’s ability to assimilate rich knowledge the hard way — through back-to-basics reading and comprehension of text. Until the technology to download knowledge straight into the brain is developed (a la The Matrix), the only way to acquire rich knowledge is through reading and low-tech learning (i.e. practice and concentration). Anyone who’s read a book and seen the movie version of said book will catch my drift. Watching a podcast or taking in The Discovery Channel (while made out — through clever marketing — to be the killer knowledge-sharing apps of our age) is no substitute for reading text, say in a newspaper or a good book (or a good blog).

So it seems that the irony that is often glossed over is that the technology that underpins the “Knowledge and Information” Age is actually dumbing down the children of this age — propagating lazy, vacuous, right-here-right-now, attention-deficited attitudes and minds that are now being highlighted by the growing Gen-Y Bashing movement. In fact a new elite is being created — one that is immune to the descent to mysticism and shallowness afflicting the ordinary schmoe. This emerging elite possesses the intellectual horsepower to understand (and I mean really understand) the science, technology, and rationality that underpins the sleek gloss that the merely savvy see and consume.

As the common wisdom goes, technology made advanced enough can be pitched as magic to the ignorant. It is already happening. A new elite churning out the technology and an old elite joining the ranks of those constants-of-human-history — the ignorant masses — to consume and gawk at the magic.

Whereas computer savvy once meant being able to code one’s own games and apps, now it means merely being able to download music from iTunes and cobble together a Facebook profile. Whilst one needed to be a true geek to use a computer back in the 80′s, today any moron can lay claim to the label “computer literate”. The now widely-held belief that we are an information and knowledge generation is a triumph of shrewd marketing. An increase in access to technology was not, as we are led to believe, accompanied by any real information savviness today any more than an increase in the number of cars on the road did not increase the proportion of motorists who know how to build or service a car with their own hands. Cars today are in fact vastly less home-serviceable than a 1980′s Toyota Corolla, just as a crashed PC today renders its data utterly inaccessible to most ordinary users.

An increase in functionality is accompanied by an increase in the complexity of the entities that deliver this functionality. As more people understand the complexity less, the more their regard for the functionality takes on a mystical approach. while I use technology to illustrate this trend, I believe the principle applies to society at large.

If we lack the intellectual breadth to manage the complexity, it turns into a monster.

Such is the problem of humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels. Progress in the last two centuries was built on the back of labour saving devices that were powered by fossil fuels. The economics and finance devised to track and manage the productivity gains delivered by these technologies failed to take into account the cost to the environment.

Those fossil fuels represent billions of tonnes of carbon compounds and billions of joules of solar energy progressively stored over geological timescales (hundreds of millions of years). All of that is being burned and released within human timescales (mere hundreds of years). One split-second revolution of a Hummer’s engine probably releases a quantity of energy that took Nature thousands of years to capture and store in the form of oil. The scenario that we might see the Earth’s atmosphere reverting back to pre-Cambrian (or worse) compositions within the next several hundred years is quite possible.

If nature does not punish us for this, our flawed economics will. As “jude” points out in his comment bringing the whole discussion back to the ground. Stagflation may be the optimistic scenario in this case. We don’t know yet if there is a sudden implosion still lurking underneath the unfathomable complexity and convolusion of the world market.

Rich societies with highly-educated populations struggle with modernity. I do wonder how a relatively ignorant, primitive, shortsighted, and inward-looking society such as ours will.

So I thought, I’d do the Pinoy thing, give Marck a “great idea mate!” nod in the process, and make gaya-gaya.

————

On top of what Marck already mentioned (many of which I am also guilty of), here is my list:

1. I used to have a weekly P100 lagay budget for my daily drive to work.

Back in the late nineties I didn’t believe in observing the odd-even law which banned my car from using Manila’s streets every Friday. I worked out that I have about a 1-in-5 chance of being caught every Friday which equates to the equivalent of P70 a month fee for undocumented “immunity” from the odd-even scheme — assuming of course that my P100 “bid” is always successful whenever I get stopped.

If a week passes and I don’t get stopped by a man-in-blue, I deposit the P100 in my savings account. And the financial institutions allocate my money to the capital-needy.

Everybody wins!

2. On my last visit to Manila, I discovered the joys of bribing security guards as well.

The annoying thing about BF Homes Paranaque is that you have to enter and leave that subdivision from the same gate. That’s because us poor sods who lack a “homeowner’s sticker” are required to leave their licenses at the gate of entry. So if you’re visiting someone there coming from the North and decide you want to check out the Alabang Town Centre after, well, you work it out. For P20 to P30 you get to save at least P100 in fuel costs and about two hours of travel time.

Side note:

US Infantryman: No guts, no glory!

US Marine: No pain, no gain!

Pinoy Sikyo: No ID, no entry!

ha ha! :D

(Disclaimer: I’d like to make a full disclosure that this is by no means an original joke of mine, in case chuck, decides to point this bit of trivia out.)

At the end of all that, a humble sikyo gets a free beer, less greenhouse gases were released into Manila’s toxic air, and P70 (net of the lagay) remains in my bank account to be allocated by our venerable financial institutions to the capital-needy.

Everybody wins!

3. Back in college when we were making ligaw-ligaw the kolehiyalas, the three criteria I subscribed to along with my peers were maputi, mayaman, and malambing.

Emphasis on the maputi part. My lame retrospective excuse here is that this seems to be consistent with our society’s tastes in the first place. Just take stock of the hues of our celebrities and the abundance of skin whitening creme brands and hair-straightening kits selling like hotcakes out there.

Then again, taste in women is personal. So maybe one shouldn’t judge…

One thing’s for sure, a collective taste for straight-haired fair-skinned ladies opens a lot of doors for the average straight-haired fair skinned Pinay aspiring to gain employment in one of them SM Malls. Those pesos (net of food, jeepney fare, and “allowance” for a philandering alcoholic husband) then end up in a bank account to be allocated by our venerable financial institutions to the capital-needy.

Everyone wins!

4. Living here in Australia today, I must say I miss cheap labour every now and then.

I often find myself mowing my lawn or cleaning crud out of my gutter and thinking of the P100 we used to pay our local all-around handyman to do those and more. I think of cheap labour whenever furniture we ordered after checking it out fully-assembled in a showroom is delivered in a million pieces with assembly instructions enclosed in a flat box.

At the office, although it is a bit heartwarming to see our CIO take his turn putting away the dishes in our tea room as he honours his designated day on our floor’s kitchen duty roster, I gotta admit to a bit of grumbling as I do it when it is MY day. I miss the office all-around we had back in Makati whose primary responsibility was to man the photocopier and wash the dishes.

But then technology and cheap telecoms were invented and all of a sudden there was a way to tap all that cheap labour First World dwellers have come to miss that would otherwise be drinking beer in the middle of the day on a sidewalk. Those dollars (net of expenditure on karaoke machines, celphone trinkets, fake Tommy Hilfigers, and daily Starbucks lattes) then end up in a bank account to be allocated by our venerable financial institutions to the capital-needy.

Everyone wins!

and finally; before the usual suspects point it out…

5. I run a Website and maintain an online persona whose main reason for existence is to question — and diss — just about every cultural trait, nuance, and quirk of the Pinoy.

That, plus an inclination to link back to that website at every opportunity, specially after I discovered the commercial wonders of PayPal and Google Adsense.

In this case, me and my ego wins!

————

Which brings us to my latest epiphany:

Being a loser is all in the mind. Winning is an attitude and a way of life.

Labo ba?

So there we have it, my gaya-gaya (emulation is the highest form of flattery, Marck) list of five things I do to contribute to the decay of the Philippines (which, it seems, turns out quite a few winners).

A bit of full-disclosure often helps. Ultimately it was Michael Douglas’s character’s full-disclosure of his affair to his wife in the seminal movie Fatal Attraction that enabled him to triumph over the deranged mistress played by Glen Close.

Two of my esteemed co-bloggers here at Filipino Voices have already expressed their opinion (in Rom’s case, her anguish), and this part from Atty. Butch’s post caught my interest:

I’m certain the RCBC murderers took some cold, cruel comfort, while they were pulling the triggers on their victims, from the knowledge that, however heinous their crimes, they would never be lawfully executed by the State.

But they can be extralegally executed, right? Calling Fred Lim and/or Rod Duterte and/or Jovito Palparan. Kidding aside, what’s forty years if you can survive that long? You can launder the money with ease, and get to enjoy the fruits of their crimes afterwards? Of course, that depends on the judge and the prosecution’s evidence. Heck, if I were to handle this case, my judgment (if ever the suspects were truly guilty) would be simple: reclusion perpetua for each murdered victims without any possibility of parole.

However, these criminals take comfort in the fact that it would take some time for the justice system to get them: for the police to apprehend them, for the prosecution to file cases, for the judge to hear the case, till the time the Supreme Court upholds the guilty verdict. That is assuming on several factors: that the police would get them, that the evidence would be overwhelming, that the suspects would hire great lawyers who could delay the proceedings, bribe the judge, or the prosecuting team could be weak. Money makes the world go round, and it can even buy justice. And of course, these criminals know that even if they are found guilty, they will die of sickness or old age, not murder, unless they survive the jungle called National Bilibid Prisons.

In short, they committed the crime because they knew the odds are stacked against the People of the Philippines. Our justice system works in favor of the suspects. And that is why I perfectly understand the sentiments of Atty. Butch and Rom.

We can always do our part as citizens of this country in making our justice system work. Sometimes we have to forgo our concept of self-preservation (the concept that currently ails this country). When we see a crime, report it immediately. When you know something about a crime, contact the police. We should not hesitate to stand as witness during a trial. If a relative has committed a crime, report it immediately; if possible, turn him/her over to the police. Follow the law. It is not easy, but these things must be done in order for our justice system to work. I do not have to state the otherwise part.

Of course, we should call on the police to do their part. Please bring back the police-on-the-beat. Please, Mr. Policeman, get a buddy and start walking the streets again. If it means going back to the brown uniform, so be it. Please get off your airconditioned precints/police cars, and walk with us.

And if you know something about this horrendous crime, please, mighty please, tell the police. If one of the criminals is a family member, please forget blood ties – report him/her to the police. For what is money tainted with blood? That makes you a criminal, too.

Let us make our justice system work. Let us make criminal’s lives harder. Let us make crimes pay.

—

Dedicated to those who forget what accountability and command responsibility are.

Carlin suggests that individually, Icelanders are self-confident. They are culturally driven to “bring up happy, healthy children, by however many fathers and mothers”. He explained that they have a sense “that, no matter whether the father lived in the same home or the mother was away working, the children belonged to, and were seen to belong by, the extended family, the village.”

You can read the whole article here.

What can the Filipino learn from Iceland? What insights can we draw?

Interesting too, is what he said here: “the most basic thing is that anyone with resources can manipulate Law to suit their own purposes”. I realised from reflecting on this that maybe influence in politics (beyond elections) is all about economic clout. In societies where wealth is distributed more evenly, the difference in political influence between the elites and the masses and middle class is less pronounced.

In the Philippines where the elite monopolise a big chunk of national wealth, their political influence sticks out out like a sore thumb.

My point is, it all leads back to developing that economic clout in the masses to tip the balance a bit in their favour. It’s not about drumbeating and footstomping about political rights. The reality is that influence will always NEED TO BE BOUGHT. The elites do it because they can. People who take a crybaby approach and blame the elites for doing so won’t get anywhere. The SOLUTION lies in the non-Elites figuring out how to develop their OWN arsenals of influence. Nobody else will do it for them.

The Tsinoy community built their power around economic clout and not political clout. They did not go around stomping their feet about how little representation they had in politics back in the 50′s. They more wisely focused their energies on slowly buying out their boss’s balut and taho factories.

The OFWs are another case in point. If you think about it, they have less physical influence over Pinoy politics than the islanders. In fact you’d think, they’re out of sight and therefore out of mind. Yet they are recognised and sought collectively as a power to reckon with despite being physically absent. But by far the only thing OFWs really contribute to Pinoy society is money. So let’s go figure. At the end of the day, money talks. OFW money talks louder than their physical presence. Many of them don’t even bother to visit the islands for decades. Yet the oligarchs and politicians pander to them. Look at the INQ7.net website. To hazard a guess, maybe 90% of their banner ads there are targetting overseas Pinoys.

It is in this regard that I beg to differ to Cocoy’s looking to the OFWs as a political force. My take is that OFWs become OFWs because of a need for money. And conversely, the only way they collectively know how to exercise influence is through the money they make (kind of like where the Chinese were several decades ago). I think we should leave OFWs to do what they do best — make money. Any expectations beyond that is only bound to disappoint.

We keep slagging politicians because we think all they really follow is the money train. Yet a simple aspect of this reality is not capitalised upon:

Why don’t we focus on making and applying more money so that they will listen?

When Pinoys start gaining economic clout, not only will politicians listen, the Henry Sy’s and Ayala’s of this world will take notice as well. It’s win-win.

But where do we choose to direct and organise our energies instead? Let me count the ways: street “revolutions”, civil disobediences, boycotts, and other hare-brained antics like those. Strange the way we resort to these, considering that we already are a society that has the power to choose its leaders and representatives — that is, we already have the constitutional channel to choose. But choosing is different from influencing. The missing ingredient is the REAL channel — moolah!

The street antics are quaintly entertaining, BUT they don’t really deliver the punch we really need. Economic clout (i.e. MONEY) is what delivers that real punch. And Pinoy non-elites need to figure out how to make MORE of it if they want REAL representation in politics.

Thanks to @LaTtEX for pointing out a recent Inquirer article, “Overseas Filipinos forming political party for 2010“:

Overseas Filipinos are forming a national political party in preparation for the 2010 elections and beyond, it was revealed at the Global Filipino Nation (GFN) conference Friday.

Francisco “Jun” Aguilar, interim chairman of the Partido ng Pandaigdigang Pilipino (PPP or Party of the Global Filipino), said the party is in the process of complying with the requirements of the Commission on Elections.

Why am I elated by this news? Check out these posts, if you haven’t already: “Because We Can“, “Because We Can Change the Dynamics of the Game“, “Power Not by Desire, But By Right“.