A Death-wish in the Political Psyche of the Filipino?

Erap Estrada had to leave Malacañang before his term was over. Gloria Arroyo narrowly avoided a similar fate. Yes, she finished her term but even after a year since leaving office, she is still grappling with all sorts of legal troubles. Actually, in the last couple of years in office, she was worse than a lame duck.

Were these events the result of organized, orchestrated, or deliberate effort? There are those who may believe so. There are easy scapegoats: the CIA quickly comes to mind. They are, after all, very well-funded. Motives, you ask? Well, they may still be hurting from the fact that we kicked them out of the Clark and Subic Military Bases. Those who love to dabble in conspiracy theories would be able to bring up a dozen more possible suspects.

I think these are far-fetched. As they say: possible but not probable.

But the story goes on. If you keep your ears close to the ground, you may already have heard stories about the sitting president. I don’t take extraordinary efforts to listen to these stories, but I haven’t escaped getting some. The ones I have heard center around a few themes: the president is not too energetic (read: lazy); he is not too intelligent (read: dumb); he is detached from the people (read: member of an indifferent elite). Interestingly, I have not yet come across these stories from taxi drivers, street sweepers or my barber. I keep hearing them from people who imply that they are “in the know.” These are people who claim to be close to the people who are great, near-great or, at least, their respective hangers-on.

I find most of the stories very annoying. It is one thing to find fault in the president’s decisions or actions. It is a different thing altogether when you attack his person. When you do the former, you keep the president on his toes. That can’t be bad. When you do the latter, what are you hoping would happen? Really now, if he is lazy or dumb, what do you want him to do?

I hope the purveyors of these stories are not building up to a scenario where they are able to convince people to again change the president before his term is over. TAMA NA. SOBRA NA.

Let me say it again. Erap was a bad president. Gloria was too. Maybe PNoy is. Let us not waste any effort trying to get rid of him. Let him finish his term. If we had let Erap finish his term, the whole country would have suffered from his actions (or inaction). That would have been a dear price to pay. But it would have convinced everyone, especially those who voted for him (dahil bida sa cine), that it takes more than movie stardom to get the country out of the troubles we are in. As it is, there are people who still believe that Erap was a good president. He almost made it when he ran again for the presidency.

As long as we have a large number of people who believe that movie stardom, or some other form of popularity equals good presidential timber, we cannot have a healthy democracy.

So, let the sitting president serve the remaining years of his term. He might still turn out to be a good one. If he turns out to be a bad president, then let the majority among us who voted for him realize that they were wrong, Let us all learn from the painful experience. The pain will be our tuition fee. Then we, as a pained but wiser people, can really say: never again. We will vote for someone who can really run the country well.

"I have seen the enemy. The enemy is us."

January 24, 2010

Metro Centre Hotel, Tagbilaran

The human brain stores memories. We all know this. What is not generally known is that the brain does not distinguish between real experience and imagined experience.

This is a crucial piece of information. You can get scared by the sudden appearance of a floating white cloth in the dark of night. The cloth may have been drifting along as it was lifted by the wind from a neighbour’s clothesline. But you got scared. You can scare yourself just as effectively if you imagine that floating piece of cloth next time you happen to be walking in the dark.

Then your brain will store each experience the same way. It makes no value judgement. It does not say this one is real and this other one is imagined.

I was having breakfast this morning in the hotel coffee shop. Next table to me was a group of men who were speaking loud enough to be heard throughout the coffee shop. They were talking about how traffic in the Philippines is so horrible compared with Singapore or the US. We Filipinos are terrible drivers. We generally are undisciplined and have no respect for the law. And they talked on and on and on.

People in the coffee shop heard them. Think about it. Those ideas entered into the brains of everyone present. Unless the people processed the information, their brains would have stored them as information –again not distinguishing whether they were real or imagined.

Then a horrible thought dawned on me.

I had thought that media people were to blame for the low regard people of other countries have for the Philippines and for Filipinos. Our media people speak mostly of what is terrible about us. Crime, corruption, poverty – if it’s bad, they write about it.

Our media people are Filipinos too. They were brought up in the same milieu as you and I. Like the milieu of those guys in the next table at the coffee shop.

A cartoon character once said, “I have seen the enemy. The enemy is us.”

It is not our media people. It is all of us. We feed ourselves with bad images of ourselves. It almost seems as though we are all competing for who can tell the worst stories about ourselves.

What would it take to change our habit into one of competing for who can tell the best stories about us? Once in a while, I would hear people talk about how good and smart and more, the Filipino is compared with the Japanese, or Singaporean, or American, or whatever. But I don’t hear it often enough. Do we want Singaporeans to compete for who can tell the worst stories about Filipinos? Or Americans? Or Japanese? Or do we want these foreigners to compete for who can tell the best stories about Filipinos?

Here’s one story: The Singaporeans under British commanders outnumbered and outgunned the Japanese attacking force. But they surrendered after just a few days of fighting at the start of the WW II. The Filipinos under Filipino commanders, graduates of the Philippine Military Academy, and American officers, were outnumbered and outgunned by the Japanese. But they fought off the superior Japanese military for several months until they practically had nothing but rocks to fight with. I wish people would tell more of this kind of story instead of how terrible our drivers are.

If all the world hears from us – and I don’t mean just from our media – is how bad we are, a great part of the fault is with us. But if all the world hears from us is how good we are, then a great part of the credit is with us.

Here’s something we can do. Don’t add to the bad stories. Add to the good stories. Next time you hear anyone tell bad stories, tell them to change. If you have friends in media, tell them to help revive the self-image of the Filipino. They have battered it enough already. Tell them to start telling good stories about us.

If all of us resolve to do this, in a short while, other countries can have a different view of our country and Filipinos.