With a few days left to go before the elections, I have not entirely made up my mind about who to vote for even though I already have a tentative list at hand. Still, everything is possible.
So I decided to ask several questions that perhaps would help me pick the right set of people. First, what does this country need? Second, What are the growing problems facing our country today? Third, how can I best serve that interest by voting for the right set of people?
The first two problems that come to mind: Poverty and corruption. But its not that, is it? On hindsight, its not that at all. Analyzing it, the fundamental issue at hand is the absence of genuine leadership and vision. Poverty, corruption and the absence of hope that our people feel that things will change are but effects of this fundamental issue.
When you think about it, our people are in a dessert. They are drinking the water in the mirage because they don't know the difference between water and sand. Nobody is telling them otherwise. They have no where to go. The choose to migrate--- rich and poor alike abroad in order to find a better living. Fat pockets with small demeaning occupations (many of them) instead of the safety and comfort of home, with huge titles and little pay. Sounds pathetic doesn't it? Unfortunately when you think about it, these are realities that can not be helped right now because our people can not hope to find a better life here. They think they can not find a better life here.
I have had the opportunity to travel all over this country and abroad. I have had the opportunity to compare and contrast various regions of our nation, and our nation as a whole with that of our friends abroad. Mind you, this country is a paradise, if only we realize it more. (but maybe thats more the curse than a blessing, nothing to push us over the edge.) Sentimental as it may sound, there is something to be said to a place that gave you birth. This is home.
Something struck me: if you travel to various parts of the country, there are varying conditions. In some places improved lives and in those cases lives that are being urbanized. You can see the difference when you travel to not so far places where things have remained the same for more than a decade. In those places you would see extreme poverty. It is likewise mirrored in different places around the world.
Whats the difference between the regions of this country that are progressing (albeit in a slow steady pace) with those places that are not? The ones running successfully are those towns and cities and generally provinces that have leaders who push for change (not necessarily corrupt free, but at least they put their people at a higher pedestal) and the unsuccessful ones are those with leaders who chose to put their interests first over their people as well as having leaders without foresight, without vision, without a plan. There lies the difference.
Furthering our thought on the matter, Ancient Chinese military thought tells us that “Warfare is the greatest affair of state, the basis for life and death, the way to survival or extinction and it must be throughly pondered and analyzed”. What does this have to do with our people? Not only are our people in the desert, they are also in a war, a war to defeat poverty, to build the future of our society, to establish a culture and a nation. To fight this war, we must understand the problem, dissect it and implement solutions for it. That is what Sun Tzu teaches in his opening lines, analyze the problem before you act because the aftermath can be terrible.
As a people, we must have a consensus on how to embark on a journey to form a collective vision of our future. We must begin a campaign to build our country. This campaign will not be quick. It will not be easy to envision much less to make a reality. We must plan the next twenty years of our national life and execute it. It must be done right now or our society and our nation face irrelevancy. Do we want that?
The objective of our vision must be simple: create an environment that will address our people's needs, focus on the needs of the future and establish ourselves as a force in the international community. It is easier said than done, but it must start from somewhere, if that is what we want. After all to dream is but the first step in establishing a foothold into reality.
What are the necessary steps that we must undertake as a people? We begin by creating true local autonomy and some quarters are suggesting that we turn to the Federal System of government. This is good. It will provide much needed infrastructure development--- roads, civil defense (police, fire, jail, coast guard), education can now be attended to not as a complex whole but depending on what each region, province, city or town so requires. Money will finally go where it is most needed: in our countryside. Beyond that, our metropolis, particularly Metro Manila can be turned into a Region that can meet the demands of the 21st Century and keep pace with our friends and neighbours abroad.
Our national government, given the freedom from looking after the small details of our country can focus on long term goals: food security, technological development, national defense, population control, better vision of education.
We need to use more technology. We need to transform our people and move towards the 21st century and to do so, rid our population of science and technological phobia. We must utilize science to solve our water crisis, our energy needs as well as health solutions and weather predictions. These solutions already exist but none are utlized for our use. What a shame right?
The answers to our problems partly lie in our use of technology, which as a nation we basically do not. We must make this our advantage and as such, we need to teach our people not just mathematics or engineering or computers but to utilize our creative side. The technology of the future will require us to be more abstract. It will require not a focus on one side of the mind but a synergy of both left and right brains. Therein shall lie our answer.
Our National Policy should focus on the creation of more manufacturing and agricultural facilities; to strengthen our industries and to have fair labour practices--- on both sides of the fence. Unfavorable labour practice by employers must be dealt with accordingly as much as the same practice must not be condoned when employees act up. Which brings us to an important point: Our vision of Philippine culture must be a people with a culture of work, balanced and grounded on morals and of ethics: Dignity of Men (and women to be politically correct) is after all paramount not just at work but in our daily lives.
Our country needs an economic one, but never at the expense of the spirit that makes this people beautiful. We need a national renewal. We must create a Filipino Culture and Society that remains grounded on Family values, on humanities, on Freedom of Religion, on tolerance and encourage a society that cares. We must do this in concert with Church and Religious leaders. Ethics and good moral standards must be in place and Church, religious leaders and Family are the pillars of Philippine Society and Culture and they must be at the forefront of this charge.
Our Vision of Philippine society must be that every child is cared for, fed properly and given equal opportunity to overachieve their potential.
Our government must put fiscal management as a priority. That is the answer to continued growth. Our Vision of Government must be one that is streamlined, professional and inter-operating, never spending more than it can generate (with substantial cash reserves).
A Vision of the Future must include concrete steps towards a common and ambitious end-goal: Zero Poverty within a generation. But this must be grounded in reality and must encompass each and every Filipino working (willingly) hand-in-hand but such a vision is neither easy nor will it be quick to accomplish. Nothing worth doing is ever easy to achieve and that is something that must be ingrained in every Filipino: to want something we must work for it. But to achieve it, we must work together (something this country is not fond of doing) and it would need Absolute, Genuine, True Leadership to accomplish these goals. To put such a plan into motion would require a strong and steady hand. It must be ready to overcome the hesitations, the conflicts, the challenges and it must be dynamic enough to alter course (ever so slightly) but it must never take its eye away from the end-goal. It must be ready to bring order. It must be ready to listen to all ideas but at the end of the day, true leadership, true statesmanship would mean deciding on a path with finality because it would achieve a desired end-goal in spite of the good or bad popularity of such a decision.
Bottom line: as a people we must be serious about doing this kind of work, as much as having the vision for future.
Looking back at this long insight... I'm uncertain if such an initiative is indeed possible because it is too ambitious, too idealistic but not impossible nor improbable to achieve. If there is something to be learned from how Manila works is that everything works at the speed of molasses. People just wont buy it. Perhaps maybe someday someone could do it all or maybe better still they have a better idea and a more do-able plan.
To borrow, to paraphrase a television program, now more than ever, “we must raise the level of debate in the country”. We must cease to discuss as an infatuated nation in minute detail the life, loves and loss of actresses and television personalities. It serves only as a distraction of the greater issues at hand. Instead debate on the important issues of the day not because “debate” is “all talk or divisive” but because it brings seriously to the table what we envision the future to be and just maybe, at the end of the day we can have a consensus as a nation to do and solve a particular issue.
On hindsight, it didn't really help me decide with finality who to vote for. It just made me realize all this crap. That this is something too good to be true but such jaded idealism is very unbecoming. It is dangerous to fall into that trap and admittedly all this is so much easier said than done. I started writing this to figure out who to vote for in the coming elections and then came up with a litany (or rant, depending on who you ask I guess) of too many things. At the end of the day, we just have to vote our conscience and trust that “the voice of the People is the voice of God”. The dying optimist in me is still praying with God's grace, that there is hope for us yet and all this may not be,
only crap.
