"A brighter day for little Jane," by Julia Carreon-Lagoc

NY, 23 April 2012

Dear Ms Julia Lagoc:

With great interest, I have just read your well-written article, "A brighter day for little Jane," which was forwarded to me and the many other people in the various Fora.

I say "with great interest" because the issue of the explosive rate at which the population of the Philippines has been growing over the past many years has been a personal and continuing concern of mine, starting way back circa 1969 when I published a long Article in The Philippines Free Press, titled "POPULATION CONTROL--OR DISASTER."

My long-standing concern--which could very well be in the nature of an "obsession"--is that the country's population has been moving North at a rate which doubles it every 35 years--from the present 100 million to 200 million by the year 2046, and yet again to 400 million by the year 2081 [assuming that there will be enough physical space to contain all those people!}

Why is that so?

The reason is that in my considered Opinion, there is no way the Philippines can get out of the sticky quagmire of Poverty--it is now known universally as "The Sick Man of Asia" with some 30 million Filipinos living lives of extreme degradation and dehumanization--if it cannot rein in this explosive rate of population growth.

The Philippines' neighbors--Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Malaysia--were once upon a time also poor like the Philippines. But they were able to get out of Poverty and earned the enviable reputation as "Asian economic tigers" because, One, they were able to manage the rate of growth of their populations effectively and, Two, parri passu, they were able to Industrialize.

Tragically, the Philippines has been a sorry failure at BOTH. It has been unable to control its population primarily because of the vigorous, unceasing and even violent opposition of the Roman Catholic Church through its political arm The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines.

And it has failed to INDUSTIALIZE because, evidently, it has not had leaders in the mold of Lee Kwan Yew, Mohammed Mahathir, for instance, but has had leaders who were either CLUELESS on what to do, or were more interested in or preoccupied with enriching themselves and their cronies in office through corruption. This has earned for the Philippines the other unenviable reputation as "One of the most corrupt countries of the world."

MarPatalinjug