What kind of country do we really want?

Editorial

IT’S another new year. But we are still a long way from being the caring and patriotic people who form caring and patriotic communities in which most of us care less for our individual self-interest than for the well-being of our fellow citizens and the common good.

That kind of people, that kind of society, is the only kind capable of lifting up our country to prosperity, human development, and economic competitiveness.

For us to become that sublime people is what Jose Rizal died for. He wanted a community of Filipinos who, freed from their foreign colonizers, do not allow themselves to be enslaved by their own kind. Sadly that is what we are: Still a society of alipin and maginoo. Some of the Filipino slaves of the Spaniards and the Americans are the tyrants enslaving today’s Filipinos.

To change this unhealthy state, we have to redefine our moral, philosophical and political foundation as a people and as a nation. There should be a national debate on whether we wish to hold on to the present national moral, philosophical foundation that makes us soft, hypocritical and remote from the Christian principles that Rizal, and after him Emilio Jacinto and Apolinario Mabini, espoused.

The absence of this definition is largely the reason our local government units and national administrations—including the present one despite its anti-corruption banner—are always manipulated by rent-seeking dynastic politicians and elites whose preeminent goal is to enrich themselves and accumulate more power.

The redefinition of our national moral, philosophical foundation, must be based on the truth if it is to restore the principles Rizal, Jacinto and Mabini championed. As a result, the economic principles underlying the way the government and the business sector manage our country’s resources would turn consistently patriotic.

Our government would then be able to function as patriotically as the Japanese, the Korean, and the Singaporean officials do. These countries are perceived to be faithful to the rules of the globalized world economic order but at the same time they patriotically promote and protect their national interests.

We need to achieve this restoration of the Rizalian vision of what the Philippines and the Filipinos should be. If we don’t our country will be fragmented by conflicts arising from a third of our population being dirt-poor and a fourth being just a hair above the poverty line.

It comforts some of us to hear the mantra that our country enjoys “sound macro economic fundamentals.” And thanks to the family-love and patriotic resolve of our overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who remit more and more of their income to their families to give them enough purchasing power despite the inflation, the so-called “strong domestic demand” makes our economy grow.

But our gross domestic product growth is being severely curtailed by the continuing decline in the economies of our biggest trading partners and sources of investment and aid—the United States, China, Europe and Japan.

The World Bank, other international bodies and Bangko Sentral Governor Amando Tetangco have forecast the 2012 global economy to be “deteriorated.” This makes the world economy more volatile and unpredictable. Our foreign trade becomes problematic.

Unlike the rich countries our economy still grew in 2011. But the high growth targets of 7 percent to 8 percent for 2012 to 2016 that government economic movers originally planned for have been lowered to between 5 percent and 6 percent. At this rate the dream to rescue the 30-plus percent of our dirt-poor compatriots from their plight has become more illusory.

The continued economic decline in Europe, the US, China and Japan, will even reduce the wealth young Filipinos are making as employees in the BPO-call center industry. It will also threaten the stability of OFW jobs. This means that the so-called “domestic demand” fuelling our robust domestic retail trade could also go into decline.