Corporate Watch
Is it hot in here, or is it just me?
By Amelia H.C. Ylagan
Hot flashes and cold night sweat. Irritability and sensitivity. Headaches, weakness, dizziness, heart palpitations, skipped heartbeats, tiredness or insomnia. Roughly four million Filipino women ages 50-59 can be experiencing that now, in the upsetting four to 10 years of menopause that signals the irreversible end of their reproductive years.
But we are 95 million Filipinos, half of whom are male, in the one-to-one male/female population ratio taken by censuses. And doctors say men also go through a similar degenerative reproductive slowdown called andropause, or "male climacteric," sometimes code-named "ADAM" (Androgen Deficiency of the Aging Male) to carefully tiptoe around the more sensitive ego of the Macho Male.
Add about 1.2 million Filipino men age 60-64 currently in their most marked andropause to the four million women estimated to be experiencing menopause, and we have about 5.2 million Filipinos possibly suffering hormonal, psychological, interpersonal, social, sexual and even moral and spiritual displacement and misplacement from climacteric hormonal changes. Should they chorus the classic menopausal (and andropausal) query -- "Is it hot in here, or is it just me?" -- the answer might plausibly be that it is just they who physically feel the hot flashes and night sweat. But are they, really, the only 5% of Filipinos suffering in the scorching hot climate of change in the Philippines nowadays?
The estimated 60 million Filipino adults (there are about 35 million children, 1-14 years of age) might as well be in that restless menopausal stage of hot flashes and cold night sweats. The Philippines -- the oldest democracy in Asia -- is undergoing political changes perhaps more draconian than the expected natural consequence of the 1986 EDSA I’s fight for democracy by the removal of a dictator. Today, Filipinos are in fact defining their democracy by reviewing laws that should protect the people rather than uphold the so-called rule of flawed law to protect the individual rights of persons misappropriating the influence and prerequisites of power. The utmost anxiety is in the present mock trial in the Senate, of the entrenched graft and corruption that has usurped political governance since the gleaming ideals of honest and fair democracy were won as recompense for World War II. It has been 66 years of democracy. Are we in irreversible menopause, hot flashes and all?
A 2009 TIME magazine political analysis of Asian democracy pointedly asked how and why Asia has failed, in effect, to truly uphold democracy in the region. "The past couple of decades have created a region that to all outward appearances is largely democratic. Over the past 10 years, some 20 Asian countries have held elections, and many have undergone peaceful transitions in government. Yet throughout 2008, many Asians appeared to progressively lose their faith indemocratic politics." The article proceeds to show that elections do not prove a democracy, as in the experiences of Thailand, South Korea, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Taiwan even Malaysia and Singapore.
Only five of the 25 Asian nations polled in the 2008 survey of political and civil rights by the US-based NGO Freedom House were deemed truly "free." "Are Asia and democracy truly compatible?" Time asked.It cited a study by the governance-tracking Asian Barometer Project that found that "more citizens believed that the(ir) nations’ recent democratic transitions had brought no improvement to their lives than those who saw positive changes. These observations for the 2009 regional political scenario seem to prevail past several passionate protests against oppressive and corrupt governance after that, to today’s continuing unrest."
In the Philippines, the giddy delirium of the 2010 victory of President Benigno Simeon Aquino III, son of freedom fighters Benigno, Sr. and Corazon Aquino, has faded and waned with the people’s observed shifting sympathy for a disgraced midnight appointee of the popularly distrusted former president Gloria Arroyo. "With time softening the memories of autocratic rule, nostalgia for overthrown dictators isspreading. Some are even calling for a resurgence of so-called ‘Asian values,’ a mix of paternalistic discipline and market economics that fell into disregard after the 1997 financial meltdown proved that crony capitalism thrived in the absence of democratic checks and balances," TIME warned.
Asians are exhorted to guard clean and honest elections as the true basis for establishing the people’s voice. "The propensity for voting ina big man [or woman] has stifled the growth of independentinstitutions that should check the power of elected leaders," the article said. Indeed, in the Philippines, the direly needed checks and balancesin government seem to be clouded by the pomp and ceremony given to leaders, which overextended respect and deference might too easily forgive lack of transparency and accountability.
The Asian Barometer Project (2009) found that "the majority of Asians say they support most democratic ideals, their commitment to limits on a leader’s power is far lower than that of people polled in Europeor even sub-Saharan Africa. In South Korea, for instance, nearly two-thirds of those surveyed believed that a morally upright ruler could be given carte blanche to do whatever he wants, even if that means breaking the law. This ruler-knows-best attitude can make Asians act more like subjects than citizens… When Asians finally do react against their governments, it is often in extremis, anger spilling onto the streets."
Will the passion of a small group of Metro Manilan civil society have to spill onto the streets to rouse indignation against a farce purportedly trying the Chief Justice appointed by a former president, who herself is being tried for electoral fraud and plunder? Will senator-judges in the impeachment court tightly insist on the legal presentation of foolproof evidence, even if such trial is not for a criminal case, but a test of moral turpitude and appropriateness forsuch a high position as Chief Justice? When will a preponderance of evidence be deemed enough to impeach for loss of trust and confidence, when senator-judges might be wary of having to show their own clean hands?
Cool ka lang, manang, a friend said. In the end, Truth and Justice will prevail." Justice, who? And there go those nasty hot flashes and cold night sweats again.
Is it hot in here, or is it just me?
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