The ending (of this series) is the beginning so says me who also have tipsy moments trying to impress silent and sober readers. It is really the shut up piece and the beginning of silence waiting for
another think coming, from readers. If as Heraclitus has said character is fate and if essays have character, then this is the essays’ time to be released to its destiny, into the nothingness of the cosmos. Writing those thoughts had reached the “point of no return” that says ENOUGH ! STOP! And let circumstances “BRING IT ON”. Let the people make PH2030 happen or just float in contentment letting the status quo take tomorrow.
But let us continue this seeming song of a swan . . .
FIVE-A: SINGIT: The Mary Jane Veloso event had unmasked a lot of people and groups for what they really are. THEY ARE NOT ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE as any dictator or despot will try to get rid of them I
shall mention them as news media had in their pages. The “Migrante,” “Gabriela,” “Credit grabbers” they are not repeat, enemies of the people. They could be their own enemies, the potent enemies of
progress. Why and how? They have not improved themselves nor the population they are trying to help. That’s why. They are still at it,that’s how. In a remote barrio if you see an old jeepney still running after 25 or more years; that’s them.
SIX: THE MACRO QUESTIONS TO MICRO ANSWERS — My occupational habits really do die hard as will be obvious from the style and content of these series. Let me be anecdotal. As OFW during the mid-90s in Papua New Guinea, I was Administration and Economic Sector advisor to a province. My first speech contribution to the Annual Budget Conference drew a retort from a PhD (Econ) Member of Parliament: “The provincial advisor’s program of development is good and we should adopt all of it. My reservation is that it is all solutions, all answers. He did not tell us the questions, and the problems. I hope he enlightens us about those too.”
I thanked the MP for his kind remarks and kept my mouth shut because I can’t say many of those who are the, or just the big part of the problems just don’t get it.
In writing PH2030, I am on, back to my old habits sidestepping micro problems and focusing more on macro solutions. The pieces had presented micro reasons for a dud PH2030. However, there are macro
questions the answers to which will be determinant variables that will ensure a substantive PH2030. Filipino writers and their books should provide the answers to such macro questions suggested below.
How did morality as fathered and mentored by religion gradually but surely contributed to PHILIPPINES 2015? To what depths had the rule or misrule of law corrupted the body, mind and spirit of the
Filipino? What is the contribution of POLITICAL-ECONOMY—political science and politicians; of economics and economists to poverty in PH2015?
Was there good political family dynasty before the Macapagals and the Marcoses? What made political family dynasties invasive and pervasive down to the regions and provinces? What is the contribution of vote buying to mendicancy, nourishment and entrenchment of family dynasties?
How come the politicians’ armoury of guns and goons in the fifties and sixties had been effectively reduced if not replaced by vote buying of electors and election officials, without the government
lifting a finger? How many government officials had been elected to Office not by the voters but by the COMELEC or by the courts? Are not vote buying and bought voters only a decoy or scapegoat of a more
sinister politics?
What is the (macro) role of law against the (micro) rule of law in shaping and nurturing a people towards a higher human development index? IS LAW IS WHAT IS ALL THERE IS TO LIFE? You make the law.
You implement and enforce the law. You interpret the law according to your own law. Nice if the laws are nice to the poor and disadvantaged and not loaded against them.
If the lawmakers, make laws which are not for the people but are implemented and interpreted only for some of the people, what happens then? If the Public Interest is so defined as the sole interest of the elite what happens to the masses ? If it is going on for at least 55 years? When and how had it started? By whom? For example, for whose sake was the law enacted to abolish the death penalty ? Compassion for the lives of the criminals maybe or saving the skin of plunderers? It is unimaginable even to Paul McCartney if for more than half a century, life is going just fine for Filipinos, making it elsewhere as global citizens.
Is greed for power and money the politicians’ shrine of the devil in the Philippines? Is it the ultimate cause or the ultimate effect leading to realization or Dud of PH2030? Simply put is losing that excessive power and money fixation by the few the light and the way out of the tunnel 15 years from now.
Between PH2015 and PH2030 several writers should plumb the depths of Philippine laws to establish once and for all whether it was and still is the zygote (fertilized ovum) of bad history of the Philippines. This piece is my swan of a long song. *****