By Bill Jethro Bagunu
I was born in Canada, miles away from our native land of the Philippines. Compared to my cousins back home, I grew up in great privilege and took the blessings I had here for granted. Truthfully when growing up, I never really cared much for the Philippines. I adopted Canadian culture despite my parents’ best efforts to send me to Filipino classes every Friday night in Hamilton. It was an enjoyable experience, one where I have fond memories of, although the only reason I wanted to go was due to the fact that I got to hang out with my other Filipino friends and eat timbits.
It didn’t help that I grew up in Burlington either – where literally 90% of the population descends from White-European ancestry. So in a way, Filipino school every Friday night was my first foray into Philippine language and culture. Well… culture at least, because I never really learned the language.
I always knew that the Philippines was a corrupt and poor country. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the reason why your parents immigrated to Canada. After all, you don’t generally immigrate to another nation if your homeland is well off. And I knew that the Philippines was not well off; if it were then there wouldn’t be 10 to 13 million Filipinos worldwide who live outside of the Philippines. The reason our people move away from our land is simple – for more opportunity. That’s why my parents immigrated here. That’s most likely the reason why your parents, or maybe even you yourself, immigrated here as well.
What if I told you however, that the Philippines never used to be a corrupt and poor country? What if I told you that it never had to be this way? What if I told you that we could have stayed and lived in our homeland? What if I told you that we never should have left in the first place?
Growing up, I heard stories from both my parents and the older generations. Stories of the Philippines that used to be one of the most advanced societies and have the most promising economies of the Asian continent. Curious, I began extensive research and grew more inclined to asking the older generations about a time forgotten. The time when the Republic of the Philippines was a model nation for the rest of Asia.
And so the question that persisted in my mind was – how did we go from being an advanced nation, to degrading into one of the worst?
Yesterday’s Glory
After the conclusion of the Second World War, when the Empire of Japan surrendered to Allied Forces, the Philippines who was once occupied by the Japanese during the war, remained in ruins. Our homeland was recovering from terrible losses during the war and struggling to combat the threat of communist insurgency (The Huks).
Slowly our nation began to rebuild itself. We signed treaties that ensured the Japanese would pay back large sums of reparations for their wrong-doings during the war. We began to slowly eliminate communist insurgency groups, and began an era of unprecedented economic growth and expansion. It’s hard to believe this now… but from the end of WWII to somewhere in the 1970’s – our people flourished.
We enjoyed years of economic surplus, higher wages, we succeeded to the point where the Philippine Peso and U.S. Dollar were virtually equivalent. We invested more in social programs such as healthcare, education, infrastructure, transportation, environmental policies, and so on.
From presidents Quezon, Laurel, Osmena, Roxas, Quirino, Magsaysay, Garcia, and Macapagal, we slowly developed from a recovering economy into one of the biggest economies in Asia, only rivalling that of Japan. You have to remember that at the time, China was still a struggling new communist nation; South Korea was still recovering from their civil war, with Vietnam entering their own. So what happened to our success? Although I am no expert, I do have my theories.
President Marcos was elected into office in 1965. To be fair, Marcos and his administration initially brought our land to new economic prosperity. He continued balancing the budget into surplus and invested in our social programs well, specifically in education and infrastructure. But somewhere along the line, whether the onus was on him, on his administration, or both… something went horribly wrong.
Today’s Crisis
At some point during the late 60’s to early 70’s, our government began to spend more than what it was earning. We began an era of serious economic decline and suffered through years of deficit. As a result, the government began to issue heavy austerity measures to try and get the nation out of deficit. Austerity measures have two detrimental outcomes, (1) a cut-back of public workers and, (2) companies are pressured to cut-back on their workforce. Heavy spending cuts were issued on more of our social programs. People’s wages were drastically reduced and our national debt ballooned exponentially out of control.
The Marcos Administration, putting a nail through the coffin, declared Martial Law in 1972. President Marcos remained in office and dictated our land for two decades. In 1986, a peaceful People Power Revolution began in our nation that started on February 22nd and ended on the 25th. Marcos resigned as President and his corrupt administration fell with him.
Unfortunately by then it was too late. Corruption sadly became the political norm of our homeland.
Every seating term of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines – Since the fall of Marcos, to Corazon Aquino, to Benigno Aquino III, has engaged in pocketing millions of taxpayer’s pesos. The locals call this “Pork Barrelling”, a continued cycle of stealing the people’s money instead of investing in social programs for the betterment of our land and our people. This is engaged by most Philippine congressmen, senators, governors, all the way down to barangay captains. With every president failing to regulate the upper and lower chambers, and to some extent their own cabinet.
20% of the Philippines overall economy is currently controlled by the wealthy – That’s 20% of wealth that could have gone towards social programs and narrowing the large inequality gap.
Furthermore, in an effort to stimulate economic growth, for years our government has been selling off our land to foreign mining and plantation companies. These mines and plantations continue to wreck extreme havoc on Earth’s environment, and is destroying our ecology. Combine this with the defunding of proper waste management systems; this is transforming what we consider as the “Pearl of the Orient”, into an ecological wasteland.
Hope for Tomorrow
As we know, typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines earlier this year. No one wants to politicize the situation due to the scale of the tragedy. But I believe that public policy and governance has some power and control over these situations. If our politicians just did the jobs they were elected to do, by the people, I won’t go as far as to saying that no one would have died, that would be an ignorant statement.
But I do believe that if our politicians had done their jobs correctly and invested millions of pesos into typhoon readiness programs, infrastructure readiness programs, and a proper waste management system – instead of stealing millions of pesos for themselves. Then I believe that the absence of such blind greed would have saved thousands of lives that were tragically lost.
It’s unfortunate it had to take a tragedy as immense as typhoon Haiyan… but hopefully now our leaders will wake up and realize that they could be doing so much more for our land and our people. Maybe now we can start, not only in rebuilding the areas that were hit by the typhoon, but in also rebuilding our nation as a whole. Towards something that together, we can all be proud of.
I visited the Philippines for the first time in 12 years last May and got to see all of my cousins who I didn’t get the chance to grow up with. Sometimes I wonder what if the Philippines stayed an economic power in Asia. Would I be there instead of here? Would I have gotten the chance to grow up with all my cousins that I missed out on? How would things be different?
My visit to our homeland inspired me. Unlike before, I now care about the Philippines. I care that I missed out on growing up with my family. I care that our homeland is suffering. I care about our land and our people.
Our homeland is calling ladies and gentlemen. The only question I have now is… do you still care?