By Tonyo Cruz
HOTSPOT
A couple of weeks ago, I jokingly asked a friend: “When do we intend to flee the country and migrate?”
Without missing a beat, my friend replied: “Why should we be the ones who ought to leave?”
“It is the thieves and the exploiters who should be chased out of the country,” my friend said.
Indeed, the big landlords, compradors, traditional politicians and dynasts stay in the country because the system suits them, allows their every whim, and there’s impunity for whatever crimes they commit. No surprise because they set this system up, and maintains it with an iron fist. For everyone else, there’s only daily hardship.
We cannot think of other countries that would allow the elites to “do business” there, in the same manner they conduct business here. They would most probably be immediately arrested, prosecuted and thrown in jail there. There’s no special treatment for them outside of the Philippines.
Of course, there are exceptions. There are humane, patriotic, conscientious and God-fearing elites. But they are —again — exceptions.
This is the tragedy or comedy of today’s Filipino life.
Ordinary working-class and middle-class Filipinos can aspire to work abroad and immigrate to other countries. There, they get gainful employment, enjoy healthcare and social services, and modern infrastructure. They are recognized for their economic, professional, and other contributions. True, there’s rising racism, anti-immigrant sentiments, sometimes downright fascism or wars, but in their brutally honest calculations, going back to the rotten and corrupt system in the Philippines is a lot worse.
Place a Filipino in any part of the world, where there’s a measure of fairness and freedom, and that Filipino would thrive and excel. (This is also possible in the Philippines but it takes lots of extra effort due to red tape, corruption, patronage, the abject lack of basics and overall unfairness that rig the system against ordinary folk.)
If left alone by or freed from the elites, I guess we could transform the country and change the system to make it work for us. Whether it is healthcare or housing, mass transport or education, agriculture or the environment, or even how to conduct politics, I believe the workers, farmers, professionals, entrepreneurs and the balikbayans who have helped build other countries would have superior ideas and would win in a truly democratic arrangement.
I have always believed that our overseas Filipino workers’ heroism is not just about the remittances that keep the bankrupt economy afloat or even about how they lift their families from poverty. They can do more than that, if only we ask them. These are people who built entire economies from nothing, laid down and managed train systems and power grids, managed and manned hospitals and healthcare systems, built mass housing, taught generations of children, worked in hi-tech companies and scientific labs, dominated the international maritime industry, and so on. Their individual and collective experience could be tapped for nation-building, and could put to shame the so-called economic plans that almost always benefit only a few. Our OFWs know what’s good and what’s possible. They have seen it, and they have done it in other countries. Hopefully soon, they could play a key role in making change in our own country.
In a related news, the government recently boasted that foreign nationals view the Philippines as a top retirement destination. I frankly don’t mind it and unsurprised about it. Who wouldn’t want to retire in our beautiful country? But we also ought to ask: Are Filipinos also looking forward to retire with dignity and good health in their own country?
Tough question, I know. But the answer is important, and how we could radically make things better equally important as well. Filipinos here and abroad have a stake in it.
(See you in the streets this weekend. June 27 is the date of Love LabanPride PH Festival at UP Diliman, and of the Metro Manila Pride March and Festival at Remedios Circle. June 28 meanwhile is the date of the White Ribbon Movement March at the EDSA People Power Monument.)
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