Filipino Attorneys: Warriors on an Empty Battlefield

Attorneys.

No band of brothers in the army should be more important than their domestic warriors in the courtroom, defending the essential civilized principle of right over wrong.

So why is the Philippine battlefield so unearthly quiet? As if one side has departed the fighting field?

Perhaps there is a reason attorneys are the most maligned group of professionals in the world, next to used car peddlers. Here is what Jonathan Swift, acerbic king of all satire writers, wrote about attorneys via the mouth of Gulliver, who is explaining the British legal system to his master, the leader of the Yahoos who occupy an island upon which Gulliver has landed:

"Here, my master, interposing, said it was a pity, that creatures endowed with such prodigious abilities of mind as these lawyers, by the description I gave of them, must certainly be, were not rather encouraged to be instructors of others in wisdom and knowledge. In answer to which I assured his Honour, that in all points out of their own trade they were usually the most ignorant and stupid generation among us, the most despicable in common conversation, avowed enemies to all knowledge and learning, and equally disposed to pervert the general reason of mankind in every other subject of discourse, as in that of their own profession."

Well, satire is not to be taken as a literal truth, but rather as an instructional exaggeration. Swift's Gulliver is suggesting what seems to be in fact an all too real limitation of Philippine lawyers, en toto, as a profession. Inside and outside the courtroom, where they perform, and maybe even "act", they appear to have no conscience, no guiding light, no drive to right the abundance of wrongs that surround them.

If I were to focus on two collectives as remarkable failures in Philippine society, I would name the Catholic Church and the nation's attorneys as Numbers One and Two, respectively.

The Church is the caretaker of morality and wisdom in a nation that cheats at everything, allows abuses toward women to persist, and is birthing itself into oblivion.

Attorneys who pledge to uphold the law stand idly by as that law is broken at every strata of society, in every venue. No matter that damages line up like so many lotto customers at a multi-million peso draw. Attorneys are stalwart . . . at performing Notary Public duties that keep the Philippines plastered in odious, officious paperwork.

I guess passion is not something that can be taught at Ateneo.

Indeed, the nation is one large damage. It is rank with pollution of every sort, abusive to women who cannot escape from the bondage of a marriage gone brutal, and who receive no education about birth control; it is corrupt from the top to the bottom of most government org charts; and it is negligent at enforcing rudimentary consumer safety laws, slaughtering Filipinos by the thousands via vehicle accidents, poisons, lousy health care, rickety ferries and substandard housing.

"Unsafe at any speed" should be pasted across the flag.

"You are too much, Joe!" you may be thinking.

No, I am simply expounding on the deductions I draw from assorted sunken ferries with hundreds dead, my young neighbor inhaling pollution every day and passing into the grave with lung cancer, the teenage motorcyclist I saw dead on the National Highway, tripped by a dog, the hundreds of people killed by mudslides every year, the journalists in graves for doing a an important job protecting free speech, the hundreds of candidates shot during the national election cycle, the guy across the street who died on the way to the hospital because his acute appendicitis was diagnosed as malaria, the fact that NPA collection-racket gangsters marched through my home in Mindanao whilst I was happily away, the reports of girls sold into the sex business, and the obstinate, warlike tones emanating from two of the keepers of values, the extreme Muslim faithful and the Catholic Church. One rolls heads for dollars and the other argues for the status quo where quo status means women are abused and abandoned whilst the nation births itself into unforgiveable poverty. In the dark, crowded, stinking alleys of squatters villages, "right to life" means nothing.

No, I am not too much.

Philippine attorneys seem to me to be absent from the battlefield, away without leave, and their comrade citizens have been bludgeoned back into hiding, deep within the forest, by an army of self-serving power mongers with plenty of weaponry.

THAT is too much.

Drawing Empty Spaces Upside Down

I once had a friend who aspired to be an artist. She went to art classes during time off from her real job, which was being a veterinarian to the dogs and cats of the rich and famous. She was thoroughly amused with her art assignment one weekend. Her instructor had given the class the task of drawing a chair, upside down.

The aim was to destroy normal perspective and look at the chair differently. Indeed, the students were not actually supposed to draw the chair itself, but to draw the empty spaces in and around the chair. From those empty spaces, upside down, the chair would emerge.

My friend completed her task and it was astounding. When you turned her drawing upside down, so that the chair was right side up, she had created a startlingly accurate sketch of the chair. She had defined the chair by isolating it from its surroundings.

Now I mention this because it is an example getting beyond convention to find the essence of a problem. It takes a stretch of the mind and ability to conceptualize a different solution to a given challenge.

Conceptualizing seems to me to be a skill largely missing in the Philippines where people like dealing with the gritty and the nitty, what they can see, what has happened before, what is practical or expedient. It is a country focused on transactions, on trees. On chairs, not the space around them. Not the abstract and the obtuse . . . not the undefined . They don't quite get frameworks or standards or plans or principles.

Philippine gardens for the most part are lines of plants, often in pots. They are not unrestrained, sensual expressions of passion and love for nature. They are flowers in a row.

It is this absence of conceptual reach that allows Filipinos to fail to see very important things. For instance, they are not able to draw the connection between rude behavior and poverty. 

They don't know what the meaning of their country is, except they know they are proud of Pacquiao when he fights. 

If I were to say " A country is its morality, the principles of community that allow people to get along safely and happily", eyes would glaze over. Computers would click off to a different internet site.

Filipinos appear not to grasp the very profound principle that morality is the bedrock of nationhood, and nationhood is not an individualistic principal, with Muslims claiming one morality, Catholics another, crooks another, the Mayor of Davao City another, and Juan dela Cruz his own. Nationhood is a shared set of values that underpin the way people look out for one another. 

Nationhood means values like honesty. Forthrightness. Fairness. Integrity. Honor. Commitment. Responsibility. Hard work. Bravery. Consideration. Compassion. Sacrifice. Forgiveness.

Where do you see people in the Philippines rise up for these principles? They rise up when they are offended. They rise up to cheer a hero. They rise up when a cause is before them, black and white. 

There is a reason the court system in the Philippines is so ineffectual. No one rises up for fairness. There is a reason the Philippines dropped out of Iraq and is not in Afghanistan. Commitment to any alliance is a one-way street, "what's in it for me", not "how can I help the cause of democracy and freedom in a world beset by terrorists who would kill innocents." There is no commitment to a profound principle, to defend a way of life against those who would put a sack over someone's head, and chop off the sack with a machete if the mouth within it protested.

"What's in it for me?" This question is asked silently and aloud millions of times a day. It drives almost every activity in the Philippines.

Too many people are pulling to go down THEIR path, accepting no other as correct. The values listed above mean little. Honor means bluster. Cheating for self-gain supersedes honesty, fairness, integrity, consideration and compassion. Commitment means "what I can get away with". Responsibility is denied by face-saving excuses, victim-playing and tearing down others. Forgiveness is supplanted by getting even. Sacrifice is made in personal terms, laboring in the rice fields under the heat of the sun, not in giving terms, like charity. Or serving in Afghanistan.

On few occasions does principle rise to take a higher ground than "what is convenient for ME".

The prognosis is not good. No nation easily changes its core culture.

The US took over 100 years to substantially eradicate racism on its legal books, but discrimination still simmers in the hearts of many.

Japan energized its economy after World War II by importing top American "Management by Objectives" gurus and learning a new way to think. People were instructed to change and so they followed a core value, obey, and did.

Not in the Philippines. Filipinos are too pride bound in who they are to do that sort of thing. To change would be to criticize "what we are", and that would be insulting - resulting in loss of face - to admit that what we are is less than what we ought to be. So it is more comfortable to stay the same, to put up the defenses, the excuses, the blames . . . to hold the changers at bay.

Here are two ideas, two concepts, detached from common belief. Can you, dear reader, grasp them? Why can others seemingly not grasp them?

Envisioning the growing of foodstuffs as agribusiness rather than farming. Agribusiness sells product into world markets for a profit. Farms grow plants. The Philippines runs farming as an employment sources for the indigent. Not as a competitive industry. When the Philippines grasps the concept of "markets" it will understand that the best way to take care of farmers is not to give them government largesse in the form of subsidies, free land or protection from global producers, but to wrap them within the strong arms of ambitious competitive practices.

Seeing nationhood as a commitment to shared values rather than to unrestrained "freedom" that allows individuals to undermine the common good because it is personally convenient. There is a connection between Ampatuan thinking and the guy who launches a bag of trash out the bus window. They don't care about others. What a huge conceptual failing. What a huge national failing. I see a national failure of values with every piece of trash that hits the ground.

 

I Like President Aquino

I've seen enough. I'm rendering my evaluation.

I like President Aquino.

Bear with me and I'll explain in a wending way why.

We know Filipinos are greatly interested in their own welfare, or that of the family, and maybe that of the clan. The well-being of the city grabs some. A few think about their province. A strikingly huge number have no idea of what a nation is about.

The difference between the US and the Philippines is very simple. One stands for values that enhance the community called America and the other stands for short-cutting those same values for self-advantage.

The Philippine Constitution has the right words. Important words like "Public Trust". But in real life, they don't get applied because they run against the grain of self-advantage. Even Filipinos tell me "don't trust a Filipino".

The people march when insulted, when their self esteem has been dinged, but they don't rise up FOR principle. Only one person I know of is marching squarely for principle, and, thankfully, he is the President of the Philippines.

Excuse this small digression. I'll circle back.

Filipinos fail to grasp the connection between rude, inconsiderate behavior (trash out the bus window) and non-competitive industries. Competitive industries work to get the inefficiencies out, and nothing is more inefficient than running around cleaning up after thoughtless people. Nothing is more inefficient than an employee who arrives late or texts on the job, and snarls at customers because they are troubling his leisure. These are examples of little corruptions, all adding up to a huge mass of non-productive behavior.

Nothing is more inefficient than a government agency, like Customs, that does not grasp what its value-based charter ought to be. Collection of taxes is seen as value creation. It is not. It interferes with value creation when it is excessive, as it is. Paperwork is considered by Customs to be diligent. It is not diligent when it interferes with value creation. Promoting competitive trade practices is value-creating. No one in National government evidently understands the distinction, how to add value by energizing trade in the Philippines. If they did, they would not allow counter-productive Customs practices to continue.

Nothing is more inefficient than poor families growing plants for food. Agribusiness is efficient.

Nothing is more inefficient than the gross failure of Philippine courts to dispense justice, when powerful people who create relentless damage go about completely unrestrained because un-powerful people have no voice in the courts. No attorneys will work for them and risk crossing paths with power (attorneys evidently have all been corrupted in spirit or wallet, or are simply happy doing Notary Public work). There are precious few advocates for the righting of wrongs. The entire economy is snarled up in uncorrected damages, like a fishing line gone snarly haywire.

Back to the point.

To get rid of these inefficiencies, you have to build a core integrity. The US was fortunate to have some visionaries who drafted her Declaration of Independence and her Constitution. And the people subscribed to it. The people . . . most of whom were recent immigrants. They wanted one thing: opportunity, and the freedom to pursue it fairly. And that is what the framers of the Constitution gave them. A set of words, and beyond that, a set of values.

The Philippines until now has only had the words.

Do you know what I like about President Aquino? He is not a thug but he has a good sense of what corruption looks like. Oh, sure, it is easy knock him about for being a part of a "family" with a ditzy sister and a housewife who was president and a hacienda that did not get dispensed. But the loud critics of his "family" overlook that his father was murdered because he had righteous values and returned to the Philippines to pursue them. I give the President credit for being influenced by his mother AND his father.

I don't care who he dates or what kind of car he drives or even if his lieutenants botch a bus massacre. I don't care what time he gets to the office in the morning or what his sister is doing. I don't care if the people from Hong Kong think his grimace looks like a smile.

I care that he has a fundamental grasp of right versus wrong and the knowledge that he has to make a statement about it. I care that he understands the importance of living thoughtfully, not just preaching good words from the pulpit then sneaking about for self advantage, as did his two predecessors.

His anti-corruption initiatives are impressive so far, and I hope they continue. Only when the masses understand that cheating is not a proper thing to do will businesses become competitive and the streets become clean.

The anti-corruption push is just one step, but it is a big one. It is a step toward real Filipino pride based on principled behavior. Not some gushy pride meant mainly as an excuse to paper over the affairs of country-mates who are not really very productive or kind people.

That is why I like President Aquino. He has taken the entire nation, and its values, one big step forward. Is he perfect, in the apparent mold of his critics? Nope. That's okay, Abraham Lincoln had warts, too (chortle).

I hope the Ombudsman carves through government agencies with a huge machete, indignant that people in power would have the audacity to abuse the people's trust. Like a hot machete through butter, eh?

I hope Filipinos broad and wide see the President's example as a refreshing VALUE and start to stand up for productive enterprise, start weeding out the trash-throwers and cheats and abusers of decency and courtesy. Those ill deeds are a sneaky form of corruption, undermining the productivity and integrity of the Philippines. Apply the same pressure on them that the President is applying on those who have had the audacity to rip off the Philippines - read Filipinos - for big dollars.

I hope upstanding principles become something to be FOR, something to ACT OUT, not something to cheat around or give lip service to. I hope it comes to represent the real Philippines, a nation gone a'missing for way too long.

The Science of Deceit

Dr. Cynthia Boaz, representing a publication called "Truthout", wrote a commentary published July 2, 2011, entitled "14 Propaganda Techniques Fox 'News' Uses to Brainwash Americans". My masters degree is in Radio and Television Arts, and we did a number of critical "content analyses" of news broadcasts during our course work. So I found the list of techniques identified by Ms. Boaz to be very instructional. We found examples of news bias in 1966 when we examined television news reporting. But the situation has deteriorated since then, perhaps reflecting the failures of my generation to instill a passion for objectivity over entertainment in news reporting.

Tea Party sippers and other conservatives will rebel immediately against the article. But I am quite confident they will be appeased if they simply switched out the references to Fox and replaced them with "Keith Olbermann" or other worthy liberal substitutes. The point is not really Fox news, or left over right, but the descent of American political discourse and news reporting into a science of deceits. Accordingly, the list of 14 untoward techniques is profound at detailing the methods of deceit. They are listed below, cut and pasted exactly as Ms. Boaz wrote them, but without her surrounding commentary. Her complete article can be found here.

When you find yourself frustrated with a response to your remarks, check this list and see if the respondent is using one of these sly techniques. I find it amazing how these techniques are natural to some people. In the Philippines, numbers 4, 5, 7 and 14 are in everyday use.

1. Panic Mongering. This goes one step beyond simple fear mongering. With panic mongering, there is never a break from the fear. The idea is to terrify and terrorize the audience during every waking moment. From Muslims to swine flu to recession to homosexuals to immigrants to the rapture itself, the belief over at Fox seems to be that if your fight-or-flight reflexes aren't activated, you aren't alive. This of course raises the question: why terrorize your own audience? Because it is the fastest way to bypasses the rational brain. In other words, when people are afraid, they don't think rationally. And when they can't think rationally, they'll believe anything.

2. Character Assassination/Ad Hominem. Fox does not like to waste time debating the idea. Instead, they prefer a quicker route to dispensing with their opponents: go after the person's credibility, motives, intelligence, character, or, if necessary, sanity. No category of character assassination is off the table and no offense is beneath them. Fox and like-minded media figures also use ad hominem attacks not just against individuals, but entire categories of people in an effort to discredit the ideas of every person who is seen to fall into that category, e.g. "liberals," "hippies," "progressives" etc. This form of argument - if it can be called that - leaves no room for genuine debate over ideas, so by definition, it is undemocratic. Not to mention just plain crass.

3. Projection/Flipping. This one is frustrating for the viewer who is trying to actually follow the argument. It involves taking whatever underhanded tactic you're using and then accusing your opponent of doing it to you first. We see this frequently in the immigration discussion, where anti-racists are accused of racism, or in the climate change debate, where those who argue for human causes of the phenomenon are accused of not having science or facts on their side. It's often called upon when the media host finds themselves on the ropes in the debate.

4. Rewriting History. This is another way of saying that propagandists make the facts fit their worldview. The Downing Street Memos on the Iraq war were a classic example of this on a massive scale, but it happens daily and over smaller issues as well. A recent case in point is Palin's mangling of the Paul Revere ride, which Fox reporters have bent over backward to validate. Why lie about the historical facts, even when they can be demonstrated to be false? Well, because dogmatic minds actually find it easier to reject reality than to update their viewpoints. They will literally rewrite history if it serves their interests. And they'll often speak with such authority that the casual viewer will be tempted to question what they knew as fact.

5. Scapegoating/Othering. This works best when people feel insecure or scared. It's technically a form of both fear mongering and diversion, but it is so pervasive that it deserves its own category. The simple idea is that if you can find a group to blame for social or economic problems, you can then go on to a) justify violence/dehumanization of them, and b) subvert responsibility for any harm that may befall them as a result.

6. Conflating Violence With Power and Opposition to Violence With Weakness. This is more of what I'd call a "meta-frame" (a deeply held belief) than a media technique, but it is manifested in the ways news is reported constantly. For example, terms like "show of strength" are often used to describe acts of repression, such as those by the Iranian regime against the protesters in the summer of 2009. There are several concerning consequences of this form of conflation. First, it has the potential to make people feel falsely emboldened by shows of force - it can turn wars into sporting events. Secondly, especially in the context of American politics, displays of violence - whether manifested in war or debates about the Second Amendment - are seen as noble and (in an especially surreal irony) moral. Violence become synonymous with power, patriotism and piety.

7. Bullying. This is a favorite technique of several Fox commentators. That it continues to be employed demonstrates that it seems to have some efficacy. Bullying and yelling works best on people who come to the conversation with a lack of confidence, either in themselves or their grasp of the subject being discussed. The bully exploits this lack of confidence by berating the guest into submission or compliance. Often, less self-possessed people will feel shame and anxiety when being berated and the quickest way to end the immediate discomfort is to cede authority to the bully. The bully is then able to interpret that as a "win."

8. Confusion. As with the preceding technique, this one works best on an audience that is less confident and self-possessed. The idea is to deliberately confuse the argument, but insist that the logic is airtight and imply that anyone who disagrees is either too dumb or too fanatical to follow along. Less independent minds will interpret the confusion technique as a form of sophisticated thinking, thereby giving the user's claims veracity in the viewer's mind.

9. Populism. This is especially popular in election years. The speakers identifies themselves as one of "the people" and the target of their ire as an enemy of the people. The opponent is always "elitist" or a "bureaucrat" or a "government insider" or some other category that is not the people. The idea is to make the opponent harder to relate to and harder to empathize with. It often goes hand in hand with scapegoating. A common logical fallacy with populism bias when used by the right is that accused "elitists" are almost always liberals - a category of political actors who, by definition, advocate for non-elite groups.

10. Invoking the Christian God. This is similar to othering and populism. With morality politics, the idea is to declare yourself and your allies as patriots, Christians and "real Americans" (those are inseparable categories in this line of thinking) and anyone who challenges them as not. Basically, God loves Fox and Republicans and America. And hates taxes and anyone who doesn't love those other three things. Because the speaker has been benedicted by God to speak on behalf of all Americans, any challenge is perceived as immoral. It's a cheap and easy technique used by all totalitarian entities from states to cults.

11. Saturation. There are three components to effective saturation: being repetitive, being ubiquitous and being consistent. The message must be repeated cover and over, it must be everywhere and it must be shared across commentators: e.g. "Saddam has WMD." Veracity and hard data have no relationship to the efficacy of saturation. There is a psychological effect of being exposed to the same message over and over, regardless of whether it's true or if it even makes sense, e.g., "Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States." If something is said enough times, by enough people, many will come to accept it as truth. Another example is Fox's own slogan of "Fair and Balanced."

12. Disparaging Education. There is an emerging and disturbing lack of reverence for education and intellectualism in many mainstream media discourses. In fact, in some circles (e.g. Fox), higher education is often disparaged as elitist. Having a university credential is perceived by these folks as not a sign of credibility, but of a lack of it. In fact, among some commentators, evidence of intellectual prowess is treated snidely and as anti-American. Education and other evidence of being trained in critical thinking are direct threats to a hive-mind mentality, which is why they are so viscerally demeaned.

13. Guilt by Association. This is a favorite of Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart, both of whom have used it to decimate the careers and lives of many good people. Here's how it works: if your cousin's college roommate's uncle's ex-wife attended a dinner party back in 1984 with Gorbachev's niece's ex-boyfriend's sister, then you, by extension are a communist set on destroying America. Period.

14. Diversion. This is where, when on the ropes, the media commentator suddenly takes the debate in a weird but predictable direction to avoid accountability. This is the point in the discussion where most Fox anchors start comparing the opponent to Saul Alinsky or invoking ACORN or Media Matters, in a desperate attempt to win through guilt by association. Or they'll talk about wanting to focus on "moving forward," as though by analyzing the current state of things or God forbid, how we got to this state of things, you have no regard for the future. Any attempt to bring the discussion back to the issue at hand will likely be called deflection, an ironic use of the technique of projection/flipping.

Here is a restatement of the technique headings which you can easily copy for reference. I suggest you remove the "Fox" context from the definitions and simply define what they mean to you.

1. Panic Mongering
2. Character Assassination/Ad Hominem
3. Projection/Flipping
4. Rewriting History
5. Scapegoating/Othering
6. Conflating Violence With Power and Opposition to Violence With Weakness
7. Bullying
8. Confusion
9. Populism
10. Invoking the Christian God
11. Saturation
12. Disparaging Education
13. Guilt by Association
14. Diversion

When a Dull President is What the Doctor Ordered

I recall having an argument with the main writers at Anti-Pinoy right after President Aquino won the election. The day after the election, the Philippine Peso strengthened markedly against the US dollar, more than the global trend of a weakening dollar would suggest it should. To me, there is nothing more factual than markets speaking , but the Anti-Pinoy people refused to accept this as a "fact" worth respecting.

They claim the President of their country is lackluster and lazy. Dull. They pound him at every opportunity, for every reason, big or small.

Methinks they cannot smell the roses for lack of a sense of what flowers contribute to the landscape of bees and honey.

The World Bank has just commented on the Philippine economic circumstance and cited an increase in money flowing to Philippine reserves. Here is what World Bank said in its latest quarterly update on the Philippines:

“The Philippines may already have moved to a new ‘normal,’ one with more robust and less variable growth. Such a growth pattern contrasts with the pre-Global Recession perception of the Philippines as a ‘high beta’ country with a weak fiscal position, and with recurrent political crises exposing the country to shocks and volatility."

A high beta country has a great deal of volatility because its finances are being yanked around. It certainly appears that under the less dull President Arroyo, money was being yanked around. The latest PCSO scandal suggests she was using that organization as her private piggy bank to award fancy cars to priests who supported her and to other mysterious "security" uses. It is one of several major financial scandals during her term, from ZTE to fertilizer to paper bags of money given to congressmen. None of these is a "country-breaker", but it did undermine trust. Because few trusted President Arroyo, few trusted how she managed the county's finances.

"Recurrent financial crises" are, I suppose, not dull, and more to the liking of the AP collective. More to write about, I suppose.

Today the peso strengthened to 42.88 pesos per US dollar.

Before President Aquino was elected, it ranged between 48.98 and 47.42.

Rating agencies have upgraded Philippine debt. They do not do this absent a change in fundamentals.

I might note, one of the four "c's of lending is "character", and the "character" of this government is vastly improved over its predecessors.

You can bet the Anti-Pinoy gurus will be able to make up an Anti-Aquino reason as to why the numbers don't mean anything. But, undeniably, something meaningful is happening.

And the World Bank knows what: (1) Stability, and (2) an intense anti-corruption drive. A botched bus massacre or the hours the President works or the troubles he has getting his communication team organized or who he dates have little bearing on what makes investors choose where to invest. Stability has bearing. Trust has bearing.

I write this knowing I am poorer today because the Philippines is richer. Much of my savings is lodged in US dollars. I could certainly root against President Aquino or try to undermine his success. It is to my advantage to have an unstable "high-beta" Philippines.

But I want him to succeed, frankly. A stable government is one that can begin to solve the many problems facing Filipinos. I said shortly after he was elected that I feel more secure in the Philippines today than under President Arroyo. That was just a personal sense that the new government was not interested in revenge or intimidation, but in stability and an end to the corruption that has plagued the government for years. Dull it may be; thuggish, it refreshingly is not.

I have never been able to grasp exactly why the writers in the Anti-Pinoy crowd want him to fail. Or why they make such a loud noise as if it is pre-ordained that he WILL fail. The only reason seems to be that they are following the time-worn Filipino tradition of rationalizing the facts to save their own Ego-bound faces. They are what they criticize.

President Aquino isn't failing, for investors. No matter how many shades of off-color those with an agenda throw against the dull progress being made, the Philippines is moving in the right direction. Only those with an axe to grind would claim otherwise.

Dull, stable and trustworthy is positive. Investors prove it with their money, not their lip.

Psst, Don't Tell Americans about the Philippines

Keep your country secret. That is my advice.

Americans are brusque, opinionated blowhards. Especially the aging baby boomers who are looking for places to retire. They don't know a whole lot about the Philippines. If they knew, they might come here. They would likely gripe about some aspects of the culture , as it is so different from what they are used to. You don't have to put up with that. Simply don't tell them how cool it is here. Tell them about the horrors of cramming into a Jeepney full of chickens, but don't tell them of a romantic ride with their sweetie on a tricycle to the beach, of scenery so gorgeous a photograph can't do it justice, of the tax breaks they can get by leaving state income behind, and the social security income they can acquire by being old and having American- citizen kids in the Philippines. Don't tell them that they can build a palace for $100,000, and have a housekeeper and a gardener and a cook and a bodyguard and a driver, all for less than $400 a month.

Don't tell them that most people speak English. Tell them Filipinos have hated American guts since that racist McKinley pounded our butts back into order, but don't tell them America built schools and sent us a zillion teachers to give us one of the highest literacy rates on the underdeveloped part of the planet.

Tell them that this place really sucks. That's why so many Filipinos go elsewhere in the world to work. Filipino drivers are rude and the store clerks snarl as they take the money. Rebels are behind every bush looking for a way to extort some money. The seas are fished to deserts and the mountains are washing into the ocean because someone yanked all the trees out. Tell them that they might fall into an open pit mine that the Koreans forgot to return to its natural state. Wild banshee fundamentalist Muslims and Catholics stand at every corner harassing those who want their daughters educated or a condom in their wallet. And for sure warn them about Mindanao, where heads roll like so many dice in the craps pit. Let them know that most drivers are unlicensed, uninsured and drunk. They taught themselves the art of the wheel at 12 and have never read about the rules of considerate behavior.

Warn them to duck behind a bush or building every time a bus passes to avoid being hit by a bag of trash being conveniently disposed of through the window.

Don't tell them the cultural convenience of pissing on the nearest wall. Tell them not to drink the water.

Don't tell the old unmarried dudes about the beautiful Filipinas who don't mind hanging out with an ancient white guy if it gets them out of the rut that is their day-to-day empty life. A night on the town, a weekend in Borocay, a lifetime . . . those are the options for both parties. Sex is only sinful to the priests who aren't getting any. They aren't exactly good judges of the other side. They've never been there. Well, most haven't.

I think "most" is the operative adjective.

But that is beside the point.

Don't tell them this place is an adventure that enriches the spirit.

Tell them it is filled with Ego-bound maniacs who won't give them the time of day. Actually, they don't even know the time of day, which is why they arrive late for everything, or simply don't show up. Or pop in when they weren't even expected. Tell them there are more dogs than people and they are all rabid. The dogs, I'm talking about. Not the people.

Don't tell them the people are fun and funny. Tell them they are stubborn like cement and have skins so thin you can see their bones if they walk against the sunlight.

Tell them "You don't know what you are getting into", which is true, for sure.

Tell them to "stay home", or" take your money and complaints to Viet Nam. We don't need no mo' stinkin' Americans around here giving our economy a boost, hiring locals, and being weird and productive in the western ways."

Tell them "we like sitting drunk under the mango tree watching the buses fly by. We are fine with that goal for our lives. We are proud of our achievements."

Keep the Philippines secret, isolated. You know. Native. Raw. Provincial. Stone age, even. Knowledge and courtesy are too much to deal with.

Multi-culturalism is offensive. Outside money is tainted with foreign cooties. Tell them "We like it pure, we like it simple. We don't aspire to be like you because we know money can't buy happiness."

Book Burning in the Philippines

Regular readers of my articles know that I read a lot, as I drop a title now and then into a blog, usually with a quote that has important meaning. I do this in part to suggest to readers that there are great treasures to be found in books. College students will often be seen in coffee shops with a course book in hand, but as a literate society, the broader masses in the Philippines lag behind modern countries in exploring history and science and the whys and ways of heart and mind and acts.

Bonfire of the Vanities

Grab a book, I suggest. The riches to be found there are enormous. Ignore the taunts of the lesser minds who would hang the title of "librarian" on your reputation. They are simply following the tried and true Filipino tradition of raising themselves up by tearing someone else down. Don't concede an inch to their under-nourished psyche.

Because National Bookstore stocks only a limited number of American fictional titles, I find myself going through my collection and re-reading those that have passed from clear recollection. It takes about a year to fade from memory, wedged out by other readings and my lazy ability to recall anything but what I had for breakfast two hours ago.

I just finished "The Rule of Four" by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason, first published in 2004. What a wonderful book. The blurb on the back says "If Scott Fitzgerald, Umberto Eco and Dan Brown teamed up to write a novel, the result would be "The Rule of Four". That is so true. It has the heart-felt poignancy of love and friendships tested, and murder; the deep richness of renaissance history; and the intrigue of puzzles and riddles and the eternal battle between the Church and its critics.

The book is about a book, one filled with secrets to be decoded pointing to hidden treasures. The mysterious, coded book is "Hypnerotomachia Poliphili", a real book of unknown authorship. Four (fictional) Princeton students attack the book brilliantly, dealing with two murders pertaining to the book, love, and the shenanigans of college life. They find out who is the real author of the book and they unravel the secrets hidden within.

I can't go through the entire plot here, but wanted to focus on the essential historical conflict that is at the core of the book. The characters are real. Florence, Italy is the center of the art world in 1498. The powerful leader of the Church there is Savonarola, an evangelical preacher with great charisma. Opposing him is the author of the mysterious book, Francesco Colonna.



Savonarola



Savonarola believed that art and literature were undermining the Church, causing men to think wild and sinful thoughts and do wild and sinful deeds. He began the practice of annually, at Easter, burning all the sinful materials he could gather up. Paintings, sculptures, and books included. This became known as the "Bonfire of the Vanities", for Savonarola preached that those who would create such works were totally self-absorbed and not properly faithful to God.

Here is an excerpt from "The Rule of Four" that explains why Francesco Colonna hated Savonarola:

" . . . Francisco couldn't stand Savonarola. To him, Savonarola represented the worst kind of fanaticism, everything that was wrong with Christianity. He was destructive. Vengeful. He refused to let men use the gifts God gave them. Francesco was a humanist, a lover of antiquity. . . . He stood at the other end of the intellectual universe from Savonarola. To him, the greatest violence in the world was against art, against knowledge."

We live this eternal battle of faith and its rules, versus the free mind and its expressions, today in the Philippines. To the Church, education about sex is sinful because of Man's weakness and proclivity to move always to the darker side, in simple and blunt terms, fornicating their eyeballs out. To the humanists of the Philippines, a woman has a right to decide how to treat her body.

In Florence, the humanists won out, for the human spirit cannot be confined by pushing it into a cave, no matter how sin-free that cave is portrayed to be. Today Florence remains the center of the World's artistic expression.

I suggest that Filipinos resist being pushed into a cave by a Catholic Church that adheres to doctrines centuries behind the times. Specifically consider the RH Bill and the Divorce Bill. They are compassionate legal instruments that the Church would paint as sinful.

It is not sinful to be educated. It is not sinful to be kind or reasonable. The Philippine Catholic Church would have it otherwise.

It would, today, in 2011, burn certain books.

The Ignorance of Poverty

One of the problems faced by the Philippines is what I might call the ignorance of poverty. I don't mean ignorance in a negative sense, and maybe there are better words for the condition that I am trying to characterized. Uninformed, perhaps. Uneducated. An innocent lack of exposure to other ways to behave. Lack of awareness. Some would say lazy minds, but that is negative.


Here's what I am talking about. Western standards of order on the highways hold to certain rules, those cited in the regulatory codes that dictate who has the "right of way" in a given situation. A vehicle turning left must yield to a vehicle coming straight, but the turning vehicle has the right of way over a car approaching it from behind. These rules allow each driver to understand what the other will do; this prevents frequent gnashings of metal and huge hospital bills.

The Philippines has essentially the same written codes, but a very different, unwritten interpretation of them. The bigger vehicle is generally acceded the right of way, a truck over a car, a car over a motorcycle, a motorcycle over a human powered tricycle. That is not written anywhere, but that is what happens. Some Filipinos claim the right of way by driving fast, careening about so that any sane opposing driver would head for the rice field rather than try to claim his rightful side of the road. Others flash their lights, essentially telling other drivers, "I'm coming, stay out of my way." And pedestrians know never, never trust that the painted crosswalk will afford any protection unless a traffic official is there to stand up for you.

The interesting thing is, these unwritten rules of the road keep traffic moving here, where traffic lights are few, lines on roads are scarce, police are snoozing, and vehicles of many types swarm for the same space. I've learned not to give way to pedestrians under risk of getting the pedestrian hit by someone behind me without the same sense of consideration. I've learned to be aggressive at busy crossroads, granting no mercy lest I bring traffic to a confusing halt. It is rather a rock and roll dance, circulating in and through the madcap flows of traffic. Or, as I have characterized it elsewhere, akin to Disney's ancient thrill for kids, "Mr. Toad's Wild Ride".

 

But the aggressiveness is a part of what I call the Ego-bound model of Filipino behavior. It is every driver for himself; other vehicles are just pieces of metal to dodge. There are no PEOPLE with personalities and mothers and kids in them. So who cares about their welfare? And this attitude is prominent in everyday life, too. Cutting in front of others in line is a natural. Playing loud music until the wee hours of the morning even though the neighbor has kids in school the next day. Pitching trash out the bus window, as if it disappears from earth when it is out of sight.

And the greater part of the Philippines is exposed to no order but this inconsiderate order.

"Who cares? It is our society", some Filipinos argue. "You Americans are wasteful hogs who don't care a whit about others."

Ouch. Worthy argument. Score 2.


But this relentless self-engagement is what prevents the Philippines from being productive, from having jobs, from gaining wealth and the safety and security that wealth provides. Western business people recognize that people are "markets" because they have needs. A business fares better by serving those needs than by being brusque or autocratic. The number of autocrats in business in the Philippines is simply astounding. And this self-engagement precludes certain aspects of efficiency, such as the understanding that appointments make things operate better for all parties. Again, like a broken record, or scratched CD . . . from efficiency . . . Comes productivity, profits and jobs. The Filipino merchant seems unaware that a smile brings a customer back. Jolibee is the exception; cheerful staff.

But as I drove through the Tacloban Zoo yesterday, known locally as downtown, it struck me as I was being swarmed by rude, pushy red motorcycle cabs that it would be impossible to get the drivers to understand the connection between their behavior and the number of jobs the Philippines can produce. It would be simply impossible to get past the rationalizations they would throw up. The blank stares. And however you say "Huh?" in Visayan.

Indeed, it is even difficult to get intelligent people to understand that rude is not productive.

Neither schools nor television nor blogs nor priests are capable of providing the kind of life's perspective that is necessary for people to grasp the connection. Thus, ignorance prevails.

So I guess it is written in stone somewhere that Filipinos are destined to be blind, and destined to go about not knowing where they aim, ever again shooting themselves in the foot. And . . . Hahahaha . . . with no idea who pulled the trigger. Not even the educators know.

Joe do, though. Joe do.

Houses in the Sand

Most of us are confident of what we know and our ability to figure out what we don’t know. But it is astounding how much we act based on understandings that reside outside of our knowledge. It is astounding how much we live a lie, or at least a big bluff. It is astounding how we delude ourselves so elegantly.

I realized this as I re-read Michael Crichton’s “State of Fear”. The book is a masterful if tad excessive tale of intrigue that does not exactly debunk global warming, but debunks the motives and objectivity of many who endorse global warming. Crichton documents his book with footnotes so those wanting to dig into the facts have a fine bibliography, now a few years stale, but thought provoking nonetheless.

Crichton’s wealthy fictional philanthropist, George Morton, offers up this pearl of wisdom in a speech he makes to withdraw his funding for a global warming charity: “But as Montaigne said three hundred years ago, ‘Nothing is so firmly believed as that which is least known.’”

I asked myself, “is this true? What are some circumstances in which people act on what they BELIEVE rather than what they KNOW.

I’m sure it is not exhaustive, but it was easy to compile examples. Here is my checklist of ways we routinely act without knowledge:

· When we embrace a religious faith and trust that what the church tells us is true. Faith is perhaps the biggest pile of sand in the universe.

· When we assess risks to make decisions (should I become a farmer or a soldier; should I invest in stocks or bonds) but are not able to read the future well.

· That is related to when we guess about what to do, for instance, taking a pot shot as to which road actually leads to our destination.

· When we make an honest mistake, like thinking that a brother said to meet on Tuesday when he actually said Thursday, or we thought a quote was from Dolly Parton instead of Abe Lincoln. How much of our behavior is anchored on mistakes or an incorrect reading of things? Lots.

· When we are prejudiced and think other races are sub-par, or democrats have all the answers, or teens are sex mad, or old people are stupid.

· When we ascribe authority to others, like believing the Cosmopolitan Magazine list of10 ways to make your sweetie horny, or when President Barak Obama says joining the NATO coalition on Libya is a good thing, or when John McCain says Arizona needs high fences to keep the Mexicans out, or when a university professor pretends to know what he is talking about.

· When we deduce or infer, leaping from that which is known to a new belief whilst passing over a huge chasm to get there. Global warming is real because we are having some bad storms.

· When we engage in gossip, enjoying the richness to be found in other people’s failings, whether true or not.

· When we engage in superstition, which circles back to religious faith; thinking a broken mirror means seven years bad luck is rather like thinking eating pigs will send you to hell or using a condom is the same as killing some one.

When you consider how prominent these forms of behavior are in our daily lives, you realize we are not operating on a sound foundation most of the time. It is sandy, it is muddy. We are winging it. Often times we know this, but we are confident that we can deal with any negative fall-out. We do this by blaming someone or some thing, or making an excuse, or lying about what we said or intended.

Owning up is not a typical outcome of the fall-out from winging it.

As Michael Crichton puts it: “I believe people are well intentioned. But I have great respect for the corrosive influence of bias, systematic distortions of thought, the power of rationalization, the guises of self-interest, and the inevitability of unintended consequences.”

What a piece of work we are, eh? And ever so pompous about the deceits we live and the manipulations we advance.

Self-confidence is great, but we ought to carry a little humility about how much we simply do not know or understand.

Who knows. Maybe some day critics will discover that President Aquino is actually trying hard, learning on the job, and doing good things for the Philippines. Or maybe I will discover that he is really just an empty yellow shirt. Odds are that we are all off base on many of our assessments, but can't see it for the rigidity of our thinking and the knowledge that simply is not ours to hold.

The Biggest Corruption of Them All

It is good to see the Philippine government working to protect women with the Reproductive Health and Divorce bills. Hopefully the Catholic Church won’t be allowed to pull the Philippines back into the Dark Ages. These are steps toward modernization and away from being a nation out of step with kindness and common sense.

It’s good to see corruption under attack on a wide scale. If this continues, it will have a profound impact on the nation’s values.

Another issue that needs to be addressed by the legislature is horrendously weak application of consumer protection laws. By modern standards of RESPECT, Filipino consumers are abused, over and over again, every day.

The modern idea that governments should make sure consumers are not deceived or cheated originated in the US during the Kennedy Administration in the 1960’s. Laws were subsequently perfected, enacted and enforced with the result that product quality and fair-dealing are virtually guaranteed in the US. In 1985, the United Nations adopted “Guidelines for Consumer Protection” for all member nations. Here are the eight basic rights that nations are urged to enforce, in Joe Am’s short-form words:

1. The Right to Safety. Products must be safe and consumers must be warned of dangers in use. Providers must advise consumers of defects and offer provisions for recall.

2. The Right to Be Informed. Providers must provide information so that consumer can make informed product choices.

3. The Right to Choose. Consumers should have a variety of options from which to choose. Competition is encouraged and monopolistic practices and price gouging are banned.

4. The Right to Be Heard. Consumers are permitted to voice complaints and have them dealt with forthrightly.

5. The Right to Satisfaction of Basic Needs. Consumers must have access to essential goods and services: adequate food, clothing, shelter, health care, education, public utilities, water and sanitation.

6. The Right to Redress. Consumers are entitled to a fair settlement of claims, including compensation for misrepresentation, shoddy goods, or unsatisfactory services.

7. The Right to Consumer Education. Consumers must be able to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to make informed choices about goods and services, while being aware of their own responsibilities.

8. The Right to a Healthy Environment. Consumers have a right to live and work in an environment which is non-threatening to the well-being of present and future generations.

The Philippines, by permitting relentless violations of these rights, confirms itself to be out of touch with kindness and fairness toward its own citizens. It is corruption in a different form, cheating for sure.

The only things standing in the way of a very different consumer experience are: (1) lack of a crystal clear endorsement of the United Nations principles by the Philippine government, and (2) lack of aggressive public advocacy lawyers. There is no doubt consumers are being cheated or provided with poor care by manipulative or authoritarian government, professional, corporate and retail organizations.

Examples of violations:

• Cellular telephone providers offer internet services and various call and text promotions, but do not provide sufficient carrying capacity to allow the services to work trouble-free. Consumers face slow service, poor access, or interrupted service and do not get the value for which they pay.

• Television stations increase the loudness of commercials and overload popular programming with so many advertisements that consumers are denied reasonable access to the programs they seek to watch. These are intrusive, abusive uses of a valuable and scarce resource that should be dedicated to public benefit.

• Consumers are generally not permitted to make appointments with doctors, dentists and government offices. Therefore, they must wait for long periods, frequently in crowded, germ-laden offices without sufficient seating arrangements or toilet facilities, in order to obtain important services.

• Pollution is a major problem. Trash disposal and sewerage facilities are lacking in many cities and municipalities, and open-air burning of plastics and chemicals persists, representing a severe health threat. Noise pollution is rampant.

• Public education is not free. Poor families are at a disadvantage and frequently cannot afford to send their children to school.

• Hospitals admit ill or injured people but will not release them until bills are paid. This authoritarian practice runs up additional daily charges for the poorest patients who are not only injured or ill, but desperate due to hospital policies. Furthermore, patients must acquire their own drugs and materials for vital medical treatment and operations, resulting in delays of service and the risk that proper medicines and supplies will not be available at critical times.

• Electrical service is unreliable. Brownouts and blackouts are routine. People with medical equipment must buy generators to assure themselves of life-preserving service. Refrigerated products perish and consumers bear the cost of replacement. Consumers cannot avail themselves of internet or other vital electronic services.

• Government offices are run with little courtesy. Citizens are treated as if they were irritants rather than as people who pay for government services with their taxes, and who are entitled to reasonable and polite service. Waits and paperwork remain onerous burdens.

• Consumers are forced to wait as retail merchants inspect goods in the store to make sure all parts are in working order. Then consumers are not allowed to return goods later found to be defective, or which are damaged from poor re-packing.

• No common information systems exist to alert consumers to shortages of products and goods, advising them of alternative resources or steps to take to moderate demand. Responses to shortages are haphazard and often result in panic buying or anger. Similarly, there are no broad recall protections in the case of product deficiencies.

• Product information is available on food and goods packaged overseas, but many local products lack sanitary treatment, government inspection or proper information for consumers.

• Consumers are endangered by poor enforcement of basic traffic and pedestrian regulations. Vehicles don’t stop for pedestrians in crosswalks. Commercial vehicles load in the roadway. Retail displays and parking block pedestrian access to sidewalks.

• Consumers do not have ready access to the courts because of the high cost of court fees and attorneys, and the slow, inefficient processing of cases. Efforts to rectify wrongs lose steam, and evidence grows stale, as plaintiffs face delay after delay.

Litigation is the best cure. It serves as a hammer to the head of businesses, governments and organizations that operate in a way punitive to consumers. The first case should be against the government for failure to provide prompt, and therefore fair, judicial renderings. Consumers pay a heavy price by not having a means to litigate for fair and considerate treatment.

There is an additional “spiritual benefit” to an intense effort to right these wrongs. When violators realize it is in their best interest to be kind and responsible to consumers, Filipinos will finally feel like they amount to something. They can stop overlaying their acts with Ego-bluster aimed at proving to others they are worthwhile.

All the legislature needs to do is endorse United Nation standards as law to give attorneys a sound basis for litigation. Given the pressures on private attorneys to bow to large corporations and powerful people, it would be advisable to set up a government Consumer Protection Agency staffed by capable, aggressive litigators.

“Man Up, Philippines”

The tourist honchos offer up new slogans now and then to attempt to characterize the wonder and awe of Philippine beaches and other tourist destinations, such as they are, in a few crisp words.

I wish to recommend a sparkling new slogan for the whole of the Philippines:

“Man up, Philippines”

This term derives from sports. When you are playing basketball and find yourself being pushed around by some larger, quicker, more talented hulk, your coach shouts out “Man up, Jones”, or whatever your name might be. It means develop some toughness real quick. Get a determined mind, an elevated spirit, an aggressive body and hold your own.

Now many Filipinos will find the slogan offensive because it comes from an outsider. A Filipino could utter the same words and that would be okay. He’s a teammate. He’s supposed to try to fire us up. But an outsider? What arrogance. That’s like a pep talk from the opposing team’s coach.

“Get outta here!” you scream, the words echoing off the locker room walls.

But the words are the same, aren’t they? If uttered by an outsider or an insider, the words are the same and the circumstances are the same. So the difference is WITHIN THE PERSON DOING THE HEARING, NOT THE PERSON MAKING THE UTTERANCE.

So if you object, I suggest you are embarrassed for yourself, for your nation’s failings, and you don’t want to hear about it from an outsider. You are the king with no clothes and you want the kid who actually sees this, and the honesty to report it, to shut his yap.

Sorry, can’t do that. You need to hear the words and stop confining yourself within a concrete barrel of defensive insecurity.

Some women might also object to the term, ascribing to it a gender bias. But it is, by my definition, gender neutral, just as “he” often refers to the community of “man” which includes “woman”. So to women who complain about it, I get my nose in their face and shout, “Man up, Broad!” Get your mind focused on the point here, which is not gender. It is attitude.

The Philippines needs attitude. No, no, no! Not more shallow flag-waving, Pinoy Pride, ego bound bluster. It needs attitude comprised of discipline, determination, intelligence and sacrifice.

Discipline means you follow a play book or plan. You are organized. You think ahead. You develop a set of personal principles and stick to them.

Determination means your mind is focused and firm. You are tough. Neither catcalls nor cheers nor intentional fouls can distract you from your mission.

Intelligence means you study, you strive to read the situation clearly, you think about risks and rewards and you act appropriately. You aren’t locked into having others tell you what to do.

Sacrifice means you work so that others can star. You don’t worry about a knee in the groin; you take the charge. You sacrifice yourself for the team

To “man up” is to do the right thing, even if it is hard. It means to condemn those who spread filth across your beautiful land, who create danger by the way they drive, giving no quarter to pedestrians or someone else’s right of way, or who allow their dogs to wander on the National Highway killing motorcyclists.

It means to report a public official who will not provide service unless you pay him.

It means to attack the corporations that rip off consumers: TV networks that overload television programs with ads played louder than regular programming; cell phone operators that advertise internet services but don’t provide the bandwidth to accommodate the traffic; retailers that don’t accept returns of damaged goods; government offices that treat the public as subjects; banks that pay ridiculously low interest rates on the deposits they loan out at ridiculously high interest rates.

It means to create a swarming offense with your country-mates that overwhelms the stuck-in-the-mud oligarchs who are hogging the ball and insisting on the boring status quo.

Brief digression: I wonder if there is a single attorney in the Philippines with the courage to work independently to take on the big dawgs, to sacrifice, to man up, for a better Philippines.

You can man up yourself by refusing to toss trash into the street, by calling ahead before visiting someone, by developing a skill and using it to build a career. There are so many ways to man up.

You can man up by doing good deeds rather than whining. By accepting responsibility rather than blaming. By being happy with your personal principles, effort and achievements rather than finding a need to elevate yourself by tearing someone else down.

Man up, Philippines.

Man up.

The Incidental Tourist

That’s me. I’ve lost my bus ticket, so I guess I’ll just stick around and see what is happening hereabouts.

I see that Moody’s has upped the investment rating of the Philippines. This is a good thing, but it is important to read the Moody’s report deeper than the headline.

Moody’s attributes the improvement to restraint on government expenses. They note that revenue keeps coming in, so the inflow/outflow is better than it used to be. But Moody’s points out that the sources of revenue are a bit soft. Well, they use better words, but that is the essence.

So two points can be drawn from this.

One, the improved rating was largely accidental. The Aquino Administration has not spent money because it does not have a rigorous infrastructure (capital) or value building (expense) plan. It just keeps doing what has been done before, but holds back on expenses that are deemed political. That is Joe Am’s technical description, not Moody’s.

Two, Moody’s intimates that ratings could be improved further if revenue sources were firmed up. “Intimates” is one of those words you use when you don’t really understand what they are saying, and want to wrap it up in something other than a wild guess, or SWAG. I think Moody’s is intimating that there is a road that the Philippines could follow to continue to work toward investment status.

I’ve argued before that the Philippine tax structure is unsound, but now with the weight of Moody’s behind my credibility on this point, I will restate it.

The Philippines depends too much on fee-based taxes rather than taxes keyed to value creation. Fee-based taxes too often destroy value. For example, court fees constrain who gets justice. Justice in the Philippines favors the favorites. The poor are not among them. Fees don’t promote the value of “justice for all”.

Customs assessments represent 22% of the entire revenue stream. Operating under a taxation charter, Customs does little to build Philippine trade competitiveness. Indeed, outrageous Customs’ fees and burdensome paperwork undermine Philippine global competitiveness. Can you imagine the benefit of uncorking the export and trading markets? The Philippines would return to its 1800’s stature as a hub of Asian trade. But Filipino officials can’t imagine this state of affairs so they can’t figure out how to get there. They just tax away.

VAT is a good tax as long as it does not become so onerous that people stop making purchases. It is keyed to value creation. A retailer creates value when he buys goods for X and sells them for X+M, where M is the markup. The amount the customer pays is X+M+T, adding in the VAT. Well, if the mark-up M is 12% and T is 12%, then government has piled on pretty heavily. The State is essentially saying that it deserves as much money as the retailer who has worked hard to build a store, build a customer base, buy goods, and build and sell products.

Seems greedy to me.

A 12% VAT is not conducive to fostering a vibrant retail industry. It is just easy money to grab for the State.

Two other taxation sources that are roundly ignored are income taxes and property taxes. Why? Because they hit the moneyed friends of the political families. So much value created, so few taxes levied. Property taxes, which could fund school improvement, are a joke. I’ve funded the purchase of two properties and both times the attorneys advised to understate the actual purchase price to avoid taxes. Then the annual tax bill arrives and I pay like P100 for a lovely beach paradise. The annual tax could and should be P10,000.

A friend who worked in the assessor’s office said they could not tax at fully authorized rates because the people who backed the mayor would complain.

Therefore, all the kids of the Philippines suffer through insufferable, overcrowded schools with weak teachers.

So the mayor can stay in office.

That, my friends, is Filipino sacrifice and patriotism. It is the jolly, good-hearted, considerate way this island paradise stays stuck in the mud. We incidental tourists just shake our heads in wonder.

In concert with my new advisory slogan, “Man up, Philippines”, I say: find where value is created and tax it reasonably. Make the whole community wealthy, if not in money, then in service and respect, instead of coddling the rich and well-connected.

Rise up, even. Like Edsa the hell out of this baby. Throw tea into Manila Bay, or a case of San Mig. Demand taxes that will benefit your kids. Demand taxes that build wealth instead of constrain productivity.