Quo Vadis, RP?

Glimpses : Union or fragmentation

Jose Ma. Montelibano
INQ7.net

WHEN we say, "Build a nation," many grand thoughts enter our minds. From those grand thoughts, many grand plans have been formulated and some have even reached implementation stage. However, in all the years that we have been politically free from the Spaniards, Americans and the Japanese, we have witnessed only the steady decline of the Philippines as a young struggling nation.

Many refer to the time when the Philippines was second only to Japan in terms of development in Asia and use that as our starting reference for many things. It is true that such a configuration actually existed, but it is not accurate to use it as a starting reference to a free Philippines. The heights, if they so deserve to be called that, that the Philippines attained in the 1950s and 1960s were less our independent efforts and more the aftertaste of American rule. In 1946, Filipinos had a faint memory of the last decades of Spanish colonization and a working habit of following the American way of governance. What Filipinos could do for themselves by themselves was only to begin, and the true reference point was where American performance and dominant influence had left off.

It is sad to note that the first attempts by Filipinos as a free nation have not borne fruit that is sweet to the taste. Today, after six decades of Filipino attempts to hold a fledgling nation together, we have succeeded in lowering the quality of life, or the level of contentment, from the stage where American dominance brought us. From second only to Japan to a fast becoming basket case of the world should be proof enough that we cannot continue under the same attitudes and leaderships.

Imperial Manila is not a location, it is an attitude. It is the attitude of royalty that is better known as feudalism. It is the attitude of elitism by birth and connection as opposed to elitism by attainment. If our leaders were to govern from Davao, it would simply become Imperial Davao. Imperialism is not a place, it is an attitude.

Democracy is not a place either. It is a perspective of life that was born from opposition to tyrannical rule. Thus, from the rule of a tyrant, democracy seeks the rule of the people. Democracy, though, is such a refined state of life. The rule of the people is more concept than real in emerging nations, and the Republicans and Democrats of America show us that people can be sharply divided. Perhaps, more than democracy, America and like nations show us more about the rule of law rather than democracy.

Governance by the people is still a fantasy in the Philippine setting. The people are poor, 60 percent of them rate themselves as impoverished, and a whopping 90 percent belong to the lowest economic classes, D and E. When the impoverished or society's poorer classes govern, that is not democracy -- that is a miracle.

What democracy is may mean lifting class E out of poverty, which means eliminating class E and bringing it to class D. We cannot have a class E and yet rise from the ground up. And without a firm ground, there will be no strong nation, no strong structure. This is the story of the Philippines -- a foolish attempt to rise from the ground by having the one percent A and B elite pull up the 90 percent D and E.

The attitude of feudalism or political elitism is what determines political, economic and social governance. Federalism will simply serve to distribute Imperial Manila to all the province capitals. Where a smaller area is definitely endowed with much larger resources, imperialism will flow there as well. At the rate that divisiveness and elitism define and dominate our society, federalism will spin out of control and literally dismember the nation. The ensuing chaos will provoke tribal rule or warlord-ism and eventual civil war.

The funny thing is that civil war will end with a winner, and that winner will begin to build a nation under his rule. Again, the path to merging the population of more than 7,000 islands will begin, the process of nation building reintroduced by the dominant force that will seek to rule all. If the people had tired of the fighting and the killing, then the new ruler will have his way and a new nation will be born to seek maturity in time.

The way of the world is not towards fragmentation. Europe says it all so succinctly when fiercely independent nations now try to find union in what they have in common over instead of allowing their uniqueness to keep them apart. It now goes towards a federation, not of states like America, but a federation of nations. The USSR disintegrated through initiatives towards autonomy and independence. Today, Russia moves towards reintegration. It may or may not succeed, but it simply shows that the move to integrate is fast becoming more powerful than the move to fragmentize.

The way of nation building is akin to the way of democracy. It is characterized more by the desire to contribute rather than to extract, to give rather than to demand. The visionaries who sought to build their nations, and succeeded, asked their people to sacrifice and offer hard work and unity as the founding pillars of their society. The proponents of autonomy in whatever form in the Philippines may be deluded to thinking that physical partitioning is the end-all and be-all of autonomy. They will fall flat on their faces and drag us into killing each other unless the motivation is elevated to sharing rather than getting.

The national state of poverty, corruption and violence is what will be devolved into autonomous regions. Whatever is the character of the nation will remain its character when a nation is divided into smaller parts -- from the desired grouping by large region to the eventual insistence of doing it by province or town. When the primary motivation of autonomy is to get more, those who have more will insist on not sharing and be on their own.

It is becoming a smaller world. Technology has made cross-country exchanges very easy and humanity has been testing the waters for moving beyond the planet Earth. It is convergence that is the wave of consciousness, not separation. And it is developing from the ground up rather than the top pulling the bottom up that builds with firmness and sustainability. Filipinos might do well to carry these thoughts as their leaders try to lead them somewhere else.