By: Gilbert M. Forbes
Yearly, we are remembering EDSA I, otherwise known as the People Power Revolution that toppled a dictator. It's 26 years and is going, however, while the economy and living standards tremendously improved at least for the bourgeois and the regular working class in major industries, the poorest of the poor remained entangled in centuries old struggle.
The poorest of the poor remained marginalized, ignorant, and exploited made worst by the onslaught of intensified materialism and commercialism.
While democratic space returned, the expanded space seems to lead many astray. Veteran traditional politicians and opportunists took it as a leverage to expand their base of power. To see brother and sisters, mother and son, father-son-brother in both the executive and legislative departments is now ordinary. Out of almost a hundred million Filipinos, how lucky are these people to be elected to the various national sit of power to represent their family and of course their interest.
Another mockery of the democratic system is the existence of inefficient local leaderships from the barangays to towns, the Sangguniang Kabataan and the Party List system. Yes, it is creating jobs for this people but the way they are performing their jobs of which nobody has forced them to do is very inefficient and short of ordinary expectations.
In many provinces, we are witnessed to see a father as congressman, his son governor and the sibling mayors, municipal or city councilors and barangay captains. Many times, it’s funny to hear of having a mother as the mayor, her husband as the municipal administrator, and the son a board member. It too is a mockery of the real essence of democracy. Haven’t there are no other choices and options left? Thanks to unaware and ignorant majority of the voting public.
Was it one of the fruits of EDSA, to make many of the voters totally blind and ignorant? Some political analysts call it the result of popular politics and patronage borne out of two decades of dictatorship and has continued as a system up to this day.. Many look at politicians not as a leader but as their provider and shining armor that will protect them from harm, even many times it tends to be wrong.
For a righteous wealthy individual, to go to politics is an economic suicide for so many reasons that everybody knows. Another dilemma is the weakening volunteerisms and participation of many to even basic political exercise in their respective institutions i.e., schools, churches, villages.
If EDSA I would have been a bloody one, will our political attitude be the same as it is now? What about the economy?
What EDSA has given us is a great opportunity we continuously fail to use for the common good due to lack of faith, hope, discipline, narrow mindedness, apathy, selfishness and greed.
Unless, we learn from our own misfortunes and realize our unrighteousness, what we are heeding to are lots of missed opportunities in favor of competitor neighboring countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar and Bangladesh. We have been left by Malaysia and Singapore and a little by Thailand.
More and more of learned, skilled, talented dismayed countrymen will leave the country in favor of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, US and Europe and those who remained will be left to the dogs or the decaying system of governance and value system of apathetic middle class majority and the poor matched by a culture of dependence under a consumerist capitalist economy.
The country could not afford another EDSA, or we may be the Somalia of the orient.
Yearly, we are remembering EDSA I, otherwise known as the People Power Revolution that toppled a dictator. It's 26 years and is going, however, while the economy and living standards tremendously improved at least for the bourgeois and the regular working class in major industries, the poorest of the poor remained entangled in centuries old struggle.
The poorest of the poor remained marginalized, ignorant, and exploited made worst by the onslaught of intensified materialism and commercialism.
 | ||
| The poor have yet to learn to elect leaders from themselves. |
Another mockery of the democratic system is the existence of inefficient local leaderships from the barangays to towns, the Sangguniang Kabataan and the Party List system. Yes, it is creating jobs for this people but the way they are performing their jobs of which nobody has forced them to do is very inefficient and short of ordinary expectations.
In many provinces, we are witnessed to see a father as congressman, his son governor and the sibling mayors, municipal or city councilors and barangay captains. Many times, it’s funny to hear of having a mother as the mayor, her husband as the municipal administrator, and the son a board member. It too is a mockery of the real essence of democracy. Haven’t there are no other choices and options left? Thanks to unaware and ignorant majority of the voting public.
Was it one of the fruits of EDSA, to make many of the voters totally blind and ignorant? Some political analysts call it the result of popular politics and patronage borne out of two decades of dictatorship and has continued as a system up to this day.. Many look at politicians not as a leader but as their provider and shining armor that will protect them from harm, even many times it tends to be wrong.
For a righteous wealthy individual, to go to politics is an economic suicide for so many reasons that everybody knows. Another dilemma is the weakening volunteerisms and participation of many to even basic political exercise in their respective institutions i.e., schools, churches, villages.
If EDSA I would have been a bloody one, will our political attitude be the same as it is now? What about the economy?
What EDSA has given us is a great opportunity we continuously fail to use for the common good due to lack of faith, hope, discipline, narrow mindedness, apathy, selfishness and greed.
Unless, we learn from our own misfortunes and realize our unrighteousness, what we are heeding to are lots of missed opportunities in favor of competitor neighboring countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar and Bangladesh. We have been left by Malaysia and Singapore and a little by Thailand.
More and more of learned, skilled, talented dismayed countrymen will leave the country in favor of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, US and Europe and those who remained will be left to the dogs or the decaying system of governance and value system of apathetic middle class majority and the poor matched by a culture of dependence under a consumerist capitalist economy.
The country could not afford another EDSA, or we may be the Somalia of the orient.
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