In a recent discussion on mlq3, enlightening as always, one of the participants bemoaned the current lack of national heroes (quote in the heading above). This is a constant refrain among Filipinos, who are always looking for new Tañadas, Rectos, or Salongas (or even new Eraps and FPJs) to rescue them from the present mess. It’s not surprising that a society so infused with Catholicism, a religion founded on the concept of salvation, would think this way. Yet when you look at the likelihood of a leader arising from the current crop of politicians, well, you might as well look outside to see whether it’s snowing.
But if not from the termite-infested political system, where would a saviour come from? Four possible routes come to mind.
Follow me, and ye shall be saved. Ironically, since the discussion thread that the quotation came from was criticizing the growing influence of religion on Philippine public life, if a hero is to rise up, he or she may well come from a faith-based organization. Religious leaders have so many advantages; they can pretend to be “above the fray”, they have a readymade organization, they literally have a pulpit, and in general the Philippine electorate, doubters on mlq3 aside, is not averse to politics being mixed with religion.
The potential of faith-based candidates was demonstrated by the performance of the rather colourless Brother Eddie Villanueva, who came from nowhere to finish a commendable fourth in last year’s presidential elections. If there were one religion in the Philippines, national and religious and religious salvation could be stitched together very neatly. But there is not. Why should the Roman Catholic Church, haemorrhaging members to evangelical churches like Brother Eddie’s, welcome a candidacy from a rival? Not to mention the Muslim minority. As for the Catholic Church itself, Father Robert Reyes is a brilliant activist, but he’s not in the mainstream of the church, which anyways claims it does not want a direct political role. Although some sort of ecumenical solution is theoretically possible, right now it’s hard to see how that could come about.
Filipinos unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains. In a country where the capitalist and democratic model has been pursued so assiduously and failed so utterly, it is a mystery why a revolutionary left-wing alternative has not captured the hearts of the people. Well, perhaps not such a mystery. The option of migration deprives a revolutionary movement of much of the Philippine intelligentsia, the class from which political activists are normally drawn. Then again, the Maoist route chosen by the Philippine left has had few successes outside China and internecine disputes have fatally weakened the movement. As for the “legitimate” left, if the economy continues to deteriorate its stock will rise, but the task of moving Bayan Muna, Anak Pawis and the rest from the margins to the mainstream seems beyond Satur Ocampo and Crispin Beltran, decent and honorable people though they are.
Bend over and I’ll give you a good spanking. There is a strong desire among many Filipinos of all classes for a muscular leader to hose down the Augean stables. However, Mlq3 reckons that there are “too few to go right” and perhaps he is right in that. The military and the police, traditional breeding grounds for rightist putsches, seem too discredited to be able to put up a “hero”. It seems more likely that a strong man would come from local government, claiming that “I cleaned up, say, Mandaluyong or Davao, I can kick ass nationally too.” Whether Bayani Fernando or Rodrigo Duterte would be effective “saviours” is another matter of course.
Let me step out of your screen and into your hearts. If the Philippines is to go all out for the hero option, what more fertile ground could there be than the movies? Still, if even FPJ could not get elected President, that seems to imply that entertainment does not have the pulling power it used to. PCIJ research into recent election results has shown that winning candidates were usually from television rather than the movies, testimony to the waning power of celluloid. Yet, television is, in every sense, a “smaller” medium than film—and its stars are not the STARS of old. The only figure from the entertainment world with universal appeal in recent years has been Manny Pacquiao, and so far as I know no one is touting him as a political leader.
Which leaves? Well, who does it leave? Or is the yearning for a hero another example of a national weakness for the short-cut, of an unwillingness to undertake the hard work needed to shore up the wobbly body politic?
Here's some kind of off-tangent insight on why the Filipino mind cannot seem to develop big ideas, execute big initiatives, and achieve big things. It is an essay by Nick Joaquin that highlights the Flipinos "Heritage of Smallness". You can read the full article here:
http://www.getrealphilippines.com/agr-disagr/17-4-smallness.html
Excerpt:
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The Filipino who travels abroad gets to thinking that his is the hardest working country in the world. By six or seven in the morning we are already up on our way to work, shops and markets are open; the wheels of industry are already agrind. Abroad, especially in the West, if you go out at seven in the morning you’re in a dead-town. Everybody’s still in bed; everything’s still closed up. Activity doesn’t begin till nine or ten-- and ceases promptly at five p.m. By six, the business sections are dead towns again. The entire cities go to sleep on weekends. They have a shorter working day, a shorter working week. Yet they pile up more mileage than we who work all day and all week.
Is the disparity to our disparagement?
We work more but make less. Why? Because we act on such a pygmy scale. Abroad they would think you mad if you went in a store and tried to buy just one stick of cigarette. They don’t operate on the scale. The difference is greater than between having and not having; the difference is in the way of thinking. They are accustomed to thinking dynamically. We have the habit, whatever our individual resources, of thinking poor, of thinking petty.
Is that the explanation for our continuing failure to rise--that we buy small and sell small, that we think small and do small?
Are we not confusing timidity for humility and making a virtue of what may be the worst of our vices? Is not our timorous clinging to smallness the bondage we must break if we are ever to inherit the earth and be free, independent, progressive? The small must ever be prey to the big. Aldous Huxley said that some people are born victims, or "murderers." He came to the Philippines and thought us the "least original" of people. Is there not a relation between his two terms? Originality requires daring: the daring to destroy the obsolete, to annihilate the petty. It’s cold comfort to think we haven’t developed that kind of "murderer mentality."
But till we do we had best stop talking about "our heritage of greatness" for the national heritage is-- let’s face it-- a heritage of smallness.
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Posted by: benign0 | October 20, 2005 at 08:20 PM
BenignO -- Thanks for the interesting comment and sorry it has taken me so long to reply. What you say is true up to a point, but I wonder if this is really a characteristic of "Pinoyness". It seems to me more a characteristic of impoverished nations, whatever their cultural stripe. The example Nick quotes of buying one stick of cigarettes is a good one. I am sure Filipino smokers would adapt without any difficulty to buying one pack at a time, the fact is they imprisoned by a lack of cash rather than a lack of ideas. Unlike Huxley (and I wonder how long he actually spent here) I actually find Filipinos quite imaginative and resourceful people. The problem is that they have to waste these talents on scrabbling around for daily necessities, rather than on dreaming great dreams.
Posted by: torn | October 31, 2005 at 07:00 PM