“People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt or die.” – Plato.
*******
This was the gist of the speech delivered by World Bank Group head David Malpass in Khartoum, Sudan recently.
Malpass did not make an observation but rather a strong declaration that poverty hounds citizens of Third World countries – in Asia, Arica and South America specifically – no end.
In our country, we need not even associate the chaos and the difficulties that the pandemic has brought upon us because poverty has been staring us in the face since the Philippines slowly but surely wilted under the onslaught of global developments in the sixties.
Yes, don’t you forget that we were running second to Japan then. Our foreign exchange was only at four to one dollar until it slid to six per.
Were we even bothered by that economic slide?
No, I never thought about it.
Because politics was then engulfing our national consciousness and we were enjoying the democracy we blindly copied after the Americans.
While Singapore was then only creeping out of its cocoon, we never noticed that we needed a leader who had a good grasp of economics and executive management skills, not to say integrity.
We were so deeply immersed in political rhetoric that we are now seeing today the folly of our ignorance and nonchalance.
Yes, there are millions of Filipinos who are still dirt poor today because our leaders did not possess the vision that should have ideally provided the direction the country trekked in the same manner that Singapore did.
Why am I comparing the Philippines to Singapore?
Why not? This small city state broke away from Malaysia’s apron strings to grow up on its own two feet, reaching First World status and the envy of every country.
Looking back, we can carefully deduce that we cannot fault anyone but us for having installed political leaders who, through these decades past, have only sought their own preservation and establish poliical dynasties.
Am I correct?
Scan the political horizon and what do you see?
Only the names of a few prominent families whose political stars continue to shine to this very day.
They have been lording over our lives since even the advent of the Commonwealth regime. Their political tentacles have stretched far and wide, from just mere provincial, then to regional and now nation-wide in scope.
Poverty is the country’s public number one but every president who sat in Malacanang has vaguely addressed the issue as if it were just “one of those things.”
To this day, one administration after another continues to rely on importations of food stuff – including rice, meat (pork and poultry) – when our agricultural sector can ably produce these.
What gives?
The adequate production of agricultural products and produce for national domestic supply and consumption will help bring prices of commodities down but we are not doing our economics.
Mindanao has become the country’s breadbasket that has distinctly outlined the lives of Mindanaoans as distinctly different from their counterparts in the urban areas of Luzon, particularly Metro Manila where millions of residents are groaning.
FIlipinos do not deserve to live under these conditions.
We live in an archipelago gifted with rich natural resources that are being eyed with covetousness by powerful nations around us. .
However, we also have a people who cannot make heads or tails of our historical legacy and the contemporary socio-economic conditions because of a confused and chaotic mix-up of culture, ethics, education, religion and what have you.
The poor cannot lag behind forever.
They have been suffering for a long time and they cannot endure suffering eternally.
A national leader with a vision and mission will one day appear and be hailed.
Mark my words. (Email your feedback to fredlumba@yahoo.com.) GOD BLESS THE PHILIPPINES!
