The Philippine Conundrum

The Descent from Public Service to Self Service.

If you have been around this world for more then 30 years or so and you have a semblance of intelligence and keep an eye on international politics you, like myself, must be appalled by the political evolution, or devolution as it were of Philippine politics.

I hesitate to call this backward country third world as it may be an insult to other third world countries that are legitimately trying to inch there way up the evolutionary ladder into democracy and a better way life but this country is slowing imploding into itself with a never ending play of death, corruption and stupidity. Let’s have elections and play another game of ” Who wants to financially Rape the country for the next 4 years” and God protect anyone that tries to stand in my way or I will have one of my neanderthal military groups round up all your children and old women,rape them, shoot them in the head,and bury them in a shallow grave.

I read somewhere in a semi spiritual essay on karma that a country will receive the leaders that they deserve based on collective karma of that country. Most people mistakenly think that there is only personal karma, far from it. While indeed there is personal karma, there is also family karma, national karma and world karma,  and if that is truly the case then the Philippine Karma is truly in need of a spiritual kick in the pants.

We are seeing this kind of base mentality currently in Jamaica where the PM and other political leaders create cadres or groups to get and control the voting populace and then when they enter office they forget about the rapid dogs they created, leaving them to pray on the week and uneducated creating uncontrollable gangs that feed of of drugs , prostitution and anything else for money. It is ultimately the politicians that create and foster the problems that they are elected to destroy.

Back to the conundrum in the Philippines….and let us use the classic example, the marcos regime and the delusional bitch that is still roaming around, unincarcerated after looting the poor country out of Billions of dollars. One has to ask…how can someone so blatantly steal so much from a country and still be free to walk the streets, let alone have the unmitigated gall to run for politics again?

There is clearly only one explanation and it is borne out time and time again in the political arena in the Philippines. The entire structure, from the ground up, the the highest level of government is corrupt to the core. From custom officials demanding bribes from tourists at the airport to the president demanding multi million dollar kickbacks and jobs for their lazy inbred family members.

imeldaThe reason that Imelda has been able to walk around free with billions in her Swiss bank account is because she has spread the wealth as it were to every corrupt, both financially and morally, official on the payroll. If you were a judge in a poor country and had 50 million US waiting for you in a swiss bank account, more money then you could possibly imagine from 100 lifetimes of honest work, would you convict a woman in a court of law? Clearly not.

A second reason, I believe is the scope of the theft. In a country where you are lucky to make $100 a month, billions of dollars is simply an abstraction, a number and a sum that most people simply cannot comprehend. It is far easier to fool someone if they have no idea what you stole..

The fact that the entire political system is cancerous to the core makes it not only easy but necessary to butter the outstretched hands so you can continue your life of fraud and deceit at the expense of your countrymen. We see this time and time again with arroyo, estrada, and every president in the history of the Philippines. There is an inherent sense of entitlement that has been bred into the upper class since birth.

So what is it in the Philippine psyche that allows them to be oblivious to the corruption that surrounds them completely in everyday life. If a powerful US senator in America hired a group of skinheads, or bikers, to stop several busloads of political activists from going to the capital to protest against his renomination. And had the group pulled over the bus, herded the group of people out into the middle of an empty field in Nebraska, summarily executing them killingsone by one while they screamed at the top of their lungs for mercy and then burying there still warm corpse is in shallow graves before riding off into the sunset. You can rest assured that within 30 days of the discovery of the mass grave the majority of those people responsible for it would be behind bars facing capital punishment. And the politician responsible would not only have lost his job would be spending the rest of his life in prison. Not allowed to walk around free living off millions in a Swiss bank account that was stolen from his constituents.

Granted, we by no means wish to infer here that the US is free from corruption. On the contrary, the only difference being that the corruption within our government is far more subtle and calculated rather than the blatant mass murder to silence those that differ with your political agenda. Our politicians are far more adept at arranging multimillion dollar deals behind closed doors for themselves and their family then  those and the Philippine political arena.

So once again we have to ask ourselves, why? Why does the population allow their government officials free reign to financially rape their country again and again, when the very money that they funnel out of the country is the money that would help develop their country from a second-class Third World country into a country capable of so much more?

Let me give you an example that illustrates one of the basic problems of Philippine  life. I know a family that were born in the Philippines that are now living in America. After birth the birth mother gave them to a grandmother to raise and then left to America for better opportunities. The grandmother was extremely strict, and upon any type of infraction would beat the children with bamboo on their legs until they wet themselves, plus many other traumatic punishments. After the mother gave birth to three children, she handed them over to someone else and left the country. When I queried the mother about the dramatic damage that  the lashings with a bamboo had done to the children, she more or less brushed it off simply saying: “oh, that’s the way they do things there.”   I took the opportunity to remind her that at one point in our history we used to burn witches, but we no longer do so using the excuse that that’s the way we do things.

That is a very important aspect of a culture’s evolution, where we see an activity or an act that was done at one time, and we now realize was incorrect or inappropriate  we generally cease doing that act or repeating that activity. That is spiritual evolution and I’m afraid is an essential part that is missing in the Philippine psyche.

Another aspect of their culture is the importance that is given to their first born, and the second class citizen status that they give to their women. This is not unique to the Philippines but is still inherently wrong.  They have raised countless generations of mama’s boys, that are bred with an  inherent sense of entitlement, and are allowed to cheat on their wives, steal,beat children all with impunity from responsibility. So a great deal of the responsibility must lie on the women that raise these men and allow them to treat women and those less fortunate as themselves as chattel and pawns in their never ending cycle of corruption and murder.

So where does this leave us in the upcoming political election, you have the option of choosing among any number of openly corrupt politicians that have served time in prison or up and coming politicians willing to embezzle their way to the top and willing to kill anyone that stands in their way. Or you can choose a relatively unknown political newcomer with name recognition and the promise to root out corruption in government. This begs the question, how do you root out corruption in a government that has been seeded by, fostered in, and flourished in that very corruption that he promises to root out? If in fact he is elected, and begins his promised quest to root out that corruption is endemic in the system, I believe one of two things will happen.

Because the current of corruption so rapidly pervasive in the government, he will eventually ramp down his expectations for change, or he will mysteriously die in office either subtly or at a road stop  checkpoint he will receive several point-blank 9 mm shots to the back of his head, and his investigation will languish in the police department for a decade until his eventually forgotten or dropped due to lack of evidence.

So how do something changed that so culturally disruptive and at the same time so deep within the very core of the culture? Can it be changed by outside intervention? Or must it be an internal action? I personally believe much like what is happening in Thailand today, that the citizens must reach a point in their disgust and disbelief at the disconnect between what they want and what the politicians provide that they must start a grassroots effort throughout the country and bring down the corrupt politicians by their own actions. It is clear that no change will come from the top when the entire top is corrupt. It becomes a cultural battle of us versus them, when the politicians circle their wagons, or Jitneys, and stay within the circle trying to protect themselves from the misguided civilian masses.

What it comes down to is lack of responsibility in the part of the Philippine people, and the fact that most are to poor to have time to fight the corruption. And those that are not poor and have escaped the daily grind of trying to find enough to feed the family have entered the corrupt world of everyone for themselves, the most base and spiritually devolved

Ten Step Philippine Political Cleansing Program:

  1. Arrest and detain Imelda Marcos and her children, and transfer custody of them to an international tribunal that has not been infected by her. Freeze any international bank accounts even remotely controlled by her or her children and return it to a 100% transparent government fund.
  2. Give current politicians a 30 day window of immunity to disclose and return any funds obtained illegally while in office. After the 30 day period proceed with investigation and prosecution, again by a third party international  tribunal that will not be hindered by the Philippine justices systems corruption and incompetence.
  3. All new government elections will bar any person from running that has previously held office and has been convicted of fraud, corruption or served jail time.
  4. All new government officials will sign documents granting 100% transparency to all financial activities both locally and internationally, and any graft, bribes or illegal activity he will forfeit seat in government and be banned from any further government activity for his remaining years.
  5. Any currently seated government official that has been found guilty of conspiring to murder, or murder through any means, once found guilty will serve a life sentence with no chance of parole. And any member of his immediate family or clan will be barred from politics for life.
  6. Any business’s setup and controlled by family members of current political clan families will return control of said companies to the benefit of the people.
  7. Establish an international law center run by a third party international law firm to deal with local corruption and has the ability to bypass local legal corruption.
  8. Any civil employee currently found to be accepting bribes or graft will summarily lose there jobs and any future pensions associated with it.
  9. The military head will be replaced and investigated for any abuses of power and premeditated murder against there citizens.
  10. A national citizens board will be setup with representatives from each region to highlight current problems each section of the country faces, and those recommendations will be acted upon with the recovered funds made available from the asset seizures.
  11. One extra for good luck: National Addendum to the Constitution: A  Zero tolerance corruption policy for all government offices.

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