Pea Eye

It is to the credit of friends and kababayans (of and from the same place) that they do not give me much grief in my use of “Pea Eye” in lieu of “P.I.”—traditionally the acronym for the Philippine Islands. To begin with, I am told, P.I. is an American colonial and Commonwealth era designation and it is anachronistic.

Since July 4, 1946, PI had become RP, the Republic of the Philippines. That is when it began touting the story that it is paradigmatic of republican democracy in the Far East. Maybe so, as far as the façade goes, but the mainframe of the structure may be less republican and definitely not democratic than it first seems.

To be sure, the Wild Wild West atmosphere of its premier metropolis Manila—its economics (support and sustenance), politics (policy, program, project making) and culture (meaning and significance)—does give one the impression that the traditions of Greco-Roman justice and law, the Christian tenets of faith-love-hope, the flowering of resurgent humanism in its arts and reformed secularism in its sciences, and the postmodern ethos of ecumenism, ecotopia, and economics-as-if-people-mattered, are all in place and abiding.

Look again. GMA (Gloria Macapagal Arroyo) was quoted of late: “Over the last decades, our republic has become one of the weakest, steadily left behind by its more progressive neighbors.” Forty years ago, only Japan led the Philippines, ahead of Taiwan, Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Thailand. At the current rate of growth, it will take 30 years for the Philippines to be where Thailand is today!

There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is the reality that only sixteen hundred extended families control 60 percent of the alienable and disposable real estate in the country. One percent of the population has access to the natural resources available in the public domain. Economics favor the select few.

Yet, it is the many that pays for the folly of the few. The Marcos administration left a national debt of $28 billion. Twenty years later, it is up to $53 billion. Foreign remittances of contracted labor outside of the country pay for the country’s debt retirement. In 30 years, the estimated debt will be at $200 billion, even with the most liberal prognosis of a healthy economic growth. Pea Eye would then be competing against the likes of the annually devastated Bangladesh economy.

Absolute dependence on external investments has rendered the value locally added on the economic process minuscule compared to the flow of payments for imported goods that has become an addiction to consumption-induced status-conscious consumers. Add the high fertility rate and improving low mortality rate and there prevails a radical absence of equitable distributive justice.

The global moral contradiction of 15 percent of the population having access to 85 percent of the resources, and the 85 percent of the people having to compete among themselves for the remaining 15 percent of assets is so dramatically portrayed in the urban center of Metro Manila where every symbol of refinement and class is more than quadrupled by the stark reality of deprivation and squalor.

The much polished and publicized form of republican democracy melts with the heat of close scrutiny. If one were to look at the family names of the legislators in the Philippine Commonwealth of 1935, and the Philippine Republic of 1946, one would be forgiven the observation that the Philippines is ruled more by a feudal oligarchy, an entrenched aristocracy than a freely elected body of representatives and executive officers. The art and discipline in the conduct of Philippine elections makes Mugabe’s machinations in Zimbabwe bullish child’s play. From the buying of votes to the miscounting of cast ballots, and the final misreporting and the hurried declaration of winners to forestall any legitimate protest, the Philippine system excels in the finesse and sophistication of organized obfuscation and deceit.

Pea Eye ranks 11th on a list of the most corrupt of nations. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court decries the current practice of extrajudicial killings allegedly perpetuated by, with the connivance of or tolerated by, the Armed Forces. In any case, life is cheap. Its parts like kidney and other organs are openly and widely offered for sale. As a whole, liquidation teams are hired to “salvage” (salvaje) anyone who might have badly crossed one’s path. The recent shooting with a silencer of a college basketball player is more than just a case of bad luck.

As to culture, the favorite image is 400 years in the Iberian convent (333 years as a Spanish colony, to be precise), and 40 years in Hollywood (though we are still living in the shadows of Beverley Hills and Park Avenue). This image excuses every aberration in the social matrix, though it hardly explains the perpetuation of practices that had been introduced earlier by colonizers and continue to be observed without hesitation.

I attended a worship service last Sunday where the hymns, iconography and architecture were straight out of New England and Midwest America. I was reminded of the movie “Mission” where the natives of Paraguay were taught how to sing the Latin chants beautifully without knowledge of their meaning. Much of the religious rituals of the Christian churches derive from Hispanic and American sources devoid of their profound contexts. The countryside these days have Moroni’s LDS manicured lawns competing with Manalo’s distinctively spired INK in witnessing to which community of faith can best fly the Christos banner.

In a six-hour bus ride recently, I had to endure the monotonous percussion of rap music. Save for the Iloco and Tagalog lyrics, I felt like I was in the Southside of Chicago. Indeed, it is not inaccurate to say, as was characterized by colleagues in San Francisco recently, that the West Coast of the United States is Roxas Boulevard of Metro Manila. The whole of Luzon looks like an extension of South San Francisco!

What is not evident is the appropriated Indo-Sino-Malay heritage that underlies the archipelago’s psyche just below the layer where the conquistadores’ influence began. The Hindu, Moslem, and Buddhist accretions to the national story remains outside the perimeters of the mainstream, though the acceptance of the same would neutralize the civil war being waged and fought in the southern island of Mindanao, and bring acceptance to the Sy, Gokongwei, Cojuangco families and the numerous Bombay Bazaars across the archipelago.

So my Pea Eye is a pea-sized eye-level view of a nation and a people coming to its own, and it is well that the CNMI pays attention to its children because they have become in our Commonwealth, for better or for worse, just a wee bit short of being a third of us.