By Jesus P. Estanislao, Ph.D.
Note: This article by UA&P co-founder Dr. Jesus P. Estanislao was originally published in The Philippine Star on August 27, 2000. It is republished here as part of our “Universitas Rewind” section, which revisits earlier works that continue to speak to present-day concerns of the UA&P community and/or Philippine society at large.
The period in which this piece was written was marked by significant political and economic tensions. The administration of then-President Joseph Estrada faced mounting criticism over governance issues, corruption allegations, and economic management concerns, culminating in the events leading up to the EDSA People Power II in January 2001. At the same time, the Philippines was navigating the lingering effects of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, with ongoing efforts toward economic recovery, fiscal stability, and institutional reform.
Revisiting this article today invites reflection on how these enduring themes continue to resonate, offering insights that remain relevant amid contemporary challenges.
With freedom comes responsibility. We should inquire into the roots of our situation as a people and throw light upon our pilgrimage to progress.
Darkness around us. Pessimism hangs thick over us. It is undermining our faith in our economy. It is draining away hope in our country’s immediate future. It is pitting Filipino against Filipino in a war no one can win, on an island where “the promise” has been set back even farther from fulfillment.
But from what well are we drawing the pessimism that is overpowering us? From what cup are we drinking it and inebriating ourselves with it? Fingers have been pointed. Tongues are wagging. The blame game is being played, even with panache. Almost naturally, much of the wailing, most of the cries, have been raised against political leadership, particularly against our President.
This should come as no surprise. Because in our psyche, the presumption has been embedded that almost everything that matters in our nation’s life happens through politics and because of the President. We have put politics and the President at the very core and center of our nation. For far too many amongst us, politics has become the milieu for our ambitions, the motor for most of our actions, and the theme for much of our conversation. Imagine for a moment politics and the twin topics of sex and money that come in its train were to be removed from our minds and lips. Then our beauty parlors and powder rooms would be as silent as oratories, and our coffee shops and boardrooms as hushed as monasteries.
Many of us have been so taken by politics that we feed on it. We are drunk on it. We are driven by it. We have become so adept at formulating political stratagems scenarios as well as imagining political plots and coups that—were they in our midst—Machiavelli would have felt like a babe lost in the woods, and Azorin would have felt compelled to go back to Politics 101.
The politics that have obsessed so many of us have been mainly about power. It has been about power, secured by enormous sums, invested by those seeking returns through the use of public levers for private gains. It has, in fact, been mainly about selfish pursuits, not about genuine service. It invokes the people and coins slogans about promoting the people’s welfare, but the sad fact is that it often uses the people and promotes a culture of dependence on handouts and hand-me-downs.
For far too many amongst us, politics has become the milieu for our ambitions, the motor for most of our actions, and the theme for much of our conversation.
It has often been said that a people gets the leadership it deserves. If the leadership we have cares more about winning popularity, extending its hold on power, and using public office for personal enrichment, rather than about expanding our common wealth, improving the efficiency of public service, and winning both peace and prosperity for the people, then that leadership speaks volumes about us.
It speaks about our political culture as a people. It is a culture that entrusts almost absolutely our fate to the leader. It invests almost all our hopes in him or her. It expects all initiatives to come from above and all benefits to fall from the political heavens. It is so centered on the President that we have put him or her on a pedestal as though he were close to being a god. And to that center, we have brought everything, our politics, our economics, our civics. It is little wonder that our economics is being treated merely as an appendage of politics, and that our civics is being thoroughly imbued with it.
Having compressed almost everything in our nation’s life into politics, and having built an overarching tower with the President put atop its commanding height, we have been tempting the political gods, who have been more than happy to oblige. We have been placing our fate on leaders, whom we have assumed to be almost as good as God, but who, in most cases, have proven that their feet are made of clay, their pockets easily get lined with gold, and their heads filled with hot air.
It has often been said that a people gets the leadership it deserves.
We have, in fact, been setting ourselves up for disillusionment, and we have been inviting the dark clouds of pessimism to settle upon us.
It is time for us to wake up. We have to get up and seize our fate, placing it back in our hands. We have to work to expand the horizons, beyond politics, of our nation’s life. Push back politics, and set it in its rightful place. But for our own sake, let us carve a separate place for economics and a still different arena for our civics. Let us broaden our concerns. We need to open up the new frontiers of economics and civics, with their different vistas, opportunities and challenges, rules, rewards for success and punishments for failure.
There is a new world that beckons a new generation of Filipinos. It is a world that is much broader and richer than our traditional politics. It has to be dominated by responsible citizenship—one that dares to strike out on one’s own, one that takes initiatives and sails forth with the spirit of enterprise, and one that cares to put the stamp of excellence on every facet of life. Responsible citizenship explores, opens up new paths, and covers new territory. It confronts the old limits of monopoly politics and taunts it with the cry—“Multum plus ultra.”
Narrowness of our horizons. But if we are to sally forth to a much broader world than the one we have delimited by a flawed political culture, we must first own up to a particular weakness we suffer as a people.
That weakness, I dare say, is our laziness to think.
We tend to be rather superficial and are quite happy to leave our minds largely unused. Ideas bore us. Concepts easily drive us to sleep. The pun is our preferred form of humor. In our midst, he who puns often jests the best, entertains the most, and gets the longest applause. And we prefer stories to treatises, jokes to serious discussion. Indeed, we have a high propensity for reducing even the most serious discussion down to one hilarious joke. We disdain being cerebral, and that is why we end up being emotional. Take food, tsismis, and puns out of our parties, and they would be empty, and we would not know what to do, since we have no other course nor serious discourse to fill them with.
That weakness, I dare say, is our laziness to think.
Since reason is kept largely in our mental freezer, our feelings can be as hot as our weather. In a discussion, we find it difficult to look at issues objectively without interposing ourselves into the foreground. We take comments as criticisms, and debating as an art form for quarreling. No wonder we tend to sweep issues under the rug because we prefer the fudge of fuzzy consensus to the substance of clear-cut decisions.
(To be continued)
Banner photo from Unsplash.
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