President Aquino is dialing up

It appears President Aquino is dialing up demonstrating hard-nosed leadership – that to achieve sustainable economic growth we need enormous investments? Hopefully we’re responding positively – instead of manifesting tentativeness? Pacquiao has won eight championships because he has the ‘mindset of a winner’ – every time he climbs the ring he is positive and confident?

But there are downsides to the PPP, to trade agreements, to second-guessing the judiciary? We can’t expect the road to economic growth to be paved with gold – the path to eternity is straight and narrow? Every major initiative will generate a new set of challenges – that must be addressed . . . with our God-given intellect? Translation: if all we have is a hammer everything looks like a nail – the practitioner’s definition of ‘lateral or creative thinking’ (likewise a critical skill set in innovation and product development that we can use).

We wouldn’t want to protest against the automobile like when it was first introduced – because road accidents would rise? Of course it did! And thus relatively small as it is we are celebrating our growing car market – because we wouldn’t want to retard progress? Backward thinking . . . yields a backward economy – i.e., we don’t want to be too big for our breeches lest we won’t be able to lift our own economy?

The writer and family were on a flight from Manila to Davao and a few seats behind were two very eloquent passengers dissecting the problems of the world. He wouldn’t have noticed except for the non-stop tête-à-tête. The writer grinned realizing that between our ‘bida’ and ‘kuro-kuro’ culture we’re expected to dissect the problems of the world? Unfortunately, given where we are in our economy, it appears our ‘bida’ and ‘kuro-kuro’ culture hasn’t worked – because we’re not predisposed to action? Is it our holistic perspective which makes us tentative? Or do we measure everything against our own yardstick – is it a belief or an ideology? But whatever it is, it would not be perfect – i.e., who can cast the first stone?

The world has a long and dreadful experience from extremist views and ideologies – and we’re still living with it. Of course it’s the fault of the Americans with the Brits aiding and abetting the misguided war on terror? That even us peaceful Filipinos are thrown into the fray in Mindanao? (The US or Obama himself was rebuffed in their bid for a bilateral trade agreement by the South Koreans yet sent the aircraft carrier George Washington and its accompanying ships to Korean waters; a globalized world can unite to fight extremism?) We pride ourselves with the longest aggregate coastline, but are we able to protect ourselves from without – and from within, especially ourselves? For example, because of our parochial instinct, we keep shooting ourselves in the foot re globalization – winning in the global arena has nothing to do with size (e.g., Singapore; while we keep underestimating ourselves thus instinctively protecting uncompetitive industries, i.e., replicating zillions of ‘Bondyings’)? It has all to do with competitiveness – but which is still foreign to us?

So where are we? We care for poor Filipinos and want to defend human dignity as the Catholic Church preaches? Fact: the number of Filipinos who’ve lost their dignity – which is worse than death – is far greater than what we lost in WW II, twice as many as the total casualties from WW I and over half that of WW II. Human dignity for a third of us Filipinos can’t come from dole outs. Granted that CSR and CCT are not exactly dole outs – but the reality is poverty and OFWs are two sides of the same coin? Both are marginalized by a frail economy designed, wittingly or unwittingly, to preserve a ‘cacique-like culture’ – with investments more than sufficient for the few but wanting for the many? And to add insult to injury they – the marginalized OFWs – are the engine of the economy? But we’re not ungrateful – we celebrate their successes? What’s ours is ours, what’s theirs is ours?

Bottom line: let’s sweep away the cobwebs in our head and be positive and confident. President Aquino hopefully would stick to his guns and drive economic growth focused like a laser? Oh . . . that doesn’t belong to our lexicon but it’s about time it does?