“I am an Egyptian again . . .”

“. . . Not without value or dignity . . . I feel like I have planted a tree. Now I need to look after it. I am cleaning [Tahrir Square] because this is my home. I am an Egyptian again,” a quote from a New York Times report, Feb 20^th. This Egyptian probably shares how we felt when Marcos departed for Hawaii. Hopefully the emotions of the moment indeed reflect both the soft and the hard elements of their liberation. Planting a tree, cleaning one’s home and rebuilding one’s country take more than luck, more than emotions. They demand hard work as well, if indeed the Egyptians are to regain their dignity?

The New York Times report talks about the other countries that had to transition to democracy, including the Philippines, Indonesia and South Korea. South Korea has special mention, that the handoff from military rule to democracy went beyond simply being smooth, and as importantly, to great economic success. And that Indonesia appears to be moving in the right direction.

A flash in the pan does not make for greatness. It takes more than luck, more than emotions and demands hard work as well. Brazil’s new and first woman president, Dilma Rousseff, is finding out that despite Brazil’s recent economic successes, leadership can’t sit on their laurels. And it is especially painful when to simply acquiesce to populist demands is not what leadership is about. It would test her resolve because to keep an overheating economy in check she has to deny ‘justifiable populist demands’. (Two successive New York archbishops had closed churches and schools in Manhattan because of the imperative of sustainability; and Mayor Bloomberg appears to follow suit.)

February reminds us of People Power. The Egyptian quoted by the New York Times would remind us that planting a tree, cleaning one’s home, rebuilding one’s country would take more than luck? And it does not mean to simply espouse populism, either. That may be the dissonance in the Filipino psyche? The departure of Marcos was not meant to hand us our dignity on a silver platter? Rebuilding one’s country demands discipline, sacrifice, sense of country before self? We have to guard against the knee-jerk, of rationalizing our shortcomings – that patriotism isn’t a veneer for parochialism or ‘playing small, vulnerable country’ isn’t a failure to take responsibility, like misusing aid grants or insidious corruption?

There are the hard elements and the soft elements in rebuilding the country. The hard elements are being pursued by President Aquino with his focus on investments. The key is for the administration to be dogged in executing their plans and partnering with the private sector – from critical infrastructure projects to stepping up efforts to drive strategic industries that would move us closer to being a developed country. But there are the soft elements too. We can’t simply have a new set of political rulers and oligarchy on the one hand and populist demands on the other, like a vicious cycle? An inwardly-directed economy perpetuates parochialism and the attendant power dynamics explain our inability to attract foreign investments; and woeful investments explain our dismal competitive standing? At the end of the day it is us! We succeed or fail because of us – we can make the economy and the environment kind or harsh for this generation and beyond?

One can start with respecting time and space – the soft element of efficiency and productivity and of enviable enterprises like Singapore, today’s most competitive nation. They have strict traffic and land-use rules, for instance. Yet Singaporeans had to learn it from the ground up – e.g., their campaign to keep their sidewalks clean, including free from spit. In the mornings, 41 years ago, the writer on his first visit was fascinated to watch store owners scrubbing their sections of the sidewalks with soap and water. “I am cleaning [Tahrir Square] because this is my home” . . . And we, Filipinos, would want to ‘clean’ the country – because it is our home and our own dignity?