“You are no longer driving a Lada.”

“The brand is well-known in post-Soviet countries and has a long history in Russia.” [Wikipedia]

Being losers for the longest time, how can these people learn how to win? That was seventeen years ago when they first came to Eastern Europe. The wife and writer were savoring a great Mavrud wine (indigenous to the country) in the town’s (of 80,000, the same population as theirs in suburban New York) “best restaurant.”

And the wife asked, “What are we doing in this god-forsaken place?” They want to win despite the competition from Western giants that have invaded their country. We are here to help them, make their dream come true, and be part of history. That was the spiel from the local representative of USAID.

But it was not a walk in the park. It took some doing before they recognized that they were no longer driving a Lada. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Let’s turn to the Philippines and examine our situation. We have been losers for the longest time. And our instincts don’t say that we know how to win.

Consider: How many of us would belittle Vietnam, an impoverished country, because our GDP per capita is still higher?

“The Philippines, which usually buys most of its rice imports from Vietnam, had a 3.6% year-on-year contraction in its rice harvest in the first quarter. [The Philippines to import 300,000 tons of rice, Reuters, Bangkok Post,11th May 2020]

How much a loser do we want to be? Let’s get down to the gut of this matter: Did we not parade around with the mantra of “food security”? What countless initiatives did we pursue to drive rice production and productivity in the name of food security?

Recall our hubris? “The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) is an international agricultural research and training organization with headquarters in Los Baños, Laguna in the Philippines, and offices in seventeen countries. IRRI is known for its work in developing rice varieties that contributed to the Green Revolution in the 1960s, which preempted the famine in Asia.

“The Institute, established in 1960, aims to reduce poverty and hunger, improve the health of rice farmers and consumers, and ensure the environmental sustainability of rice farming. It advances its mission through collaborative research, partnerships, and the strengthening of the national agricultural research and extension systems of the countries IRRI works in.” [Wikipedia]

Aside from rice, water, electricity, and an efficient public transportation system are the very fundamental needs of Juan de la Cruz.

How come more impoverished Vietnam can produce more rice and export tons upon tons to us? And guess what, their poverty rate is only a third of ours!

Beyond rice, they are showing us how to be a globally competitive economy. If we are parochial and insular, they are the complete opposite. They are forward-thinking and outward-looking and stand like equals and partners to the bigger and wealthier nations.

How else can they become the hub and regional technology manufacturer for Samsung? It is not rocket science. In one fell swoop, they surpassed the combined revenues of our eight top listed companies. That explains why their export receipts are over four times more while their poverty rate just a fraction of ours.

They begged for foreign money and technology to rapidly build an economy that will be globally competitive. Vietnam looked beyond poverty because they benchmarked against Singapore, Malaysia, and China – i.e., as Lee and Mahathir told Deng, beg for Western money and technology if you want to lift China’s people from poverty.

Sadly, our instincts don’t say that we know how to win. In fairness, the writer recognizes the 3Cs of the hardy mindset. For example, the only one he controls is himself, not our chattering classes with whom he shares the postings. And so, over the years of its existence, the blog keeps tweaking how to deliver the same message.

We are parochial and insular. We value hierarchy and paternalism that we rely on political patronage and oligarchy that ours is a culture of impunity.

In other words, we are still driving a Lada; we have not overcome parochialism and insularity despite how the world has evolved – and continues to grow.

Instincts are like habits; they are hard to break. We are arguing against systems and isms that don’t sit well with us despite the evidence to the contrary, as in our neighbors showing the world what tiger economies are. 

Benchmark. Benchmark. Benchmark.

Sadly, that’s Greek to us. We can’t internalize how our neighbors embraced these same practices and succeeded, leaving us in the dust? Because we want perfection, and our neighbors aren’t, and neither is globalization. “Perfection” is not of this world. Try dynamism.

It’s insanity! We keep talking about the shortcomings of the Constitution, yet never dared to move ahead. And it brings us to our value of hierarchy and paternalism, aka our caste system.

In other words, democracy – i.e., a government of the people, by the people, for the people – is not in our hearts. Why? Because of our subservience to a hierarchy that comes with paternalism.

And these impulses are likewise hard to break – that we would instead entrust our well-being to political patronage and oligarchy.

Consider: We created a Marcos and a Duterte. We applauded both for their supposed leadership. It is not the leadership that we are praising.

At the end of the day, so said Rizal, we love tyranny – and it explains why ours is a culture of impunity. That also explains why Padre Damaso lives on. For example, the establishment won’t respect the hierarchy of needs of Juan de la Cruz because of his status. 

Unsurprisingly, water, electricity, and an efficient public transportation system – and a globally competitive economy – are critical only to Juan de la Cruz. Those higher up in the hierarchy can access anything and everything.

Given the reality of Juan de la Cruz, we can only pray for a leadership that will put the nation above self and takes us along to traverse the road from poverty to prosperity.

But that prospect is remote given whatever leadership we produce will come from us. Despite being out-of-step with democracy, we are still a republic, and we the people elect our leadership from among us.

Consider: Our sheltered upbringing has not changed. We still shelter our children. Unsurprisingly, our education in the Philippines is like the economy, the regional laggard.

Recall how the blog defines nirvana for Juan de la Cruz: We must create a virtuous circle that mirrors the dynamism of the photosynthesis phenomenon. But given all the preceding, how can we even figure out the dots to connect when they are absent from our psyche?

What are we doing in this god-forsaken place? Try personal responsibility.

Recall the paper from the UP ISSE that studied MSMEs. No amount of intervention from the government or UP ISSE can make them succeed. MSME owners must learn to be risk-takers and bank on the animal spirits and the entrepreneurial spirit that got them into the enterprise in the first place.

As the writer’s Eastern Europeans raised on day-one, our products are selling, but we have not made money in eight years, how do we move up to the next level?

How does Juan de la Cruz move up to the next level – must be our mantra?

Not food security. Not the war on poverty. Not the war on drugs. Not a 6%-6.5% GDP growth rate. Not tax rationalization. Not privatization of water distribution.

What is the next level for Juan de la Cruz?

To move up from a service-consumption economy to an industrial-investment economy.

In other words, to move up from analysis to analytics. It means to forward-think. And to look outward. As well as stand as equals of bigger and wealthier nations.

We need incremental GDP of $200 billion yesterday to be ahead of Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam and overcome poverty to the extent that they did.

Let’s pause right there. That is the way forward to overcoming poverty. And the next question Juan de la Cruz will ask is, how soon do we get there?

That is not an easy question to answer, but the key is to get everyone to sing from the same song sheet. Then, our economic managers must quickly draw up the game plan.

For example, we will prioritize the initiatives that will give us the biggest bang the soonest. 

Therefore, we want to learn from the Vietnamese. We must replicate the magic of Samsung Vietnam and AirPods Vietnam. Our two most significant exports are in the same categories. But we must move up from third-party providers of chips into regional technology manufacturing of finished consumer products.

And from food security to exporting globally competitive branded packaged food and beverages.

We want to learn from China, from the Pearl River Delta Economic Development Zone and develop Central Luzon as a mirror image. Not to think small, as in one-town, one-product.

In fairness, while it is effortless to mouth “penny wise, pound foolish,” reality demands practice and experience. The crab mentality is instinctive, while Pareto is counter-intuitive. It applies to analysis versus analytics. And it is universal.

It has nothing to do with IQ, even strings of degrees from the Ivies. As some would know, the writer did “restructuring” initiatives in different parts of the world, and those qualifications did not matter. What matters is for the enterprise, say the local team, to pause and ponder: How do we forward-think? For example: Where are we? Where do we want to be? How do we get there?

But there is also the absolutist version of the exercise. Instead of challenging the mind, it asserts: Revenues are down 5% after a flat year, we must reduce costs by 10%. The analysis can be correct, but what about the forward-thinking to win?

Consider: What human need does the product address? Does anyone know? Likewise, how can the mind work for the enterprise? Who is the market leader, and why? How does our product measure up? How do they succeed and sustain market leadership?

The brain is potent, but not when Padre Damaso shuts it down.

Consider: The writer’s old MNC-company was 200 years old when he changed the finance-driven budget process to business alignment. That was after the COO visited a couple of countries in the writer’s region and realized the power of connecting the dots across different markets, developed versus developing countries, and across cultures. Why will an MNC doing business in over 200 countries not want to sing from the same song sheet? 

Who says an old, established global enterprise can’t be dynamic?

Try Juan de la Cruz. Why are we sinking into the abyss?

If it is not apparent yet, we are connecting the dots. But it presupposes that we first get ahead of the curve and then connect the dots going backward. We can employ critical and creative thinking, and exploit the human mind, go beyond dualism or absolutism into relativism. It is called metacognition, where even AI is inferior to humankind.

That means we will still tackle issues like productivity or poverty. But just as how our neighbors successfully overcome poverty, we must recognize and distinguish cause and effect. It is a universal law that we can’t take for granted — and it is central to the science of medicine.  

Could Rizal and Mahathir have shared how to diagnose the ills of their societies despite coming from different times and places?

The bottom line: Haven’t we had enough of parochialism and insularity? Our inflexibility in parochialism is so blatant that we are today the biggest rice importer. What happened to the mantra of rice productivity and food security?

It’s insanity!

We want to learn from the Thais, Malaysians, and Singaporeans too.

And to heed Rizal and our elders: To stop loving tyranny. And not be the modern-day Padre Damaso. Nor Juan Tamad or Bondying.

We are no longer driving a Lada.

Gising bayan! 

“True social reform has little to do with politics. To unmoor ourselves from the burdens of the past, we must be engaged in the act of continual and conscious self-renewal. All men are partially buried in the grave of custom. Even virtue is no longer such if it is stagnant.

“Change begins when we finally choose to examine critically and then recalibrate the ill-serving codes and conventions handed down to us, often unquestioned, by the past and its power structures. It is essentially an act of imagination first.” [David Henry Thoreau; American essayist, poet, and philosopher; 1817-1862]

“Why independence, if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow? Moreover, that they will be such is not to be doubted, for he who submits to tyranny loves it.” [We are ruled by Rizal’s ‘tyrants of tomorrow,’ Editorial, The Manila Times, 29th Dec 2015]

“Now I know why Paul dared to speak of ‘the curse of the law’ (Galatians 3:13). Law reigns and discernment is unnecessary, which means there is little growth or change in such people. When you do not grow, you remain an infant.” [Faith and Science, Open to Change, Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation, 23rd Oct 2017]

“As a major component for the education and reorientation of our people, mainstream media – their reporters, writers, photographers, columnists, and editors – have an obligation to this country . . .” [Era of documented irrelevance: Mainstream media, critics and protesters, Homobono A. Adaza, The Manila Times, 25th Nov 2015]

“National prosperity is created, not inherited. It does not grow out of a country’s natural endowments, its labor pool, its interest rates, or its currency’s value, as classical economics insists. [A] nation’s competitiveness depends on the capacity of its industry to innovate and upgrade.” [The Competitive Advantage of Nations, Michael E. Porter, Harvard Business Review, March–April 1990]

“You have to have a dream, whether big or small. Then plan, focus, work hard, and be very determined to achieve your goals.” [Henry Sy Sr., Chairman Emeritus and Founder, SM Group (1924 - 2019)]

“Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.” [William Pollard, 1911-1989, physicist-priest, Manhattan Project]

“Development is informed by a people’s worldview, cognitive capacity, values, moral development, self-identity, spirituality, and leadership . . .” [Frederic Laloux, Reinventing organizations, Nelson Parker, 2014]