Authority, Responsibility, Abuse, and Benevolence

Rizal Monument | Photo by AntonNawalangMalay via Wikimedia Commons

In the fog of any conflict, confusion inevitably clouds judgment. Often, right is replaced by recalcitrance, and wrong becomes easy. These contradictions confound both daily family life and country leadership. While history provides myriad examples of how life can evolve and thrive due to our shared values, it is also unclear what history can teach or what we can expect of our future. This future inextricably depends mainly upon our present circumstances. For example, the possibility of a new world is readily sacrificed to the expediency of the status quo, especially when the vested in the present perceive a threat to their interests. The family is not immune to this dilemma, and neither are nations.

Overall, prosperous countries are blessed with benevolent leaders and/or patriotic citizens. These countries tend to have a benevolent system or benevolent leaders or a benevolent citizenry that choose those benevolent leaders, thus, giving birth to a country where social safety nets are robust. Most, if not nearly all, these prosperous countries have a trove of founding fathers or subsequent rebels in their history who are patriotic and establish nations that serve the common good. Corollary nations that struggle, even accounting for natural impediments, seem to lack these attributes.

New imperialist colonialism has, by and large, failed to take root in the traditional sense. However, it may be conceded that new economic colonialism still prevails on the heels or guise of economic globalization. Even then, countries endowed with benevolent leadership manage to find springboards for their share of success.

Where does the Republic of the Philippines fit in this milieu? In a recent survey, nearly half of Filipinos considered themselves poor contrary to government data consistently showing a decline in poverty. This incongruity warrants some scrutiny as to perceived inequity or natural inequality. In certain quarters, there seems to be contentment bordering on bureaucratic indifference; there is no lack of good examples.

Facts first. Over 10 million overseas Filipinos are in a country of around 110 million. The per capita GDP is around P180,000 annually. Agriculture accounts for 5.4% of the national GDP, and the average age of a farmer is around 57.

Ten million overseas Filipinos conservatively represent four dependents each back home; counting the overseas Filipinos, that’s around half the country’s population who no longer count themselves among the poor. Who, then, are the other half that does consider themselves poor still? If the per capita GDP is P180,000, why do so many Filipinos leave family behind and earn not much more than domestic helpers abroad? By all accounts, the Philippines is home to some of the world’s most fertile and arable land; how is it possible that food security is persistently elusive?

Is the diaspora a product of neglect, incompetence, avarice, something else in the dictionary, or naked intent? Anecdotally, any Filipino will tell you that corruption is around half of the national budget, not including forgone revenue not collected due to even more corruption. The drug trade is also alive and well. In both, foreign exchange is a key requisite. How else would ill-gotten wealth be deposited or deployed abroad, or drug trafficking be possible between domestic and foreign drug cartels?

The easiest way to generate foreign exchange is for the overseas Filipino worker.

Then there’s the futile attempt at ‘comprehensive agrarian reform.’ Beneficiaries generally do not become part of or are not organized into cooperatives to achieve economies of scale, lack basic financial literacy, have no control of and often without access to post-harvest facilities which they should logically own and operate if they were not outright being turned into subsistence farmers, to begin with, have no direct access to markets, financing, real insurance that does not limit liability to crops that have achieved viability, and everything else that are not addressed by myopic policy.

Most egregiously, a tax code has given birth to one of the world’s most inequitable wealth distribution, and there is much for sure. If P180,000 is the per capita GDP, how unreasonable would a wealth tax be for income more than P1,800,000 (10X the per capita GDP)? How unreasonable would it be to ‘transfer’ at least some of the cost of diesel to those who drive gasoline-fed private vehicles and to tax private (non-business) diesel vehicles in the form of vehicle registration fees? When the price of diesel is a constant irritant for public utility drivers whose income is delimited by their daily vehicle rental called the ‘boundary,’ commuters whose take-home pay is adversely affected by resulting rising fares and commodity prices that are equally impacted, is it not evident that the price of diesel is a most regressive indirect tax?

Why should students from wealthy families enrolled in state colleges and universities not pay the same tuition and other fees they would otherwise pay if they were enrolled in private colleges and universities to generate more scholarships for the poor, considering that after graduation, the scions of the privileged and the influential likely have the best employment prospects, all else being equal, for example, if both the poor and the wealthy students were to graduate with the same honors and accolades and happen to apply for the same job?

To paraphrase one of the current economic planners in government, “I am not opposed to taxing the rich, except it would be a fool’s errand to try and pass such laws in the Philippine Congress,” is quite a brave criticism indeed. What is real estate tax? Rates are so low that they evoke no more than a curious shoulder shrug. A progressive approach would impose a lower tax on property owned by soldiers, teachers, laborers, or those barely owning a piece of the Filipino dream of homeownership. Affluent owners should pay more so long as the windfall funds higher education for the working poor.

One thing is guaranteed, the Filipinos will not wait 300 years as they did against the Spaniards, nor perhaps another generation demanding reform. Perhaps the promise of a postponed genuine social upheaval would be worth the sacrifice from those ablest to afford it. After all, Filipinos have a history of revolution when pushed to the brink. Our young Republic has not seen a civil conflict as severe as the American Revolutionary or Civil War or the French Bastille Day, culminating in beheadings of abusers. Pray, we do not descend into the abyss of repeated history because we failed to learn from it.

Our Republic seems bereft of responsible and benevolent leadership but never short of those who wield power bordering on abuse disguised as authority invoked behind laws riddled with designed ambiguity and inherent contempt.

This is our call to patriotism.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dr. Crispin Fernandez advocates for overseas Filipinos, public health, transformative political change, and patriotic economics. He is also a community organizer and leader, and freelance writer.