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about Asia Buzz
Asia Buzz: Shakespeare's Fools
The Philippines doesn't need saviors -- just competent leaders
By TERRY McCARTHY
January 25, 2001
Web posted at 11:00 p.m. Hong Kong time, 10:00 a.m. EDT
So the old gangster got caught with his finger in the till -- or his whole grubby fist, more like it. Not that we didn't warn you: last year we wrote a piece about Erap's love of the lucre after following the likable rogue around the country for some time. We showed him compulsively handing out money to those around him, including a 1,000-peso tip to his helicopter pilots, both members of the Filipino Airforce. Endearing, perhaps, but hardly presidential. The presidential spinmeister at the time wrote a letter to the magazine complaining that TIME clearly did not understand Filipino tipping customs -- totally missing the point.
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But then Filipino politicians have a fatal habit of missing the point, spending endless hours of hot air on issues like combating poverty without ever sending so much as one peso in the direction of the poor. And then there are the newspapers, stuffed with columnists ranging from the sanctimonious to the self-opinionated to the cynical, all of whom have their own take on the problems of the Philippines -- a lot more hot air.
Then there is the Senate, who were totally unable to carry through the impeachment process, meaning that the departure of Estrada and the installment of Gloria is now being questioned for its constitutionality. Of course, the military, with their self-appointed vainglorious mission to "protect" the country (remember Gringo Honasan and his boys running rampage in Makati to "save" the country from Cory?), couldn't help putting their clumsy foot in it by staging their quasi-coup.
So what is good in this scenario? Gloria reading the bible to the Filipino people every morning? In the beginning was the word, but then -- according to the holy book -- God got to work to make something (in this case, everything). In Manila, the word is in the beginning but it never ends -- and nobody ever gets around to doing or making anything, except that hot air we mentioned.
Erap sold himself as the savior of the poor. Cory was the savior of the people suffering under Marcos. Gloria is the savior of the month. But the Philippines doesn't need saviors -- it simply needs competent managers who can put the country back on the road to growth and prosperity that its people deserve. There are many talented people in the country, and the archipelago has many natural resources. It is about time its leaders stopped posturing, speechifying and enriching themselves from inside deals and did what they were elected to do -- serve the people. Until they do that, the role of the Philippines in Asia will never extend beyond that of Shakespeare's Fools.
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