Need for National Identity: GLOBAL PANDEMIC EXPOSES OUR STRENGTHS, WEAKNESS

The long road trips and journeys to the countryside which I often take are like windows through which I see things first hand and appreciate the living conditions of our countrymen whose faint voices are not often heard by government.

Every time I travel through the Maharlika Highway in going to Manila and back, which I believe is the safest way to avoid COVID 19 exposure inside a plane, I see the pervasive poverty in several provinces endowed with so much natural resources.

It is so unthinkable that 122 years after our nationhood, there are still areas in the country where up to 70% of the people are living below the poverty threshold.

Many of us point to the pathetic state to corruption, conflicts, lack of competent leadership and lately alleged flaws in the Constitution as the reasons behind our economic miseries.

I am just a farm boy and a graduate of a barangay high school but I believe that we are pointing blaming fingers at the wrong direction.

Tayo, sarili natin ang problema because until today, we have not decided on what we would like to be as a nation.

Remember when we were young and our grade school teacher asked us: “What would you like to be when you grow up?”

We knew what we wanted to be: a pilot, an engineer, a lawyer, a mayor and even the President.

Of course, we did not all become what we wanted to be as a child.

Fate and queer events led some of us to where we are now.

I joined politics when my father, Bernardo, fell ill in the homestretch of his campaign for the mayorship of my hometown in M’lang, Cotabato in 1995 and I was called home from Manila to take over his candidacy.

That opened the doors to a new career – public service – which I later realized was what made me happy and defined me as a person.

This leads us to the realization that until today, we have failed to come up with an answer to the question of “What do we want to be as a nation?”

We are suffering from a national identity crisis because we have not fully figured out what we would like the Philippines to be.

We are consumed by our obsession to be like our neighbors.

“Look at Vietnam, Look at Thailand, Look at Malaysia, Look at Singapore, Look at Japan, Look at South Korea,” are the oft-repeated lines of our development planners.

Now, our legislators are blaming the restrictive policies in the Philippine Constitution as the reason behind the lack of job opportunities, forgetting that the allocations that each of them get every year, properly utilized, would have been enough to create jobs and boost productivity in the countryside.

This is so very Us, pointing blaming finger at everybody except ourselves.

Why don’t we look at ourselves and ask: What do we want the Philippines to be?

Let us be our own model, let us weave our own story and craft a national development plan based on what we have and our strengths as a nation.

Look at these ironies:

1. We are surrounded by the sea and yet we import fish.

2. We host the world’s foremost rice research institution and taught others how to plant rice but we are the world’s No. 1 rice importer.

3. We could grow meat chicken in less than 30 days but we prefer to bring in imports which would take at least 60 days to be shipped from the country of origin to the Philippines.

The COVID 19 pandemic could prove to be the “queer event” which could help us in determining who and what we should be as a nation.

1. We have to be a food producing nation because we have the resources. COVID 19 showed that the global supply chain could be disrupted by “queer” events. We cannot rely on importation. In fact, if only we invest in rural development, agriculture and fisheries, we could be a major food producing country in this part of the world;

2. We have to develop our local economy by using our resources – human and natural – to support processing and manufacturing industries. Let us stop selling iron ores. Instead, let us develop our own steel industry. Let us not waste efforts in enticing foreign investors to come. They could be influenced by geo-politics and leave anytime just like what is happening in China now. Besides, COVID 19 has resulted to many corporate downsizing and retrenchments;

3. We cannot be a Service Economy because, as COVID 19 has shown, a pandemic or a conflict could lead to the collapse of the economy of nations engaging our workers’ services. We have to realign our educational program to this reality;

4. Finally, let us stop dreaming of manufacturing airplanes or cars. We are too far behind in those fields. Let us do what we know best like producing food, building boats and ships for our fishermen, tractors and farm machinery, medical supplies and others using our local resources.

With all these, the Philippines could stand out and be identified as a self-sufficient country and major powerhouse in food production where every family forms part of the foundations of a national economy built on its rich Natural and Human Resources.

This is the Philippines that I dream of and wish to live in as a proud Filipino.

With this realization, let us start by crafting a recovery program which would steer our country towards attaining a definitive and clear national identity.

That or we will forever be the confused child lost in the woods who does not even know his name.

#ThoughtsOfTheFarmBoy!

#GovernanceIsCommonSense!

#DistinctNationalIdentity!

(This article is a rewrite of a post I made in June 2020 which I updated to include recent developments. The attached meme was composed by Mindanao Development Authority artist Samuel Ponsica)