June 2009 is Philippines Month

I haven’t stopped writing — you should see the 100 or so draft articles in my Wordpress dashboard. I have simply taken a break from publishing. Nothing I write satisfies me at this point — an analysis of our ills, suggestions that fall on deaf ears, opinions that need more research …

A blogger’s “writer’s block?” Maybe.

But certainly, my real life has gotten in the way of blogging.

I have many excuses reasons, a lot of them related to family issues, construction supervision, making money online, exploring business opportunities in areas other than Baguio City. But the most fun of them all, and this gives me tremendous satisfaction, is my sudden involvement in initiatives for change politics.

Manila has been the venue for the latter, and I find this engagement so important because national issues do affect Baguio City. We are all Filipinos after all (but we Baguio Filipinos are so special because we are Filipinos with free natural airconditioning — nothing like our home elsewhere in the Philippines!).

And then suddenly it struck me — I should focus on one theme for this month. Something I feel so passionate about. Of course I am passionate about Baguio City, as you can probably tell about my sites and writing, but there’s something bigger and more urgent out there.

So …

I have decided to focus on the Philippines for June 2009.

My plan of course is to echo all I am learning and experiencing in Manila with the PAGASA Baguio group and here at Baguio Insider of course, and anyone else offline who is willing to listen.

PAGASA is the Peoples Alliance for Genuine Alternatives to Social Apathy. At PAGASA we assess the root of society’s ills and always arrive at one solution – inner transformation.

Here’s my “PAGASA shortcut:”

All institutions and ills have at their root — PEOPLE!

With different experiences, stimuli, traumas. Everything we do has a causal effect on everything else. I sneeze, another covers his face, someone catches a cold. The face coverer moves away and makes another person move more to the right and hits a girl, to whom he says “sorry” and they laugh it off and make a date, fall in love and get married eventually. The person who catches the cold cannot go to work and his family has less to eat for the day, so his kid goes to school without breakfast and does not top the quiz, which breaks his record of perfect quizzes, etc., etc.

In other words, everyone — EVERYONE — in this world is connected!

So what we do affects everyone else. Negative begets negative, positive begets positive…

We are connected even when we do not know each other.

But more than each one’s effect on another and the snowballing effect of our actions, we are also connected at the core. We speak the same language of love, hunger, yearning, love again, hope, love some more.

Thus the basic things we want for ourselves is what the next person wants for himself — God made us all this way. Regardless of color or creed, we have to eat  and drink everyday, we need clothing, we need shelter, we want peace and quiet, we want clean air, we want what is best for our kids.

But somewhere along the way, we lose that connection with God that we were born with and become more animal, less human.

The societal ills of the Philippines manifest themselves in Baguio City, too — politics as big business, education as big business, real honest business becoming unprofitable business, poor becoming poorer, rich becoming richer only if they join politics, good people shying away from real politics — the kind of engaged citizenship — because Filipino politicians have given politics a bad name.

The children no longer want to be doctors, they want to be nurses. They no longer want to be lawyers, they prefer to become policemen. As a kid what he wants to BE when he grows up, he will answer “I want to go abroad.” In other words, he wants to be exported as a laborer to benefit other countries because of the current hopeless state of the Philippines that he is growing up in.

I can go on and on about societal ills but we all know all these. Instead I will remind us for a whole month (am starting a day late because I only just figured out this afternoon what I really wanted to write about) about what it means to be a Filipino.

I will remind us of this beautiful country and its equally beautiful people.

I will ask you for your stories about when you were proudest to be called a Filipino (I am sure everyone has one such story of greatness).

I will post images and videos and songs.

Someone once told me, that we should call ourselves the “Music of Asia” for the Filipino sings with HEART! The way Manny Pacquiao fights with heart, the way heart rules every Filipino. Okay, come to think of it, maybe we should market the Philippines as “The Heart of Asia” instead.

June is the month we celebrate Philippine independence. It is the month our National Hero Jose P. Rizal was born. June is a historic month as this is when the KKK or Katipunan declared its independence from Spain and I will remind us about our relatively short history.

I only understood the sage words “Ang di tumingin sa pinangalingan ay hindi makararating sa paroroonan” recently. I used to think that if we looked back we would stumble! Not at all — if we do not look back, we repeat our mistakes and so not know if we are still on the right path.

For our revolution of self-determination that started more than 100 years ago is unfinished. And we must recognize that we are still in the process of finding ourselves. And in my 44 years, I know this — the Filipino is a good, honest, industrious, creative person. At par, if not better, than the rest of the world.

We have just lost our way…

We tend to blame the Spanish, the Americans, the Japanese, the Conjugal Dictatorship of Marcos, the incompetence of the Aquino administration, the wiliness and national sell-out of the Ramos Administration, the dishonesty and excesses of the Estrada administration, the evil of this current Macapagal-Arroyo regime, but in the end — WE are the problem. We have always allowed stronger, abusive, bad people dominate us.

But here’s Great News — we are also the SOLUTION!!!

We must learn to think, to analyze, to act, to stand tall, to be agents of positive change.

How? We transform ourselves, individually, then watch happily as we collectively transform. We take our roles as nation builders seriously. We inspire each other with positive stories of greatness, we become real citizens not by virtue of birth but through our actions. We find other people who believe in what we believe in and work together. We stop lying to ourselves and stop justifying everything. We start calling a spade a spade (stealing is not “pitik” — it is in Baguio that I learned that term — it is “pagnanakaw.” We apply social sanctions to bad people — we shun them, we put them in jail and never let them go. We actively look for the good and celebrate what is right about the Filipino. Enough of self-pity or pitying others. Empowerment is the key — not to abuse but to make sure that NO ABUSE EVER HAPPENS. We find solutions to situations (everything is situation — as temporary as the wind).

We must apply the carrot & stick approach — a horse will move if he is following a carrot, a horse will move if we hit him with a stick. The horse will not move if we just sit on the saddle and do nothing. It is the same for Baguio and the Philippines.

Nothing happens if we are apathetic. We cannot be lazy, expect others to do all the work and reap the benefits. That does not work, mind you, because the workers burn out and in the end we all lose.

In Jun Lozada’s words in Saint Louis University in 2008, “Tumaya tayo, huwag lang maki-balato.”

I insist on a better Philippines the way I insist on a better Baguio City.

We deserve it.

And yes, the Filipino CAN!

About the Video

I watched this newest Juana Change video last Saturday during the launch of the Imagine Philippines Movement in SAIDI in Antipolo. Juana Change is a character played by Mae Paner, who among other things is a PAGASA member. Her other videos “Lupang Hinirang” and “Sabihin Mo ang Totoo” have been featured elsewhere at Baguio Insider.

After the event we went from SAIDI to nearby Vieux Chalet which is our old haunt, Connie V’s and mine from UP Law days. There I remarked to Mae, that she could have called on me to cameo for the “Darna” part. Being cooped up in the Baguio boondocks and online, I did not even KNOW that there were many more Juana Change videos already before “Baligtaran” or that Mae Paner is now so famous that my brother follows her TV interviews and know more about her than I do.

How dare I ask her for me to “cameo?!” You see, I have always just wanted to dress up as Darna (in fact, that’s how they know me at Brother’s Burger in Tomas Morato — at Brother’s Burger in Camp John Hay it is Pocahontas)

Fabulous character. fabulous acting, fabulous concept, fabulous message, fabulous initiative.

There should be more of Mae Paner’s kind.

I absolutely LOVE Juana Change!!!

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