WHAT EXACTLY IS AILING THE PHILIPPINES?

     It was a Saturday during the reign of the convicted economic plunderer, Joseph Estrada, that a PEN (Poets, Essayists, Novelists) international conference was held at the Oasis Country Resort in San Fernando City, La Union.pa
     The blogger was one of the panelists that included F. Sionil Jose, Charlson Ong, Star Columnist Isagani Cruz, and the Ilokano writer Juan S. P. Hidalgo, Jr. In attendance, too, were University of the Philippines English professor Nieves Espitola and Elmer Ordonez; and more than 300 Ilokano writers and English and literature teachers in the Ilokos--Pangasinan, La Union, Ilocos Norte, Abra, and Ilocos Norte.
     Hidalgo delivered the keynote address while Jose, recipient of the 1980 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Journalism, Literature and Communication Arts, gave acidic comments on the country's political, social and economic state during the open forum.
     What Jose said then is still true today.
     "The country is not only suffering from poverty where people get hungry," he said. "It is suffering from spiritual poverty which is worse than poverty of the stomach."
     He said that in the village where he grew up, the parents are very proud that their daughters are going to Japan, when they know very well that many of these young women would become prostitutes in that country.
     Jose claimed that in Pagsanjan, Laguna, parents pimp for their young boys who sell their young bodies to pedophiles.
     "The degeneracy of our people illustrates too well the failure of the established churches," he said. "If it is true that we are the only Christian country in Asia, then such Christian values of honesty and integrity and belief in God should be imprinted in us."
     Nothing of the sort, according to Jose. He deplored that the country's priests live like princes and poor men's churches like the Iglesia ni Cristo and El Shaddai don't have lower class ideology.

 

 

"What do they really believe in?" he asked.

 

(At that time, INC and El Shaddai were supporting Estrada, whose ouster from the presidency was being demanded by the Roman Catholic Church, business groups, the academe and various sectors across the nation in the aftermate of the "juetengate" which triggered the impeachment trial of Estrada.)                                                    

Jose said he envied the Iranians who ousted the Shah of Iran in the 1970s. He said, "They, the Iranians, are not Catholics but Muslims. Their God is a fighting God."

"If we are interested in building the country, it is very important to look at ethics as solution to our problems," he said in the language of close to 10 million Ilokanos, mostly living in Northern Philippines.

"We go the worst from our  colonial masters--the Spaniards. the Americans, the Japanese," he said.

Jose said what Filipinos inherited was racism, the attitude of superiority, and the attitude of people from the Iberian peninsula that it is not honorable to work with the hands.

"From the Japanese, we did not get their high point that enabled them to become the great nation that they are. What we got from them was the sense of brutality and hierarchy," he said.

Jose, the most translated Filipino writer (he is an Ilokano who traces his roots to Cabugao, Ilocos Sur, but grew up in Tomana, Rosales, Pangasinan), hit the disparity between wealthy Filipinos and the poor. "It is obscene for one family to own a whole district of Manila wherein built mansions and skyscrapers," he said.