The Troubled Philippines
Deats, Richard L.
The Troubled Philippines by RICHARD L. DEATS The recent visit of President Ferdinand E. Marcos of the Philippines to the United States has focused attention on this "showcase of democracy" in...
...Catholic influence in the islands minimizes the chances of any effective curb on population growth, although there are significant family planning programs by Protestants which are able to reach fairly large numbers of both Protestants and Catholics...
...One-fourth of the country's total wealth is owned by foreigners...
...We have not conquered, ravished, robbed, and systematically exploited any people...
...Although the country is basically agricultural, rural development is not matching the needs of the day...
...But the Philippines also possesses the potential to meet these problems creatively, given her dedication to democracy, her educated citizenry, her growing middle class, the increasing relevance of the churches, and the deepening national consciousness combined with a firm dedication to the world community of nations...
...big business...
...Another irritant is the special economic privileges the United States has in the islands until 1974, under trade treaty agreements with Washington that go back to 1947...
...Despite impressive charitable work, Philippine Catholicism in the past has been far too absorbed with pilgrimages, miraculous statues, and "rosary crusades" to address itself rigorously to the nation's crying social ills...
...The Supreme Court ably completes the balance of powers in the government and has not infrequently reversed infringements upon constitutional provisions...
...There has been an alarming increase in crime and a general breakdown of public order in recent years...
...While the Philippine government has maintained a rigidly anti-Communist foreign policy since independence (even today she has no diplomatic relations with any Communist country,) this attitude is beginning to undergo serious reevaluation...
...Only one out of 6,666 college students is in an agricultural school...
...Despite the open displeasure of the Catholic cardinal and his urging of "faithful Catholics" to vote to reelect President Diosdado Macapagal, Marcos won by a wide margin...
...While there has been some resurgence of the Huk movement in recent months in the provinces of Pampanga and Tarlac, its strength is negligible, although it could become a problem again if the Marcos administration does not make visible headway against the social and economic problems facing the peasantry, especially in Central 'Luzon...
...The Philippine electorate went to the polls in November, 1965, and voted out the party in power for failing to fulfill in adequate measure the promises it had made four years earlier...
...The need for land reform is still acute...
...When they need cash they have to borrow from private lenders—at rates that may range from one hundred per cent to 2,000 per cent...
...Concerted efforts have been made to Filipinize" the national economy in which one-half million aliens—mostly Chinese and Americans—control three-fourths of the trade and commerce...
...Far too much of this development, however, is in greater Manila...
...Soil erosion and deforestation are reaching the critical point...
...The American Eagle today brings with it, not a pledge of justice and fair play, but a Twentieth Century version of gunboat diplomacy dedicated to the protection of U.S...
...Many of the personnel on the bases are not only uninterested in Philippine life and culture but are somewhat suspicious and prejudiced towards these "inscrutable Asians...
...Seventy-five per cent of the land shows serious soil erosion and the depletion of the forests is said to be the highest in the world...
...The three per cent of the population that is Protestant—a total community of about one million—has in the past been mainly concerned with evangelism in the traditional "soul-winning" sense, although there has also been a fairly strong emphasis on social service...
...The next generation of Filipinos will suffer in floods and wastelands—indeed, the results are already beginning to be felt —because of "free enterprise" at work in the islands' lush forests...
...Each year finds more and more products stamped with a "Made in the Philippines" label...
...Of the eight new senators—elected nationally rather than by province— the one who received the greatest number of votes was Jovito Salonga, a well-known Protestant, the son of a Presbyterian clergyman...
...Antiquated and superstitious methods of farming are a continual drag on the national economy...
...This is no mean accomplishment for a part of the world where revolution, dictatorship, and war have become all too common...
...At the same time, this rethinking of official policies toward Communist countries has been overshadowed by the national debate over the Vietnam war...
...forty-seven deaths accompanied the 1965 election compared to eighty deaths the previous national election...
...As Winston Churchill pointed out, it took a hundred years to transform England, whose democracy is held up to us as a model, from a nation of thieves to a nation of shopkeepers...
...If President Marcos is able to develop these positive factors effectively, the future of this island republic is bright indeed and she will truly become a ray of hope in troubled Southeast Asia...
...Among the most pressing of the immediate problems facing President Marcos and his administration are smuggling, and the widespread graft and corruption in public life...
...in the United Kingdom the ratio is one to 841, and in Japan it is one to 972...
...Violence marred the election as it has previous Philippine contests, but on a reduced scale...
...Through its department of public welfare, it carries on a varied program of rural, medical, social, and industrial activity...
...President Marcos was openly supported in his election bid by the Iglesia ni Cristo, a rapidly growing indigenous sect of several hundred thousand that votes as one after its supreme bishop has indicated his choice...
...This, then, is the Republic of the Philippines, a fledgling democracy, beset by staggering problems, the most serious being smuggling and corruption, unregulated business enterprise and waste of natural resources, a runaway population growth, and an inefficient agricultural sector...
...Manila is the educational mecca of the Philippines with such schools as the University of Santo Tomas (older than Harvard) and the University of the Philippines, which is under the presidency of Carlos P. Romulo, who now is also the Secretary of Education...
...His doctoral dissertation, "Nationalism and the Churches in the Philippines," will be published this year by the Southern University Methodist Press...
...In 1963 the major Protestant groups formed the National Council of Churches in the Philippines...
...Local feelings came to a boiling point in December of 1964 when an off-duty guard, who was slightly inebriated, shot and killed an eleven-year-old Filipino boy who had wandered into an American "preserve" in Pampanga...
...Paved roads are nonexistent except for a very few main arteries leading out of Manila and a few other cities...
...Such freedom to criticize has not always been accompanied by commensurate responsibility, however, and sensational "yellow" journalism is proving detrimental to national development...
...The NCCP gives the churches a much broader base for effective social witness than before...
...One cause of friction stems from the presence of U.S...
...These "Sinos," as they are called—hardworking, frugal, clannish—have borne the brunt of widespread prejudice, suspicion, and envy, despite the contribution many of them have made to the economy...
...This could lead eventually to a concerted front by Filipino Christians—Catholic and Protestant—against the entrenched social evils in the islands...
...The fact that in twenty years of independence no president voted into the office has won reelection can be attributed, in part, to the constant exposure and criticism that comes to government officials from press, radio, and television...
...Declaration of Independence a beacon to all the world, these ideals are betrayed and the inspiring testament of the past confounded by the actuations of the high-pressure business lobbies that now manipulate decisions in Old Foggy Bottom and around Capitol Hill...
...The party in power can be certain of being subjected to searching scrutiny by the nation's journalists...
...While the presidential office is vested with considerably more power than in the United States, the legislative branch of government—which has always included a sizable representation of the party out of power—jealously guards its designated functions...
...There has been a steady growth of industry in recent years...
...The immunity of American servicemen from Filipino laws has made criminal jurisdiction a highly inflammable issue...
...In assessing the present state of democracy in the Philippines, Teodoro Locsin, editor of the influential Philippines Free Press, has written: "Let foreign observers be patient with us—and recall their own country's sordid history...
...The potential is great —and the problems are formidable...
...There are no shortcuts to political maturity...
...An emerging middle class is one of the most hopeful signs on the horizon, and although per capita income is rising it is far too low—$137 per year...
...Independence gained is not independence properly used...
...Complicating and compounding all of these problems, of course, is the burgeoning population...
...Anomalies in public life—and there are many—most generally come under merciless attack in the vigorous national press...
...In all too many of the schools, the parents' precious pesos go toward an education that is of little worth to the nation or the hopeful graduates...
...Minority rights are zealously protected and a genuine democratic pluralism is developing in this diverse archipelago of more than 7,000 islands...
...American efforts to entrench her economic interests in the Philippines led a Manila Times journalist, Maximo Soliven, to write: "It is no wonder that America, with every passing year, seems to have fewer and fewer friends in Asia...
...Although President Macapagal made a start at land reform, and Marcos has promised to continue the program, powerful vested interests have prevented any sizable dent on the problem...
...These positive factors of stability and democratic government need to be understood within the context of the growing self-awareness of the Philippine Republic...
...but again the task at hand is staggering...
...military bases...
...The smuggling of luxury items into the country from abroad robs the government of an estimated $200 million a year in lost revenue, an amount equal to nearly forty per cent of the federal budget...
...Practically nothing is being spent on government housing projects...
...the rural areas have been largely passed by...
...President Marcos has said that his goal of achieving self-sufficiency in rice production within three years will be met...
...Lumber concessionaries get a minimum of 500 per cent on their investments and the lack of regulation as to what timber is cut is scandalous...
...The fact that they were even allowed to make the visit was itself a remarkable change from previous policies...
...Nonetheless, certain sectors of the American press which persist in confusing nationalism with Communism grossly exaggerate the problem of Communism in the Philippines today...
...Lack of government direction is felt not only in the lumber industry...
...role in Vietnam...
...Although there is an overwhelming Catholic majority (eighty-four per cent of the people) in the nation, the population as a whole continues to manifest a healthy independence in its voting habits...
...U.S.-Philippine relations have declined in this nationalistic development...
...Part of the vote-getting appeal of Marcos was that he ¦—the nation's most decorated hero of World War II—would be able to deal decisively with these urgent and massive problems...
...The lot of the average farmer is a hard one...
...Such practices are what help the Philippines to rank with the United States in having one college student among every thirty-eight citizens...
...This diverse and handsome people, combined of many racial stocks and molded by long years of Spanish and then American colonialism, is searching for its own identity as a nation...
...Only twelve per cent of the Philippines' gross national product is used for public expenditures, a much lower rate than among most other countries at a similar stage of development...
...far too many prefer the prestigious— and overcrowded—white collar and professional courses...
...The average rice yield is only twenty-eight sacks per hectare (two and a half acres...
...There must be time for attitudes to change, for the conditions that produced the attitudes to change...
...The heated debate on participating in the Vietnam war has left the nation sharply divided with many Filipinos, especially student, labor, and peasant groups, deeply critical of the U.S...
...The International Rice Research Institute at Los Banos is able to produce more than 150 sacks per hectare, but the scientific method that yields such impressive results is painfully slow in reaching the common Tao farmer...
...The Troubled Philippines by RICHARD L. DEATS The recent visit of President Ferdinand E. Marcos of the Philippines to the United States has focused attention on this "showcase of democracy" in Southeast Asia...
...The influence of Vatican II is beginning to be felt as Catholics for the first time are showing a willingness to recognize and even cooperate with Evangelicals...
...What are the prospects of the Republic of the Philippines in the years that lie ahead...
...Within an eight-block radius of the center of Manila are more than 200,000 college students...
...This has been true especially in the many cases of fatal shootings by American guards of Filipino trespassers on American property...
...The plight of the rural areas is indeed one of the nation's gravest problems...
...The churches of late, however, have begun to show a deepened concern for relevant social witness...
...Most of them are paid largely in rice rather than cash...
...Nearly half of the wealth of this nation of thirty-three millions is concentrated among Manila's two and one-half million residents...
...Such groups as Catholic Action, the Institute of Social Order, the Young Christian Workers, and the Federation of Free Farmers are some of the avenues by which concerned Catholics —lay and clergy—are carrying the Church's message out of the sanctuaries and into the world...
...To send their children to college, a farmer will sell his hard-earned rice land and a teacher will open up a dress shop on the side...
...We have not exterminated or enslaved—or kept another in a state of degradation...
...There are some outstanding projects in community development...
...Independence Day has been changed from July 4— the date in 1946 when the United States "gave" the islands, liberated from the Japanese, their second independence—to June 12 as a reminder that the Philippines declared her freedom from Spain on that day in 1898, shortly before America decided to have her own fling at imperialism...
...and World Neighbors is at work in ten barrios...
...Far too much of the national economy is unregulated, left in the hands of powerful—and socially irresponsible—economic interests...
...There are three women senators, and in the last election six women were elected to the House of RepresenRICHARD L. DEATS has served as associate professor of social ethics at Union Theological Seminary in the Philippines...
...There is also the danger of xenophobia, especially as regards the one per cent of the population that is Chinese...
...Considerable pressure from the United States has been placed on President Marcos to send Filipino troops to Vietnam...
...However, the church body that is carrying out the most effective social witness is the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (with 135,000 communicant members...
...It is little wonder they are perpetually in debt...
...But there are 90,000 barrios in the Philippines...
...There is a one million gain in population yearly, one of the highest rates of increase (3.3 per cent) in the world...
...While the treatment Americans living in the islands receive is still almost embarrassingly cordial and warm, the official relations between the two countries have been severely strained at times...
...New stirrings of social awareness, however, are beginning to make themselves felt...
...The Muslims of the south are always represented in the House and usually in the Senate as well...
...Some of these efforts at Filipinization are laudable and much needed to stimulate wider sectors of the economy, but they are frustrated by too many fiestas, cockfights, and holidays...
...Another aspect of this developing nationalism is economic in nature...
...How are we to assess the development of this island republic of thirty-three million people after two decades of independence...
...Hence, rice must still be imported yearly to meet the nation's minimal needs...
...One result has been an impressive revival and development of Filipino folk dances, songs, arts, and crafts...
...The Department of Foreign Affairs is giving an attentive ear to these proposals...
...Freedom of speech is another significant reality of Philippine life...
...This great desire for education has had the detrimental effect of stimulating crass commercialization in many of the nation's schools...
...There has been some hopeful development of credit unions and cooperatives but progress has been slow...
...Bribes, payoffs, and patronage are common in government operations...
...For, despite the ideals that once made America great and the burning words of equality and freedom that have made the U.S...
...Although as a senator, Marcos was flatly against any such commitment, he now favors it...
...In Taiwan the yield is sixty-six per hectare and in Japan eighty-seven sacks to the hectare...
...Since their return there has been a great deal of discussion of China's present position in Asia and some national leaders have gone on record as favoring the beginning of trade and diplomatic relations with China and other Communist countries...
...People do not change overnight, nor the political system they approve of or tolerate...
...The Philippines is a nation where education is highly prized...
...There is a deepened appreciation of Philippine history and its heroes and, finally, Tagalog, the chief native language of the islands, is beginning to gain acceptance as the national language along with English...
...It is still too early to evaluate whether these hopes will be realized...
...Not a few mammoth colleges—with large classes and overworked professors—are money-making diploma mills...
...Perhaps the most striking factor is that the Philippines is a developing, peace-loving democracy that manifests considerable evidence of both stability and progress...
...We are ignorant and superstitious but we do not believe in the most abominable superstition of all, more abominable than the Communist one—the racial superstition...
...ten per cent of the people own ninety per cent of the land...
...tatives, an illustration of the place women hold in national affairs...
...The government-sponsored P A C D (Presidential Assistance on Community Development) reaches 2,000 barrios (township-size political subdivisions) ; the Philippines Rural Reconstruction Movement has pilot projects in 120 barrios...
...In early 1966 a widely respected woman senator, Maria Kalaw Katigbak, went with a group of Filipino journalists to mainland China for a two-week visit...
Vol. 30 • November 1966 • No. 11
