Country of crabs

 

 

The city of Baltimore is world-famous for its crab houses, not to be mistaken for pubic lice or “crabs,” a common form of STD. Freshly-steamed blue crabs have been very much a part of Baltimore tradition.

 

But in the Philippines, the kind of crustacean that is the most well known is the two-legged variety that lives on land – Filipinos with a crab mentality.

Click link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keezDubex_w to view 100% Pinoy Crab Mentality.

Only a few weeks before the coming May 13 elections, putative topnotcher of the senatorial candidates and re-electionist Senator Loren Legarda was accused of not disclosing her condo apartment in New York’s tony Park Avenue in her SALN (Statement of Assets and Liabilities Networth). The accusation triggered off potential comparisons with former Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona whose downfall from the highest court in the land was caused by inaccuracies in SALN reporting. Senator Legarda must have felt the tremors from the ground up there in the stratosphere where she has been coasting along as the top senatorial candidate since day one.

 

Senator Legarda was charged at the Office of the Ombudsman with five counts each of graft and non-declaration of a property in the United States in her statement of assets, liabilities and net worth from 2007 to 2012 as required by law.

 

Crab mentality arises from a situation where crabs in a bucket find it difficult to escape because the other crabs grab at each other and prevent the other from escaping. The analogy is extended to human behaviour where some members of a group pull down any member who has achieved success over the others, out of envy, jealousy or competitive feelings.

 

While popularly ascribed to Filipinos, this particular mentality is not endemic to Filipinos. It’s a universal individual and social dynamic, ubiquitous in almost every other culture. Among Germans, for instance, there is an attitude called schadenfreude which means taking pleasure in the misfortune of others and can be understood as an outgrowth of envy or jealousy.

 

When Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz was asked if Republican candidate for president Mitt Romney should release more of his tax returns during the last US elections, he categorically answered no, implying that those who wanted to see them were just jealous of Romney’s wealth and success. “He’s the kind of guy I want to be president. He actually knows how to turn the economy around,” Chaffetz added.

 

So this crab mentality of pulling down someone because of his or her advantages is a common thing. Most people are naturally insecure or unsatisfied with where they are in life, so they take the opportunity to try to hold down others. We see neighbours defaming neighbours, reporters inventing stories about celebrities, businessmen cutting corners to beat their competitors, and professionals dislodging fellow professionals, which are all common varieties of crab mentality.

 

In politics, crab mentality is intuitively germane in the dynamics of rivalry or competition. Politicians by nature attack their opponents for their failure to deliver their electoral promises of honesty, good government, jobs growth or better social programs, or simply for the purpose of putting them down in the eyes of the electorate. They pull down others who don’t follow their line. It is because of this incessant tug of war and mudslinging between politicians that there is a perceived general failure in government.

 

It’s rather disingenuous, however, to hear allegations from the opposition party that crab mentality is driving a member or some members of the administration’s roster candidates (Team PNoy) to prevent Senator Legarda from finishing on top of the senatorial contest. “Somebody wants to be number one ahead of her. Is that the kind of people you want to be elected in the Senate?” asked senatorial candidate Richard Gordon of the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA).

 

“It is saddening that Loren’s fellow Liberal Party candidate is the one initiating the black propaganda against her. Behind the ‘daang matuwid’ (straight path) is a mix of personalities who put ambitions over principles,” UNA secretary general and campaign manager Toby Tiangco noted.

 

Talking about ethical principles is something very strange to hear from politicians. They better check the reflection on their personal mirrors first before they open their mouths for they could also be sorely lacking in ethical scruples.

 

Yet, it is more refreshing to listen to Nancy Binay’s candour when she expressed disapproval of what Senator Legarda’s fellow candidate in Team PNoy was doing to pull her down. “We are helping each other to improve our chances. In the last three months of campaigning together, we are becoming closer to each other and we are already like sisters and brothers and one family. Our relationship as friends and as UNA candidates is becoming more strong as the elections near,” Nancy Binay said.

 

Very comforting and honest words from a candidate who seems not to know why she’s running for senator in the first place. But this is closer to reality, to the kind of remarks expected from contestants in the American Idol singing contest – praising the closeness and camaraderie they have developed among them, and the expression of collective angst that one of them could be thrown out because one of them is secretly pulling another down. Doesn’t Ms. Binay sound like a contestant in the American Idol show?

 

Instead of crying crab mentality, spare the blameless crabs of their complicity. If a candidate has a spotless record as a politician, what then is she afraid of attacks against her? Don’t blame it to our cultural predilection to pull down those who are ahead. Tell the truth and it shall make you free.

 

Ms. Binay and Mr. Gordon are both running for senators on account of their parents’ political legacy. At least Mr. Gordon has proven himself in the past. In the case of Ms. Binay, it’s all about name recognition. All she carries is her father’s name. She’s as empty as a vacuum, who is willing to engage in a debate with the other candidates, but only after the election is over.

 

Both Ms. Binay and Mr. Gordon are scions of famous political families, just like Bam Aquino, Jun and Mitos Magsaysay, Jack Enrile, Allan Cayetano, Sonny Angara, Tingting Cojuangco, JV Ejercito, Cynthia Villar, Juan Miguel Zubiri, Koko Pimentel, Jamby Madrigal and others who could all trace their political fortune to their ancestors and are all banking on the magical appeal of their names. Even Senator Legarda hails from a political family, her husband was former governor of Batangas and member of a political clan.

 

If we want to involve the crabs in this election, then let’s emulate them: we might as well pull down all these candidates and elect instead people on their true merits and political principles they stand on. There are a handful of aspirants among the 33 senatorial candidates who are not from known political families and are running on political platforms worthy of the people’s support. Teddy Casiño stands tall among these candidates for his unwavering crusade for nationalism, democracy, and the rights and welfare of the people at all times. But the major political parties, including the media, are portraying Casiño as a leftist because of his advocacy of the rights of workers, farmers, and the poor and oppressed. As if electing one candidate from the left will shake the entire Congress and bring the government down. At least, in electing Casiño, there would be one member of the senate who represents a new perspective, a fresh point of view instead of the usual exchange of senseless political tirades and one-upmanship that have typically characterized Congress.

Makabayan Platform. Click link to view Miting de Avanse ng Makabayan,
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTFCTwlv7J0&feature=youtube_gdata

But because of crab mentality again, this time by those on the conservative right fearing of a Teddy Casiño-led uprising of workers and peasants, they’re going to shoot down Casiño’s candidacy. They will keep portraying Casiño as the leftist arsonist, who will burn Congress to the ground if elected. If necessary, they will push politics back to the Hobbesian state of nature where political envy and jealousy are the primary passions of the day.

 

Forever under the spell of crab mentality, Congress has become a big bucket of crabs, each member trying to outdo the other while some members keep pulling down the others. It’s a brutal race to the top, and victory always belongs to the one whose political genealogy is rooted to a powerful family dynasty. Just look at our past and present leaders, Estrada, Arroyo and Aquino – all family dynasties, and their minions are still growing.

 

Let’s rally all the crabs in the country to put these family dynasties down for good. At least, this way we can make use of the crab mentality we are known worldwide in dismantling a significant obstacle to the democratization of the political process. Like the popular crabs of our culture, we will claw them back and stop them from reaching the pinnacle of political power.

Delusional talk

 

 

Speaking before the general commencement exercises of the University of the Philippines for its Class of 2013, Senator Edgardo Angara, also a former president of the university, told the graduates that they belong to the middle class that “is emerging as a potent force in the Philippines’ social transformation.” Angara compared the young graduates to the ilustrados of the Spanish colonial period who spearheaded the failed reform movement for a more equitable role of Filipinos in the political and economic life of the colony.  

Of course, it’s a historical myth to liken the middle class to the ilustrados of the 1800s. These ilustrados represented the highest class in the Philippine social system at that time. Together with the lower class called the taos, both the ilustrados and the taos comprised the entire social spectrum. There was no middle ground during the Spanish colonial times, either one belonged to the rich upper class or the poor lower class. 





Filipino ilustrados in Madrid during the Spanish colonial period. Photo courtesy
 of Wikipedia Commons. Click link to view Protest Action at UP Graduation 2013,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=883zqRBGOfo

The taos were peasants and were in greater number, while the ilustrados or caciques as they were sometimes called were large landowners or persons of influence. They were small in number, well-educated and cultured, thus they comprised the ruling class. Dante Simbulan called this class the principalia which was the origin of the present-day oligarchic elite in the Philippines.

 

The concept of the middle class is a latter-day phenomenon although it was historically referred to in the past as the bourgeoisie that was responsible for the success of the French and American revolutions. In contrast, the socialist revolutions in Russia and China were not led by the bourgeoisie although their leaders were intellectuals from this class who forged ranks with the masses of workers and peasants. While today’s liberation movements, like the wars in Algeria and Vietnam and in other parts of the world could also be considered revolutions in the popular sense, they are not necessarily bourgeois in nature and origin. The recent Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya were hastened by street demonstrations of disgruntled youth, students and ordinary citizens, not by the middle class.

 

Perhaps, Senator Angara was talking tongue in cheek when he graciously described the UP Class of 2013 as part of the new middle class that could be harnessed in the social transformation of the Philippines. The reference to “social transformation” seems an obvious attempt to dissociate it from the 1896 Revolution, a radical and an armed struggle that took over the reform movement.

 

In talking about “a strong middle class as the backbone of civil society,” Senator Angara refers to this class as “the voice of reason that moderates vested interests, the force of change that compels societies to invest in their own future.” This sounds like a line lifted from the political platforms of American political parties which both stress the vital importance of the middle class in responsible political governance and in promoting economic growth.

 

Senator Angara’s middle class, however, is about as American as apple pie: a comfortable standard of living, significant economic security, considerable work autonomy, and with a college education that helps to sustain themselves. But the American middle class is not the same middle class we find in other economies or cultures, especially those which are poorer or backward. So, all this talk about creating the middle class patterned after the American model is only as aspirational as a fairy-tale dream.  

Philippines' poverty map. Graphic courtesy of Emil Mercado, rappler.com. Click
link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOcua4apIlY to view NCSB: Poverty
Incidence Almost Unchanged.

This is like the kind of surprise President Noynoy Aquino elicited when reality strikes you on the face. To the president’s chagrin, his own bureaucrats, the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB), reported that the poverty incidence in the Philippines stood at 27.9 percent in the first semester of 2012, practically unchanged from the same period in 2009, which was 28.6 percent, and in 2006 which was 28.8 percent. They must be referring to old population data, not 2012, the president could only gripe. President Aquino must be wondering as to what happened to the high credit ratings the Standard & Poor, Fitch Ratings, and Moody’s Analytics recently gave the Philippines, which all pointed to a robust economic growth in 2014. Or to the president’s much-ballyhooed Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program which he was hoping would rescue the poor from their misery.

 

Is it a paradox that poverty in the Philippines continues despite high expectations of economic growth?

 

There is really no paradox. According to the Asian Development Bank (ADB), a liberal economic institution, “the benefits of strong economic growth have not spilled over to the people because they still cannot find a job.” The country’s rate of unemployment stood at 7.1 percent in January 2013, with a further 20.9 percent underemployed or those working fewer than 40 hours a week. About 41.8 percent of the underemployed are in the farming sector. Norio Usui, ADB senior country economist, said that the government must solve the problem of jobless growth if it hoped to reduce poverty.

 

This also means that only the rich and the educated have benefited from growth the economy is experiencing and not the poor and uneducated, which also explains why there is a pervasive income inequality between the haves and the have-nots.

 

Similarly, President Aquino’s flagship anti-poverty initiative, the CCT Program wasn’t also enough to significantly mitigate income inequality in the first semester of 2012. Because the CCT budget accounted for only 25 percent of the amount needed to eradicate poverty, the NCSB said. Besides, with the corrupt nature of pork barrel politics, it is highly likely that the money could have been shifted around instead of spending it for the alleviation of the targeted poor.

 

The model of economic growth that the present government adopted depended on increased levels of consumption, strong remittances from the country’s large overseas workforce, and the outsourcing industry which the Philippines is currently number one in the world. Half or even more of the UP 2013 graduating class, the new members of the middle class as Senator Angara would like to call them, will probably join the growing outsourcing industry which employs highly educated workers, if they don’t migrate to work or settle overseas.

 

The Philippines has a weak industrial base compared to the other economies in the region. Without durable industrialization, highly educated college graduates or even high school graduates will not be able to get jobs. Their only choice is either to become underemployed as call-centre workers or go overseas as part of the contingent of the country’s cheap exploitable labour.

 

National industrialization is one of the key issues that the National Democratic Front, the umbrella group for communist organizations, has been insisting to be on the peace negotiations table with the government panel. Edwin Lacierda, President Aquino’s spokesperson, said the problem with the NDF is it continues to use ideas that had become passé, such as “national industrialization,” which makes negotiations for peace impossible.

 

“National industrialization? I mean, we’ve moved on. They seemed to have not moved on. So how does one talk in a present setting with people who are still in the ’50s or in the ’60s perspective?” Lacierda asked.

 

Perhaps, President Aquino and the staff that surrounds and protects him, including our politicians like Senator Angara, should go on a retreat for some serious soul-searching. The country will never be able to gain a significant headway in attempting to solve its economic and social problems if our elected leaders and their coterie of experts continue to ignore realities that their own bureaucrats and other respected institutions have objectively identified.

 

It is not enough that the country is favourably regarded by international credit rating agencies. High ratings are not the true measure of a country’s economic performance if the growth in the economy does not trickle down to the benefit of the greater majority of the population. The outsourcing industry is not a real industrial boon that would spur an increase in jobs, beyond the minimal expansion in consumption patterns of those employed in this sector.

 

Senator Angara in his speech before the UP Class of 2013 called on the new graduates to take advantage of a nascent Asian regional economy that would allow the Philippines “to finance our own growth from our people’s own savings, without having to levy new taxes or borrow from other nations’ savings. We can build schools and hospitals, roads and bridges from our own pockets—investments for the people, by the people.” This is the rising middle class, he said.

 

Talk is really cheap, especially if it is not reflective of reality, historical and present, and the actual choices the people must confront. It’s probably time for our leaders in government not just to think outside the box, but perhaps by going beyond and away from their traditional mindsets.