Exit

Pulse Asia Inc., a private polling firm, disclosed last month that one out of five Filipinos sees no hope in the country and wants to migrate. This translates to a whopping 8.2 million souls wanting to jump ship at the slightest opportunity. Ironically, the educated and skilled comprised the bulk of those who have lost hope.

The survey adds that 26 percent of those polled were undecided, bringing the total to 57 percent of those belonging to the rich and educated who cannot categorically say there is hope for the country. The remaining of the 1,200 respondents preferred to stay put. However, the bulk of the latter belonged to the class E socioeconomic group, who neither has the means nor skills to survive abroad.

It is clear from these results that the typical educated, skilled and thinking Filipino feels that he does not belong to his country, that he would rather serve foreign masters and toil in a foreign land.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was quick in her rebuttal, saying that the purveyor of the news, which is the Philippine Daily Inquirer, should have emphasized that more Filipinos wanted to stay put. Mouthing a typical ad hominem, she even accused the Inquirer of being a “false prophet,” while quoting the Bible to boot.

Arroyo should have realized that to most Filipinos, the exit points are few and far between, and those who have opted to stay may have also lost hope in leaving. Finance Secretary Jose Isidro Camacho added insult by saying that the “loser’s mentality of Filipinos, their fondness for second-hand clothes and their penchant for circumventing laws and evading taxes were partly to blame for the country’s slow progress.” He believed that Filipinos lacked a common sense of nation-building and believed instead that this was purely the responsibility of government.

Camacho, in all his intelligence, should have realized that Filipinos would rather buy brand new if they have the means, and if Filipinos circumvent laws or evade taxes, it is because government itself is the ultimate haven of graft and corruption, swallowing anyone who comes within 10 feet.

And if Filipinos lacked a sense of nation-building, it is simply because of what they see in Malacañang and in Congress. There always seems to be a circus in the Senate and House, the last one being just a few weeks back (See June editorial). If even elected officials cannot get their acts together, what can we expect from the man on the street?

The man on the street is likewise living in fear, the Philippines being the kidnap capital of Asia. It is only in the Philippines where a leader of the notorious Pentagon kidnap-for-ransom gang and two other kidnapping suspects recently escaped -- not from a decrepit jail in the boondocks -- but from the Philippine National Police’s Camp Crame National Headquarters in Quezon City. Whew!

The Philippines is going to the dogs, and if 8.2 million thinking Filipinos want to pack up, they have 8.2 million justifiable reasons. *

Back to top