September 9, 2024 | 12:00am
My colleague, veteran journalist Tony Lopez, tells it like it is, holding no punches. In one of our Viber Groups, Tony wrote last week what sums up the sad state of our country today:
“What a country we have. We can’t manage anything like printing our national ID. We have a VP, a secretary of education, who writes a book based on the books of an American author. She inserts herself into the book, asks taxpayers to bankroll her book, for distribution to the poorest of kids who cannot read and write. We have ports, airports, customs and immigration so porous anyone can walk in and out carting billions that AMLA cannot monitor. You try to arrest the culprit and she just flies out like a parrot or an owl in Sara’s book. Funny, no?”
Funny but the joke’s on us. Tony just described a failed state. Maybe that’s too harsh a description. But we are getting there. It is like being diagnosed as pre-diabetic. You are not yet a diabetic but you are well on your way to being one if you don’t take necessary measures to avoid it.
A failed state. A banana republic. None of those are descriptions we want for our country. But election after election, we elect people determined to destroy our country through selfishness, corruption, lack of commitment to the common good.
Apparently, it is easy to get a birth certificate even if born in China without going through the naturalization process. The NBI found out that over a thousand birth certificates were issued by a town in Davao and according to Sen. Win Gatchalian, the going package price for a birth certificate, a passport and a driver’s license is P300,000. Cheap.
It is so unnerving for law-abiding Filipinos to realize fellow Filipinos are selling their country for less than thirty pieces of silver. We may not yet be a failed state but we are definitely a soft state.
I first came across this concept of a soft state after reading The Asian Drama, a masterpiece written by Swedish Nobel Prize winning economist Gunnar Myrdal. It was required reading in one of my basic journalism classes, assigned by Prof. Hernando Abaya.
Looking back, it might well be the most important “textbook” in my entire journalism course. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to properly report on our country’s development.
A ‘soft state’ has a lenient attitude to social deviance. Soft states do not take hard decisions, even if the situation demands for it. This soft state inclination weakens the capacity of the state in enforcing the rule of law.
The concept of a ‘soft state’ describes our country then and now. In Myrdal’s words, “By the term ‘Soft State,’ I mean to characterize a general lack of social discipline, signified by many weaknesses: deficiencies in legislation and, in particular in law observance and enforcement; lack of obedience to rules and directives handed down to public officials on various levels; frequent collusion of these officials with powerful persons or groups of persons whose conduct they should regulate; and at bottom, a general inclination of people in all strata to resist public controls and their implementation. Within the concept of the Soft State is corruption, a phenomenon that seems generally on the increase.”
Our most significant failure today is in educating our youth. The World Bank reported our learning poverty is at 91 percent. This means that nine out of 10 Filipino children are unable to read and understand a simple reading material by the age of 10.
The learning poverty rate in low- and middle-income countries was estimated at 57 percent, and in Sub-Saharan Africa, it’s 86 percent. Apparently, we are worse… we are in the pits.
What happens is our children “don’t acquire the human capital they need to power their careers and economies once they leave school, or the skills that will help them become engaged citizens and nurture healthy, prosperous families. When young people lack these skills, it threatens the equity and stability of a nation…” In other words, our learning poverty of 91 percent is a strong factor that pushes us to become a future failed state.
There are other clear indicators of a failing state. The website Global Organized Crime Index (ocindex.net) noted that “the judicial system in the Philippines is affected by corruption, inefficiency and lack of accountability from the country’s elite. Law enforcement in the Philippines remains fragile and fragmented, with law enforcers, especially customs, border and maritime officials, frequently accused of corruption.”
“Some police and military officials are alleged to be implicated in illegal markets such as drug trafficking, arms trafficking and extortion. These officials are described to operate more like another organized criminal group than a state security apparatus. The Philippines has also failed to prosecute officials involved in human trafficking. The Philippines’ control over its territory and borders remains weak.”
The Philippines, the website said, “is at a critical risk of cybercrime and has become a hub for it, posing a threat to national security, the private sector and the government… The Philippines has one of the highest numbers of cybercrime victims related to financial crimes, that have arisen in conjunction with the increase in online transactions.”
And money laundering… We can’t get out of the grey list of the international Financial Action Task Force that monitors anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CFT) measures. Mountains of cash discovered by the government task force dealing with organized crime in the vaults of Chinese-led POGO operations in Central Luzon show that our anti-money laundering system is a failure.
There is a suggestion that we should let Quiboloy escape to Indonesia so that Indonesian police can do what the PNP can’t do: arrest the fugitive.
Soft state today, failed state tomorrow. It’s almost certain because we don’t seem to care for our country’s safety and future.
Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on X @boochanco.
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