> Shades of
Poverty
The other day as I tossed a P5 coin at my favorite female beggar
squatting by the side entrance of the Naga Cathedral, a fellow
early morning ‘walker’ commented that I was just wasting my money
as she would just burn it on cigarettes! Despite this friendly
‘warning’ I continue to toss my poor ‘friend’ P5 coins. Who cares
if she has long ago refused to heed my warnings not to smoke! It
makes me feel good and somehow erases some guilt at not being able
to really make her life much better than it is now.
I just read a front page article in the Phil. Daily Inquirer
(3/29/06): Eradicating poverty a ‘utopian dream’. In it National
Anti-Poverty Commissioner, Datu Zamzamin Ampatuan was quoted as
believing that stamping out poverty is a “utopian dream”! That it
will never be eradicated! Well, TOTAL eradication of poverty is
really quite impossible! Without poverty, or a point of
comparison, the idea of affluence will cease to exist! Besides
without any squatters or beggars or out-of-school youth in the
slums and out on the streets life would be a bore for the really
rich! Can you imagine everyone having sprawling mansions with
pools, driving BMWs, Jags, Rovers, and fleets of Rolls Royce,
going on weekend trips to Europe and the U.S. as if they were just
going to Baguio or Cebu? Can you imagine really clean streets with
busy pedestrians on their way to and from work in place of beggars
and loiterers; Malls and Restaurants bustling with shoppers and
customers? Can you imagine a zero crime rate all year through
where the Police are just there to help the blind and the disabled
cross the streets or help citizens change flat tires? With such a
scenario, life would cease to be exciting as there would no longer
be anyone complaining about not having enough, and envy would just
be a word without meaning! Politicians would then have a problem
running ON THEIR OWN MERITS, because cheating and vote buying
would no longer do the trick!
That there will always be poor people wherever there are rich is a
fact of life. That the rich become richer and the poor become
poorer is also such a sad fact which is nevertheless taken
advantage of and belabored by the Socialists who have ever since
been batting for common ownership of property (private ownership
will, thus, cease to exist), as if preventing the rich from
becoming richer even by dint of their own hard work would help
close this yawning gap between the rich and the poor! Rather than
resort to this improbable totalitarian tactic why don’t we try to
learn from formerly down-and-out countries like South Korea,
Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and very recently, Vietnam.
Owing to space limitations, let’s just go straight to Vietnam. Who
would think that this small country would now be nearing the
economic take-off stage in so short a time? We are all aware of
the fact that this country absorbed tons upon tons of Carpet and
all sorts of bombs! That countless thousands were killed,
mutilated, or disabled by that Vietnam War (1963-1973) which saw
the Greatest Military Power in the modern world completely
humiliated by headstrong and determined Vietcongs armed with
AK-47s and relatively ‘primitive’ weapons, will never be forgotten
in the annals of Warfare! That the Vietnamese war economy was what
really sustained post-war Vietnam until the U.S. Economic Aid was
let loose on it in torrents, to, perhaps, atone for the hundreds
of thousands of innocent civilians killed in the bombings, not to
mention that now infamous My Lai Massacre, is a fact that can
perhaps explain the steep rise of Vietnam’s economy.
Compared to Vietnam we have never had it so good. It would thus be
such a shame if in the next 5 years it ‘overtakes’ our economy and
leaves us in the dumps! Despite U.S. Aid which we have also been
enjoying ever since, what gives the Vietnamese an edge, is,
perhaps, their SPARTAN DISCIPLINE and STOICISM which has been
strengthened all the more by decades of war, first against the
French, then against the Americans. After the official U.S.
withdrawal from South Vietnam in 1973, perhaps made imminent by
the Tet Offensive on the night of Jan. 1968, the Vietnamese had to
really rebuild their country almost from scratch! Then they didn’t
have any politicians to confuse them and a corrupt bureaucracy to
bilk them. They had only themselves and their Economy to think and
worry about. In the process they are now about to accomplish the
latest economic miracle of Asia.
Discipline and Hard Work are indeed traits which we Pinoys lack so
much. We talk about wanting to pull ourselves out of this quagmire
of poverty. We blame the system, our leaders, the weather, and our
stars, except ourselves for everything that’s wrong with this
country. We complain and expect results to be accomplished As Soon
As Possible without us lifting even a finger! Some of us have
become so poor that politicians can easily pay them to complain
and bring a government down! Mama Mia! What discipline can one
expect in a land where loopholes are studied first before the
laws? Where the police and all other people expected to enforce
the law are the very first ones who break it? Where most
government officials work with their own vested interests in mind?
Where bureaucratic work and especially government projects are
done on a piecemeal basis to maximize money earned in return for
the least work done?
For Christ sakes! How can we even expect to move and maybe even
lessen poverty a bit in this blighted Land if we don’t realize
that the greatest change that we all have to undertake is that
change WITHIN OURSELVES! Until we accept this fact and go about
indeed changing the way we think, believe, and work, this country
will really be bogged down in the Mire of Discontent which these
rich politicians have been happily allowing us to wallow in just
to serve their own purpose!
