Recent surveys again showed that the most transparent developed economies in the world are Hongkong & Singapore. They are also among the wealthiest per capita in the world (the world's richest is Qatar at almost $100,000 GNP per capita). A country should be democratic in the Western mold to really excel, so goes Western propaganda, right? Alas, just like Qatar, both cities are labeled as not quite democratic: Singapore for being allegedly a "managed" democracy, Hongkong for allegedly being under the thumb of China. China is supposed to be undemocratic but it is now the banker of the supposed bastion of democracy, the supposed to be wealthiest but actually terminally highly-indebted US. So, how come these "undemocratic " countries are excelling while the "democratic" ones are declining?
The Philippines is supposed to be a bastion of democracy in Asia but despite its democratic pretensions, it has been left behind by most of its neighbors. I still have to read any account from any of our neighbors where they look up at us, extolling our adherence to Western ,democracy. More likely they look down on us because they've left us behind. The proof of the pudding is how poor you are after all the years of "Western-style democratic" daydreaming.
30 years after the ousting of supposed dictator Marcos, have the Filipinos really felt a big difference in the freedom that they enjoy in their personal lives? Is there freedom in widespread poverty? Freedom of the press? How could there be freedom of the press when you just transferred control from one puppetmaster to another? The most ridiculous of all, the same faces and gimmicks in politics remained. So was the same poverty and low respect to Filipinos as the word "Filipina" came to mean "maid" in Europe. 30 years after Marcos, it is still is, but no longer just in Europe but nearly throughout the world.
And the Filipino, still poor and not respected, should be happy just because it fought for "Western-style" democracy?
Actually, most Filipinos would have preferred a Lee Kuan Yu than any of our democratically elected Presidents. More than gloating about Western democracy, we want to keep in step with the progress of our neighbors. One by one, they zoomed in front of us, and they did not have to fool themselves that they needed Western democracy to achieve success. It came to the point that the wealthiest country on earth is now a neighbor. And wonder of wonders, it is not an adherent of Western democracy either..
Our neighbors also had corruption but still they zoomed ahead. Could it be we played so much the game of disrupting our national systems whenever the bogey of political manipulations was stirred by rabble-rousers who seemed to materialize out of nowhere, curiously screaming democracy every time as if most common Filipinos even care ( Corruption is the favorite "rallying cry" though corruption is still with us up no now. )? Above are the seeds of the now famous "People Power" covert operations which have lately came to mean "regime change" in a sovereign country, subverting democratically elected governments, most commonly implemented by the very same countries which are now unmasked as hypocritical icons of democracy. Are they actually espousing their type of democracy so they can easily manipulate other countries and inflict them their extortionist rackets? In Ukraine, Western leaders were shamelessly intervening in Kiev itself, and considering that these countries are up to their necks with debts, where did they even find the gall to stir an almost bankrupt country which they won't be able to help adequately anyway unless they imposed their usual "loan sharking" rackets which have victimized so many countries in the past including the Philippines? Isn't it curious that "corruption" was also the main theme of the script of the recent Ukraine "regime change", same as that of EDSA and in the other phony "People Power" revolutions -it had the same climax, the public opening of the Presidential palace in Kiev a la Malacanang & voila, the hidden wealth was for all to see (what, no Imelda's thousand shoes?) Did they check the gold reserves in Kiev, Marcos was reported to have lost 63,000 metric tons of Gold from the "extortions" of the CIA during the EDSA Revolution, as narrated in a book by David Guyatt, "Secret Gold Treaty".
Is democracy just one kind- the Western one which didn't prevent the Western nations to now decline?
The start of the Asian Century means we should find our bearings in our region, now the engine of the world. Time to write a better Asian plot and leave behind the baggage and delusions left us by previous Western occupations. We'll remain patronized suckers there. It doesn't have to be the Western type of pretension still. Curious, we developed many of the supposed rights without the political mantras which have poisoned the social atmosphere of the socially and economically regressing Western countries (we rate one of the highest in the women & sexual minorities development indexes in the world though we don't have disruptive feminist or sexual minority movements). The outdated Western political spectrum from Left to Right has exhausted its possibilities as it's been obvious that politics under that setup were easily captured by cold private capitalist interests, manipulated at both ends,both funded to produce the intended result, paying lip service to the people as their main business at hand. Ask the dissipating middle classes of America.
Lee Kuan Yew's style was similar to the present Confucian evolution of originally Western socialistic theories in China. That type of Socialism was for the consumption of innocent Asians at that particular moment in time, it's just right that the Chinese are now calling their evolution as Confucianist and regain their real selves in the process . The Asian Century doesn't require that the previous outdated Western concepts are still relevant. As China consolidates its wealth and power, we see there the justification for its own principles. Most importantly, they worked. How can we forget what Japanese Prime Minister said about "obligation"? Is it any wonder that though Japan is highly leveraged, it is in a much better shape than the US because, like China, it has surplus money and if ever it has big debts, 80% is to its own people, a people known for their deep sense of obligation so they will "stick" come what may. Money is created from nothing as long as you can sucker anybody to believe it is money. That has been the gist of the Mafia gimmicks of the gangsters who took over the free people of America (they were not above using terrorism like "People Power" covert operations, the hypocritical variant, to intimidate other nations to accept that their nothing was money). The creation of money out of nothing must rely less on Mafia extortionary tricks for the gentler people of Asia.
No need to be distracted by current intramurals like the territorial disputes. A $30 trillion economy in 20 years just across the China Sea is a bigger market than anywhere else. The realization that real wealth is already produced here will erase all the persistent political dynamics left behind by the fading system, even the so-called Filipino "colonial" mentality. We tend to automatically readjust to the new richest neighbor in our neighborhoods. It's obvious one doesn't need Western-style democracy to get rich. Most of the wealth for investments already come from within the region anyway, it will ultimately be demented to rely on the usual poseurs and their terrorism and racketeering schemes. The Philippines needs to find new models, time to think out of the box and ditch the old useless tactics.
We'll flesh out our vision of Asian-type Democracy in future posts.
NOTE: This isn't even about Nationalism, it's simply practical economics and politics.
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