SHATTERED HOPES


I am now 75. I have a wife and six children and two truckloads of grandchildren, but my family has been breaking up because of the failures of our government. All this makes my blood pressure shoot up. I think many senior citizens are in the same situation.

I know whereof I speak because I have lived through the administrations of Quezon, Osmena, Roxas, Quirino, Magsaysay, Garcia and Macapagal, and life under them was good. I was a boy during Quezon's time and I know little of Osmena's rule, but I know they were good and dedicated leaders. During the administrations of Roxas through Macapagal, I got an education, got married, had children and educated them in turn. The government under them was also good.

Then came Marcos. At first the people responded well to his exhortation: "Sa ikauunlad ng bayan, disiplina ang kailangan (For the nation to progress, discipline is needed)." But he turned out to be a dictator. He killed or imprisoned his political enemies, stole money in the billions of pesos, and repressed the people's freedoms.

One day my youngest daughter, who had just finished her course at the University of the Philippines announced, "My future has been ruined by Marcos. I want to leave."

I was dumbfounded, but I knew she was right. She went abroad. Then my eldest son, an electrical engineer, followed her. I terribly missed them, and I blamed the government for taking away their hope for a bright future in their own country.

Upon the petition of my eldest son, now a citizen of another country, my wife and I were granted immigrant visas so we could live in that country. I did not go, but my wife went to live with my children there, so now we only visit each other. She, too, was disillusioned with our leaders. Her leaving was to me the unkindest cut of all. Marcos was thrown out of power, and was succeeded by the widow of his foremost victim and later by a former army general. But my four children remained skeptical about the future.

Tragedy struck when a movie actor was elected president. Then he was charged with plunder and detained without bail. I watched what my four remaining children would do. True enough, two of them soon gave up and left. I could not believe they would go, since they had studied in good universities, they had decent houses, drove cars and lived in relative comfort. But they left because they saw no hope here especially for their own children. Now I have only two children left with me. They are also jumping ship because they do not see any good reason for staying. Sadly I know they are just waiting for me to go to my final destination, and they may have only a few years to wait.

A recent survey found that about 20 percent of Filipinos want to leave the country. Many families really want to go abroad for good. One Inquirer columnist said it all for them when he wrote, "For the first time in my life last week, I really felt that this country has become hopeless."

Like my four children who have gone, many people are convinced this country is hopeless and wish they had the opportunity to move elsewhere with their families.

Countless Filipinos have chosen another way to leave, which is by finding work abroad. If they could, they would uproot their families. But they are forced to leave behind their spouses, children and parents in order to take foreign jobs, mostly menial and below their level of education, and they and their loved ones must suffer the pains of separation and loneliness. While the government is happy for the millions of dollars that they send home to prop up the economy, it does nothing to address the reason why, like the emigrants, these overseas Filipino workers have to go abroad in the first place. There is also the big brain drain that the government does not seem to care about. Educated and talented Filipinos go to live abroad and apply their expertise and knowledge to their foreign jobs. The exodus of doctors, nurses, engineers and technicians goes unabated, but the government is not bothered by this waste of talent.

Why do Filipinos go away? First of all, there is so much corruption everywhere in the government. A world opinion survey has revealed that our country is the third most corrupt in Asia and the 11th most corrupt in the world.

There is also too much politics. The finance secretary has said that politics is the cause of our dire economic problems.

But who is engaged in too much politics? Why, the politicians, of course. There are too many of them in and outside Congress. They are concerned only about their personal ambitions and their expensive junkets and their abuse of their pork barrel and other perks. Gone are the days of Recto, Laurel, Diokno, Osias and House Speakers Cornelio Villareal and Eugenio Perez, of Ramon Magsaysay, and of justices like Concepcion, Moran, and Avancea.

Many politicians give speeches about poverty, joblessness, crime and other ills, but do very little, if at all, to address these problems. Instead, they resort to what is expedient or good for themselves. Look at the shameless speed with which congressmen have railroaded the impeachment charges against the Chief Justice and how some senators are thirsting for the publicity they will get as judges during the impeachment. Look also at how fast many politicians have risen to defend the Chief Justice without ascertaining that he is really innocent in his handling of the Judiciary Development Fund amounting to billions of pesos.

The people are now cynical of this government. Even Filipinos abroad share this cynicism, as shown by the fact that only one out of every 100 of them has bothered to register under the new Absentee Voting Law. Like my wife and children abroad, they do not trust the government enough to participate by voting. The common lament is, why vote when the same kind of so-called leaders will get elected anyway, by hook or by crook?

Now, I am horrified to learn that another movie actor, who has reportedly not finished high school, will be elected president in 2004. When my last two remaining children leave because this country is hopeless, my family would be completely shattered and, if I would still be alive, my hope in the government will also be completely lost. This would be tragic for me. I have seen better governance from the likes of Laurel, Recto, and Magsaysay, and I will never see the light of hope in this hopeless country.

Silverio Aquino
Lawyer, Filipino


I got this from the email this morning.

If I got this email a couple of years ago, I probably would have been sympathetic, but I wouldn't have empathy. I would probably have nodded my head in agreement, and then moved on the next mail.

Just maybe, I would have wondered how it really feels to have one's family scattered in all parts of the globe, unable to see them whenever one wants to, not to hear them call, 'I'm home!' at the end of each day, to greet them on their birthdays over the phone and with greeting cards and not be able to see their faces and read whatever is written there on these, their special days. I wouldn't know how it feels to try and build a life and try as one might, still see everything stamped as 'temporary' cause wherever one finds himself, it will never be home. I had no idea at all how the heart skips a beat when one hears that one familiar language, that one language one grew up with and when heard over and above a whole cornucopia of others, makes one feel he's not alone, and the eyes go searching for the source of those words, and the lips light up in a timid smile, in acknowledgement of a kindred soul. It probably would have been too remote for me to consider its effect on a larger scale... this breaking up of the family, of the very nucleus of society... to afford our children a dream for the night, of tomorrow.

I receive this email now and I don't wonder anymore because I know how it feels... I felt the fire in every word, every iota of despair behind the words, every measure of sadness, every grit of the teeth in useless vehemence.

The dreams of the many... the nameless, faceless many... for the personal gain of the few. Politicians who are so busy making endless promises that they never find the time to keep them and people who listen to these promises and unwittingly believe or wittingly walk away... uprooting roots, abandoning homes, enslaving selves to foreigners who resent their presence for getting a slice of their pie, grabbing for a glimmer of hope inspite of all the strangeness in a foreign land just because, perhaps, there is more hope to be had in these other shores.

Is this the price we have to pay to call ourselves Filipinos?