Our Vision for 2010

Our problems are many. They are complicated and are inter-linked in a web created by corruption, deceit, colonialism and cultural anarchronisms. This web is being sustained by a humongous bureaucracy, held captive by time and tradition. Think of our system as a black widow in her web, waiting for her next prey.

This pot-bellied black widow has been there for centuries, even. She became the fattest spider ever to live on this earth, fed most by our frustrations, corruption as a people and our innate republicanism. For us to destroy her web, we need to first, annihilate her. There is no other option. The changes we desire are being neutralized by this bureaucracy which has kept us in bondage for so long.

We need to destroy or in the safest term, "re-imagine" the bureaucracy. And how do we do that?

We need a surgical operation. There is no other choice. If we are to pin our hopes on the slow grind of justice and the pandering effect of laws, we will all die first before we defeat the enemy. The legal option only exists for us if the system is still in a curable situation. In our case, the social cancer that has been described by our martyrs as the one afflicting us has eaten the very core of our collective soul.

The cancer has now mutated into the very system we now live. It must be excised immediately.

Before we even elect our president in 2010, we need to bond together and form a government that shall examine and kill this cancer. Doing so requires our collective strength. The structural problems that bedevil us right now cannot be solved by just one person. We don't need one Caudillo. We need many.

Before we even think of going thru this elections, we need to change the government. This year is the proper time to do it.

We need to institute a Council of State that is composed of members of the academe, the non-governmental sectors, illustrious and revolt-minded elites and well-meaning reform advocates.

This Council shall play the role of a systems reviewer. This Council shall review the charter, the present set of laws and policies being implemented by the bureaucracy. It should function as the bureaucracy.

We need a period of "suspended animation", where we review the problems and aches of the system and institute calibrated solutions. This period of time, possibly lasting for six months, would require great effort to sustain. It would be our Rose Revolution.

Think of it as preparing the bride for the eventual groom come 2010. If we elect a president in 2010 and the system or bureaucracy remains, the perpetual cycle of corruption, deceit, intolerance, injustice, and republicanism will forever grind leading us eventually to a future of disaster. Without a reformed bureaucratic system, no president will ever succeed in his avowed mission of reform and change.

We need a holiday from our woes.

We don't need to change from presidential to parliamentary. The political system is not entirely flawed. It is the bureaucratic system that needs to be re-imagined.

When we succeed in excising this black widow, the effects of this change will spillover to our people. Better services will dissolve distrust in our institutions of governance, leading to an improved peace and order situation, a rise in revenues and increased investments.

Better efficiency equates to better service. Better service means happy people. Happy people means more support to government. More support to government means less stress, less dissent and more peaceful. A peaceful environment means more business. More business means more money and jobs for people. More jobs for people mean stable economy. Stable economy means more money and more money for the people. More money means more food security and a confidence boost for the people. And when more and more people get to attain their personal and family goals, this increases the nation's "emotional quotient" (EQ). Less aggression, less corruption.

If the economic opportunities are equal and spread far and wide, no Filipino will be led to corruption just to survive. The environment will be less of a jungle, or a veritable battlefield for the exploitation of resources. When resources are available to everybody under a regime of equality, then, less people will use coercive or corruptive practices to enrich themselves. Why go to corruption when all you have to do is use your natural talents to get rich?

Corruption's root cause is perception of inequality. When most people perceive the system as unfair, the natural tendency is "go with the flow", "do what most do" and "claw your way up the latter by pandering or use money". If we eliminate that, we root out one of the major contributors of our misery.