There are studies in psychology pointing to the tendency of the human brain to escape when it experiences frustration over circumstances it cannot change. Last week, in the thick of the congressional probe about what transpired in Mamasapano that led to the horrific death of 44 Special Action Force men on January 25, my family and I, with some friends, went for a brief travel to Chiangmai and Bangkok. I thought it would be good to be away for a little while although we occasionally received text messages about a rumored coup d’ etat back home and the emotion-laden probe in Congress. I soon realized that escaping from frustration would not erase it because I still felt angst and a dull anxiety. I then stepped back and tried to understand the roots of my profound sense of frustration.
I have been frustrated nearly much of the time with the way the Philippine government has been run. When strongman Ferdinand E. Marcos was deposed as a dictator president in 1986 I, as an activist then, thought and hoped it would be full democracy and progress onward for the Philippines. But my hopes remained just that. While economic progress took a fairly big leap in the term of President Fidel V. Ramos, the administrations that followed failed to sustain it. In fact, the administrations after Ramos seemed more adept at regressing either because of corruption, incompetence or both.
My frustration has been hinged on a sense of helplessness about the Filipino people’s inability to choose good enough leaders to pull the country through its woes. Or perhaps it is because the people lack options to choose from. Our unitary system of government where we have to elect a president and the senators at large or, on a nationwide basis, has proven to be deleterious. The greater majority vote largely on the basis of name recall or popularity, not on platform, party ideology or qualifications to lead. The multi-party system under a presidential/unitary form of government heightens the problem even more. Distinguished from the two-party system which we used to have, where candidates joined a party for the ideology it represented, in the multi party system, persons running for positions jump from one party to another to be with the most popular standard bearer each election time. Ideology and platform no longer characterize a political party rather, the personalities in it. This is the reason we have popular people, not statesmen, populating Congress and the Palace.
What’s worse is that because candidates for an elective post need hundreds of millions up to billions of pesos in campaign funds, they have to seek the support of the moneyed interest groups such as the businessmen, gambling and smuggling lords, even drug lords. When they get elected, pay-back time, of course, comes.
Being away for a brief while to escape from a frustrating environment did me no good. If at all, it made me feel worse. Seeing that Thailand (a nation once beleaguered by massive rallies and unrest that disrupted the nation’s life for many months until its Prime Minister resigned in May 2014) in a much better shape than the Philippines made my frustration grow. Our group thought we would see a slump in tourism, a slowdown in Thailand’s economic progress and a people exhibiting discomfiture under a military regime. What we saw made us green with envy. Tourists still arrived in droves. Marketplaces and grocery stores were teeming with people of all nationalities. The traffic in the city of Bangkok has reasonably eased up owing to new skyways and roads. When we took a flight to the province of Chiangmai, we saw a domestic airport that was better than our international airports.
Tourism was well organized, giving tourists diverse options of places to visit and activities to do. The markets and shops sold clothes, handicrafts and foodstuff manufactured in Thailand and not imported from China. This made our group wonder. Will tourists visiting the Philippines be able to choose from a wide array of distinctly Filipino products? Can tourists roam our streets without worrying about peace and order?
In my desire to validate if there are others who feel the way I do, I asked a number of people—professionals, government employees, drivers, hairstylists, sales attendants, househelp, business people—what they think about the Philippine government and what, in their view, were our prospects. The answers ranged from: “We don’t seem to be getting anywhere.” “Wala naman tayong mapagpilian (We don’t seem to have any choices.) “Parang wala na tayong pagasa (We seem hopeless.)” The most pessimistic ones said: “Dapat na yatang mawala sa mundo ang lahat ng pulitikong Pilipino (Perhaps it is time that all Filipino politicians were removed from the earth.)
Frustration and a sense of hopelessness lie in the hearts of many, not just in mine, after all. Studies say that the only cure for frustration is change.
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