Bridging a divided nation
It’s easier to bring heaven and earth together than have two Filipinos agree on anything,” rued Gen. Antonio Luna in the film “Heneral Luna,” a box office hit nearly a decade ago. Further back in the 1990s, former president Fidel Ramos admonished his audiences, saying, “if we all row in different directions, our national boat will go around in circles, but if we all agree to row in one direction, we could surge ahead past our neighbors.” He preached and practiced his message of UST—unity, solidarity, and teamwork—as key to strengthening our nation. Decades have passed and presidents have come and gone, yet we are no closer to having achieved greater unity of purpose and mission as a people to truly merit the term “nation.”
Indeed, the forces of division have become even more acute and formidable in this age of social media, fake news, and false images and videos generated by artificial intelligence. It didn’t help that Ramos was followed by leaders who thrived on heightening, rather than bridging, our deep divisions across economic, social, political, religious, and geographic lines. Not the least of these was Rodrigo Duterte, possibly the most divisive of our presidents. Pondering on the message of “Heneral Luna” 10 years ago, I wrote of how I hoped to see the film impel Filipino voters to finally choose our leaders right.
Then Duterte won an unprecedented broad base of support spanning all socioeconomic classes and most geographic regions, mesmerized by the promise of change he mouthed—but turned out to be change in a different direction. But I wrote then that his broad (albeit minority) base of support, with his background as a longtime mayor who kept close touch with those he governed, especially equipped him to be a potential unifier. For a while, he seemed uniquely positioned to be the leader we could all rally behind, the team captain to exhort us to row our national boat in one direction.
That perception proved to be dead wrong, of course. He squandered a golden opportunity for greatness, and the rest is history. His recent arrest and impending trial at the International Criminal Court have resurfaced the fissures that divide Filipinos along the various lines I listed. We now see the proliferation of outright falsehoods, disinformation, and fake news further fanning the flames of division, preying particularly on the less discerning. All this comes at a time when the country is being buffeted by strengthening economic and political headwinds intensified by the return of Donald Trump to the United States presidency, which has heightened the same divisions in American society. We are thus particularly vulnerable now, and allowing those divisions to deter us from rowing in unison out of the cesspool our national boat is caught in could prove fatal.
At this juncture of our history, it is critical that we set aside things that divide us and build on those that unite us. Three interrelated crises of great urgency demand attention and remedial action from all of us, whichever sides of our various societal divides we may lie on. These are (1) a child malnutrition crisis afflicting the youngest of our successor generation, (2) an education crisis threatening the quality and relevance of our workforce in a future driven by advanced knowledge and technology, and (3) an agriculture crisis that arguably lies at the root of the other two.
How so? Our age-old failure to instill inherent productivity, efficiency, and competitiveness in our farms and farmers explains why our food is inordinately expensive even when compared to countries with far higher average incomes than ours.
In turn, high food costs coupled with low incomes lie at the root of our widespread malnutrition, compromising the brain development of one in every four young Filipino children, rendering them damaged for life. This excessive incidence of brain impairment and weak cognitive and learning abilities among our children underlies our education crisis, which more classrooms, teachers, and textbooks alone cannot solve.
How do we embark on the needed whole-of-nation effort to overcome the three-fold crises we now face? This is where we must build on the values that unite rather than divide us Filipinos. Most commonly cited are our devotion to family, strong faith and spirituality, and spirit of bayanihan or community cooperation. All of us care for the future welfare of our children and grandchildren now or yet to come. Whatever our religious affiliations, Filipinos share a strong faith in God and the power of good over evil. And the Filipino tradition of bayanihan, while often said to give way to kanya-kanya or selfish individualism, always comes to the fore in times of calamities and crises. Now is such a time. Working as unified communities, there is much we can do together regardless of the politicians and leaders that divide us.
