Hope for the Philippines

I searched the United States’ State Department documents on the Philippines in vain for references to Harry Stonehill, whose name came up during the impeachment hearings. What I found on Stonehill was not enough to build a column. What I did find were reports on government inefficiency and alleged corruption that go way back to Quezon and the Commonwealth, perhaps even to Aguinaldo in the Malolos Republic. Graft and corruption are not new; these defects in our political system are as old as Philippine history.

What makes the material so depressing is that while graft and corruption were repeatedly identified as a social cancer eating into Philippine society, no meaningful solutions were proposed. Persistence paid off when I read a memorandum for then US President Richard Nixon from Henry Kissinger on March 31, 1971, labeled “Some Positive Insights on Filipino Characteristics.”

Kissinger referred to a report by a political officer, named Underhill, in the US Embassy in Manila. Underhill provided “a brief but remarkably perceptive report on the political and social character of the Filipinos … [that] illuminates those positive and stabilizing aspects of Philippine society which we have been groping to understand, but which are so often lost from view amid the welter of daily life.”

While written in 1971, the main points of the report remain relevant today:

“There is no argument about the lack of visible progress on dealing with the Philippines’ major problems; graft and corruption, peace and order, the widening gap between rich and poor, government inefficiency, and the inadequacies of top leadership.

“If there is general agreement that Philippine society is seriously ill, there is also equally firm agreement that a revolutionary situation does not exist. The reasons for the ‘perverse stability of this noisy, poorly governed, disorderly, under-achieving society’ [Emphasis mine] are:

“There is a political system in the Philippines. The Constitution has been in effect for 35 years without suspension or having been rewritten by a ‘strong man.’ Peaceful transfer of power repeatedly takes place. There is general agreement that the system needs revision, but there is equal agreement that the mechanism to bring about changes should be the Constitutional Convention. [In September 1972, former President Ferdinand Marcos became the strongman who declared martial law, ruled by decree, and imposed a new Constitution].

“In other developing countries of Asia, we are concerned because the provinces do not identify with the capital. This is definitely not the case in the Philippines. A good internal civil air network, a nationwide radio network, and an excellent newspaper distribution system provide good communication within this society.

“The Filipino is addicted to elections and if much energy is absorbed in the political game, it fulfills the special purpose in the Philippines of serving to deal with the oriental problem of face. The Filipinos are unusual in Asia for knowing how to find a respected place for defeated ex-Presidents.

“The Philippine press helps drain off revolutionary pressure. This is a compulsively open society, where the life span of a secret is measured in hours. Scandals are hyper-ventilated. After a while this produces not indignation but boredom. A comparable phenomenon is indifference to student martyrs. The normal level of casual violence is so high in the Philippines that there is no general sense of outrage when a few students are shot.

“The private sector of the economy works well. The road to wealth is open to the ordinary dishonest man. In most of developing Asia, this road is controlled by the military.

“The Filipino is less interested in good government than in government that is good to him. Like a gambler in Las Vegas, the system may wipe him out, but he is no more interested than the gambler in changing it. Tomorrow he may strike it lucky.

See Also

‘The Little Prince,’ the Philippines, and the pursuit beyond the facade

“Sheltered in his extended family system, linked by dual ties of loyalty and obligation upward and downward in the social structure, the Filipino is almost never alone, either actually or figuratively. The individual loneliness and alienation that is deeply troubling the society of the West is almost unknown in the Philippines. This is perhaps the essential reason why the average Filipino is optimistic about the future. To the despair of the revolutionaries, he has not lost his sense of humor, he is not bitter.”

The report concluded that violent change was out of the question, but that severe crisis could encourage change:

“The alternative to peaceful reform in the Philippines is probably not revolution but anarchy. Those who try to end the anarchy may come from either the Right or Left, but they will have to accept the fact that the Filipino will not tolerate too much government. He will be intractable and rebellious if his individualistic way of life is denied him.

“The democratic values which the US planted in the Philippines have now assumed their own indigenous forms. The roots are deep, and if we have faith in the capacity of our own society to change and survive, we cannot give up hope for the Philippines.”

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