THE Marcos regional political clout, buttressed by ill-gotten wealth, has been a specter hovering over every administration these past 30 years, threatening havoc on the electoral process, extracting political concessions from each major national candidate every sexennial on one hand, and applying carrot and stick tactics to advance family agenda on the other. All in the overarching drive to rehabilitate their name. They obviously have succeeded as they now have the audacity to offer through the Deegong, no less, to return a portion of this wealth.

This wealth, “…the riches (gold bars and part of their alleged hidden wealth) were taken only to secure the Philippine economy at that time”(Arianne Merez, ABS-CBN News, August 31, 2017).With this return, the Marcos family can help erase the country’s deficits, and fund the social programs of the country. How nice of the Marcoses! Now, Ferdinand can truly be regarded as a Philippine Hero – one whose “tadhana ay naiguhit din”.

The insinuation is that this wealth was not plundered from the Filipino people. The family simply “borrowed” the country’s wealth for safekeeping. As PRRD intimated, “I will accept the explanation whether or not it is true, kasi wala na, e”

There is something wrong with this picture. Especially for those millennials who aren’t familiar with how Ferdinand Marcos plundered the country’s coffers during his two-decade rule. Perhaps a cursory description of the magnitude will help illuminate the fruits of this perversion ending in 1986.

According to the Supreme Court estimate, Marcos had accumulated $10 billion while in office (The Guardian, Nick Davies, May 7, 2016),while his annual pay during those years averaged $13,500. Now, do the math!

Imelda Marcos boasted in 1990, taunting the Filipino, that “…there is more money the government is not yet aware of…we own practically everything in the Philippines”.

In the past 30 years, since the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) was created by the Cory Aquino government, it has retrieved money from five Swiss accounts, half a dozen crony companies, most of the coconut levy funds and proceeds from auctioned paintings, jewelry and real estate properties totaling $3.7 billion. Still far short of the estimated $10 billion loot.

I will not review the extent and methods of the plunder but would direct the reader to several links one of which was written on May 7, 2016 by Nick Davies of The Guardian, who was allowed by the PCGG to do research in its archives.

The focus of this piece is the implication of PRRD’s pronouncements. The President is as much frustrated as the citizenry who have been played by the Marcos family. But more importantly the people need to understand the anomalies and corruption underlining the hunt for the Marcos wealth. The 30-year saga could generate reams and books on the bungling on the part of the government and the dissipation of those sequestered Marcos assets placed under the incompetent hands and thieves in the PCGG, our government trustees. They have reduced the search-for-the-wealth narrative into “thieves stealing from thieves”.

Our culture of government service today is largely influenced by the legacy of the Martial Law years that we have yet to purge ourselves of. This innovative type of impunity can only be described as kleptocracy– the mass thievery by a cabal of political and economic leaders that sucked dry the marrow of the governed. This centralized corruption through “crony capitalism”, was a Marcos attempt to create his brand of oligarchy replacing that of the old. Marcos put in place his cronies not only in individual businesses but in control of whole industries: banking and financial services, coco-oil production refining and exports, sugar and banana plantations, state finance projects, infrastructure construction, etc. The Marcos wealth was dispersed among these few chosen few dummies, who after his exile and demise, compromised with a naïve Cory government to surrender portions and legitimize the rest of the ill-gotten assets still in their possession. Crony capitalism and its effects were so successful that the practice still resonates up to the present. “Businesses thrive not as a result of risk taken for them, but as a return on money amassed through a nexus between a business class and the political class”(Wikipedia). The residue can be glimpsed in the current oligarchy in control of political parties and elected officials thereby capturing key regulatory agencies.

But the Deegong’s pronouncements of late to accept a return of a “portion of the Marcos ill-gotten wealth” will have bigger reverberations on the body politic and especially for our millennials for generations to come. These are very disturbing.

This ill-gotten wealth was never acknowledged publicly by the Marcos family as stolen. A convenient euphemism is substituted. These assets instead were “borrowed for safekeeping” for the Filipino with presumably the intention of returning them at some future date. And this date has arrived. The family has been restored and thriving; Imelda, an elected representative of Ilocos Norte; Imee, provincial governor and Bongbong, who might just win an election protest and the vice presidency and could then move on to become the country’s President.

How about accountability and justice? And what of those who suffered human rights violations, torture and summary executions through those dark years. Should we just leave this to karma – that nebulous justice of the universe at some future date for retribution?

The question at bar is, how will the Deegong finally handle this? Is he as powerless and feeble as to accept this ridiculous euphemism of “borrowed assets for safekeeping” and play along with this mockery?

Mr. President, if you scour through social media, their message is clear, and simple. “Can you not apply your vaunted ‘tokhang’ solution to these high and mighty and just make samples of them too? Get the wealth back to your people and punish the plunderers the way you know how. We have given you 80 percent support despite the daily dead bodies of the dregs of society strewn in the streets nightly. What’s a few more?”

God forbid, that I may have to re-teach my grandchildren – crime does indeed pay! But don’t steal…just borrow for safekeeping, and return the same when able!

On the opposite side, is an articulate wife an “energy healer with a third eye” out to extricate herself from a now loveless marriage; and who has been painted as a scheming, manipulative and an extortionate woman trying to end a marriage and be with a “soul mate,” one not her husband.

^{_{Have we truly become a full-blown narco state?}}

^{_{OR is this not a rhetorical question?}}

^{_{There are not too many narco states in the world, and there isn’t one to be envied by others. A short list begins with Afghanistan, which produces 90 percent of the world’s opium. Followed by Burma (Myanmar), whose opium king used to control three-fourths of the world’s supply of heroin. Then Mexico; 7,000 have been killed since 2008, and the leader of the Sineloa cartel, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, has become, according to Forbes magazine, the 701st richest man in the world with $1 billion. Then Colombia, the world’s top producer of cocaine; then Peru, which follows Colombia in cocaine; then Bolivia, which follows Peru. Then the Bahamas, which acts as the cocaine transshipment point from Colombia to the US. Here, the narco king runs his business from jail.}}

^{_{We are not listed anywhere, despite the fact that President Rodrigo Duterte’s year-long war on drugs has already killed 8,000 or more, and 605 kilograms of shabu worth P6.4 billion is now smuggled through customs in broad daylight, using the “green lane.” Nor do we have a narco king remotely resembling the Burmese KhunSa, Colombia’s Pablo Escobar, Mexico’s “El Chapo” Guzman or the Bahamas’ Carlos Lehder.}}

^{_{The hideous 605-kg, P6.4 billion “shabu” smuggling from China suggests that the bigger part of the cargo (2,160 kg), released without customs inspection, may have contained the same stuff (worth P22.5 billion), and that the Bureau of Customs’ “green lane” may have been used for smuggling dangerous drugs for sometime now. This seems to be the best index of what we have become. We cannot pretend to believe otherwise, unless we want to be delusional.}}

^{_{All claims to the contrary notwithstanding, corrupt politicians and bureaucrats are in cahoots with the illegal drug dealers, a good number of the nation’s 105 million people are addicted, and China, whose avowed benevolence DU30 has embraced, seems eager to provide inexhaustible supply. So, while DU30 vows to kill every unshod drug pusher or user, the bigtime illegal drugs business goes on at the very heart of the nation, unmindful of the corpses piling up in the ghettos and the slums.}}

^{_{The war on drugs}}

^{_{DU30 began his six-year term in 2016 by warning against the possibility of the Philippines becoming a narco state, if he did not launch his war on drugs. So, he launched his brutal war. Honest citizens supported this war, though not the killings and DU30’s relentless threat to “kill, kill, kill.” On July 7, 2016, one week after he assumed office, he named the country’s supposedly three biggest drug lords, said to be members of the Chinese triad, and allegedly protected by a powerful police general.}}

^{_{He identified them as Wun Tan, also known as “Tatay Co,” Peter Lim aka “Tiger Balm,” and Herbert Colangco, a convict said to be operating from inside the New Bilibid Prison—all allegedly protected by retired Deputy Director General Marcelo Garbo Jr., who vehemently denied the accusation.}}

^{_{DU30 then began publicly listing names of individuals allegedly involved in drugs. He unleashed the Philippine National Police under Director General Ronald “Bato” de la Rosa and masked “vigilantes” on all suspected pushers and users. And he denounced as “sons of bitches” then-US President Barack Obama, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, US Ambassador Philip Goldberg, unnamed leaders of the European Union, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights Agnes Callamard, and others for criticizing the “extra-judicial killings” which had become the defining program of his presidency.}}

^{_{DU30 and Bato appeared to relish the bloodletting, for which the policemen and “vigilantes” were reportedly given “kill quotas” and reward money for every suspect killed. Within one year, the war was reported to have killed some 8,000 suspects, without documentation or due process, raising an international human rights storm, which includes an accusation of “crimes against humanity” and “mass murder” against DU30 before the International Criminal Court at The Hague, and sharp denunciations from the US State Department and the European Union, among others.}}

^{_{No big haul of illegal drugs, no busting of any sizeable drug laboratories, no arrest of any bigtime drug lords were ever reported. Most of the victims belonged to the class of “social rejects” whose births, in Eliot’s words, “are unwelcome,” whose death is “unmentioned in the Times.” So far only three notable suspects had been killed in the most bizarre circumstances.}}

^{_{Some mentionables}}

^{_{On November 5, 2016, Mayor Rolando Espinosa of Albuera, Leyte, who had earlier turned himself in after having been tagged as a drug suspect, was killed at four o’clock in the morning inside his detention cell at the Baybay, Leyte subprovincial jail by a police strike team that had motored for hours from Tacloban, allegedly to serve him a search warrant. The National Bureau of Investigation saw this as a plain “rubout,” but the raiding party said it was a “shootout”, and DU30 agreed with the police, and Superintendent Marvin Marcos, the leader of the raiding party, will now be promoted to the next higher rank.}}

^{_{On January 19, 2017, it became publicly known that sometime in October some rogue policemen abducted Korean businessman Jee Ick-joo, an alleged drug suspect, for a P5 million ransom, drove him to the PNP compound at Camp Crame, where he was strangled to death inside his car.}}

^{_{This raised a strong statement from the South Korean government, but the sensation quickly died down.}}

^{_{On July 30, 2017, a Sunday, Ozamiz City mayor Reynaldo Parojinog Sr., his wife and 13 others, mostly relatives and friends, were massacred inside their three residences at 2.30 a.m. on the suspicion of their alleged drug dealing. The raiding party claimed they were met with gunfire from inside the residences under siege, a claim denied by the lawyer of the slain mayor. Reports from the city have since claimed that the raiding party included hired gunmen from Isabel, Leyte, hiding behind masks.}}

^{_{The drug war was temporarily overshadowed by DU30’s war on the Islamic State (IS)-aligned Maute terror group, which attacked the Islamic city of Marawi on May 23, prompting DU30 to proclaim martial law and suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus for 90 days in the whole of Mindanao. The constitutionality of Proclamation 216, issued in Moscow where DU30 was visiting at the time, was challenged before the Supreme Court, but DU30 prevailed. Upon its expiration on Juy22, Congress extended the proclamation until December 31, 2017.}}

^{_{Back to the drug war}}

^{_{With the successful military operations against the Mautes in Marawi, and the apparent collapse of the IS structure in Syria and Iraq, the war of drugs shot back to prominence upon the discovery of a P6.4 billion illegal drug shipment from Xiamen, which had gone through the “green lane.” Despite the gravity of the case, for which Customs Commissioner Nicanor Faeldon should be held directly accountable, DU30 expressed full confidence in the former Philippine Marines captain, who had participated in the military mutiny against then-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in 2003. Now Chairman Robert Barbers of the House committee on dangerous drugs, a Mindanao politician, has asked DU30 to fire Faeldon for corruption and incompetence.}}

^{_{This is something DU30 may not blithely ignore. Analysts close to this issue, however, believe Faeldon may be in possession of certain sensitive information, which makes it hard for DU30 to get rid of him, unless he volunteers to step down. Amid the apparent efforts of some quarters to link DU30’s son Paolo, the vice mayor of Davao City, to the dangerous drugs shipment from Xiamen, Faeldon has not said one word clearing him of any suspicion. If Faeldon knows Paolo is not at all involved in any monkey business at the pier, shouldn’t he have come to his defense after the customs broker Mark Taguba mentioned his name, quoting wild rumors, in a congressional hearing? He did not.}}

^{_{Who is this Kenneth Dong?}}

^{_{The problem is, a photo has surfaced in the social media showing Paolo in a friendly pose with Kenneth Dong, the alleged middleman in the illegal P6.4 billion drug shipment. And some people are giving undue importance to it. No one is saying the young man has any fascination for any narco king—whether it be Burma’s late opium king Khun Sa, or Colombia’s Pablo Escobar, or Mexico’s Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. But by linking him to Kenneth Dong and the rest of his narco chain, his enemies clearly want to show his guilt by association.}}

^{_{Since he came to power, DU30 has had to deal with various problems. This is one problem he probably never expected to deal with though. This is why he says if anyone could show him an affidavit, a sworn statement, implicating his son in any shady deal, he would quit the presidency. This statement is understandable, but I hope it does not come to that. Still, until a much bigger problem arises, this seems to be DU30’s biggest problem for now.}}

^{_{Have we truly become a full-blown narco state?}}

^{_{OR is this not a rhetorical question?}}

^{_{There are not too many narco states in the world, and there isn’t one to be envied by others. A short list begins with Afghanistan, which produces 90 percent of the world’s opium. Followed by Burma (Myanmar), whose opium king used to control three-fourths of the world’s supply of heroin. Then Mexico; 7,000 have been killed since 2008, and the leader of the Sineloa cartel, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, has become, according to Forbes magazine, the 701st richest man in the world with $1 billion. Then Colombia, the world’s top producer of cocaine; then Peru, which follows Colombia in cocaine; then Bolivia, which follows Peru. Then the Bahamas, which acts as the cocaine transshipment point from Colombia to the US. Here, the narco king runs his business from jail.}}

^{_{We are not listed anywhere, despite the fact that President Rodrigo Duterte’s year-long war on drugs has already killed 8,000 or more, and 605 kilograms of shabu worth P6.4 billion is now smuggled through customs in broad daylight, using the “green lane.” Nor do we have a narco king remotely resembling the Burmese KhunSa, Colombia’s Pablo Escobar, Mexico’s “El Chapo” Guzman or the Bahamas’ Carlos Lehder.}}

^{_{The hideous 605-kg, P6.4 billion “shabu” smuggling from China suggests that the bigger part of the cargo (2,160 kg), released without customs inspection, may have contained the same stuff (worth P22.5 billion), and that the Bureau of Customs’ “green lane” may have been used for smuggling dangerous drugs for sometime now. This seems to be the best index of what we have become. We cannot pretend to believe otherwise, unless we want to be delusional.}}

^{_{All claims to the contrary notwithstanding, corrupt politicians and bureaucrats are in cahoots with the illegal drug dealers, a good number of the nation’s 105 million people are addicted, and China, whose avowed benevolence DU30 has embraced, seems eager to provide inexhaustible supply. So, while DU30 vows to kill every unshod drug pusher or user, the bigtime illegal drugs business goes on at the very heart of the nation, unmindful of the corpses piling up in the ghettos and the slums.}}

^{_{The war on drugs}}

^{_{DU30 began his six-year term in 2016 by warning against the possibility of the Philippines becoming a narco state, if he did not launch his war on drugs. So, he launched his brutal war. Honest citizens supported this war, though not the killings and DU30’s relentless threat to “kill, kill, kill.” On July 7, 2016, one week after he assumed office, he named the country’s supposedly three biggest drug lords, said to be members of the Chinese triad, and allegedly protected by a powerful police general.}}

^{_{He identified them as Wun Tan, also known as “Tatay Co,” Peter Lim aka “Tiger Balm,” and Herbert Colangco, a convict said to be operating from inside the New Bilibid Prison—all allegedly protected by retired Deputy Director General Marcelo Garbo Jr., who vehemently denied the accusation.}}

^{_{DU30 then began publicly listing names of individuals allegedly involved in drugs. He unleashed the Philippine National Police under Director General Ronald “Bato” de la Rosa and masked “vigilantes” on all suspected pushers and users. And he denounced as “sons of bitches” then-US President Barack Obama, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, US Ambassador Philip Goldberg, unnamed leaders of the European Union, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights Agnes Callamard, and others for criticizing the “extra-judicial killings” which had become the defining program of his presidency.}}

^{_{DU30 and Bato appeared to relish the bloodletting, for which the policemen and “vigilantes” were reportedly given “kill quotas” and reward money for every suspect killed. Within one year, the war was reported to have killed some 8,000 suspects, without documentation or due process, raising an international human rights storm, which includes an accusation of “crimes against humanity” and “mass murder” against DU30 before the International Criminal Court at The Hague, and sharp denunciations from the US State Department and the European Union, among others.}}

^{_{No big haul of illegal drugs, no busting of any sizeable drug laboratories, no arrest of any bigtime drug lords were ever reported. Most of the victims belonged to the class of “social rejects” whose births, in Eliot’s words, “are unwelcome,” whose death is “unmentioned in the Times.” So far only three notable suspects had been killed in the most bizarre circumstances.}}

^{_{Some mentionables}}

^{_{On November 5, 2016, Mayor Rolando Espinosa of Albuera, Leyte, who had earlier turned himself in after having been tagged as a drug suspect, was killed at four o’clock in the morning inside his detention cell at the Baybay, Leyte subprovincial jail by a police strike team that had motored for hours from Tacloban, allegedly to serve him a search warrant. The National Bureau of Investigation saw this as a plain “rubout,” but the raiding party said it was a “shootout”, and DU30 agreed with the police, and Superintendent Marvin Marcos, the leader of the raiding party, will now be promoted to the next higher rank.}}

^{_{On January 19, 2017, it became publicly known that sometime in October some rogue policemen abducted Korean businessman Jee Ick-joo, an alleged drug suspect, for a P5 million ransom, drove him to the PNP compound at Camp Crame, where he was strangled to death inside his car.}}

^{_{This raised a strong statement from the South Korean government, but the sensation quickly died down.}}

^{_{On July 30, 2017, a Sunday, Ozamiz City mayor Reynaldo Parojinog Sr., his wife and 13 others, mostly relatives and friends, were massacred inside their three residences at 2.30 a.m. on the suspicion of their alleged drug dealing. The raiding party claimed they were met with gunfire from inside the residences under siege, a claim denied by the lawyer of the slain mayor. Reports from the city have since claimed that the raiding party included hired gunmen from Isabel, Leyte, hiding behind masks.}}

^{_{The drug war was temporarily overshadowed by DU30’s war on the Islamic State (IS)-aligned Maute terror group, which attacked the Islamic city of Marawi on May 23, prompting DU30 to proclaim martial law and suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus for 90 days in the whole of Mindanao. The constitutionality of Proclamation 216, issued in Moscow where DU30 was visiting at the time, was challenged before the Supreme Court, but DU30 prevailed. Upon its expiration on Juy22, Congress extended the proclamation until December 31, 2017.}}

^{_{Back to the drug war}}

^{_{With the successful military operations against the Mautes in Marawi, and the apparent collapse of the IS structure in Syria and Iraq, the war of drugs shot back to prominence upon the discovery of a P6.4 billion illegal drug shipment from Xiamen, which had gone through the “green lane.” Despite the gravity of the case, for which Customs Commissioner Nicanor Faeldon should be held directly accountable, DU30 expressed full confidence in the former Philippine Marines captain, who had participated in the military mutiny against then-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in 2003. Now Chairman Robert Barbers of the House committee on dangerous drugs, a Mindanao politician, has asked DU30 to fire Faeldon for corruption and incompetence.}}

^{_{This is something DU30 may not blithely ignore. Analysts close to this issue, however, believe Faeldon may be in possession of certain sensitive information, which makes it hard for DU30 to get rid of him, unless he volunteers to step down. Amid the apparent efforts of some quarters to link DU30’s son Paolo, the vice mayor of Davao City, to the dangerous drugs shipment from Xiamen, Faeldon has not said one word clearing him of any suspicion. If Faeldon knows Paolo is not at all involved in any monkey business at the pier, shouldn’t he have come to his defense after the customs broker Mark Taguba mentioned his name, quoting wild rumors, in a congressional hearing? He did not.}}

^{_{Who is this Kenneth Dong?}}

^{_{The problem is, a photo has surfaced in the social media showing Paolo in a friendly pose with Kenneth Dong, the alleged middleman in the illegal P6.4 billion drug shipment. And some people are giving undue importance to it. No one is saying the young man has any fascination for any narco king—whether it be Burma’s late opium king Khun Sa, or Colombia’s Pablo Escobar, or Mexico’s Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman. But by linking him to Kenneth Dong and the rest of his narco chain, his enemies clearly want to show his guilt by association.}}

^{_{Since he came to power, DU30 has had to deal with various problems. This is one problem he probably never expected to deal with though. This is why he says if anyone could show him an affidavit, a sworn statement, implicating his son in any shady deal, he would quit the presidency. This statement is understandable, but I hope it does not come to that. Still, until a much bigger problem arises, this seems to be DU30’s biggest problem for now.}}

THE death of a loved one or a friend—two friends Michael Marasigan and Roy Sinfuego passed away recently—always reminds one how fleeting life is.

Brief it is but life is a magical moment, a miracle in the universe’s14 billion years of existence in which a species called homo sapiens has evolved that it is now able to reflect on himself and on the world.

Most of us celebrate that brief span with our loved ones, making sure — usually simultaneous with satisfying our own needs — they have all the necessities to enjoy life, and not suffer it. Occasionally, we move out of that circle, with acts of kindness to those outside it: handing out coins to the ragamuffin who taps on your windshield; giving an unexpected end-year bonus to your gardener; donating money to help victims of floods or the Marawi crisis.

But with the realization that life is such a miracle, shouldn’t we devote at least a significant part of our lives, not just within our small circle, but to help our fellow homo sapiens enjoy it too, instead of living it in misery?

Many well-off people actually do, or think they do—believing that their companies give jobs to people who would otherwise be out of work or underpaid, giving scholarships to the poor, funding charitable organizations or working in NGOs, for communists, struggling to overthrow an exploitative state, and for many Catholics, praying for the poor.

In this age we live in, though, the most efficient way to help as many people in the shortest period of time is to help make the State under which one is a member of by birth or choice, as strong and efficient as possible, that it can supervise the nation it has the authority to control, so that its economic structure lifts the majority of its citizens from poverty.

Think about it. When a Filipino moves out of the country to migrate to the US, Canada, or any other developed country, he gets to live a much, much better life, and even develops his talents to the full.

US or Canada

That’s a cliché of course, but we forget that the US or Canada are that way because their citizens who have been buried long ago, had built, often at a high cost to themselves and their families, the political and economic structures that have made their nations such that anybody living there would have the necessities of life and the means to develop his talents.

After all, it is a nation’s government that is the apparatus of institutions and practices that order and regulate society, and appropriate and distribute the resources of a nation. It is in this age the most important organization that determines whether humans live in happiness or misery. That is why we revere or hate presidents so much, since they headed that organization, the state, that has had the most impact on our people’s lives.

It hasn’t always been the case. That supreme role of a nation-state over humans emerged only in the last 300 years or so of humankind’s million-year history. In the past, what determined people’s lives were the leadership of a tribe or band of tribes, later of kingdoms (and the character of their kings), of empires that conquered tribes, and even of the Catholic Church and the Islamic Caliphates.

The realization that the nation-state is the most important organization that determines whether a human being lives in happiness or misery is called nationalism.

The term or even the notion of it has been denigrated, even caricatured by the term “nativism” here and abroad, by the global capitalist elites, whose businesses have gone not just beyond their own nations, but depend on removing the boundaries of nations. They have even spread the lie that it is them – “foreign investments”—that is the biggest factor for a nation’s growth.

In our country, nationalism has been all but killed by the elites, who after all look at the Philippines not as their country—they see themselves are Spanish, Americans, or “globalists”—but only as a lucrative market or production site.

Contrast Japanese or Thai capitalists’ nationalism, and you will realize how bad our situation is. Our elites have dived into the idea of “globalization”: most of them have mansions in New York, California, and even London, which they consider as their real homes. The most famous executive in our country, much admired for his corporate successes, is Manuel V. Pangilinan. Yet he works for foreigners: the lucrative conglomerate he manages has given a billion dollars in profits to its main owners, the Indonesian Anthoni Salim and rich American investors.

All these points would be just theoretical if not for recent developments: the emergence as an economic powerhouse of China, one of the world’s most nationalist countries.

China’s 800 million

According to the World Bank, China lifted out of extreme poverty (those living on $1.90 per day, roughly P96 per day) 800 million of its citizens from 1988 to 2013.The most important factor for China’s growth is that it had a strong state that adopted whatever policy, absent the dogmas, that would grow the economy and lift its people out of poverty.

That 800 million lifted out of poverty is equivalent to the population of eight Philippines. How many poor Filipinos have managed to crawl out of poverty after the EDSA Revolution to today? Just 20 million, although the net increase, according to World Bank data, is just 2.5 million because of our population growth, that has bred more poor.

“China’s progress accounted for more than three-quarters of global poverty reduction and is the reason why the world reached the UN millennium development goal of halving extreme poverty,” a recent article in the UK-based newspaper The Guardian pointed out. China’s poverty reduction was even seen by several scholars as a “modern miracle’” as never in humankind’s history have so many people been lifted out of poverty in such a short span of time as three decades.

Indeed, humanity has been in such misery for most of its existence that it is a dogma for major religions. A Christian after-life heaven wouldn’t have had traction if most people were happy alive. Islam views life as so miserable that one should pass through it as fast as possible, which indeed jihadists do. Buddhism says there are ways to eject from the cycle of (miserable) life.

Isn’t it mind-boggling that 800 million Chinese souls in just 25 years – less than the time span between our EDSA revolution and today – were lifted out of poverty, so that they and their descendants will be able to celebrate life? Wouldn’t it have given those responsible for that feat all the meaning in life? Shouldn’t we emulate them?

Between collecting Porsches and helping get out of poverty 10 million Filipinos, which would include their hundreds of millions of descendants in the future, won’t the latter give you the bigger thrill?