Cusp of greatness

By: Conrado de Quiros

Philippine Daily Inquirer
9:33 pm | Tuesday, June 5th, 2012
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(This was the talk I gave at the recent Gawad Kalinga Hope Ball in New Jersey. Its
one way of looking at recent events from a broader perspective.)
Many years ago, a friend of mine invited me to the opening of a Filipino press club in
the United States. But of course Ill attend, I said, and expressed elation that the
place would finally have a Filipino press club. Oh, he said, its not the first, its the
third. It was the third Filipino press club being launched there.
What happened? I asked. Well, he answered, the guy who lost in the election in the
first press club decided to split after some time and put up his own press club. Then
the guy who lost the election in the second press club decided to split after some
time and put up his own press club.
My friend understood that it was such a small place to have three Filipino press
clubs in, but what could he do? The people who put up the third press club were his
friends, too, which was why he had agreed to invite people to its launching.
I did not go on to ask if there would be a fourth.
I guess thats a fairly familiar experience to you. We Filipinos cant seem to get our
act together, we Filipinos cant seem to stay together. We split from organizations,
we split from teams, we even split from the country. The only thing we cant seem
to split from is our spouses, but that is not out of extraordinary loyalty, that is only
out of the extraordinary policy of the Philippine Catholic Church banning divorce. A
proscription Filipino males, in particular, remedy by extraordinary extracurricular
activity. But thats another story.
In fact, we even like to split from ourselves, to go by the split personalities many of
our controversial public officials exhibit. You saw that only recently in the ex-Chief
Justice who stood trial for a variety of sins and trotted out a variety of personalities,
saintly and devilish, judicious and devious.
Whatever the cause of this, its turned us into a people that have fallen low in the
esteem of our neighbors, and even lower in our own eyes. We like to disparage
ourselves, also called crab mentality; we like to think others are better, also called
colonial mentality. For four decades now, since martial law, our mindset has been
one of getting by. Where other countries think of excellence and transcendence, we

think of recovery and survival. Where other countries think of moving mountains,
we think of moving, well, whatever it is we move in the john.
You see that in the awe-inspiring difference between us and the Japanese. Last April
was the first anniversary of the earthquake/tsunami that laid low Iwate Prefecture in
Tohoku, and the Internet carried pictures of the place one year after. The contrast
between the shambles it was in the aftermath of the disaster and its restoration to
what it was before, if not to something better, was mind-boggling. Youd think that
place had never been devastated. Youd think those lives had never been lost. One
is tempted to say that that recovery is nothing short of miraculous, but that is not
so to the Japanese. For them recovery is not an option, it is a given. Recovery is not
something talked about, recovery is not something striven for, recovery is
something merely done.
A country like that doesnt just survive, it triumphs.
By contrast, we remain in a mode where our leaders and we ourselves debate
endlessly how we may recover, how we may survive. It is a lack of capacity to think
heroically and act heroically. Or as I like to put it: Other people make love, other
people make war, we just make do.
What makes all this astonishing is that we have an astonishing tradition of heroism.
We have an astonishing array of accomplishments to make us proud of ourselves, to
make us think there are no limits to what we can do.
We were, as P-Noy pointed out in his Independence Day message, the first country
in Asia to rise up against colonial rule. What makes that all the more astonishing is
that unlike the Latin American revolutions of the 1820s which were led by the
homegrown elite or local bourgeoisie, ours was led by the plebeian. The Katipunan
was founded and spurred to action not by a member of the landed class or the
ilustrado but by a plebeian who sold canes and fans in Tondo. Well before Lenin led
his uprising in Russia and Mao his own in China, Andres Bonifacio rose up against
Spanish rule in the Philippines. Bonifacio (and later Emilio Aguinaldo) of course
failed where the other two succeeded, largely because America gatecrashed the
party and stole the prom queen, but that does not make the venture any less grand
or heartwarming.
Just as well we were the first country in the world to mount People Power. The
concept of civil disobedience was there before, the concept of peaceful revolution
was there before. But nobody had the imagination, or instinct, or inspired madness
to suddenly and spontaneously join others in front of the camps, defying the guns
defying the tanks, defying his abject opinion of himself, other than the Filipino. And
having done so, turned the event into a burst of colors, into an explosion of song,
into a frantic, kaleidoscopic, mlange of images typified by a nun adorning the
mouth of the cannon of a tank with a garland of flowers. The tourism department is
right: Its more fun in the Philippines. Even our uprisings are so.

And still just as well, weve managed to impeach a president and a chief justice,
both of whom ended in a conviction. The first rendered by the people themselves,
the second by the people whom the people had tasked to represent them.

(conclusion)
We are capable of heroic imagination, we are capable of heroic action. We have
shown it, we have done it. Our only problem is sustaining it. We blaze forth in one
flash of time only to stumble in darkness afterward. We rise to brilliance in one blink
of time only to plunge into interminable mediocrity afterward. Whatever the
reasons, and they are legion, we have shown ourselves to be so full of promise but
so lacking in fulfillment. We have been called a country with an unfinished
revolution, and it is only too true. Whatever the reason, whether its the intrusion of
a foreign power or the implosion of what James Fallows called a damaged culture,
weve found ourselves faced again and again with an aborted revolution.
Can we change things? Can we change our fate? Can we change ourselves?
I look at whats happening today, and I find myself revising my questions. I find
myself asking instead: Why havent we done so already?
The ingredients for transcending ourselves and sustaining it are there, if we only
have the wits to see them, if we only have the will to harness them.
Not least is the spirit of voluntarism that has arisen over the years. That is the spirit
Filipinos showed when they flocked to P-Noy, a candidate who came from out of
nowhere, brandishing good against Gloria Macapagal-Arroyos evil, and volunteered
their time and their talent, without pay and without hesitation, to his cause. That is
the spirit the voters showed when they trooped to the precincts and waited in long
lines under a raging sun, the way they had done in Corys wake, the way they had
done in Marcos and Eraps wakefulness, proving that 2010 was really an Edsa
masquerading as an election.
That is the spirit Filipinos showed in Tropical Storm Ondoy and Typhoon
Sendong, bursting out of their homes and their shelters, their comfort and their
smugness, to help those who had lost theirs. The istambays, the movie stars, the
musicians, the students, the civic groups, the media, the ordinary citizens, they
came out without thought of pay or reward, without thought of glory or recognition,
feeling the pain of others as their own, feeling only a sense of bayanihan, feeling
only a sense of malasakit.
That is the spirit we see in Gawad Kalinga.
In a sense, all this is still People Power, yoked now not to the service of ousting a
tyrant but to building a nation, Yoked now not to ending the regimes of those who

have oppressed us bitterly but to ending the reign of the things that continue to
grind us to heel mercilessly.
Just as well, and from the other end of things, there is a government capable of
matching the peoples heroism with a heroism of its own, capable of mirroring the
peoples heroism with a heroism its own. This is a government that is determined to
push corruption to the sea, that is driven to drive corruption to the ends of the
earth. A resolve it has just demonstrated by getting rid of the one obstacle that
stood in the way of Arroyos prosecution, the former chief justice, Renato Corona.
That the impeachment courts verdict of guilty has been met by near-universal
jubilation here as much as back homeI saw a footage on TV of a group of Fil-Ams
toasting to the verdictmust say that we all want the same things, that we can
come together on the same things.
The corrupt of course have criticized P-Noy for concentrating too much on fighting
corruption thereby forgetting fighting poverty. As though the two things are
separate, as though the two things are opposed. When fighting corruption is in fact
fighting poverty, when fighting poverty is in fact fighting corruption. When
corruption in fact is the one thing that keeps us separate and divisive. When
corruption in fact is the one thing that keeps us from contributing our talents to king
and country. When corruption is the one thing that makes us ask, Why in hell
should I want to have anything to do with a country whose leaders want to rip me
off?
Corruption kills. Corruption does not deplete, it kills. Corruption does not weaken, it
kills. Corruption does not diminish, it kills. It kills the body, it kills the soul.
Corruption is the books and pencils and pad paper that are taken away from the kid
who scavenges in the mountain of trash in Payatas but goes to elementary school
on the side. Corruption is the roof over the heads of the family that broods and
breeds in squalor underneath bridges or beside esteros, risking the fury of Ondoy
and Sendong, that is taken away from them. Corruption is the doctor or nurse or
medical student in some improvised clinic in the wilds of Aparri or the desolation of
Sulu, who is taken away from the sick and dying. Corruption is the morsel of food
from the leavings of Jollibee and McDonalds snatched away from the mouth of the
hungry. Corruption is the child sleeping on the street, dead to the world, deader to
pain and hunger, his frail brain roiling in the fumes of rugby and cough syrup.
Corruption kills. Its time we ended that plague in our country, which is exactly what
P-Noys administration is ferociously, relentlessly, heroically trying to do.
We can do worse than to yoke ourselves to that cause. Who knows? The world used
to look at us and say, There but for the grace of God goes the Filipino. Maybe with
this new opportunity, we can start to finish the unfinished revolution we began long
ago. Maybe with this fresh start, we can climb to the cusp of greatness and not

tumble back down like Jack and Jill. Maybe with a little help from heaven and a lot
more faith in ourselves, we can finally say:
There and with the grace of God goes the Filipino.